comes into the domain of art. It is of course acknowledged that
a mere prosaically hteral likeness of a natural object is not a work
of art; but when the representation is of such a kind as to bring out
the character of the object with discrimination and emphasis, to
give the soul of it, as it were, and not the mere lineaments, then,
logically or illogically, art claims it as its child. In the strict
sense the delineation only becomes artistic when there is present
the element of beauty in arrangement or composition. The insight
and sympathy just referred to are qualities rather intellectual
than artistic, and the really artistic element would be the tasteful
fitting of the representation to the space within which it is displayed,
and the harmonious relations of the lines or masses or
tones or colours that it presents to the eye. In other words, in
artistic delineation there will be united elements drawn from both
the sources above indicated. The representation of nature will
be present, and so will also a decorative effect produced by a
pleasing combination of forms and lines.
§ 2. Limitations of the Meaning of the word Painting.—If delineation take on itself a decorative character, so too decoration, relying at first on a pleasing arrangement of mere lines or patches that have in themselves no significance, soon goes on to impart to these the similitude, more or less exact, of natural objects. Here we arrive at a distinction which must be drawn at the outset so as duly to limit the field which this survey of painting has to cover. The distinction is that between ornamental or, in a narrow sense, decorative painting on the one side, and painting proper on the other. In the first, the forms employed have either in themselves no significance or have a resemblance to nature that is only distant or conventional. In painting proper the imitation of nature is more advanced and is of greater importance than the decorative effect to the eye. It is not only present but preponderant, while in ornamental work the representative element is distinctly subordinate to the decorative effect. In Greek vase decoration the conventional floral forms, or the mannered animal figures that follow each other monotonously round vases of the “Oriental” style, belong to the domain of ornament, while the human forms, say, on the earliest red-figured vases, while displayed in pleasing patterns and in studied relation to the shape and structure of the vessel, exhibit so much variety and so great an effort on the part of the artist to achieve similitude to nature, that they claim a place for themselves in the annals of the painter’s art.
A further limitation is also necessary at the outset. Pictorial designs may be produced without the equipment of the painter proper; that is to say, without the use of pigments or coloured substances in thin films rubbed on to or attached by a binding material upon a surface. They may be executed by setting together coloured pieces of some hard substance in the form of Mosaic (q.v.); by interweaving dyed threads of wool, linen or silk into a textile web to produce Tapestry (q.v.) or Embroidery (q.v.); by inlaying into each other strips of wood of different colours in the work called Tarsia or Marquetry (q.v.); by fusing different coloured vitreous pastes into contiguous cavities, as in Enamelling (see Enamel); or by framing together variously shaped pieces of transparent coloured glass into the stained glass window (see Glass, Stained).
These special methods of producing pictorial effects, in so far as the technical processes they involve are concerned, are excluded from view in this article and are dealt with under their own headings. Only at those periods when pictorial design was exclusively or especially represented by work in these forms will the results of these decorative processes be brought in to illustrate the general character of the painting of the time. For example, in the 5th and 6th Christian centuries the art of painting is mainly represented by the mosaics in the churches at Rome and Ravenna, and these must be included from the point of view of design in any review of painting, though as examples of mosaic technique and style they are treated in an article apart. Greek vase painting, again, is a special subject (see Greek Art and Ceramics), yet the designs on early Greek vases are the only extant monuments that illustrate for us the early stages of the development of classical painting as a whole. It will be understood therefore that in this article the word “painting” means the spreading of thin films of colouring matter over surfaces to which they are made by different means to adhere, and it will only be taken in a wider sense in certain exceptional cases just indicated.
§ 3. Importance in the Art of the Representation of Nature.—If we regard painting as a whole, the imitation of nature may be established as its most distinctive characteristic and the guiding principle of its development. It must at the same time be understood that in the advanced criticism of painting, as it is formulated in modern times, no distinction is allowed among the different elements that go to make up a perfect production of the art. In such a production the idea, the form, the execution, the elements of representation and of beauty, and the individual expression of the artist in his handiwork, are essentially one, and none of them can be imagined as really existing without the others. It is not the case of a thought, envisaged pictorially, and deliberately clothed in an artistic dress, but of a thought that would have no existence save in so far as it is expressible in paint. This is the modern truth of the art, and the importance of the principle here involved will be illustrated in a later section, but it must be borne in mind that the painting to which this principle applies is a creation of comparatively modern times. As in music so in painting, it has been reserved for recent epochs to manifest the full capabilities of the art. Whereas the arts of architecture and sculpture, though they have found in the modern era new fields to conquer, yet grew to their full stature in ancient Hellas, those of music and painting remained almost in their infancy till the Renaissance. It was only in the 16th and 17th centuries that painters obtained such a mastery on the one hand over the forms of nature, and on the other over an adequate technique, that they were able to create works in which truth and beauty are one and the artistic speech exactly expresses the artistic idea. For this the painter had to command the whole resources of the science of perspective, linear and aerial, and all the technical capabilities of the many-sided processes of oil-paint. Till that stage in the development of the art was reached work was always on one side or another tentative and imperfect, but all through these long periods of endeavour there is one constant feature, and this is the effort of the artist to attain to truth in the representation of nature. No matter what was the character of his task or the material equipment of which he disposed, this ideal was for ever before his eyes, and hence it is that in the relation of the painter’s work to nature we find that permanent feature which makes the development of the art from first to last a unity.
§ 4. General Scheme of the Development of the Art.—From this point of view, that of the relation of the work of the painter to nature, we may make a rough division of the whole history of the art into four main periods.
The first embraces the efforts of the older Oriental peoples, best represented by the painting of the Egyptians; the second includes the classical and medieval epochs up to the beginning of the 15th century; the third, the 15th and 16th centuries; and the fourth the time from the beginning of the 17th century onwards.
In the first period the endeavour is after truth of contour, in the second and third after truth of form, in the fourth after truth of space.
The Egyptian artist was satisfied if he could render with accuracy, and with proper emphasis on what is characteristic, the silhouettes of things in nature regarded as little more than flat objects cut out against a light background. The Greek and the medieval artist realized that objects had three dimensions, and that it was possible on a flat surface to give an indication of the thickness of anything, that is of its depth away from the spectator, as well as its length and breadth, but they cannot be said to have fully succeeded in the difficult task they set themselves. For this there was needful an efficient knowledge of perspective, and this the 15th century brought with it. During the 15th century the painter fully succeeds in mastering the representation of the third dimension, and during the next he exercises the power thus acquired in perfect freedom, producing some of the most convincing and masterly presentments of solid
