When 'Pliny wrote (about A.D. 75), painting was already an expiring art (art is marientis); the most splendid colours, he says were used, but nothing worth looking at was produced. Mural painting was chiefly practised, the painting being executed in a light rapid manner, and the aubjeeta 1111C11 as would surprise the spectator by some trick of art. Grotesques and fantastic architectural and landscape designs formed the decorations of apartments; or gay and brilliantly coloured mytho logical subjects mingled with grotesque borders and garlands of flowers on roofs and walls. The best pictures were those which aimed at the reproduction of the more celebrated works of earlier artists. We have the names of many painters of this age of decrepitude, but they are names only ; the art was felt to be so fallen that the artists them selves were despised, and painting came at length to be the occupation of slaves and men of slavish minds. The last embers of native power were extinguished amidst the turmoils of civil dissensions, and the inroads of foreign barbarians.
For further information on the painting of the ancients, tee Muller, `Handbuch der Arehnologie der Kunst; Bottiger, ' Ideen zur Arelitio logie der Malerei Raoul-Rochette, Recherches our l'Emplol de la Peinture ; and Peintures Antiques;' Junius, ' de Picture Voter= ; and Sillig's ' Catalogue Artificum Thierach, Ueber die Epochen der bildenden Kunst minter den Griechen ; and Mr. Wornum's article, ' Picture,' in Smith's ' Dictionary of Greek and Hornell Antiquities,' with the authorities there cited.
Met/larval painting.—From the ashes of this extinct ancient art arose a new form, which our zealous modern medievalists have dis tinguished with the name of Christian art. But as it was chiefly Christian inasmuch as it was the art of the priest and the cloister, it might with equal justice have been designated Monastic, or Eccle siastical Art, if it bad been intended to mark its origin or application ; while from its being nearly coincident•in duration with the period known as the middle ages, its date is more specifically indicated by the older phrase, Medizeval Art, and its source, as far as painting is con cerned, by that of Romanesque or Byzantine. As, however, the term Christian Art has found pretty general acceptance, it may without inconvenience be employed indifferently with either of the others.
In the first centuries, however, Christianity was too uniformly oppressed to require the blandishments of art ; and the Judaic' notions of a large proportion of its professors would probably have prevented them front calling in the assistance of painting for the decoration of their places of worship, or for recording the events and miracles of their faith, even had they been at liberty to do so. The earliest examples of art applied to Christian purposes occur in tho catacombs of Rome [GaTacomas], where, on opening those vast subterraneous vaults in the early part of the 17th century, the sides and roofs were seen to be almost covered with paintings and inscriptions ; and numerous sarco phagi bore similar examples of the sculptor's chisel. The effects of air and damp, and the smoke of numberless torches have combined to obliterate the paintings left in situ, but a large proportion of them will be found engraved as well as described in the works of Aringlii, Bosio, Bottari, and Bunsen, on Subterranean Rome, in D'Agineourt's 'Hist. de YAW and Maitland's Church in the Catacombs; while as many as were removable of the painting themselves, and carefully executed copies of others, have been collected and placed in tho Vatican and in the palace of St. John Lateran at Rome. As might well be supposed from their place, no less than their age, these works are extremely rude and inartistic; and at times they exhibit a rather incongruous adaptation of heathen symbols and personages ; but on the other hand, some excellent critics discover in them much grandeur of arrangement, and a " peculiar solemnity and dignity of style." (Kugler, thuldbook of
fainting Italy.') From the removal of the seat of empire to Constantiuople, Rome ceased to be even nominally the centre of the arts, though that there were undoubtedly native painters in Rome, as well as in other parts of Italy, down to the revival of painting in the 13th century, is certain, from the remains still extant in many cities of Italy ; from the illu minations in manuscripts [Mixixruez]; from the Mosaics [Mosaics] ; from the painted series of popes in the Basilica of St. Paolo, com menced in the 5th century by order of St. Leo, and from other evidence. For above two centuries Byzantine art differed in no essen tial respect from that of Rome. It was not till about the reign of Justinian that Byzantine art arrived at its full development ; but thenceforward, Byzantium remained, till the great revival of painting in Italy in the 13th century, the grand central school which supplied artists, works of art. and the laws by which they were judged, to all parts of Europe. But art itself was now at almost its lowest ebb. The works produced were chiefly for churches or religious purposes. All traces of the traditions of the ancient schools seem to have been lost, though some desire to imitate ancient forms was retained. Some thing of the oriental love of gold and bright colours appears to have been engrafted on the western modes of working. The figures were ill-drawn, rigid iu character, ungainly in position. long and meagre in their proportions, and devoid of all reality. The colours, though bright, were raw and crude, and commonly painted on a gold back ground. Enormous mosaics or frescoes of the St. Saviour, and figure's of the saints, of the most strictly conventional type, were placed in all the churches. Individuality of style was entirely ignored. The same characteristics occur in Byzantine paintings, mosaics, and miniatures wherever found. And the same characteristics have distinguished the school down to the present day : for in Greece and Russia, and wherever in fact the Greek church exists, religious pictures of pre cisely the same type have continued to be manufactured. M. Didron Manuel d'Iconographie,' p. ix. &c.), on visiting the monastery of Mount Athos, now the principal manufactory for pictures for the Greek churches throughout the world, saw painters engaged in the execution of pictures according to a strict and singularly minute code of Laws, "Epnnyfia rijr Zorypacpuriis' (' Guide for Painting a copy of which he with some difficulty procured, and of which translations have been published in French by M. Durand, and in German by Dr. Schiffer (` Das Handbuch der Malerei vom Berge Athos). To such mechanical perfection had the painters, whom M. Didron saw at work, attained—each man taking his own part of the picture—that he actually witnessed the Monk Joasph and five assistants paint in fresco entirely from memory, without cartoons, tracings, or any other me chanicil aid, a picture of Christ and the Eleven Apostles, all the size of life, in the apace of an hour This swiftness and certainty of execution are the result of the training and experience of centuries directed upon unchanged repetitions ; but we have here only an exaggeration of mediaeval Byzantine art with all its soulless traditional design and absence of thought, imagination, and individuality. The art of Byzan tium is best seen in MINIATURES and 3losales, to which headings we refer the reader for further information.