Note 281 — Chapter XIX · (XXXIII.)

To some small extent the ancients do seem to have filled the engraved lines in their bronze or silver plates with colouring matter, and the known examples are described in Daremberg et Saglio, Dictionnaire des Antiquités, art. ‘Chrysographia,’ p. 1138. Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXIII, 46, gives a recipe, as used by the Egyptians, for a material for colouring silver that corresponds with the composition used for niello work, though the use he indicates seems rather that of an artificial patina than a filling for incisions. In any case the use of such a filling in antiquity was quite uncommon, for the innumerable incised designs on the backs of Greek and Etruscan mirrors and on caskets like the Ficeronian Cista show no indication of the process, though of course in the lapse of time the incisions have acquired a darker tinge than the smooth surfaces of the metal, and Vasari may have seen them filled with accidental impurities.