PAINTING is the art of representing objects by means of colour on a plane surface. In the present article it is intended, not to enter upon the question of the purpose or the limits of the art, nor to discuss its principles or practice, but merely to give a broad sketch of its history, leaving the details to be filled in by a reference to the names, in the Biographical Division of this work, of the principal painters mentioned in the course of the article.
As far as our knowledge extends the history of painting commences with Egypt, where it may be traced back to a very remote antiquity. Of the two arts, sculpture was probably the elder; and painting may at first have been chiefly etercised in connection with it : statues and rilievi being first coloured with more or loss taste and skill, and then outlines and figures in sunk relief (intaglio rilevato) being carved on pillars and walls, and the enclosed space coloured to imitate the natural appearance of the objects. But during the 13th dynasty, or 1400 s.e., and downwards, the most flourishing period of the arts in Egypt, painting proper, according to the definition given at the commence ment of this article, was commonly practised. Egyptian painting has been conveniently divided into three classes : mural painting; paint ing on mummy cases; and painting on papyrus ; to which might be added the portraits on wooden panels, of which several have been found in mummy cases, and which also appear, from passages in Greek authors, to have been presented as votive offerings in the temples. The earlier painting was strictly hierarchic and symbolical ; later it became somewhat freer, but always it was closely bound by conven tional rules, and as much a mechanical as an intellectual art. The human form was depicted according to a definite canon, of which there is an example in a tablet in the British Museum at least 3000 years old. In all Egyptian paintings the human figure is drawn with leas truth and freedom than figures of animals; but in neither is there any attempt at foreshortening. The subjects on the walls of tombs, which are most like pictures as the term is commonly understood, comprise chiefly religious or funeral ceremonies, rural occupations, fowling, ban quets, and household employments. In these, little of what is called competition or grouping appears to have been attempted; the colours are bright, and unbroken by modification of tint, or light and shadow ; and the artists were ignorant of perspective, the figures being placed one above another, and such objects as a rectangular fish-pond being drawn as on a ground plan, almost precisely as in the rude pictures of the ancient Mexicans. Tho colours used are the primitives, red, blue, and yellow ; with green, black, brown, and gray. They have been shown by analysis to consist of. metallic oxides, as well as of vegetable pig ments. The vehicle employed with the colours was usually glue, but occasionally, though probably only at a comparatively late date, wax dissolved in naphtha was also used. The picture was sometimes
covered with a varnish of glue, in order to preserve the colours from the dust or from atmospheric action, and occasionally a varnish of resin appears to have been employed for the same purpose.
From the state in which Belzoni found the great tomb of the kings of Thebes, and from an examination of various mural paintings, the method of working adopted by Egyptian painters has been ascertained with tolerable precision. After the wall was made quite smooth it was covered with an intonaco of fine lime and gypsum, which was suffered to dry, and then polished. Upon this the outline of the figures was carefully drawn, of sufficient strength to show through a thin coat of limewash which was spread over it ; and upon this the colours, mixed with glue prepared from thick hides, were painted. For the paintings on mummy eases the wood was usually covered with cloth saturated with glue ; on this cloth was spread a ground of gesso, and upon this the pigments, rendered opaque by an admixture of chalk, or simply mixed with glue, were laid. The portraits on tablets of cedar, some times found in mummy cases, are also covered with a coating of gesso, and in these portraits some approach is made to the modulation of surface by means of light and shade. The British Museum contains a great many examples of Egyptian paintings and painted hieroglyphics. Among the most interesting is a series of twelve fragments of frescoes (Nos. 169-ISO), painted as described above, which were brought from a tomb at Thebes, and which contain representations of the royal granaries ; the taking of fowls, and of fish ; foreigners bringing tri bute ; royal banquets and entertainments, with musicians, dancers, &c. In the First Egyptian Room at the British Museum (Case 39), are many of the implements used by Egyptian painters, including rec tangular pallets, with grooves for the brushes and read pens, and wells in which the colours were kept mixed for uso; also colour boxes ; millers and slabs for grinding the colours; fragments of colours, and a brush made of tho fibres of palm-leaves. (The great work of Roach lini, Monnmenti dell' Egitto' (Tavoli Mon. Civili), contaius numerous examples of Egyptian paintings : see also Wilkinson's ' Ancient Egyp tians,' and ' Egyptian Antiquities,' vol. ii.) Of Assyrian pictures, no instance has, wo believe, been found. That they had "images of men portrayed on the walls" in gorgeous raboents and with bright colours we know ; but these were no doubt the sculp tured slabs of which Botta and Layard exhumed so many examples, and which from the traces of colour found on them, as well as from secondary evidence, we know to have been originally brilliantly painted. But that the Assyrians painted pictures even of the kind which the Egyptians painted wo have no proof.