With the Etruscans themselves there seems to have been little copying, as of the very great multitude of vases that have been h.ought to light, there are not found any copies of the same subject ; they are all originals. Al though the same idea may be the subject of representa tion, it is always differently expressed, and with great liveliness of invention. When we consider the mechani cal difficulties accompanying this mode of painting; the quickness and precision with which it must be executed, from the Colours being instantly imbibed; the impossibi lity of retouching or altering any false line or mistake; the clean, uninterrupted, and rapid sweep of the pencil, which is the very quintessence of a draughtsman's address, and indispensable to the mode of painting in question, we can not but admire the dexterity of these Etruscan artists. No false lines are ever detected, no interruptions, or returning upon the touch ; the whole outline is dashed off with a playfulness and accuracy of pencil like the magical touch of Raphael.
They seem to have been equally attentive to secure the advantage of the finest clay, as appears by the very great tenuity and lightness of their vases. Nothing of the kind has been discovered in modern times of equal quality, ex cept a vein of decomposed jasper in the neighbourhood of Montereale, in Sicily. We have had an opportunity of examining this substance on the spot, in company with the Padre Stersinger, who had been occupied for many years in the investigation of this subject. He had ascer tained, that wherever the fragments of Etruscan vases so called were found in great abundance, as is often the case, and probably indicative of the former existence of a ma nufactory of them, he uniformly discovered veins of jasper somewhere in the neighbourhood. That of Montereale he traced down to a situation, where it was decomposed into a red earth. Of this earth he formed some vases, which we saw, fully as smooth and light as those of the an cients, which was all that depended on the earth ; for in point of elegance of form, the Padre's taste and dexterity fell greatly short of his predecessors the ancient potters. Stone jasper can be pounded in the same mills as those used in our modern porcelain manufactories, and is more tenacious, smooth, and workable, than any other earth, so that we may safely infer that it really was the substance used by the ancients.
Pliny mentions some painted ceilings still existing in his day in the town of Ardea, an ancient city of Etruria, which had been executed at a date prior to the foundation of Rome. He expresses great surprise and admiration at their fresh ness and state of preservation after the lapse of so many centuries. At Lanuvium, another ancient city of Etruria, there was a temple decorated with pictures of Atalanta and Helen, which, although exposed to the air from the ruined state of the temple, were still in a state of great preservation in Pliny's time. They were simply painted on the wall of the building, and possessed considerable ex cellence of execution, according to Pliny. Caligula made an attempt to remove them, but failed from the great hard ness of the plaster. At the town of Ccre, another ancient Eutruscan city, there were some paintings extant of a still older date.
In the history of the various nations of the world, we find none that seems to have possessed in so eminent a degree as the Greeks, that acute susceptibility of, and taste for, the beautiful, which leads to the highest attainments in the fine arts. From the first dawning of the art among them, a correct sense of the charm of simplicity and ele gance chastened the eager flights of their genius, and pre vented their diverging into those extravagances into which talent is so apt to stray, so soon as it has acquired such facility in the execution of an art, as to enable it to minis ter readily to all the dictates of fancy. More than twenty
centuries have elapsed since painting attained this state of advancement in Greece. We have accounts, not only of the painters themselves, but of their works, with de tailed descriptions of their perfections, and the effects pro duced by them, which, unless we make very great allow ance fur the exaggeration naturally excited by the illusions of an art yet new, must have equalled in excellence any thing that modern genius has been able to produce. In this branch of our subject, we have not to grope in a bar ren wilderness, where but a few scattered and imperfect remnants of art or information is all we have to judge by ; the progress of the art in Greece is no longer a mere mat ter of historic curiosity, but a rich mine from whence both advantage and entertainment are to be drawn. Time has no doubt enveloped much in doubt, and mowed down a great proportion of the luxuriant harvest, hut valuable gleanings still remain amply to repay.the consideration of the subject.
When we advance the supposition that it was from Etru ria and Egypt that Greece derived her knowledge of the arts, we do not mean to deny the probability, that some rude mode of practice common to nations in the earliest state of society, preceded in Greece the introduction of Etrurian skill, and enabled her artists speedily to improve upon their borrowed knowledge. Almost all that we know of painting at the period in question is derived from Pliny ; a great deal has been written on the subject ; but, with the exception of a few observations to be found in the works of Cicero and some others of the classics, Pliny is the source from which all the facts are drawn. It is easy to distinguish what he records as facts from the conjectural part of the account, such as the history of the invention painting, where Pliny adopts the idle story of its origin from the fabulous dreams with which the vanity of the Greeks had corrupted their early history. According to them, we not only owe the discovery of this noble art to the dalliance of an amorous shepherd ; but every particu lar step of its advance towards perfection is the distinct invention of some one of their earliest artists ; and this in so very systematical a progression, tbat, were there no other circumstance to shake the probability of its accuracy, this consideration alone would suffice. To Cleanthes, for in stance, is given the first step beyond the shepherd's shadow picture, namely, the origin of linear drawing, or tracing the outline ; which there is little probability of ever having been the first attempt at art in any country. To this Te lephanes added hatching, or the improvement of repre senting shade by crossed lines,—a merit which is likewise claimed for another artist, Ardices ; but hatching is obvi ously a refinement of shading in its simpler form. The next step, according to the regularity of the structure, was filling up the outline, and completing the figure with one uni form colour like a shadow ; to this they gave the name of monochromatic, and attributed its invention to Cleophanes of Corinth. The next advance was the distinction of the sexes in the representation of figures, given to Cimon of Cleona ; then followed the indication of the muscles, drap ing, and an attempt to vary the attitude of figures, which till then had been confined to profile ; and to Cimon is par ticularly attributed the merit of departing from the pris tine stiffness, and rigid draperies, which cling to the ancient figures of Egypt, by substituting greater fulness, and a more natural disposition of folds. It must have required consi derable proficiency in the art of light and shade, to give a just representation of the projections and sinuosities of the drapery.