History of painting
Pre-history
Also see pre-historic art.
The oldest known paintings are at the Grotte Chauvet in France, claimed by some historians to be about 32,000 years old. They are engraved and painted using red ochre and black pigment and show horses, rhinoceros, lions, buffalo, mammoth or humans often hunting. There are examples of cave paintings all over the world—in France, Spain, Portugal, China, Australia etc. Many theories have been written about these paintings with no objective conclusion. Some sustain that prehistoric men painted animals to "catch" their soul or spirit in order to hunt them more easily, others refer an animistic vision and homage to surrounding nature and others the basic need of expression that is innate to human being.
Egypt, Greece and Rome
Ancient Egypt, a civilization that is strongly connected to architecture and artistic forms, had many mural paintings in his temple and buildings. Often graphical, more symbolic than realistic in bold outline and flat, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language (see pictography) and painting had an essential role in their manuscripts (papyrus). In fact painted symbols are amongst the first forms of written language.
To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization on the island of Crete. The wall paintings found in palaces such as of the Knosos are similar to that of the Egyptians. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and the people there passed their artistic knowledge to the Greeks.
Ancient Greece had its great painters like it had great sculptors and architects, unfortunately no example of their work lasted to our days. What remains are written descriptions of their contemporaries or Roman copies. However vase painting can be as a surviving example of what Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters who are referred in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis lived in 5-6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. His paintings are described to be highly realistic so much that Pliny the Elder wrote that birds tried to eat the grapes of his works. Apelles is described to be the greatest painter of Antiquity for its perfect technique in drawing, brilliant colour and modeling.
Roman painting was influenced by Greek painting and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. Much of the surviving Roman painting comes down as wall paintings from the area known as Campania, in the Naples area. Such painting can be grouped into 4 main "styles" or periods and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'oeil, psuedo-perspective, and pure landscape.
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