SIGNOR MONTI'S LECTURES.
The fourth lecture of this series, to which we have before referred was given on Wednesday, continuing the subject of Greek art in its na- tive land and among the Romans. The figures of which diagrams had been presented on the last occasion again passed under review with some- what more of detail,--the Niobe, the beautiful and womanly Polyhymnia, the Farnese Hercules, the never-ending Laocoon, and many others, with por- traits of the prte-Roman and Roman periods down to the final leavings of Greece-here a foolish Trajan, there the total decadence of the Arch of Constantine. Signor Monti then proceeded to the interesting subject of the technical means employed in Grecian sculpture, and the important question of its colouring. The first efforts were probably in clay or wax; afterwards wooden statues covered with riveted plates of metal : no men- tion occurs of the use of marble till the end of the seventh century D. c. The tools were identically the same as at the present day-the ma- nipulations the same, even to pointing. As to colour, Egypt, As- syria, India, the Greek hieratic art, and terra-cotta, equally witness to its use. The great masters of the demotic period also produced works having all the effects of colour. Staining or tinting of marble figures is attested by Pliny and Vitruvius under the name of " oircumlitio" ; and Paul- Wes is mentioned by one non-contemporaneous author as the first man who exhibited a statue in all the whiteness of the marble. Demotic co- louring, says Signor Monti, was undoubtedly less than that of the hieratic period, but not less certain. He conceives the result, however, to have been more a tone than a positive colour; and expresses his conviction that the colouring never altered the surface of the marble or concealed the character of its appearance. This view, we may observe, is widely dif- ferent from that which has received a practical expression, as far as it goes, in the coloured Parthenon frieze at the Crystal Palace, with the painting of which Signor Monti is himself officially credited-although, as we have heard it intimated, with only partial accuracy.
Christian art is to form the subject of the remaining two lectures of the series ; the interest and careful preparation of which have amply main- tained whatever good opinion may have been earned by the first. It strikes us, however, as somewhat singular-or would so strike us, were not the paradox a common one-that a sculptor who so consistently advo- cates refined severity in his art as Signor Monti does, should. aim so little at it in his own works.
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