At all periods of the world the plastic clay has been a favourite material of art. Accordingly we see it from the remotest times applied to the decoration of public buildings, as well as to the embellishment of private dwellings. The fortunate purchase of the Campana collection has enabled us to understand not only the part played in building by earthen applications, such as masks, antefixes and ornamental mouldings, but also to ascertain the types preferred by men of taste, in the choice of which Pliny himself did not scorn to take advice. These large plaques in bas-relief, when treated with skill and learning, have helped to illustrate the Homeric poems, while others were of subjects of a mythological character, and others representations of common life, as the vintage, women milking their flocks, etc.

Statuettes, again, are past counting, and the excavations at Tarsus in Cilicia and Tanagra have attracted to this subject some very useful studies. For how was it possible to remain indifferent to the grace and delicacy of these delightful little deities, the lares or guardians of the ancient hearth, preserved throughout so many ages by the secret of the tomb ? Some of these little figures, with their exquisite modelling and soft tones, are in their way as grand as colossal statues, as life-like as anything that has been elsewhere quickened by the touch of genius. When beneath these pink or light blue draperies, we follow the outlines of Aphrodite, we fancy we see her bosom heave while her head, curved under a mysterious penumbra, seems to be lit up with a god-like smile. We almost expect to see a movement in these simply and softly moulded limbs by the tone of the clay made to look like the warm flesh, gilded by the rays of a southern sun. Subtle power of art, capable of so enrapturing the connoisseur, and which ought to make him all eagerness to possess some of these marvellous masterpieces! And in this there is something more than the gratification of a refined taste. There is the discovery of fresh data to be added to the repeated investigations long devoted to the productions of antiquity. By merely carefully studying the statuettes gathered from the tombs of Boeotia, such numbers of which may be seen in the Louvre, M. O. Raynet has been enabled to characterise the productions of four distinct centres. The first, comprising three-fourths of the works known, although probably baked in different localities, is composed of statuettes made of a light purified clay, of a clear brown colour, very slightly fired, and with a granulated and dead fracture. From the artistic point of view the figures are extremely well-proportioned, of easy attitude, graceful without exaggeration, and simply painted, with but little white, and neither green nor violet.

The second centre, which was at Thisbe, does not seem to have been very productive. Here the earth is heavy and well baked. Its close grain breaks sharply off; the surface is glazed and as it were enamelled, and the colours are accordingly very firm. White and a clear green, seem to be characteristic of this make. Indifferently executed, the figures are short with thick-set heads, the attitudes often showing a pretentious exaggeration, while the chestnut hair is frequently plaited and coiled round the top of the head.

The third seems to have flourished at Aulis on the Euripus, the inhabitants of which place are described by Pausanias as potters. In their material features the objects from this division greatly resemble the two preceding ones, though distinguished from them by their make. The figures, which are all those of females, are marked by small heads and disproportionate length, being slim and inelegant, with but little colour, except an enamelled white.

From Tanagra itself comes the fourth group, the main feature of which consists in its artistic perfection. Of matchless proportions, these statuettes betray a singular degree of eloquence in their motions and general disposition. The execution is very finished, the heads re-touched, and the hair treated with searching care, so that figures cast from the same mould acquire in the hand of the artist an obvious individuality of their own. In fact, they are never mere replicas one of the other. The confidence of the modellers in their anatomical knowledge, may, moreover, be seen in the tendency they evince to show the forms of the body beneath the draperies, or, better still, to leave the arms or the breast exposed. The colouring is soft, the white tunic showing well on the pale carnations, while the other draperies, when present, are of a pale rose or clear violet colour.

It is no easy matter to distinguish the Boeotian from those of the rest of Greece or Asia Minor. All that can be said of those brought by M. Langlois from Tarsus is that they are no less graceful, no less perfect, than the very finest of those in the first group. A special feature of the Tanagra statuettes are the heads, which at times seem to have been treated separately, offering at the neck a seam or trace of juncture not elsewhere observed.

But, apart from all this, how many charming objects are still but little known.

Without speaking of the figures intended to be applied to vases, or those with smooth base that stood erect on the handles of the large Apulian urns, what are these genii with their expanded wings? Or these divinities in the art of flight, which must doubtless have been suspended to some decorative work? Were they produced in the same centres as the statuettes?

It will be readily seen that the lover of Art and the historian have still many discoveries to make amongst these little marvels so worthy to figure in the glass cases of a collection, and whose merit renders them conspicuous even amidst the bronzes and other more costly materials.

It will always be a subject of regret for the owners of the more perfect of these works that they bear no name. For, though history has preserved a long list of plastic artists, nearly all of them were specialists occupied with the decoration of tiles and antefixes. We have doubtless the sigillarii, whose province is supposed to have been to deliver to everyone the lares intended for the domestic hearth. But their number is too limited to allow of their being the originators of these numerous masterpieces. It seems to us as if we should rather go back to the great names in sculpture for the creation of the purest types. These, as lately shown by M. Hcuze in connection with the group of Demeter and her daughter Core, after Praxiteles, would thus give us on a reduced scale a reminiscence of the most renowned works of monumental sculpture. We know to what an extent the ancient workshops were nurseries of men of genius, subjected to a training based on respect and admiration for the master. If we follow up this hint, possibly some discoveries may yet be made.