Butades

Butades of Sicyon ( Boutades), sometimes mistakenly called Dibutades, was the reputed inventor of the art of modelling clay in relief.

The story, as recorded by Pliny the Elder, is that his daughter was smitten with love for a youth at Corinth where they lived. When he was due to go abroad, she drew the outline of his shadow on a wall thrown by the light of a lamp. It was 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 Mummius sacked that city in 146 BC. 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. And it is because of him that modellers get the Greek name plastae.