page_title: History of painting
section_title: Egypt, Greece and Rome
hierarchical_section_title: History of painting / Western / Egypt, Greece and Rome
caption_attribution_description: A Hellenistic terracotta funerary wall painting of a seated man and a standing woman, most likely husband and wife; it is dated to the 3rd century BC. The style and poses of the figures depicted here are similar to those found in earlier Attic grave stelai and white ground lekythoi from the 5th-4th Centuries BC. To the right of this scene (pictured here) are two of their attendants standing by, one of them perhaps being a slave, while the other holds a Greek hoplon shield, is armed with a spear, and wears a golden helmet with red ribbons and a red plume. The central male figure wears a himation garment over his left shoulder and rests his feet on a red-painted wooden stool. The woman wears both a chiton and himation.
context_page_description: The history of painting reaches back in time to artifacts from pre-historic humans, and spans all cultures. It represents a continuous, though periodically disrupted, tradition from Antiquity. Across cultures, and spanning continents and millennia, the history of painting is an ongoing river of creativity, that continues into the 21st century. Until the early 20th century it relied primarily on representational, religious and classical motifs, after which time more purely abstract and conceptual approaches gained favor.
  Developments in Eastern painting historically parallel those in Western painting, in general, a few centuries earlier. African art, Jewish art, Islamic art, Indian art, Chinese art, and Japanese art each had significant influence on Western art, and vice versa.
  Initially serving utilitarian purpose, followed by imperial, private, civic, and religious patronage, Eastern and Western painting later found audiences in the aristocracy and the middle class. From the Modern era, the Middle Ages through the Renaissance painters worked for the church and a wealthy aristocracy.
context_section_description: Ancient Egypt, a civilization with very strong traditions of architecture and sculpture (both originally painted in bright colours) also had many mural paintings in temples and buildings, and painted illustrations on papyrus manuscripts. Egyptian wall painting and decorative painting is often graphic, sometimes more symbolic than realistic. Egyptian painting depicts figures in bold outline and flat silhouette, in which symmetry is a constant characteristic. Egyptian painting has close connection with its written language – called Egyptian hieroglyphs. Painted symbols are found amongst the first forms of written language. The Egyptians also painted on linen, remnants of which survive today. Ancient Egyptian paintings survived due to the extremely dry climate. The ancient Egyptians created paintings to make the afterlife of the deceased a pleasant place. The themes included journey through the afterworld or their protective deities introducing the deceased to the gods of the underworld. Some examples of such paintings are paintings of the gods and goddesses Ra, Horus, Anubis, Nut, Osiris and Isis. Some tomb paintings show activities that the deceased were involved in when they were alive and wished to carry on doing for eternity. In the New Kingdom and later, the Book of the Dead was buried with the entombed person. It was considered important for an introduction to the afterlife.
  To the north of Egypt was the Minoan civilization centered on the island of Crete. The wall paintings found in the palace of Knossos are similar to that of the Egyptians but much more free in style. Mycenaean Greece, beginning around 1600 BC, produced similar art to that of Minoan Crete. Ancient Greek art during the Greek Dark Age became far less complex, but the renewal of Greek civilization throughout the Mediterranean during Archaic Greece brought about new forms of Greek art with the Orientalizing style.
  Ancient Greece had skilled painters, sculptors (though both endeavours were regarded as mere manual labour at the time), and architects. The Parthenon is an example of their architecture that has lasted to modern days. Greek marble sculpture is often described as the highest form of Classical art. Painting on pottery of Ancient Greece and ceramics gives a particularly informative glimpse into the way society in Ancient Greece functioned. Black-figure vase painting and Red-figure vase painting gives many surviving examples of what Greek painting was. Some famous Greek painters on wooden panels who are mentioned in texts are Apelles, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, however no examples of Ancient Greek panel painting survive, only written descriptions by their contemporaries or later Romans. Zeuxis lived in 5–6 BC and was said to be the first to use sfumato. According to Pliny the Elder, the realism of his paintings was such that birds tried to eat the painted grapes. Apelles is described as the greatest painter of Antiquity for perfect technique in drawing, brilliant color and modeling.
  Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting. However, Roman painting does have important unique characteristics. Surviving Roman paintings include wall paintings and frescoes, many from villas in Campania, in Southern Italy at sites such as Pompeii and Herculaneum. Such painting can be grouped into four main "styles" or periods and may contain the first examples of trompe-l'œil, pseudo-perspective, and pure landscape. Almost the only painted portraits surviving from the Ancient world are a large number of coffin-portraits of bust form found in the Late Antique cemetery of Al-Fayum. Although these were neither of the best period nor the highest quality, they are impressive in themselves, and give an idea of the quality that the finest ancient work must have had. A very small number of miniatures from Late Antique illustrated books also survive, and a rather larger number of copies of them from the Early Medieval period.
caption: Hellenistic Greek terracotta funerary wall painting, 3rd century BC
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