We have no certain knowledge as to the commencement of the art of painting. The Egyptians assert that it was invented among themselves, six thousand years before it passed into Greece; a vain boast—evidently. As to the Greeks, some say that it was invented at Sicyon, others at Corinth; but they all agree that it originated in tracing lines round the human shadow. The first stage of the art was this, the second the employment of single colors; a process known as “monochrome-painting.” The invention of line-drawing has been assigned to Philocles, the Egyptian, or to Cleanthes of Corinth. The first who practised this line-drawing were Aridices, the Corinthian, and Telephanes, the Sicyonian, artists who, without making use of any colors, shaded the interior of the outline by drawing lines; hence, it was the custom with them to add to the picture the name of the person represented. Ecphantus, the Corinthian, was the first to employ colors upon these pictures, made, it is said, of broken earthenware, reduced to powder.

But already had the art of painting been perfectly developed in Italy. At all events, there are extant in the temples at Ardea, at this day, paintings of greater antiquity than Rome itself; in which, in my opinion, nothing is more marvellous, than that they should have remained so long unprotected by a roof, and yet preserving their freshness. At Lanuvium we see an Atalanta and a Helena, without drapery, close together, and painted by the same artist. They are both of the greatest beauty, the former being evidently the figure of a virgin, and they still remain uninjured, though the temple is in ruins. The Emperor Caligula attempted to have them removed to his own palace, but the nature of the plaster would not admit of it. There are in existence at CÆre, some paintings of a still higher antiquity. Whoever carefully examines them, will be forced to admit that no art has arrived more speedily at perfection, seeing that it evidently was not in existence at the time of the Trojan War.

Among the Romans this art very soon rose into esteem, the Fabii, a most illustrious family, deriving from it their surname of “Pictor;” the first of the family who bore it, himself painted the Temple of Health, in the year of the City, 450; a work which lasted to our own times, but was destroyed when the temple was burnt, in the reign of Claudius. Next in celebrity were the paintings of the poet Pacuvius, in the Temple of Hercules, in the Cattle Market: he was a son of the sister of Ennius, and the fame of the art was enhanced at Rome by the success of this artist on the stage. After this period, the art was no longer practised by men of rank; unless we except Turpilius, in our own times, a native of Venetia, and of equestrian rank, several of whose beautiful works are still in existence at Verona. He painted, too, with his left hand, a thing never known to have been done by any one before.[228]

Titidius Labeo, a person of prÆtorian rank, who had been formerly proconsul of the province of Gallia Narbonensis, and who lately died at a very advanced age, used to pride himself upon the little pictures which he executed, but it only caused him to be ridiculed and sneered at. I must not omit to mention a celebrated consultation upon the subject of painting, which was held by some persons of the highest rank. Q. Pedius, who had been honored with the consulship and a triumph, and who had been named by the Dictator CÆsar as co-heir with Augustus, had a grandson, dumb from his birth, whom the orator Messala, to whose family his grandmother belonged, recommended to be brought up as a painter. He died, however, in his youth, after having made great progress in the art. But the high estimation in which painting came to be held at Rome, was principally due, in my opinion, to Valerius Maximus Messala, who, in the year of the City, 490, was the first to exhibit a painting to the public; a picture, namely, of the battle in which he had defeated the Carthaginians and Hiero in Sicily, upon one side of the Curia Hostilia. The same thing was done, too, by Lucius Scipio, who placed in the Capitol a painting of the victory which he had gained in Asia; but his brother Africanus was offended at it, for his son had been taken prisoner in the battle. Lucius Hostilius Mancinus, who had been the first to enter Carthage at the final attack, gave a similar offence to Æmilianus, by exposing in the Forum a painting of that city and the attack upon it, he himself standing near the picture, and describing to the spectators the various details of the siege; a piece of complaisance which secured him the consulship at the ensuing Comitia.

The stage which was erected for the games celebrated by Claudius Pulcher, brought the art of painting into great admiration, for the ravens were so deceived by the resemblance, as to light upon the decorations which were painted in imitation of tiles.

The late Emperor Augustus placed in the most conspicuous part of his forum, two pictures, representing War and Triumph. He also placed in the Temple of his father, CÆsar, a picture of the Castors, and one of Victory, in addition to those which we shall mention in our account of the works of the different artists. He also inserted two pictures in the wall of the Curia which he consecrated in the Comitium, one of which was a Nemea seated upon a lion, and bearing a palm in her hand. Close to her is an old man, standing with a staff, and above his head hangs the picture of a chariot with two horses. Nicias has written upon this picture that he “inburned”[229] it.

In the second picture the thing to be chiefly admired is the resemblance that the youth bears to the old man his father, allowing, of course, for the difference in age; above them soars an eagle, which grasps a dragon in its talons. Philochares attests that he is the author of this work, an instance, if we only consider it, of the mighty power wielded by the pictorial art; for here, thanks to Philochares, the senate of the Roman people, age after age, has before its eyes Glaucion and his son Aristippus, persons who would otherwise have been altogether unknown.

Cimon of CleonÆ first invented foreshortenings, or in other words, oblique views of the figure, and first learned to vary the features by representing them in the various attitudes of looking backwards, upwards, or downwards. It was he, too, who first marked the articulations of the limbs, indicated the veins, and gave the natural folds and sinuosities to drapery. PanÆnus, the brother of Phidias, even executed a painting of the battle fought by the Athenians with the Persians at Marathon: and so common had the employment of colors become, and to such a state of perfection had the art arrived, that he was able to represent the portraits of the various generals who commanded at that battle, Miltiades, Callimachus, and CynÆgirus, on the side of the Athenians, and, on that of the barbarians, Datis and Artaphernes.

Polygnotus of Thasos was the first to paint the figures of women in transparent drapery, and to represent the head covered with a parti-colored head-dress. He, too, was the first to contribute many other improvements to the art of painting, opening the mouth, for example, showing the teeth, and throwing expression into the countenance, in place of the ancient rigidity of the features.