452 MERGE TO GYRENE.

shade. The colours employed are simply red, blue, and yellow ; but whatever may be their nature they still are brilliant in the extreme, and appear to have stood remarkably well. There seem to have been two reds used in these pictures, (for so we may call the several groups in question,) one a transparent colour resembling madder lake, the other like that colour with a mixture of vermilion or of some other bright, opaque red. These colours appear so rich and brilliant, when sprinkled with water*, that one would imagine they had been passed over gold leaf, or some similar substance, as we observe to have been the case in pictures of Giotto and Cimabue, as well as in the earher works of the Venetian and other schools.

We are not, however, of opinion that this practice was adopted in the paintings now before us, although the brilliancy of their colours would suggest the employment of some such expedient. The yellow appears equally to have been of two kinds ; an orange colour was first used to fill in the outline, and the lights were touched on with a brighter yellow over it ; the whole together presenting that golden, sunny hue, so delightful to the eye both in nature and art. The same process seems to have been adopted with respect to the blues ; but the lights, in this instance, appear rather to have been made by a mixture of white with the local colour than by a second blue of a lighter shade.

It may be inferred from the copies which we have made of these designs, (which, although they are as good as we could make them, naturally fall very short of the perfection of the originals,) that the * An operation which is at present necessary, in order to make them bear out.