It has just been said that the great works of Phidias and his pupils are not to be praised merely because they were coloured nor because no mode of enrichment, gold or jewels or ivory or enamelling, was grudged as being too costly in order to adorn them. So, again, the use of colours is not to be condemned because the statues of some very ancient nations are coarse and rude, or because the idols of the old Mexicans or of the savages of Africa and New Zealand are made by it even more hideous than they would otherwise be. The wide-spread observance of the practice is the point to be considered; and the fact that it rests upon some deep-seated and universal feeling in the mind of all men, of all countries, and of almost every age.
Regarded as a mode of handing down to future generations the memory of much which would have been lost for want of it, who can complain of the careful colouring of mediæval tombs and monuments? We are indebted to it for exact details of dresses and jewelry and armour: about which there can therefore be no longer any dispute, and which give the answer at once to many difficulties and many interesting subjects of inquiry. Nowadays we should almost shudder at a statue painted and coloured to imitate the muslins and silks worn in Hyde Park by women, and the various coats and trowsers of the men. But five hundred years hence some of our descendants would be grateful if, in spite of our own prejudices, we had given them even one statue among the many of our Queen or of the prince Consort, not left in the bare uncoloured silence of the marble.
Crucifixes in ivory of the middle ages are extremely rare; they may remain still in use in some churches abroad, but whether abroad or at home they are seldom found in the collection of any museum. There is one, although a fragment yet very beautiful, in the South Kensington collection: no. 212. The figure is represented after death; but the still suffering expression of the drooping head, the strained muscles across the breast showing the ribs, and, as it were, the struggle of the legs contracted in the last agony, are admirably given. The eyes are closed, the forehead drawn with pain, the mouth open. The body is clothed with a garment crossed in white folds over the loins and falling to the knees. It is greatly to be regretted that this beautiful figure has been so mutilated. The conception of the artist is full of true feeling and devotion, and his treatment of the subject an excellent example of the right union of conventionality with enough of what is real. As with regard to the heads of pastoral staffs, so also it is not easy to say why mediæval crucifixes should be so uncommon: for, although there must have been hundreds wilfully destroyed and broken in England in the sixteenth century, the same reason does not apply to other countries, where the demand and the supply both for the churches and for private use must have been continual and almost without limit.