MAKART, HANS (184o-1884), Austrian painter, born at Salzburg on May 27, 1840, was the son of an inspector of the imperial castle. He has been aptly called the first German painter of the 19th century. When he entered the Vienna Academy, German art was under the rule of Cornelius's cold classicism and was entirely intellectual and academic. Makart, poor draughtsman to the very last, with a passionate and sensual love of colour was forced to leave the Vienna Academy. He went to Munich, and after two years of independent study attracted the attention of Piloty, under whom he made astonishing progress. Gradually he came to sacrifice everything to the decorative quality of his work. His "Romeo and Juliet" was bought by the Austrian emperor for the Vienna Museum, and Makart was invited to come to Vienna, where a large studio was placed at his disposal. In Vienna he became the acknowledged leader of the artistic life of the city. The obvious appeal of his huge compositions in their glowing richness of colour, in which he tried to emulate Rubens, made him appear a very giant to his contemporaries in Vienna, and indeed in all Austria and Germany. He reached the zenith of his fame when, in 1879, he designed, single-handed, the costumes, scenic setting, and triumphal cars of the grand pageant with which the citizens of Vienna celebrated the silver wedding of their rulers, all dressed in the costumes of the Rubens and Rembrandt period.
Unfortunately Makart used such villainous pigments and mediums that the majority of his large paintings have practically perished. The paint has cracked, and in some instances crumbled away, and this loss of their chief quality has accentuated their weakness of drawing and execution, and the prevalence of glaring anachronism in his work. He died in Vienna on Oct. 3, 1884.
Important examples of his work are to be found at the galleries of Vienna, Berlin, Hamburg and Stuttgart. For the Vienna Museum he also executed a series of decorative lunettes. His great historical pic tures include "Catherina Cornaro," "Diana's Hunt," "The Entry of Charles V. into Antwerp," "Abundantia," "Spring," "Summer," "The
Death of Cleopatra," and the "Five Senses." As long as dramatic exposition has existed it has presumably been accompanied by some form of masquerade for the purpose of transforming the actor into the part he por trays. History reveals its employment far into antiquity.
Primitive Make-up.—A suggestion of the simplicity and crudeness of the earliest devices of make-up may be found in the religious rites of primitive races in modern times. The Pata gonians, whose only form of dramatic movement was the sway ing of their bodies and a monotonous mumbling of incantations, made up for the occasion by smearing their faces with chalk. Among the Australian aborigines, who rank somewhat higher in the ethnological scale, ritual ceremonies are enhanced by bodily adornments of wreaths, flowers and feathers worn over greased bodies and faces daubed with white clay.
The Aleutian Indians use painted wooden masks representing demons and sea animals for their mystic rites, while the natives of the South Sea islands dress their heads with helmet-like struc tures, into which are built masks of wood, reeds, tortoise shell and human skulls, sometimes decorated with vegetable substances to represent hair. Some of these islanders, like the Areoi, discard the mask and impress their spectators by painting their faces red and their bodies black. The Red Indians of North America, be sides decorating their bodies and faces with variously hued war paints, were accustomed to behold their medicine man dressed for their rituals in the complete skin and head of elk, bear, wolf or panther.
The Chinese and Siamese theatre of to-day not only hands down its old tradition of masks, but makes use of grotesquely painted faces of blue, green, ochre, vermillion and ghastly white for demons and spirits. For the official ceremonies of the ancient Egyptians wigs were worn by kings and priests. Persian warriors wove strands of jute into their marcelled beards.