The Etruscans, it is said, cultivated painting before the Greeks, and Pliny attributes to the former a certain degree of perfection before the Greeks had emerged from the infancy of the art. Ancient paintings at Ardea, in Etruria, and at Lanuvium still retained, in the time of Pliny, all their primitive freshness. According to Pliny, paintings of a still earlier date were to be seen at Cære, another Etruscan city. Those paintings mentioned by Pliny were commonly believed to be earlier than the foundation of Rome. At the present day the tombs of Etruria afford examples of Etruscan painting in every stage of its development, from the rudeness and conventionality of early art in the tomb of Veii to the correctness and ease of design, and the more perfect development of the art exhibited in the painted scenes in the tombs of Tarquinii. In one of these tombs the pilasters are profusely adorned with arabesques, and a frieze which runs round the side of the tomb is composed of painted figures draped, winged, armed, fighting, or borne in chariots. The subjects of these paintings are various; in them we find the ideas of the Etruscans on the state of the soul after death, combats of warriors, banquets, funeral scenes. The Etruscans painted also bas-reliefs and statues.
The Greeks carried painting to the highest degree of perfection; their first attempts were long posterior to those of the Egyptians; they do not even date as far back as the epoch of the siege of Troy; and Pliny remarks that Homer does not mention painting. The Greeks always cultivated sculpture in preference. Pausanias enumerates only eighty-eight paintings, and forty-three portraits; he describes, on the other hand, 2,827 statues. These were, in fact, more suitable ornaments to public places, and the gods were always represented in the temple by sculpture. In Greece painting followed the invariable law of development. Its cycle was run through. Painting passed through the successive stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline, and decay. The art of design in Greece is said to have had its origin in Corinth. The legend is: the daughter of Dibutades, a potter of Corinth, struck by the shadow of her lover's head cast by the lamp on the wall, drew its outline, filling it in with a dark shadow. Hence, the earliest mode of representing the human figure was a silhouette. The simplest form of design or drawing was mere outline, or monogrammon, and was invented by Cleanthes, of Corinth. After this the outlines were filled in, and light and shade introduced of one color, and hence were styled mono-chromes. Telephanes, of Sicyon, further improved the art by indicating the principal details of anatomy; Euphantes, of Corinth, or Craton, of Sicyon, by the introduction of color. Cimon, of Cleonæ, is the first who is mentioned as having advanced the art of painting in Greece, and as having emancipated it from its archaic rigidity, by exchanging the conventional manner of rendering the human form for an approach to truthfulness to nature. He also first made muscular articulations, indicated the veins, and gave natural folds to draperies. He is also supposed to have been the first who used a variety of colors, and to have introduced foreshortening. The first painter of great renown was Polygnotus. Accurate drawing, and a noble and distinct manner of characterizing the most different mythological forms was his great merit; his female figures also possessed charms and grace. His large tabular pictures were conceived with great knowledge of legends, and in an earnest religious spirit. At Athens he painted, according to Pausanias, a series of paintings of mythological subjects in the Pinakotheke in the Propylæa on the Acropolis, and pictorial decorations for the temple of Theseus, and the Pœcile. He executed a series of paintings at Delphi on the long walls of the Lesche. The wall to the right on entering the Lesche bore scenes illustrative of the epic myth of the taking of Troy; the left, the visit of Ulysses to the lower world, as described in the Odyssey. Pliny remarks that in place of the old severity and rigidity of the features he introduced a great variety of expression, and was the first to paint figures with the lips open. Lucian attributes to him great improvements in the rendering of drapery so as to show the forms underneath. Apollodorus, of Athens, was the first great master of light and shade. According to Pliny he was the first to paint men and things as they really appear. A more advanced stage of improved painting began with Zeuxis, in which art aimed at illusion of the senses and the rendering of external charms. He appears to have been equally distinguished in the representation of female charms, and of the sublime majesty of Zeus on his throne. His masterpiece was his picture of Helen, in painting which he had as his models the five most beautiful virgins of Croton.
Neither the place nor date of the birth of Zeuxis can be accurately ascertained, though he was probably born about 455 B.C., since thirty years after that date we find him practicing his art with great success at Athens. He was patronized by Archelaus, King of Macedonia, and spent some time at his court. He must also have visited Magna Græcia, as he painted his celebrated picture of Helen for the City of Croton. He acquired great wealth by his pencil, and was very ostentatious in displaying it. He appeared at Olympia in a magnificent robe, having his name embroidered in letters of gold, and the same vanity is also displayed in the anecdote that, after he had reached the summit of his fame, he no longer sold, but gave away, his pictures, as being above all price. With regard to his style of art, single figures were his favorite subjects. He could depict gods or heroes with sufficient majesty, but he particularly excelled in painting the softer graces of female beauty. In one important respect he appears to have degenerated from the style of Polygnotus, his idealism being rather that of form than of character and expression. Thus his style is analogous to that of Euripides in tragedy. He was a great master of color, and his paintings were sometimes so accurate and life-like as to amount to illusion. This is exemplified in the story told of him and Parrhasius. As a trial of skill, these artists painted two pictures. That of Zeuxis represented a bunch of grapes, and was so naturally executed that the birds came and pecked at it. After this proof, Zeuxis, confident of success, called upon his rival to draw aside the curtain which concealed his picture. But the painting of Parrhasius was the curtain itself, and Zeuxis was now obliged to acknowledge himself vanquished, for, though he had deceived birds, Parrhasius had deceived the author of the deception. But many of the pictures of Zeuxis also displayed great dramatic power. He worked very slowly and carefully, and he is said to have replied to somebody who blamed him for his slowness, "It is true I take a long time to paint, but then I paint works to last a long time." His master-piece was the picture of Helen, already mentioned.
Parrhasius was a native of Ephesus, but his art was chiefly exercised at Athens, where he was presented with the right of citizenship. His date can not be accurately ascertained, but he was probably rather younger than his contemporary, Zeuxis, and it is certain that he enjoyed a high reputation before the death of Socrates. The style and degree of excellence attained by Parrhasius appear to have been much the same as those of Zeuxis. He was particularly celebrated for the accuracy of his drawing, and the excellent proportions of his figures. For these he established a canon, as Phidias had done in sculpture for gods, and Polycletus for the human figure, whence Quintilian calls him the legislator of his art. His vanity seems to have been as remarkable as that of Zeuxis. Among the most celebrated of his works was a portrait of the personified Athenian Demos, which is said to have miraculously expressed even the most contradictory qualities of that many-headed personage.
PAINTING. (2600 years old.)[ToList]
Parrhasius excelled in giving a roundness and a beautiful contour to his figures, and was remarkable for the richness and variety of his creations. His numerous pictures of gods and heroes attained the highest consideration in art. He was overcome, however, in a pictorial contest, in which the subject was the contest of Ulysses and Ajax for the arms of Achilles, by the ingenious Timanthes, in whose sacrifice of Iphigenia the ancients admired the expression of grief carried to that pitch of intensity at which art had only dared to hint. The most striking feature in the picture was the concealment of the face of Agamemnon in his mantle. (The concealment of the face of Agamemnon in this picture has been generally considered as a "trick" or ingenious invention of Timanthes, when it was the result of a fundamental law in Greek art—to represent alone what was beautiful, and never to present to the eye anything repulsive or disagreeable; the features of a father convulsed with grief would not have been a pleasing object to gaze on; hence the painter, fully conscious of the laws of his art, concealed the countenance of Agamemnon.) Timanthes was distinguished for his invention and expression. Before all, however, ranks the great Apelles, who united the advantages of his native Ionia—grace, sensual charms, and rich coloring—with the scientific accuracy of the Sicyonian school. The most prominent characteristic of his style was grace (charis), a quality which he himself avowed as peculiarly his, and which serves to unite all the other gifts and faculties which the painter requires; perhaps in none of his pictures was it exhibited in such perfection as in his famous Anadyomene, in which Aphrodite is represented rising out of the sea, and wringing the wet out of her hair. But heroic subjects were likewise adapted to his genius, especially grandly-conceived portraits, such as the numerous likenesses of Alexander, by whom he was warmly patronized. He not only represented Alexander with the thunderbolt in his hand, but he even attempted, as the master in light and shade, to paint thunderstorms, probably at the same time as natural scenes and mythological personifications. The Anadyomene, originally painted for the temple of Æsculapius, at Cos, was transferred by Augustus to the temple of D. Julius, at Rome, where, however, it was in a decayed state even at the time of Nero. Contemporaneously with him flourished Protogenes and Nicias. Protogenes was both a painter and a statuary, and was celebrated for the high finish of his works. His master-piece was the picture of Ialysus, the tutelary hero of Rhodes, where he lived. He is said to have spent seven years on it. Nicias, of Athens, was celebrated for the delicacy with which he painted females. He was also famous as an encaustic painter, and was employed by Praxiteles to apply his art to his statues. The glorious art of these masters, as far as regards light, tone, and local colors, is lost to us, and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations. It is not thus necessary to speak at length of the various schools of painting in Greece, their works being all lost, the knowledge of the characteristics peculiar to each school would be at the present day perfectly useless. Painting had to follow the invariable law of all development; having reached a period of maturity, it followed, as a necessary consequence, that the period of decline should begin. The art of this period of refinement, Mr. Wornum writes, which has been termed the Alexandrian, because the most celebrated artist of this period lived about the time of Alexander the Great, was the last of progression, or acquisition, but it only added variety of effect to the tones it could not improve, and was principally characterized by the diversity of the styles of so many contemporary artists. The decadence of the arts immediately succeeded, the necessary consequence, when, instead of excellence, variety and originality became the end of the artist. The tendencies which are peculiar to this period gave birth sometimes to pictures which ministered to a low sensuality; sometimes to works which attracted by their effects of light, and also to caricatures and travesties of mythological subjects. The artists of this period were under the necessity of attracting attention by novelty and variety; thus rhyparography, and the lower classes of art, attained the ascendency, and became the characteristic styles of the period. In these Pyreieus was pre-eminent; he was termed rhyparographos, on account of the mean quality of his subjects. After the destruction of Corinth by Mummius and the spoliation of Athens by Sylla the art of painting experienced a rapid and total decay.
