Till we from an author's words paint his very thoughts in our minds, we do not understand him." Locke. The church of the annunciation looks beautiful in the inside, all but one corner of it being covered with statues, gilding, and paint. Addison. Poets are limners To copy out ideas in the mind: Words are the paint by which their thoughts are shown, And nature is their object to be drawn. Granville. "Tis in life as 'tis in painting, Much may be right, yet much be wanting. Prior. Oh! if to dance all night, and dress all day, Charmed the small-pox, or chased old age away, To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint, Nor would it sure be such a sin to paint. Pope. Her charms in breathing paint engage, Her modest cheek shall warm a future age. Id. Arts on the mind, like paint upon the face, Fright him, that's worth your love, from your emYoung. brace. SIR BENJ. Nay now, Lady Sneerwell, you are severe upon the widow. Come, come, 'tis not that she paints so ill-but when she has finished her face, she joins it so badly to her neck, that she looks like a mended statue, in which the connoisseur sees at once that the head's modern, though the trunk's antique. Sheridan. ob PAINTING is the art of representing to the eyes, by means of figures and colors, every ject in nature that is discernible by the sight; and of sometimes expressing, according to the principles of physiognomy, and by the attitudes of the body, the various emotions of the mind. A smooth surface, by means of lines and colors, represents objects in a state of projection; and may represent them in the most pleasant dress, and in a manner most capable of enchanting the senses. The art of painting is extremely difficult in the execution; and its merit can only be appreciated by devotees to the art. The painter who is distinguished for noble and profound conceptions; who by means of a perfect delineation, and colors more capable of fixing the attention and dazzling the eye, conveys to the spectators the sentiments with which he himself was inspired; who animates them with his genius, and makes a lasting impression on their mind; this artist resembles a poet, and is worthy to share even in the glories of Homer. PART I. HISTORY OF THE ART. PAINTING IN ANCIENT TIMES. Painting originally consisted of simple outlines, and long continued in this state before the expression of relievo, or the application of color. The next step in the art was to render the imitation more complete by applying colors; which was done in the same way that we color maps, and several nations, as the Egyptians, the Chinese, and the different nations of India, have never yet painted in a better manner. Even that great improvement in painting, the Claro-Obscuro, was discovered by the Greeks before the invention and proper application of colors. Plato, who lived 400 years before the Christian era, states, that painting had been practised in Egypt for 10,000 years. Without regarding his Egyptian chronology as accurate, we may consider it as designed to impress us with the very remote antiquity of the art. The monuments of Egyptian painting with which we are best acquainted, says Winckelman, are the chests of mummies. These have resisted the injuries of time, and are still submitted to the examination of the curious. The white, made of white lead, is spread over the ground of the piece; the outlines of the figure are traced with black strokes, and the colors are generally blue, red, yellow, and green, laid on without any mixture or shading. The red and blue prevail most; and these colors seem to have been prepared in the coarsest manner. The light is formed by leaving those parts of the ground where it is necessary covered with the white lead, as it is formed by the white paper in some of our drawings. This description is sufficient to convince us that the whole art of painting in Egypt consisted in coloring; but every person knows that without tints, and the mixture of colors, painting can never arrive at perfection. Pliny says, that the Egyptian artists painted the precious metals; that is, they varthis art was, but most probably it consisted in nished or enamelled them. It is doubtful what Egyptians are supposed to have continued this covering gold or silver with a single color. The coarse style till the reign of the Ptolemies. The ancient Persians were so far from excel ling in the arts, that the paintings of Egypt were highly esteemed among them after they had painter of Persia, whose name is preserved, is conquered that country. The only ancient Manes; and he is more celebrated for his attempt to accommodate the Persian theology of two first principles to the Christian system, than for his skill as a painter. He was famed, however, for drawing straight lines without a ruler. The modern Persians have made no progress in the art. In India the art seems to be confined to monstrous figures connected with their religion. See POLYTHEISM. And the paintings of Thibet are only remarkable for the fineness of their strokes. The Chinese seem never to have had the least idea of perspective. Their landscapes have no plan, no variety in the appearance of the clouds, and no diminishing of the objects in proportion to their distance; and their representations of human beings are caricatures upon the human figure. It is undoubtedly to the Greeks that we are indebted for the highest cultivation which the imitative arts have known. In sculpture this is even now sufficiently palpable, since at this day their performances remain not only unequalled but unapproached. The same observation holds with respect to architecture; and it is probable that, so far as relates to the perfect representation of a single figure, it might be applied also to their painting; but there is great reason to conclude that in many branches of this art they are surpassed by the great names among the moderns. In Egypt the knowledge of that principle which is most desirable in art (selection) never appears to have operated far. When a specific form of character was once adopted, there it remained, and was repeated unchanged for generations. Little action was given to figures, and no attempts at all made at expression. Pliny reports, that the statues executed by the Egyptians in his time differed in no respect whatever from those made by them 1000 years before. Of their paintings a few remain to the present era, but the date of these relics is by no means evident. Two of them (seen at Thebes and described by Bruce) are referred by him to the time of Sesostris (about 700 years B. C.), who is said to have restored and embellished that city; but this is mere conjecture. He remarks of these paintings, that they might be compared with good signpaintings of his day. We cannot here detail the reasons and the coincidence of fortunate circumstances which raised the Greeks to be the arbiters of form. The standard they erected,' says Fuseli, the canon they framed, fell not from heaven: but as they fancied themselves of divine origin, and religion was the first mover of their art, it followed that they should endeavour to invest their authors with the most perfect form; and, as man possesses that exclusively, they were led to a complete and intellectual study of his elements and constitution; this, with their climate, which allowed that form to grow, and to show itself to the greatest advantage; with their civil and political institutions, which established and encouraged exercises and manners best calculated to develope its powers; and above all, that simplicity of their end, that uniformity of pursuit, which in all its derivations retraced the great principle from which it sprang, and, like a central stamen, drew it out into one immense connected web of congenial imitation; these, I say, are the reasons why the Greeks carried the art to a height which no subsequent time or race has been able to rival or even to approach. Great as these advantages were, it is not to be supposed that nature deviated from her gradual progress in the development of human faculties, in favor of the Greeks. Greek art had her infancy, but the graces rocked her cradle, and love taught her to speak. If ever legend deserved our belief, the amorous tale of the Corinthian maid, who traced the shade of her departing lover by the secret lamp, appeals to our sympathy to grant it; and leads us at the same time to some observations on the first mechanical essays of painting, and that linear method which, though passed nearly unnoticed by Winckelman, seems to have continued as the basis of execution, even when the instrument for which it was chiefly adapted had long been laid aside. The etymology of the word used by the Greeks to express painting being the same with that which they employ for writing, makes the similarity of tool, materials, method, almost certain. The tool was a style or pen of wood or metal; the materials a board, or a levigated plane of wood, metal, stone, or some prepared compound; the method, letters or lines. The first essays of the art were skiagrams, simple outlines of a shade, similar to those which have been introduced to vulgar use by the students and parasites of physiognomy, under the name of Silhouettes; without any other addition of character or feature but what the profile of the object, thus delineated, could afford. The next step was the monogram, outlines of figures without light or shade, but with some addition of the parts within the outline, and from that to the monochrom, or paintings of a single color on a plane or tablet, primed with white, and then covered with what they called punic wax, first amalgamated with a tough resinous pigment, generally of a red, sometimes dark brown, or black color. In, or rather through, this thin inky ground, the outlines were traced with a firm but pliant style, which they called cestrum; if the traced line happened to be incorrect or wrong, it was gently effaced with the finger or with a sponge, and easily replaced by a fresh one. When the whole design was settled, and no farther alteration intended, it was suffered to dry, was covered, to make it permanent, with a brown encaustic varnish, the lights were worked over again, and rendered more brilliant with a point still more delicate, according to the gradual advance from mere outlines to some indications, and at last to masses of light and shade, and from those to the superinduction of different colors, or the invention of the polychrom, which, by the addition of the pencil to the style, raised the mezzotinto or stained drawing to a legitimate picture, and at length produced that vaunted harmony, the magic scale of Grecian color. "If this conjecture, for it is not more, on the process of linear painting, formed on the evidence and comparison of passages always unconnected, and frequently contradictory, be founded in fact, the rapturous astonishment at the supposed momentaneous production of the Herculanean dancers, and the figures on the earthen vases of the ancients, will cease; or rather, we shall no longer suffer ourselves to be deluded by palpable impossibility of execution: on a ground of levigated lime, or on potter's ware, no velocity or certainty attainable by human hands can conduct a full pencil with that degree of evenness equal from beginning to end with which we see those figures executed, or, if it could, would ever be able to fix the line on the glassy surface without its flowing: to make the appearances we see possible, we must have recourse to the linear process that has been described, and transfer our admiration to the perseverance, the correctness of principle, the elegance of taste that conducted the artist's hand, without presuming to arm it with contradictory powers: the figures he drew, and we admire, are not the magic produce of a winged pencil, they are the result of gradual improvement, exquisitely finished monochroms. How long the pencil continued only to assist, when it began to engross, and when it at last entirely supplanted the cestrum, cannot, in the perplexity of accidental report, be ascertained. Apollodorus, in the ninety-third olympiad, and Zeuxis in the ninety-fourth, are said to have used it with freedom and with power. The battle of the Lapitha and the Centaurs, which, according to Pausanias, Parrhasius painted on the shield of the Minerva of Phidias, to be chased by Mys, could be nothing but a monochrom, and was probably designed with the cestrum, as an instrument of greater accuracy. Apelles and Protogenes, nearly a century, afterwards, drew their contested lines with the pencil; and that alone, as delicacy and evanescent subtlety were the characteristics of those lines, may give an idea of their mechanic excellence. And yet in their time the diagraphic process, which is the very same with the linear one we have described, made a part of liberal education. And Pausias of Sicyon, the contemporary of Apelles, and perhaps the greatest master of composition amongst the ancients, when employed to repair the decayed pictures of Polygnotus at Thespie, was adjudged by general opinion to have egregiously failed in the attempt, because he had substituted the pencil for the cestrum, and entered a contest for superiority with weapons not his own. Here it might seem in its place to say something on the encaustic method used by the ancients; were it not a subject by ambiguity of expression and conjectural dispute so involved in obscurity that a true account of its process must be despaired of: the most probable idea we can form of it is, that it bore some resemblance to our oil-painting, and that the name was adopted to denote the use of materials, inflammable or prepared by fire, the supposed durability of which, whether applied hot or cold, authorised the terms èvɛkavos and inussit.' See our article ENCAUSTIC PAINTING. The ancient inhabitants of Etruria were among the first who connected the arts with the study of nature. In some of their monuments, which still remain, there is to be observed a first style, which shows the art in its infancy; and a second which, like the works of the Florentine artists, shows more of greatness and exaggeration in the character than precision or beauty. Pliny says that painting was carried to great perfection in Italy before the foundation of Rome; but it appears that even in his time the painters of Etruria were held in great reputation. The only Etrurian paintings which remain have been found in the tombs of the Tarquins. They consist of long painted friezes, and pilasters adorned with huge figures, which occupied the whole space from the base to the cornice. These paintings are executed on a ground of thick mortar, and many of them are in a state of high preservation. Winckelman is of opinion that the Greek colonies established at Naples and Nola had at a very early period cultivated the imitative arts, and taught them to the Campanians established in that country. He considers as works purely Campanian certain medals of Capua and Teanum, cities of Campania into which the Greek colo nies never penetrated. But there have been discovered, adds he, a great number of Campanian vases covered with painting. The design of the greatest part of these vases, says he, is such, that the figures might occupy a distinguished place in the works of Raphael. Those vases, when we consider that this kind of work admits of no correction, and that the stroke which forms the outline must remain as it is originally traced, are wonderful proofs of the perfection of the art among the ancients. But the count de Caylus is persuaded that the Campanian vases are of Greek origin. The name of Phidias is as familiar to every man of education as his own. That of Pananus, his brother, is known only to the few who trace back to their starting-post the early and obscure footsteps of the muse of painting. The performances of Phidias, particularly those in the temple of Minerva, called the Parthenon, remain even to the present day a source of admiration, of wonder, and envy. Those of Panænus exhibited his art still in its infancy, and have been for many revolving ages buried in the stream of oblivion.-To this man, however, Greece appears to have been indebted for an anxious zeal, at least, to advance the art he practised to a more equal station with sculpture; and in his time there were prizes established both at Delphos and Corinth, for its encouragement, whereat he himself contended, but was excelled by Timogras of Chalcis. The first great name of that epoch of the preparatory period, when facts appear to overbalance conjecture, is that of Polygnotus of Thasos, who painted the Poecile at Athens, and the Lesche, or public hall, at Delphi. Of these works, but chiefly of the two large pictures at Delphi, which represented scenes subsequent to the eversion of Troy, and Ulysses consulting the spirit of Tiresias in Hades, Pausanias gives a minute and circumstantial detail; by which we are led to surmise that what is now called composition was totally wanting in them as a whole; for he begins his description at one end of the picture, and finishes it at the opposite extremity-a senseless method, if we suppose that a central group, or a principal figure to which the rest were in a certain degree subordinate, attracted the eye; it appears as plain that they had no perspective, the series of figures on the second or middle ground being described as placed above those in the foreground, and the figures in the distance above the whole: the honest method, too, which the painter chose of annexing to many of his figures their names in writing, savors much of the infancy of painting. This circumstance, however, we should be cautious in imputing either to ignorance or imbecility, since it might rest on the firm base of permanent principles. The genius of Polygnotus was, more than that of any other artist before or after, a public genius, his works monumental works, and these very pictures the votive offerings of the Gnidians. Polygnotus was, in fact, a man endowed with uncommon ability, and certainly advanced his art very far in point of expression and action in his figures, and in ideal coloring. Of the truth of this observation, his figure of the demon Eurynomus, in one of the pictures abovementioned, namely, Ulysses consulting the shade of Tiresias in Hades, affords sufficient proof. His color,' says Pausanias, 'is between black and azure, like that of the flies which infest meat; he shows his teeth, and sits upon the skin of the vulture.' Lucian and Pliny both speak in high commendation of this artist; the former, in particular, invoking his aid to finish his perfect woman, exclaims:- Polygnotus shall open and spread her eyebrows, and give her that fine, glowing, decent blush, which beautifies so irresistibly his Cassandra. He also shall give her a flowing, unconstrained attire, which, with all its delicate wavings, shall partly adhere to her body and partly flutter in the wind.' Polygnotus, says Aristotle, improves the model. His invention reached the conception of undescribed being in the demon Eurynomus; filled the chasm of description in Theseus and Pirithous, in Ariadne and Phædra; and improved its terrors in the spectre of Tityus; whilst color to assist it became in his hand an organ of expression; such was the prophetic glow which still crimsoned the cheeks of his Cassandra in the time of Lucian. The improvements in painting which Pliny ascribes to him, of having dressed the heads of his females in variegated veils and bandeaus, and robed them in lucid drapery; of having gently opened the lips, given a glimpse of the teeth, and lessened the former monotony of face; such improvements were surely the most trifling part of a power to which the age of Apelles and that of Quintilian paid equal homage: nor can it add much to our esteem for him, to be told by Pliny that there existed, in the portico of Pompey, a picture of his with the figure of a warrior in an attitude so ambiguous as to make it a question whether he were ascending or descending. Such a figure could only be the offspring of mental or technic imbecility, even if it resembled the celebrated one of a Diomede carrying off the palladium with one, and holding a sword in the other hand, on the intaglio inscribed with the name of Dioscorides. With this simplicity of manner and materials the art seems to have proceeded from Polygnotus, Aglaophon, Phidias, Pananus, Colotes, and Evenor, the father of Parrhasius, during a period of more or less disputed olympiads, till the appearance of Apollodorus the Athenian, who applied the essential principles of Polygnotus to the delineation of the species, by investigating the leading forms that discriminate the various 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, sc they were separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character, and bound them to a class: that, in proportion as this specific powe partook of individual peculiarities, the farther it was removed from a share in that harmonious system which constitutes nature, and consists in a due balance of all its parts: thence he drew his line of imitation, and personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged, and to which the rest of its qualities administered without being absorbed : agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or weight; nor strength and weight agility; elegance did not degenerate to effeminacy, or grandeur swell to hugeness; such were his principles of style: his expression extended them to the mind, if we may judge from the two subjects mentioned by Pliny, in which he seems to have personified the characters of devotion and impiety; that in the adoring figure of a priest, perhaps of Chryses, expanding his gratitude at the shrine of the god whose arrows avenged his wrongs and restored his daughter; and this, in the figure of Ajax wrecked, and from the sea-swept rock hurling defiance unto the murky sky. As neither of these subjects can present themselves to a painter's mind without a contrast of the most awful and the most terrific tones of color, magic of light and shade, and unlimited command over the tools of art, we may with Pliny and with Plutarch consider Apollodorus as the first assertor of the pencil's honors, as the first colorist of his age, and the man who opened the gates of art which the Heracleot Zeuxis entered. From the essential style of Polygnotus, and the specific discrimination of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, by comparison of what belonged to the genius and what to the class, framed at last that ideal form, which, in his opinion, constituted the supreme degree of human beauty, or, in other words, embodied possibility, by uniting the various but homogeneous powers scattered among many, in one object, to one end. Such a system, if it originated in genius, was the considerate result of taste refined by the unremitting perseverance with which he observed, consulted, compared, and selected, the congenial but scattered forms of nature. Quintilian remarks of Zeuxis that he considered the poetic unity of character adopted by Homer, in the descriptions of his heroes, as his model; giving to each individual he painted the peculiar distinction of a class. It is said, and the anecdote bears on the remark, that, previously to commencing a picture of Juno for her temple at Agrigentum, he requested to see all the most beautiful maidens of the city naked, and from them selected five whose shape he most admired; purposing to exhibit the most perfect combination of female forms, by selecting and adopting the most beautiful parts of each. Of the coloring employed by Zeuxis, little is known with certainty; but it may doubtless be inferred with some fairness that it rivalled the excellencies of his design; and, from his alleged method of painting monochroms on a black ground, adding the lights in white, we may deduce that he understood the extension of light and shade to masses. Timanthes, Eupompus, Androcides, and Parrhasius the Ephesian, all flourished during the same era with Zeuxis. The latter, however, is the only one who may be said to have rivalled that eminent artist; and indeed it is hard to tell which of the two bore the palm, or most selfsufficiently claimed it. The story related by Pliny of their contest is not decisive on the former point, since those pictures had little to do with the real excellencies of either artist, except in the one quality of coloring. Zeuxis painted grapes; and, on exhibiting his picture, the birds came with the greatest avidity to pluck them. The rival artist then proceeded to display his performance, and, on being introduced to the spot, Zeuxis exclaimed, 'Remove your curtain that we may see the painting.' The curtain was the painting, and Zeuxis confessed himself vanquished, exclaiming, Zeuxis has deceived birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis himself." Now, how does this fact, if it be regarded as one, tally with the limitation of Pliny as to the colors used by the ancient artists? A curtain may, it is true, be of a dull color, and such a one might possibly have been imitated by Parrhasius with such materials, and so perfectly, as to have deceived Zeuxis: but it is to be presumed that the luscious transparency, color, and brilliancy of the grape, in those days, were not very widely different from what it now exhibits; and those pure qualities can only be represented by the purest and most perfect of colors. Parrhasius is reported to have had a surer eye than this celebrated rival for proportion and symmetry: he circumscribed the ample style of Zeuxis, and, by subtle examination of outline, 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 gave to the divine and heroic character, in painting, what Polycletus had given to the human in sculpture, by his Doryphorus, a canon of proportion. Phidias had discovered in the nod of the Homeric Jupiter the characteristic of majesty, inclination of the head: this hinted to him a higher elevation of the neck behind, a bolder protrusion of the front, and the increased perpendicular of the profile. To this conception Parrhasius fixed a maximum; that point from which descends the ultimate line of celestial beauty, the angle within which moves what is inferior, beyond which what is portentous. From the head conclude to the proportions of the neck, the limbs, the extremities; from the father to the race of gods; all the sons of one, Jupiter; derived from one source of tradition, Homer; formed by one artist, Phidias: on him measured and decided by Parrbasius. In the simplicity of this principle, adhered to by the succeeding periods, lies the uninterrupted progress, and the unattainable superiority, of Grecian art. With this prerogative, which evidently implies a profound as well as general knowledge of the parts, how are we to reconcile the criticism passed on the intermediate parts of his forms as inferior to their outline? or how could Winckelman, in contradiction with his own principles, explain it, by a want of anatomic knowledge? how is it possible to suppose that he who decided his outline with such intelligence that it appeared ambient, and pronounced the parts that escaped the eye, should have been uninformed of its contents? Let us rather suppose that the defect ascribed to the intermediate forms of his bodies, if such a fault there was, consisted in an affectation of smoothness bordering on insipidity, in something effeminately voluptuous, which absorbed their character and the idea of elastic vigor; and this Euphranor seems to have hinted at, when, in comparing his own Theseus with that of Parrhasius, he pronounced the Ionian's to have fed on roses, his own on flesh: emasculate softness was not in his opinion the proper companion of the contour, or flowery freshness of color an adequate substitute for the sterner tints of heroic form. None of the ancients seem to have united or wished to combine, as man and artist, more qualities seemingly incompatible than Parrhasius:-the volubility and ostentatious insolence of an Asiatic with Athenian simplicity and urbanity of manners; punctilious correctness with blandishments of handling and luxurious color; and with sublime and pathetic conception a fancy libidinously sportive. If he was not the inventor, he surely was the greatest master of allegory, supposing that he really embodied, by signs universally comprehended, that image of the Athenian AHMO】 or people, which was to combine and to express at once its contradictory qualities. Perhaps he traced the jarring branches to their source, the aboriginal moral principle of the Athenian character, which he made intuitive. This supposition alone can shed a dawn of possibility on what else appears impossible. We know that the personification of the Athenian Anuoc was an object of sculpture, and that its images by Lyson and Leochares were publicly set up; but there is no clue to decide whether they preceded or followed the conceit of Parrhasius. It was repeated by Aristolaus, the son of Pausias. The decided forms of Parrhasius, Timanthes the Cythnian, his competitor for fame, attempted to inspire with mind and to animate with passions. No picture of antiquity is more celebrated than his immolation of Iphigenia in Aulis, painted, as Quintilian informs us, in contest with Colotes of Teos, a painter and sculptor from the school of Phidias; crowned with victory at its rival exhibition, and since the theme of unlimited praise from the orators and historians of antiquity, though the solidity or justice of their praise relatively to the art has been questioned by modern criticism. The art now continued to advance with rapid strides. Nature was the guide; and to develope her various charms, in expression, shape, and color, the object of the artists. The leading principle of Eupompus may be traced in the advice which he gave to Lysippus, as preserved by Pliny, whom, when consulted on a standard of imitation, he directed to the contemplation of human variety in the multitude of characters who were passing by. Behold,' said the painter, behold my models! From nature, not from art, by whomsoever wrought, must he study who seeks to acquire reputation and extend the scope of his art." The doctrine of Eupompus was adopted by Pamphilus the Amphipolitan, the most scientific artist of his time, and by him transmitted to Apelles of Cos, or, according to Lucian, of Ephesus, his pupil. This wonderfu. person was, if we may credit the tradition respecting him, gifted with such a combination. of natural and acquired endowments as never, perhaps, either before or since, fell to the lot of another individual. In addition, he had the happiness to live at that period wherein the genius of his country had reached its highest point of elevation. The name of Apelles in |