The use of an enamelled glaze first appears at Athens in the fourth century, and it is also occasionally found at Tanagra. The colour is uniformly a dull ashen-grey. A few examples are also known from the Cyrenaica, but it was in Sicily that the practice found most favour. There we find attempts to reproduce the colouring of the flesh by an enamel coating varying in hue from rose-pink to orange, and also grey and purple tints. It is probable that the colours employed for painting terracottas were made from the same earths, though of a coarser kind, as the ware itself. Some information on the subject may be derived from Theophrastos, Vitruvius, and Dioskorides.[414] For white the artist used a white earth, such as Melos produces, and white lead; it is also said to have been produced from the burnt lees of wine, and from ivory. The reds were composed of a red earth, probably ochre from Sinope, and vermilion or _minium_. Yellow was obtained from Skyros and Lydia; and a yellow ochre was obtained by burning a red earth.[415] The Egyptian _smalto_ or cobalt served for blue, and a copper solution prepared with alkali and silica was also employed. Copper green was obtained from many places, and mixed with white or black. * * * * * This may be a convenient point at which to speak of a class of vases which come rather under the heading of terracottas than that of painted pottery. They are found at Calvi, Canosa, Cumae, and other places in Southern Italy, and belong to the Hellenistic period, forming a parallel development to the glazed wares with reliefs of which we shall speak later (p. 497 ff.). They combine in a marked degree the characteristics of the vase and the statuette, some being vases with moulded reliefs or small figures in the round attached in different places, others again actual figures or colossal heads modelled in vase form by the addition of mouth, handle, and base (see Plate VI.). They are usually of considerable—sometimes gigantic—size, and do not appear to have served any practical purpose; some, indeed, are only imitation vases with false bottoms. It is reasonable to suppose that they were manufactured for sepulchral purposes only, like the large painted kraters and amphorae of Apulia (p. 476). ------------------------------------------------------ PLATE VI [Illustration: TERRACOTTA VASES FROM SOUTHERN ITALY (BRITISH MUSEUM).] ------------------------------------