HISTORY OF PAINTING
The art of our species
If Neanderthal man created any form of art, no traces of it have yet been found. But with the arrival of modern man, or Homo sapiens sapiens, the human genius for image-making becomes abundantly clear.
In the recesses of caves, people begin to decorate the rock face with an important theme in their daily lives, the bison and reindeer which are their prey as Ice Age hunters. And sculptors carve portable images of another predominant interest of mankind – the swelling curves of the female form, emphasizing the fertility on which the survival of the tribe depends.
Cave paintings: from 31,000 years ago
Prehistoric cave paintings have been discovered in many parts of the world, from Europe and Africa to Australia. Africa has some of the earliest paintings and rock engravings to have been securely dated. Nearly 30,000 years old, they are discovered in 1969 on the rock face in a cave near Twyfelfontein in Namibia. But the most numerous and the most sophisticated of prehistoric paintings are on the walls of caves in southwest France and northern Spain.
About 150 painted caves have been discovered in this region. Perhaps the most startling of all are the paintings in Chauvet cave, found as recently as 1994 and thought to be as much as 31,000 years old. But far better known, as yet, are the glories of Altamira and Lascaux.
The walls and ceilings of these caves are covered in paintings, with shades of red, brown, yellow and black created from powdered minerals, probably mixed with animal blood and fat. The subjects are mainly the animals of the chase – bison, wild cattle, horses and deer. Many of the paintings are deep in the caves, in dark recesses.
The painters do their work by the light of saucer-like stone lamps, burning animal fat. The charcoal wick of one of the lamps at Lascaux has been carbon-dated to about 17,000 years ago. The same process has dated objects found at Altamira to some 13,000 years ago. Around this period cave art in other European sites also reaches its peak.
Why do hunter-gatherers paint images of large animals on the walls of caves? The evidence of tribal societies in more recent times makes it certain that the purpose is not merely decorative. Religion and magic are the context, but no one knows the precise motive.
There is no lack of theories. It has been argued that the magic is to aid the hunters in the chase; or that it is to increase the herds of wild animals; or that these images, in the innermost recesses of a mysterious and holy place, are to help the shaman into the state of trance which is essential for his priestly work. Speculation may be endless, but the appeal of this early human art is eternal.
When humans first form settled communities, paintings again play a prominent part in religious life. A good example is the early neolithic town of Catal Huyuk, from about 6000 BC. Many of the houses so far excavated appear to be shrines. Their walls are painted with a wide range of subjects, including hunting scenes, a picture of vultures setting about human corpses, and even an elementary landscape.
As in many early societies, such as Minoan Crete, the bull is here a sacred animal. Bulls’ heads and horns project aggressively from the walls and altars of the temple chambers of Catal Huyuk.
The Egyptian style: from 3100 BC
The first civilization to establish a recognizable artistic style is Egypt. This style follows a strange but remarkably consistent convention, by which the feet, legs and head of each human figure are shown in profile but the torso, shoulders, arms and eye are depicted as if from the front.
By this means, it has to be admitted, the artist is able to tackle each separate feature from the easiest angle. It is a convenient convention, and it is used both in paintings and in low-relief sculptures. Often the two are combined, with paint applied to the lightly sculpted figures.
The paintings in Egyptian tombs and temples usually depict the incidents which will occur during the journey of the dead into the next world. The practical purpose is to provide the sacred details required for this journey, in the form of images and hieroglyphs.
In the great temple of Ramses II at Thebes, for example, one image shows his queen, Nefertari, being gently taken by the hand by the goddess Isis. The inscription says: ‘Words spoken by Isis – Come, great king’s wife Nefertari, beloved of Mut, without fault, that I may show thee thy place in the sacred world’. Similarly helpful paintings are later buried with rich Egyptians in the standard form of papyrus scroll known as the Book of the Dead – introduced in the New Kingdom, from the 16th century BC..
Minoan art: c.1600 BC
While the Egyptian skill in painting was reserved mainly for tombs and temples, the Aegean civilization on the northern side of the Mediterranean makes much use of painted murals in the living rooms of the rich and mighty.
A fresco of about 1600 BC in the royal palace at Knossos, in Crete, develops the island’s link with the cult of the bull. Two bullfighters flank the charging creature while an acrobat vaults over it.
The island of Thera is at this time a thriving colony of Crete. In about 1525 BC it is suddenly submerged in volcanic ash in an eruption of the local volcano. Archaeological excavations on the island (also known as Santorin) have unearthed some remarkably well preserved rooms, lived in by the richer inhabitants of Thera more than 3500 years ago. These rooms are lavishly decorated with murals.
One room has on its walls a range of fanciful mountains, of a kind later more familiar in Chinese painting. The Minoan tradition introduces landscape as a subject of art.
The Greek classical ideal: 5th – 4th century BC
Greece in the classical period makes the innovations which underlie the mainstream western tradition in art. This is true of both painting and sculpture.
The essential characteristic of classical Greek art is a heroic realism. Painters and sculptors attempt to reveal the human body, in movement or repose, exactly as it appears to the eye. The emphasis will be on people of unusual beauty, or moments of high and noble drama. But the technical ability to capture the familiar appearance of things is an innovation which can later be adapted to any subject.
Ancient Greek authors consider the paintings on the walls of public buildings, particularly temples, to be works of art as magnificent and important as anything created by the sculptors. But the fragility of the medium means that hardly any painting of this kind has survived (the murals unearthed at Vergina in 1977 provide one sensational exception).
We can acquire obliquely some idea of what has been lost. One method is through the designs on Greek vases, which survive in great numbers from the classical period. They represent a skilful and cartoon-like style of Greek drawing, and give some idea of the subjects chosen by Greek painters. But in their own time they are considered the work of craftsmen rather than artists.
It is possible to have a glimpse of early Greek art through Greece’s influence on the Etruscans, in central Italy. The style of the pre-classical period in Greece can be seen in the many murals which have survived in Etruscan tombs. These are extremely lively in a stylized manner, very different from the realism of classical Greek art.
A splendid example from the 6th century BC is the inebriated pair of dancers from the Tomb of the Lionesses, in Tarquinia.
The Greek style in Pompeii and Egypt
Another way of approaching Greek painting is through later copies. Many have been preserved by the volcanic ash at Pompeii, where one mosaic in particular is considered an accurate version of a large picture of the late 4th century BC – when the classical period in Greece is just giving way to the Hellenistic Age.
It shows, in dramatic detail, a moment in the battle at Issus between Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius. Even in mosaic (inevitably more stilted than painting), the image suggests the painter’s skill in conveying a realistic impression of a very complex scene.
Pompeii is in origin a Greek city, and many of the painters of the murals come from the eastern Mediterranean. But it is also part of the Roman empire. Throughout the Roman world artists strive for this degree of realism – particularly in portraits, the art form which most interests the Romans. Again a historical accident has delivered some striking examples.
The dry sand of Egypt has preserved many superb paintings, placed in coffins from the 1st century AD. They are known as Fayyum portraits, from the place where most of them have been discovered. Painted in encaustic, a medium using hot wax, they give an intimate and moving glimpse of some of the men and women of Roman Egypt.
Roman murals: 1st – 3rd century AD
Murals are even more fragile than the walls they are painted on, so it is not surprising that few survive from the days of the Roman empire. The accidents of being covered by ash or sand, or of being originally painted underground, have preserved some examples in Pompeii, Doura-Europos and the Roman catacombs. They are not for the most part very distinguished. But they demonstrate that it is a normal custom, in Roman communities, to decorate walls by painting on the plaster.
It is equally conventional to enliven the floor with mosaics. This remains a relatively minor art form until Christian emperors move mosaic from floors to the walls of churches.
Buddhist murals: 5th – 8th century AD
Monks and pilgrims play an important part in the practice of Buddhism. Both are attracted to caves in remote places. And the profusion of popular stories in Mahayana Buddhism (on topics such as the adventures of Buddha in his previous lives on earth) provides a rich source of material for narrative paintings on the walls of the caves.
Two places suggest more vividly than any others the vitality of Buddhist cave painting from about the 5th century AD. One is Ajanta, a site in India long forgotten until discovered in 1817. The other is Dunhuang, one of the great oasis staging posts on the Silk Road.
At Ajanta there are about thirty architectural spaces cut into a steep cliff flanking a ravine. Some are viharas, or monasteries, with cells for the monks around a central hall. Others are chaityas, or meeting places, with a small central stupa as an object for worship and contemplation.
The paintings range from calm devotional images of the Buddha to lively and crowded scenes, often featuring the seductively full-breasted and narrow-waisted women more familiar in Indian sculpture than in painting. The latest images are from the 8th century, after which the decline of Buddhism in India causes these remote and beautiful places to become gradually abandoned and then entirely forgotten.
Dunhuang, on one of the world’s greatest trade routes, is an altogether busier place than Ajanta. Rather than thirty caves, Dunhuang has nearly 500 – known collectively as the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas. The murals span three centuries, from the 5th to the 8th AD. The images in the earlier caves (hollowed from the soft rock, as at Ajanta) show the influence of central Asia and even India – the regions from which Buddhism travels on its way to China – but the later paintings are fully Chinese in style.
Dunhuang, unlike Ajanta, is never lost. But one particular cave is sealed against intruders. Rediscovered in 1899, this cave is found to contain fine examples of Chinese painting on silk and the world’s first known printed book.
