Butades

The Origin of Painting by Jean-Baptiste Regnault, 1785

Butades of Sicyon (Ancient Greek: Βουτάδης Boutades), sometimes mistakenly called Dibutades, was the reputed inventor of the art of modelling clay in relief. An accident first led him to practise, in conjunction with his daughter, at Corinth. The period at which he flourished is unknown, but has been estimated at 600 BC.

The Corinthian Maid by Joseph Wright of Derby

The story, as recorded by Pliny the Elder, is that his daughter, Kora of Sicyon, was smitten with love for a youth at Corinth where they lived. She drew the outline of his shadow on a wall, and upon this outline her father modelled a face of the youth in clay, which he baked along with the clay tiles which it was his trade to make. This model was preserved in the Nymphaeum in Corinth until Lucius Mummius sacked that city in 146 BC. Because of this occurrence, Butades began a practice that is supported by a large body of existing evidence: he began to decorate the ends or edges of rain gutter roof tiles with masks of human faces, first in low relief (protypa), then in high relief (ectypa). Pliny adds that Butades 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 chalk. He is also said to have invented a mixture of clay and ruddle (red ochre), or to have introduced the use of a special kind of red clay. Pliny adds Hine et fastigia templorum orta, that is, the terra-cotta figures which Butades was said to have invented, were used to ornament the pediments of temples.

Sources

• "Dibutades". In William Smith (ed.). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. 1. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1867.
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Butades". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 4 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 877.
• Frasca-Rath, Anna: The Origin and Decay of Painting. Iaia, Dibutades and the Concept of ‚Women Art, in: Hans Christian Hönes & Anna Frasca-Rath (Hrsg.), Modern Lives, Modern Legends. Artist Anecdotes since the 18th century, Journal for Art Historiography, 23, 2020, S. 1-17 [1]