THE FINE ARTS.
PAINTING.
CHAPTER X.
In the present undertaking, two methods of arrangement are obviously presented: either to treat the arts simultaneously; or, considering each in succession, to commence with that one which seemed best adapted to illustrate the history and common principles of all. With this view we have, in the commencement, followed the fortunes of Sculpture at some length, because here we find an uninterrupted series of monuments; here the elements of imitative art are discoverable in their purest and least compounded character; and also because in Sculpture the labours, being enduring, of greater magnitude, and more generally employed for national purposes than those of Painting, seem more clearly to illustrate the connexion which will ever be found to subsist between the refinement of taste and the progress of moral and political intelligence, as affects nations, or the human race universally. This is the truly dignified object in the history of the fine arts. In this respect our inquiries have been most satisfactorily resolved. We have found the state of sculpture an index of the moral and political condition of the people; owing its best cultivation to national and popular causes. We have seen it languish or revive according to the energy and the freedom of national institutions. The epochs of painting were nearly or altogether the same, as were also those of architecture. The conclusions, then, are universal. Little, therefore, remains to be explained in painting, save its own peculiarities as an individual art.
Painting, which depends upon illusion for some of its most striking effects, and employs principles abstractly unreal, is, in the application of these principles, and in the full accomplishment of their effects, an art of greater difficulty than Sculpture. Hence, a priori, it might be inferred, that the former would more slowly attain to the perfection which it reached among the nations of the ancient world. But perhaps it would hardly have been predicted, that, in the age of Phidias, when sculpture had already been raised to an elevation yet unapproached, the sister art should still be little advanced. At the same time, there can be no doubt that the elements of both arts have in all countries sprung up together. Nature has sown the seed, but circumstances nourish the plants.
Among the ancient inhabitants of Asia, painting and writing appear to have been the same art, or rather, the former supplied the place of the latter. From the same source the art arose in Egypt, where are still to be found its oldest remains. In this branch the mental and political despotism already explained, bound down every aspiration. Whether we regard the art as picture writing, or in its more determinate and independent efforts at representation, we discover no change—no progressive improvement, and no superiority which has not evidently arisen from a greater or less degree of care and personal skill in the performer. Egyptian painting seldom, if ever, attempts more than an outline of the object, as seen in profile, such as would be obtained by its shadow. To this rude but always well-proportioned draught, colors are applied, simply and without mixture or blending, or the slightest indication of light and shade. The process appears to have been, first, the preparation of the ground in white; next, the outline was firmly traced in black; and, lastly, the flat colors were applied. The Egyptian artists employed six pigments, mixed up with a gummy liquid, namely, white, black, red, blue, yellow, and green: the three first always earthy, the remaining vegetable, or at least frequently transparent. The specimens from which we derive these facts, are the painted shrouds and cases of the mummies, and the still more perfect examples on the walls of the tombs. It can furnish no evidence of extraordinary experience or practice, that these paintings still retain their hues clear and fresh. The circumstance merely shows the aridity of the climate, and that the coloring matters were prepared and applied pure and without admixture.
Over no part of ancient intellectual history hangs there so great uncertainty, respecting at least the means and progressive steps, as in the instance of Painting in Greece. We can judge here only from inference, while the facts upon which our conclusions must rest, are in some degree contradictory. No production of the Grecian pencil remains to us, as in sculpture, whence to form our own judgment apart from the opinions of ancient critics; while there is internal evidence, that the historical annals handed down to us, imperfect as these now are, have been compiled, not from authentic materials early collected, but from recollection of names to whom discoveries are by the later historian casually attributed. The whole account of early painting is too regular, too systematic, the progressive advances follow each other in an order too artificial to represent faithfully the alternate failure and success, the devious course, the rapid and almost inexplicable advance of genius. The young eagle tempts not the liquid way in steady flight, commensurate only with his strength—he flutters and falls—wavers in broken and ungraceful curves, before he can launch into full career, or circle slowly and majestically in his pride of place.
We do not doubt, then, that the names of the earliest painters handed down to us in the Greek and Roman writers, are correct; but the system of gradual and regular advance which they have connected with these names, seems inconsistent with the nature of human things. In this case, the only safe method that can be adopted, consistently with the intention of giving every useful information, is to select a few leading and well ascertained dates, between which it is proved that certain discoveries did take place; the interval will thus be sufficiently filled up without entering into minute discussion. Anticipating this arrangement, we have been full in our account of the early schools of sculpture, whence the deficiency here may be supplied; for in both arts, the locality is always, and the masters frequently, the same.