Dibu'tades
of Sicyon, was the reputed inventor of the art of modelling in relief, which an accident first led him to practise, in conjunction with his daughter, at Corinth.
The story is, that the daughter traced the profile of her lover's face as thrown in shadow on the wall, and that Dibutades filled in the outline with clay, and thus made a face in relief, which he afterwards hardened with fire.
The work was preserved in the Nymphaeum till the destruction of Corinth by Mummius. (
Plin. Nat. 35.12. s. 43.) Pliny adds, that Dibutades invented the colouring of plastic works by adding a red colour to them (from the existing works of this kind it seems to have been red sand), or modelling them in red clialk; and also that he was the first who made masks on the edges of the gutter tiles of the roofs of buildings, at first in low relief (
protypa,) and afterwards in high relief (
ectypa). Pliny adds "Hine et fastigia templorum orta," that is, the terra-cotta figures which Dibutades was said to have invented, were used to ornament the pediments of temples. (See
Dict. of Ant. s. v. Fastigium.)
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