Another fact of importance, a fact which few are able to keep
constantly enough in their thoughts, is that Greek marble
sculpture was always more or less painted. This is proved both by
statements in ancient authors and by the fuller and more explicit
evidence of numberless actual remains. (See especially pages 148,
247.) From these sources we learn that eyes, eyebrows, hair, and
perhaps lips were regularly painted, and that draperies and other
accessories were often painted in whole or in part. As regards the
treatment of flesh the evidence is conflicting. Some instances are
reported where the flesh of men was colored a reddish brown, as in
the sculpture of Egypt. But the evidence seems to me to warrant
the inference that this was unusual in marble sculpture. On the
"Alexander" sarcophagus the nude flesh has been by some process
toned down to an ivory tint, and this treatment may have been the
rule, although most sculptures which retain remains of color show
no trace of this. Observe that wherever color was applied, it was
laid on in "flat" tints, i.e., not graded or shaded.

This polychromatic character of Greek marble sculpture is at
variance with what we moderns have been accustomed to since the
Renaissance. By practice and theory we have been taught that
sculpture and painting are entirely distinct arts. And in the
austere renunciation by sculpture of all color there has even
been seen a special distinction, a claim to precedence in the
hierarchy of the arts. The Greeks had no such idea. The sculpture
of the older nations about them was polychromatic; their own early
sculpture in wood and coarse stone was almost necessarily so;
their architecture, with which sculpture was often associated, was
so likewise. The coloring of marble sculpture, then, was a natural
result of the influences by which that sculpture was molded. And,