The art of painting appears to have remained in the same state in China, without any particular change from time immemorial. They have never attempted anything beyond mere imitation, and that entirely devoid of taste or truth. The human figure, with them, is a ludicrous deformity, and their perspective is gained, by piling one object above another, until the picture as all ground and no sky. Invention and Imagination were never known among them; and, although the elaborateness of many of their works is astonishing, yet with such a people, it would be useless to look for the origin and progress of art.
The arts of the Etruscans are famous for the vases they produced. Etruria, in its ancient state, was one of the most powerful and civilized countries in Italy. Though the history of this nation is involved in obscurity, as the Romans tried every means in their power to destroy all its claims to refinement, yet there are sufficient proofs remaining of the height and perfection to which they carried the fine arts. Near the town of Civita Vecchia stood the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia, near which are found numbers of sepulchral grottoes, many of which are decorated with paintings and figures much in the style of those on the Etruscan vases. Some of the pictures represent combats, and others dances of females, executed with considerable spirit. The pottery before mentioned, however, affords the greatest number of their specimens of the art of design; the forms displayed in the contour of the vases, no less than the paintings with which they are decorated, show the wonderful attainment in elegance of design, purity of form, and ingenuity of delineation. The power over line, and the facility of execution they reached, may be easily conceived from the absorbent nature of the material upon which they wrought. No retouching was possible; but the whole must have been completely arranged in the mind of the artist before it could be struck off. Pliny states, that in his day, the town of Ardea, an ancient city of Etruria, contained some paintings which he ascribes to a period anterior to the founding of Rome, and mentions with surprise their then perfect state of preservation. At Lacurium also, he describes some pictures of Atalanta and Helen, which were simply painted on the wall, and exhibited great merit in execution. These Caligulo, after a fruitless attempt, failed in removing. Cere, another Etruscan city, boasted some paintings of an early date. All these specimens, although of remote date, have no positive clue by which to ascertain anything positive as to the origin of the art of painting. And we are obliged to turn to Greece for the foundation from whence sprung works still the admiration of the world.
Religion was the motive of Greek art; it was, therefore, natural that they should endeavor to invest their own authors, for they considered themselves of divine origin, with the most perfect forms; and as man possessed that exclusively, they completely and thoroughly studied the elements of his constitution. The climate was favorable to the development of that form, and the establishment of exercises by their civil and political institutions, created models in nature, which elevated Greek art to the highest excellence.
The next step of the art was the monogram, which is the outline of figures without light or shade, with the addition, however, of parts within the outline. From this the monochrom, or painting with a single color, and a white ground, then covered with punic wax, first amalgamated with a resinous pigment generally of a red, sometimes of a dark brown or black color, was the next advance. Through this inky ground, the outlines were traced with a firm though plyant style, called a cestrum: the line could be altered by the finger or a sponge, and easily replaced by a new one. When the whole was settled, it was suffered to dry, and covered with a brown encaustic varnish; the lights were worked over again, and rendered more brilliant with a more delicate point, according to the gradual advance from mere outline to some indication; and at last to masses of light and shade—thence to the superinduction of different colors, or the invention of polychrom, which, by the addition of the pencil to the style, raised the stained drawing to a legitimate picture, and at length produced that vaunted harmony—"the magic scale of Grecian color."
The period at which the pencil supplanted the cestrum cannot be ascertained. Apollodorus in the 93d Olympiad, and Zeuxis, in the 94th, are said to have used it with freedom and power. Parrhasins painted the battle of the Lapithtæ and centaurs on the shield of Minerva for Phidias, to enable Mys to chase it. It was nearly a century after this that Appelles and Protogenes had a competition in drawing lines with the pencil, in which "delicacy and evanescent subtlety being the characteristic, some notion of their mechanical skill may be formed."
Encaustic painting was accomplished by using the colors in wax, as they are used now in oil, drying them by a fire, and polishing the surface by dry friction.
Polygnotus is the first great name that appears in history, that any satisfactory data of the arts may be commenced from. He lived about 400 years B. C. So great was his success in the Pœcile at Athens, and the Desche, or public hall at Delphi, that in a great council of the Amphyctons, it was solemnly decreed "that his expenses, whenever he travelled in Greece, should be borne at the public charge." His pictures were admired by Pliny, at the distance of six hundred years.
The first painting on record is the battle of Magnete, by Balarchus, and purchased by Candaules, King of Lydia, for its weight in gold, or, as some say, a quantity of gold coins equal to its surface.
After Aglaophon, Phidias, Panenus, Colotes, and Evenor, the father of Parrhasins, came Apollodorus, the Athenian. This painter applied the essential principles of Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by investigating the leading forms that discriminate the different classes of human qualities and passions. The acuteness of his taste led him to discover, that, as all men were connected by one general form, so were they separated by some peculiar individuality. Pliny and Plutarch considered Apollodorus as the first colorist of his age, and it is very probable, by their descriptions, that he was the inventor of local color and tone. Zeuxis succeeded to Apollodorus, and by uniting in one figure the most perfect parts of many models, produced an ideal form, which, in his opinion, constituted the supreme degree of human beauty. Lucian describes a picture he exhibited at the Olympic Games as remarkable for its invention. It represented a female centaur, suckling her young. It was carried off from Athens by Sylla, but lost on the voyage to Italy.
Parrhasins, a native of Ephesus, but a citizen of Athens, was the son of a disciple of Evenor, and contemporary of Zeuxis. By his subtle examination of outline, "he established that standard of divine and heroic form, which raised him to the authority of a legislator, from whose decisions there was no appeal." He was a thorough master of allegory, from the fact of his embodying by signs, universally understood, the Athenian people. In a competition with Timanthes, he had the mortification of being declared, by a majority of votes, inferior to him. The subject for competition, was the contest of Ajax and Ulysses for the arms of Achilles.