In the course of its history,
Art for sale painting has taken several major forms, involving distinctive media and techniques. Up until the 20th century, it has almost invariably been underpinned by the art of drawing. In the West fresco painting, which reached the height of its development in the late Middle Ages and throughout the Renaissance, involves the application of paint to wet, or fresh (Ital., fresco), plaster or to dry plaster. Tempera painting, another older form, involves the use of powdered pigments mixed with egg yolk applied to a prepared surfacesually a wood panel covered with linen. Oil painting, which largely supplanted the use of fresco and tempera during the Renaissance, was traditionally thought to have been developed in the late Middle Ages by the Flemish brothers Jan van Eyck and Hubert van Eyck; it is now believed to have been invented much earlier. Other techniques are enamel, encaustic painting, gouache, grisaille, and watercolour painting. The use of acrylic paints has become very popular in recent times; this water-based medium is easily applied, dries quickly, and does not darken with the passage of time. Over the centuries, different artistic methods, styles, and theories relating to the purposes of art have evolved, succeeding one another, and in certain cases reappearing, generally with modifications, in later times. In the Renaissance, fresco painting on walls and ceilings largely gave way to easel painting in oils, but wall painting returned to popularity in the 20th centuryor example, in the work of the Mexican muralists. The impulse to express intense emotion in art links painters as different as El Greco in 16th-century Spain and the German Expressionists of the 20th century. At the opposite pole from Expressionist attempts to reveal inner reality, there have always been painters committed to the exact representation of outward appearances. Realism and symbolism, classical restraint and Romantic passion, have alternated throughout the history of painting, revealing significant affinities and influences.es.
Prehistoric and Ancient Painting The earliest known paintings were executed on the walls of caves and rock shelters some 30,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic period. Examples of Palaeolithic art are known from sites in western Europe, southern and Saharan Africa, and Australia. In certain areas, such as the Mediterranean littoral, the development of painting continued into the Neolithic period. Cave Paintings
The paintings
Canvas Art still preserved on the walls of caves in Spain and southern France portray with amazing accuracy bison, horses, and deer. These representations were painted in earth colours composed of various minerals ground into powders and mixed with animal fat, egg whites, plant juices, fish glue, or even blood and applied with brushes made of twigs and reeds, or blown on. The paintings may have played a part in magic ritual, although their exact nature is unclear. In a cave painting at Lascaux, France, for example, a man is depicted among the animals, and several dark dots are included; although the exact meaning of such paintings remains obscure, they demonstrate a spiritual awareness and the ability to express it through images, signs, and symbols.}
Greek Painting Except for a few fragments, Greek wall paintings and panels have not survived. The naturalistic representations of mythological scenes on Greek pottery, however, may shed light on what this large-scale painting was like. In the Hellenistic era, scenes and designs represented in mosaics are probably also echoes of lost monumental paintings in other media. See Greek Art and Architecture. Roman Painting The Romans decorated their villas with mosaic floors and exquisite wall frescoes portraying rituals, myths, landscapes, still life, and scenes of daily activities. Using the technique known as aerial perspective, in which colours and outlines of more distant objects are softened and blurred to achieve spatial effects, Roman artists created the illusion of reality. In the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, buried by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79 and excavated in modern times, a corpus of Roman painting, both secular and religious, has been preserved. Early Christian and Byzantine Painting Surviving Early Christian painting dates from the 3rd and 4th centuries and consists of fresco paintings in catacombs. Certain stylizations and artistic conventions are characteristic of these representations of New Testament events. For example, Christ was shown as the Good Shepherd, a figural type adopted from representations of the Greek god Hermes; the Resurrection was symbolized by depictions of the Old Testament story of Jonah, who was delivered from the fish. Among the most extraordinary works of this Early Christian period are the mosaics found in the 6th-century churches in Ravenna, Italy. San Vitale, in particular, is noted for its beautiful automatizari porti depicting both spiritual and secular subjects. On the church's walls, stylized elongated figures, mostly shown frontally, stare wide-eyed at the viewer and seem to float weightlessly, outside time. This otherworldly presentation became characteristic of Byzantine art, and the style came to be associated with the imperial Christian court of Constantinople, which survived from AD 330 until 1453. The Byzantine style is also seen in icons, conventionalized paintings on wooden panels depicting Christ, the Virgin, or the saints, made for veneration. Illuminated manuscripts both of non-Christian textsor example, the Vatican Virgil (4th or early 5th century, Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome)nd Christian writings such as the Paris Psalter (10th century, Bibliothcque Nationale, Paris) show remnants of Graeco-Roman art style. Medieval Painting
The art of the Middle Ageshat
oil painting produced outside the Byzantine Empire and within what had been the northern boundaries of the Roman worldan be categorized according to its distinctive stylistic traits. Celtic art, which flourished from the 7th to the 9th century in monasteries in various parts of the British Isles, was largely an art of intricate calligraphic designs. Highly decorated illuminated manuscripts were produced, such as the Lindisfarne Gospels (c. 698-721, British Museum, London), which display flat, elaborate linear patterns combining Celtic and Germanic elements. In the Romanesque period, during the 11th and 12th centuries, no single style appeared in the manuscripts of northern Europe; some illuminations were of classical inspiration, while others show a new, highly charged, energetic drawing style (see Romanesque Art and Architecture). In the Gothic period that followed, from the later part of the 12th century to the beginning of the Italian Renaissance, a larger repertoire of media camere supraveghere was introduced, and painting ceased to be entirely the product of the monasteries. Gothic Painting During the early Gothic period, as cathedral structure gave more emphasis to windows, stained glass occupied a more prominent role in the arts than did manuscript illumination. Lay artists now established workshops in Paris and other major centres, producing elaborately illuminated manuscripts for royal patrons. Paintings of secular subjects also survive from this period, notably in Italy. Frescoes painted by Ambrogio Lorenzetti from 1338 to 1339 in the Palazzo Pubblico (Town Hall) in Siena, portray 14th-century city and country life, and in the hall's Council Chamber, an equestrian portrait (1328) of a local military hero painted by Simone Martini, is set against a backdrop of his encampment in landscape background. See Gothic Art and Architecture. International Gothic Style The merging of the artistic traditions of northern Europe and Italy that took place at the beginning of the 15th century is known as the International Gothic style. Among the many characteristics that define painting in this style is an attention to realistic detail that shows the artist's acute observation of human beings and of nature. In the early 1400s the Limbourg brothers moved from Flanders to France and created a magnificent Book of Hours, the famous Trcs riches heures du duc de Berry (1413-1416, Muse Cond, Chantilly, France). This manuscript, one of the greatest works in the International Gothic style, was made for their patron, Jean de France, Duc de Berry. Its remarkable calendar pages portray peasant life as well as that of the nobility, providing a brilliant record of the clothing, activities, and architecture of the times. Although these are full-page illustrations, they reflect an older medieval style, in that the figures are small and must vie for attention with other imagery. Giotto Iancu Jianu
