Polychrome
Polychrome means: who is of several Couleur S. One speaks about polychrome statue, polychrome roof, polychrome painting, polychrome marble.
Beautiful arts
The study of the products of the Antique art made it possible to note that, among former civilized people, the use required to paint whole or part, of one or more colors, the monuments of Architecture and Sculpture. It is this kind of painting which one indicates under the name of polychromy or of polychrome painting.
It emitted forever of doubt about the architectonic and plastic polychromy of the Egyptian S because one has multiple material proofs of them. It is the same of the Perse S, the Assyrian S and the Babylonian S which gave to their buildings the brightest nuances and most splendid as we bring it back the historians.
As for the Greek , one believed a long time that they did not practice polychromy, but the closer examination of the monuments raised during the most beautiful centuries of Greek art showed that all, without exception, were covered varied colors.
Following the example Greeks, the Romains cultivated also the polychromy but in a more restricted way. The Christian artists of the Moyen-âge draw also sometimes party from it, especially for the Romance period and the first centuries of the Gothic period .
The painted stained glasses must be looked like a particular form of polychromy.
With the Rebirth, polychromy is still practiced and is expressed by the ceramics of the terra cotta enamelled ( terracotta invetriata ) several artists Tuscan of re-elected like Santi Buglioni, Andrea della Robbia, Luca della Robbia.
The apogee of the Baroque and the Rococo will continue to devote polychromy in sculpture.
This art will never fall in disuse at the 19th century as the studies of the realization of the Opéra Garnier will reveal it and as prove it the many works preserved at the Musée of Orsay, and as much the statues ploychromes of Niki de Saint Phalle for the last half of the 20th century.
See too
polychrome Alsatian or Painting on wood