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Ancient

Greek and Italian art.

In discussing Greek painting we shall rely entirely upon the erudite historical work of Messrs. Woltmann and Woermann, giving a short résumé of their remarks on the subject. |No Greek paintings extant.| This is absolutely necessary, as not one specimen of Greek painting has come down to us.^[3] But on the other, hand, in dealing with Greek and Græco-Roman sculpture we shall base our remarks on the Greek and Græco-Roman sculpture in the British Museum.

3. Some paintings quite recently discovered in Egypt are apparently the work of Greek artists, and tend to confirm this written testimony.

History of Greek painting.

Beginning then with Greek painting, let us see what the historians tell us. They begin by saying, in painting “the Greeks effected nothing short of a revolution ... by right of which they deserve the glory of having first made painting a truthful mirror of realities.” This fact, that their pictorial art reached such perfection, is not generally known, for the reason that the assertion rests on written testimony,—but it is reliable testimony. The historians “insist on the fact that no single work of any one of the famous painters recognized in the history of Greek art has survived to our time.” Let us then briefly trace the rise of Greek painting till it culminated in Apelles. |Polygnotos.| Polygnotos (B.C. 475-55) is the first name we hear of, and of his works we are told, “they were just as far from being really complete pictorial representations as the wall-pictures of the Assyrians and Egyptians themselves,” although in some particulars there must have been a distinct advancement on the work of the orientals. For example, we are told Polygnotos painted the “fishes of Acheron shadowy grey, and the pebbles of the river-bed so that they could be seen through the water.” Polygnotos fell, however, into a pitfall which has entrapped many painters since, he painted imaginative pictures. We are told he “was a painter of heroes,” some of his school attempted portraiture, “but painting though in this age was still a mere system of tinted outline design.” |Agatharchos.| Then followed Agatharchos, “the leader of a real revolution, a revolution by which art was enabled to achieve great and decisive progress towards a system of representation corresponding with the laws of optics and the full truth of nature.” Agatharchos was a scene-painter, and was no doubt led by striving for naturalism in his scenery to study naturalism in painting generally. |Scene-painting.| As the historians remark, “In scene-painting as thus practised, we find the origins not only of all representations of determinate backgrounds, but also, and more especially, of landscape painting. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the invention of scene-painting as the most decisive turning-point in the entire history of the art, and Agatharchos is named as the master who, at the inspiration of Æschylus, first devoted himself to practising the invention.” |Perspective.| This painter, it is said, also paid great attention to perspective, and left a treatise which was afterwards used in drawing up the laws of perspective. It is said his manner of treatment was “comparatively broad and picturesque.” |Apollodoros.| Next came Apollodoros, a figure-painter, who also combined landscape and figure subjects, and of whom Pliny says “that he was the first to give the appearance of reality to his pictures, the first to bring the brush into just repute, |Easel-pictures.| and even that before him no easel-picture (tabula) had existed by any master fit to charm the eye of the spectator.” |Chiaro-oscuro.| Apollodoros was the first to give his pictures a natural and definite background in true perspective; he was the first, it is emphatically stated, “who rightly managed chiaro-oscuro and the fusion of colours.... He will have also been the first to soften off the outlines of his figures.... |Brunn.| For this reason we may, with Brunn, in a certain sense call Apollodoros “the first true painter.” We are told, however, that his “painting was, in comparison with his successors, hard and imperfect,” and that the innovations made by him in the relation of foreground and background cannot be compared to the improvements effected by the brothers Van Eyck in modern times. |Zeuxis, Parrhasios, and Timanthes.| We now read of Zeuxis, Parrhasios, and Timanthes, who, we are told, “perfected a system of pictorial representation, adequately rendering on the flat surface the relief and variety of nature, in other particulars if not in colour.” The endeavour of Zeuxis was “by the brilliant use of the brush to rival nature herself,” and from anecdotes related of him and of Parrhasios, we gather that they “laid the greatest stress on carrying out to the point of actual illusion the deceptive likeness to nature.” Many of Zeuxis' subjects were taken from everyday life—another step in the right direction. |Eupompos.| We now come to the Dorian school, with Eupompos as its founder; and here we find a determination to study painting scientifically, and to conscientiously observe nature, for we are told Eupompos expressed the opinion “that the artist who wished to succeed must go first of all to nature as his teacher.” |Pamphilos.| Pamphilos, a pupil of Eupompos, brought this school to maturity, and insisted on the “necessity of scientific study for the painter.” |Melanthios.| He was followed by Melanthios, who pursued the same lines of scientific investigation; and was in his turn succeeded by Pausias, of whom we hear, |Pausias.| “It is quoted as a novel and striking effect, that in one of his pictures the face of Methê (or personified Intoxication) was visible through the transparent substance of the glass out of which she drank.” His work was considered to have great technical excellence, his subjects were taken from everyday life, and his pictures were all on a small scale. Pliny says “his favourite themes were ‘boys,’ that is, no doubt, scenes of child-life.... He developed, it seems, a more natural method of representing the modelling of objects by the gradations of a single colour.” We read, too, that his paintings drawn fresh from life “were much appreciated by the Romans.” Such is the case with all good naturalistic works, they always interest posterity, whereas the so-called imaginative works only interest the age for which they are painted. We should to-day prefer and treasure as beyond price one of Pausias' studies of familiar Greek life, whereas the heroes of Polygnotos would lack interest for us, and excite but little enthusiasm. |The Theban-Attic school.| There was a third school of Greek painting, that called the Theban-Attic, and of this we read that there was “a great ease and versatility, and an invention more intent upon the expression of human emotion,” but no painter of this school made any very great advance. |Apelles.| At length we come to Apelles, the most famous of all Greek painters. He, although already well known and highly thought of, went to the Sikyonian school, to study under Pamphilos, and we afterwards hear of him as court painter to Alexander the Great. We are told that at court his “mission was to celebrate the person and the deeds of the king, as well as those of his captains and chief men.” This was at any rate legitimate historical painting. Woltmann and Woermann say, “In faithful imitation of nature he was second to none; he was first of all in refinement of light and shade, and consequent fulness of relief and completeness of modelling.” And again we read, “Astonishing technical perfection in the illusory imitation of nature” distinguished Apelles. Thus we see that the great aim of the greatest of Greek painters was to paint nature exactly as she is, or as glib critics would say, to paint “mere transcripts of nature.” |Protogenes.| Contemporary with Apelles was Protogenes, whose aim was to reach the “highest degree of illusion in detail.” The cycle of development seemed now to have reached its highest point, and as the naturalistic teachings fell into the hands of inferior men, they were abused, and Woltmann and Woermann tell us the imitative principle was not kept subservient to artistic ends, and in the hands of Theon of Samos the principle of illusion became an end in itself, and art degenerated into legerdemain. This same tendency is now showing its hydra head, and in London, Brussels, and other places are to be seen inferior works hidden in dark rooms, or to be viewed through peep-holes. |Theon.| We only want the trumpets of Theon or the music of the opera bouffe to complete the degradation.Following Theon, and probably disgusted with his phantasies, came painters of small subjects;|The rhyparographi.| the rhyparographi of Pliny, or the rag-and-tatter painters, “who painted barbers' shops, asses, eatables, and such-like.” “We see, therefore, that about B.C. 300 ... Greek painting had already extended its achievements to almost all conceivable themes, with the single exception of landscape. Within the space of a hundred and fifty years the art had passed through every technical stage, from the tinted profile system of Polygnotos to the properly pictorial system of natural scenes, enclosed in natural backgrounds, and thence to the system of trick and artifice, which aimed at the realism of actual illusion by means beyond the legitimate scope of art.”

“The creative power of Greek painting was as good as exhausted by this series of efforts. In the following centuries the art survived indeed as a pleasant after-growth, in some of its old seats, but few artists stand out with strong individuality from among their contemporaries. Only a master here and there makes a name for himself. |Timomachos.| The one of these whom we have here especially to notice is Timomachos, of Byzantium, an exception of undeniable importance, since even at this late period of Greek culture he won for himself a world-wide celebrity.”

Decadence, however, had already set in, and we find that Timomachos neglected the study of familiar subjects, and returned to the so-called imaginative style, producing such works as “Ajax and Medea,” and “Iphigenia in Taurus.” |Greek landscape painting.| Curiously enough, it was during this period that the only branch of painting not yet tried by the Greeks, namely, landscape painting, was attempted. Woltmann and Woermann suggest a reason for this new departure when they say, “We can gather with certainty from poetry and literature that it was in the age of the Diadochi (the kings who divided amongst them the kingdom of Alexander) that the innate Greek instinct of anthropomorphism, of personifying nature in human forms, from a combination of causes was gradually modified in the direction of an appreciation of natural scenes for their own sake, and as they really are.” Landscape painting, however, did not reach any great perfection, for we are told it “scarcely got beyond the superficial character of decorative work.” |Decadence.| With this period ends the true history of Greek painting, though it still lingers on, and becomes so far merged into that of Roman art that between the two it is not possible to draw a line of distinction. |Fabius and Ludius.| Roman art had a character of its own, and even two painters, whose names, Fabius and Ludius, and in the case of the latter whose works, have been handed down to us; but the works of Ludius do not appear to have been more than decorative work.