Fresco was probably little employed by the ancients for works of imitative art, but it appears to have been the ordinary method of simply coloring walls, especially amongst the Romans. Coloring al fresco, in which the colors were mixed simply in water, as the term implies, was applied when the composition of the stucco on the walls was still wet (udo tectorio), and on that account was limited to certain colors, for no colors except earths can be employed in this way.
The fresco walls, when painted, were covered with an encaustic varnish, both to heighten the colors and to preserve them from the injurious effects of the sun or the weather. Vitruvius describes the process as a Greek practice. When the wall was colored and dry, Punic wax, melted and tempered with a little oil, was rubbed over it with a hard brush (seta); this was made smooth and even by applying a cauterium or an iron pan, filled with live coals, over the surface, as near to it as was just necessary to melt the wax; it was then rubbed with a candle (wax) and a clean cloth. In encaustic painting the wax colors were burnt into the ground by means of a hot iron (called cauterium) or pan of hot coals being held near the surface of the picture. The mere process of burning in constitutes the whole difference between encaustic and the ordinary method of painting with wax colors.
We shall now say a few words with regard to the much canvassed question of painting or coloring statues. Its antiquity and universality admit of no doubt. Indeed, the practice of painting statues is a characteristic of a primitive and workmanship of clay or wood. It was a survival of the old religious practices of daubing the early statues of the gods with vermilion, and was done to meet the superstitious tastes of the uneducated. Statues for religious purposes may have been painted in obedience to a formula prescribed by religion, but statues as objects of art, on which the sculptor exhibited all his genius and taste, were unquestionably executed in the pure and uncolored marble alone. In the chryselephantine, or ivory statues of Jove and Minerva, by Phidias, art was made a handmaid to religion. Phidias himself would have preferred to have executed them in marble.
We may further remark that form, in its purest ideal, being the chief aim of sculpture, any application of color, which would detract from the purity and ideality of this purest of the arts, could never be agreeable to refined taste. Coloring sculpture and giving it a life-like reality is manifestly trenching on the province of painting, and so departing from the true principle of sculpture, which is to give form in its most perfect and idealized development. We must also consider that sculpture in marble, by its whiteness, is calculated for the display of light and shade. For this reason statues and bas-reliefs were placed either in the open light to receive the direct rays of the sun, or in underground places, or thermæ, where they received their light either from an upper window, or, by night, from the strong light of a lamp, the sculptor having for that purpose studied the effects of the shadows. It must also be remembered that the statues in Greek and Roman temples received their light from the upper part of the building, many of the temples being hypæthral, thus having the benefit of a top light, the sculptor's chief aim. Color in these statues or bas-reliefs would have tended to mar the contrasts of light and shade, and blended them too much; for example, color a photograph of a statue, which exhibits a marked contrast of light and shade, and it will tend to confuse and blend the two. The taste for polychrome sculpture in the period of the decline of art was obviously but a returning to the primitive imperfection of art, when an attempt was made to produce illusion in order to please the uneducated taste of the vulgar.
The Romans derived their knowledge of painting from the Etruscans, their ancestors and neighbors; the first Grecian painters who came to Italy are said to have been brought over by Demaratus, the father of Tarquinius Priscus, King of Rome; at all events Etruria appears to have exercised extensive influence over the arts of Rome during the reign of the Tarquins. Tradition attributes to them the first works which were used to adorn the temples of Rome, and, according to Pliny, not much consideration was bestowed either on the arts or on the artists. Fabius, the first among the Romans, had some painting executed in the temple of Salus, from which he received the name of Pictor. The works of art brought from Corinth by Mummius, from Athens by Sulla, and from Syracuse by Marcellus, introduced a taste for paintings and statues in their public buildings, which eventually became an absorbing passion with many distinguished Romans. Towards the end of the republic Rome was full of painters. Julius Cæsar, Agrippa, Augustus, were among the earliest great patrons of artists. Suetonius informs us that Cæsar expended great sums in the purchase of pictures by the old masters. Under Augustus, Marcus Ludius painted marine subjects, landscape decorations, and historic landscape as ornamentation for the apartments of villas and country houses. He invented that style of decoration which we now call arabesque or grotesque. It spread rapidly, insomuch that the baths of Titus and Livia, the remains discovered at Cumæ, Pozzuoli, Herculaneum, Stabiæ, Pompeii, in short, whatever buildings about that date have been found in good preservation, afford numerous and beautiful examples of it. At this time, also, a passion for portrait painting prevailed; an art which flattered their vanity was more suited to the tastes of the Romans than the art which could produce beautiful and refined works similar to those of Greece. Portraits must have been exceedingly numerous; Varro made a collection of the portraits of 700 eminent men. Portraits, decorative and scene painting, seem to have engrossed the art. The example, or rather the pretensions, of Nero must also have contributed to encourage painting in Rome; but Roman artists were, however, but few in number; the victories of the consuls, and the rapine of the prætors, were sufficient to adorn Rome with all the master-pieces of Greece and Italy. They introduced the fashion of having a taste for the beautiful works of Greek art. At a later period, such was the corrupt state of taste, that painting was almost left to be practiced by slaves, and the painter was estimated by the quantity of work that he could do in a day.
The remains of painting found at Pompeii, Herculaneum, and in the baths of Titus, at Rome, are the only paintings which can give us any idea of the coloring and painting of the ancients, which, though they exhibit many beauties, particularly in composition, are evidently the works of inferior artists in a period of decline. At Pompeii there is scarcely a house the walls of which are not decorated with fresco paintings. The smallest apartments were lined with stucco, painted in the most brilliant and endless variety of colors, in compartments simply tinted with a light ground, surrounded by an ornamental margin, and sometimes embellished with a single figure or subject in the center, or at equal distances. These paintings are very frequently historical or mythological, but embrace every variety of subject, some of the most exquisite beauty. Landscape painting was never a favorite with the ancients, and if ever introduced in a painting, was subordinate. The end and aim of painting among the ancients was to represent and illustrate the myths of the gods, the deeds of heroes, and important historical events, hence giving all prominence to the delineation of the human form. Landscape, on the other hand, illustrated nothing, represented no important event deserving of record, and was thus totally without significance in a Grecian temple or pinacotheca. In an age of decline, as at Pompeii, it was employed for mere decorative purposes. Many architectural subjects are continually found in which it is easy to trace the true principles of perspective, but they are rather indicated than minutely expressed or accurately displayed; whereas in most instances a total want of the knowledge of this art is but too evident. Greek artists seem to have been employed; indeed, native painters were few, while the former everywhere abounded, and their superiority in design must have always insured them the preference.
The subjects of Roman mural paintings are usually Greek myths; in the composition and style we see Greek conception, modified by Roman influence. The style of drawing is rather dexterous than masterly; rapidity of execution seems to be more prized than faithful, conscientious representation of the truth of nature; the drawing is generally careless, and effects are sometimes produced by tricks and expedients, which belong rather to scene-painting than to the higher branches of art. It must not, however, be forgotten that the majority of these pictures were architectural decorations, not meant to be regarded as independent compositions, but as parts of larger compositions, in which they were inserted as in a frame. As examples of ancient coloring they are of the highest interest, and much may be learnt from them in reference to the technical materials and processes employed by ancient artists.
