The most difficult point to determine, is the colour of the flesh. It is
evident that the Greeks would avoid every attempt at representing
nature. Whatever colours they used, we may be sure that they were
treated conventionally only, so as to suggest the nature of the object
represented, yet not to attempt a direct imitation; we must feel,
however, that they went to the utmost limit of conventionality.
M. Hittorff has in his possession a fragment of a figure from Selinus,
retaining a flesh colour very similar to that which we have employed.
Although colour has been found on the hair, eyes, lips, and drapery of
Greek fragments of marble, no traces have as yet been found on the nude
portions. And those who believe that the marble of the Greeks was only
stained and not painted, build up a triumphant argument on this. The
explanation, however, is very simple; it is evident that the smooth
portions of a coloured object would lose their colour first under the
influence of time, and, in fact, all traces of colour that ever are
found, are found in the folds and crevices, from which it is fairly
argued that the surface of which they formed a part was of that colour.
Even in the Alhambra, which was entirely covered with colour, and which
is so many centuries nearer our time than the Greek temples, colour is
but rarely found on the surface: it is only by what is found in the
depths and hollows, that we know how the whole was coloured.
On the terra-cottas of the Louvre there are figures where the white
ground with which the whole surface of the terra-cottas was covered,
remains perfect over the whole of the figures, at the same time that a
fragment of flesh tint still remains upon some portion of it. Were this
absent, it might equally well be argued, that the Greeks were in the
habit of painting the flesh white on their terra-cottas.