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ng these, both the public and the householder would feel relieved of any danger of betraying the wrong taste. The workshops or studios of Greek artists turned out large numbers of a given masterpiece--a Faun, a Venus, or a Discobolus--at prices from L50 or so upwards. It followed also that there were numerous imitations passed off as originals, and many a wealthy man boasted of possessing an "original" or a genuine "old master"--a Praxiteles or a Lysippus--when he owned but a clever reproduction. The same remark applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum, and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth. Petronius, the coarse but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks at the vulgar _nouveau riche_ who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes were the work of an artist named Corinthus. [Illustration: FIG. 117.--WALL-PAINTING. (Woman with Tablets.)] [Illustration: FIG. 118.--WALL-PAINTING FROM HERCULANEUM. (Women playing with Knuckle-Bones.)] Next to sculpture came painting, and in this art Romans themselves appear to have often acquired a technical skill which rivalled that of the Greeks. There is also plenty of evidence that among the pictorial artists there were no few women. For us practically the only painting of the time which has been preserved is that upon the walls of private houses, and it is probable that we see some of the worst specimens of the kind as well as some of a high order of excellence. It is not difficult to distinguish between the truly artistic design and colouring of wall-pictures in the House of Vettii or of the "Tragic Poet" and the crude journeyman work in sundry other Pompeian houses which must have belonged to anything but connoisseurs. Paintings, it must be remembered, were the ancient wall-papers, as well as the ancient pictures. Here, as in sculpture, we find the same or similar motives and groupings repeated in a way which shows that the painter--or rather the collaborating painters--must have been reproducing or adapting an original which was particularly admired or had obtained a fashionable vogue. The wall-pictures, done in fresco or distemper and in various dimensions, fall into four main classes. There are landscapes, from a pretty realistic garden scene to a fantastic stretch of sea and land diversified with woods, rocks, figures, and buildings. There are subjects from my
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