The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

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History of Painting

Although the articles enumerated in the last paragraph have primarily to do with technique, there is in them—especially in such articles as Miniature and Portraiture—much historical and critical information. And from them the student may well turn back to the article Painting to pursue there those topics which he has not yet covered. These are: Part I.—A Sketch of the Development of the Art (pp. 460–478); Part II.—Schools of Painting, a tabular scheme (pp. 479–481), and Recent Schools of Painting (pp. 497–518), by M. H. Spielmann, for British; Léonce Bénédite, keeper of the Luxembourg Museum, for French; Fernand Khnopff, painter and etcher, for Belgian; Prof. J. C. Van Dyck, Rutgers College, author of History of American Art, for the United States; and Prof. Richard Muther, Breslau University, author of The History of Modern Painting, on Dutch, German, Austrian, Italian, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian and Balkan States.

These parts of the article are illustrated with ten plates containing 36 figures, including four prehistoric incised drawings of animals found in French caves and remarkable for their technical accuracy and life; two paintings, a boar and a bison, reproduced in colours, from the palaeolithic cave of Altamira—see also Plates II and III in the article Archaeology (between pp. 348 and 349, Vol. 2), Figs. 6, 7 and 8 in Plate accompanying Anthropology (opposite p. 118, Vol. 2), and the plates of American antiques in the article America (Vol. 1, pp. 808–816); an excellent Egyptian drawing of birds; the François vase (Greek); a Pompeian wall painting—see also the reproduction in colours of a wall-painting from a Roman villa in the article Mural Decoration (Vol. 20, p. 22); a wall painting from Brunswick cathedral; and typical examples of the work of Hubert van Eyck, Giotto, Lorenzetti, Masaccio, Uccello, Pollaiuolo, Piero della Francesca, Ghirlandajo, Mantegna, Bellini, Giorgione, Michelangelo, Botticelli, Titian, Holbein, Watteau, Gainsborough, Rembrandt, Quintin Matsys, Brouwer, Ruysdael, Turner, Chardin.

“A rough division of the whole history of art into four main periods” gives “first ... the efforts of the older Oriental peoples, best represented by the painting of the Egyptians; the second includes the classical and medieval epochs up to the beginning of the 15th century; the third the 15th and 16th centuries, and the fourth the time from the beginning of the 17th century onward. In the first period the endeavour is after truth of contour, in the second and third after truth of form, in the fourth after truth of space.”

The Egyptian artist was satisfied if he could render with accuracy, and with proper emphasis on what is characteristic, the silhouettes of things in nature regarded as little more than flat objects cut out against a light background. The Greek and the medieval artist realized that objects had three dimensions, and that it was possible on a flat surface to give an indication of the thickness of anything, that is, of its depth away from the spectator, as well as its length and breadth, but they cannot be said to have fully succeeded in the difficult task they set themselves. For this there was needful an efficient knowledge of perspective, and this the 15th century brought with it. During the 15th century the painter fully succeeds in mastering the representation of the third dimension, and during the next he exercises the power thus acquired in perfect freedom, producing some of the most convincing and masterly presentments of solid forms upon a flat surface that the art has to show. During this period, however, and to a more partial extent even in the earlier classical epoch, efforts were being made to widen the horizon of the art and to embrace within the scope of its representations not only solid objects in themselves, but such objects as a whole in space, in due relation to each other and to the universe at large. It was reserved, however, for the masters of the 17th century perfectly to realize this ideal of the art, and in their hands painting as an art of representation is widened out to its fullest possible limits, and the whole of nature in all its aspects becomes for the first time the subject of the picture.

Early Painting

Following this classification, the article Painting, after commenting on primitive art among bushmen, Eskimo and Australians and on the remarkable cave drawings and paintings of Altamira, Gourdan and Lortet,—even the paintings are thought to be 50,000 years old,—discusses the painting of contour in Egypt and Babylonia, in prehistoric Greece, in ancient Greece and Italy, and in the early Christian and early medieval periods. Of particular interest is the criticism of Greek drawing.

It may be admitted that in many artistic qualities it was beyond praise. In beauty, in grace of line, in composition, we can imagine works of Apelles, of Zeuxis, of Protogenes, excelling even the efforts of the Italian painters, or only matched by the finest designs of a Raphael or a Leonardo.... The facts, however, remain, first, that the Greek pictures about which we chiefly read were of single figures, or subjects of a very limited and compact order, with little variety of planes; and second, that the existing remains of ancient painting are so full of mistakes in perspective that the representation of distance cannot have been a matter to which the artists had really set themselves.... The problem of representing correctly the third dimension of space ... had certainly not been solved.... It is an additional confirmation of this view to find early Christian and early medieval painting confined to the representation of the few near objects which the older Oriental artists had all along envisaged.

For more detailed treatment of this period see the articles: Egypt, Art and Archaeology (Vol. 9, pp. 65–77), with many illustrations both of painting and sculpture, by Dr. W. M. Flinders Petrie, the eminent Egyptologist; Babylonia and Assyria, particularly the two plates of illustrations (opposite pp. 104 and 105, Vol. 3); Aegean Civilization, especially the illustrations (Vol. 1, pp. 246–251); Greek Art (Vol. 12, pp. 470–492), by Percy Gardner, author of Grammar of Greek Art,—and, mostly by the same author, the articles Agatharchus, Panaenus, Micon, Polygnotus, Protogenes, Apelles, Aristides of Thebes, Pausias, Theon, Zeuxis; Roman Art (Vol. 23, pp. 474–486), especially Plates V (p. 481) and VI (p. 484); and for the early Christian and early medieval periods such articles as Illuminated Manuscripts, with illustrations, by Sir E. Maunde Thompson, late director British Museum, and Miniature. The reader should also consult the articles China and Japan for the section on the art of each of these countries (Vol. 6, pp. 213–216, with two plates, 17 figures; and Vol. 15, pp. 172–190, with eight plates, 30 figures—especially Plates I-IV, pp. 172–177), as Oriental art in general may be said to belong to this phase of effort after truth of contour and of form. See also the separate articles on Japanese artists, mostly by E. F. Strange, author of Japanese Illustration, Hokusai, etc.,—particularly Korin, Utamaro, Hokusai, Hiroshige, and Yosai.

The first important individual names after those of the Greek painters mentioned above are those of the Proto-Renaissance of the 13th and 14th century.