[Illustration: FIG. 263.--Outline for a portrait of Amenophis III. Champollion, pl. 232.]
At Beni-Hassan, and in several of the Theban tombs, there are representations of the painter at work. When he had to spread a single tint over a large surface--brown, for instance, upon the whole superficies of a limestone statue--we see him seated upon a kind of stool, his pot of colour in his left hand, his brush in his unsupported right (Fig. 54 Vol. I.). Sometimes his work was more complicated than this. There are a few royal portraits, and a few scenes with numerous actors, in which the whole scale of tints at his command must have been required. He then makes use of a palette. Specimens of these palettes are to be seen in every museum. They are rectangular pieces of wood, of alabaster, or of enamelled earthenware. They usually have seven little colour cups, but a few have as many as eleven or twelve. Small _styles_, as large as a crow-quill, have been found with these palettes. The use of these has been much discussed. Prisse cut one and steeped it in water. It was then discovered that the reed of which it was composed became a brush when its fibres were thus softened by moisture.[329] None of the large brushes which must have been used to spread the colour over considerable surfaces have been discovered, but Prisse believes that they too must have been made of fibrous reeds, such as the sarmentose stems of the _Salvadora persica_. Others think that for such purposes the hair pencil must have been employed.
[329] PRISSE, _Histoire de l'Art Égyptien_, text, p. 289.
Cakes of colour have sometimes been found in the tombs, together with earthenware mortars and pestles for grinding them. The tints usually employed were _yellow_, _red_, _blue_, _green_, _brown_, _white_, and _black_. These correspond to the seven cups hollowed in most of the palettes. They each included several varieties. Some of these colours were vegetable, such as indigo; others--and these more numerous--were mineral. Among the latter is a certain blue, which has preserved all its brilliancy even after so many centuries. Its merits were extolled by Theophrastus and Vitruvius. It is an ash with wonderful power of resisting chemical agents, and neither turning green nor black with exposure to the air. It must have been composed, we are told, of sand, copper-filings, and subcarbonate of soda reduced to powder and burnt in an oven. Copper is also the colouring principle, at least in our days, of those greens which are more or less olive in tone. Different shades of red, yellow, and brown, were obtained from the ochres. Their whites, formed of lime, of plaster, or of powdered enamel, have sometimes preserved a snowy whiteness beside which our whitest papers seem grey.[330] As for violet, Champollion tells us that no colour used by the ancients had that value. In those few bas-reliefs in which it is now found, it is a result of the changes which time has spread over surfaces originally gilded. The hue in question is caused, we are told, by the mordant or other preparation upon which the gold was laid.[331]