Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/348

 318 Painting it is evident from the accounts of various ancient writers that paintings of great excellence were executed in Greece at a very remote age. In the early Greek vases we are able to recognise the individual character of the painter, as distinct from the sculptor and architect. The most ancient specimens which have come down to us, and which are preserved in the various museums of Europe, display considerable knowledge of the true proportions of the human figure, and of right balance in action and in repose, combined with a genuine feeling for beauty and grace ; but we find no attempt at subtle combinations or gradations of colour, for the practice of the painter was limited to the use of white, red, yellow, and black ; nor are there any such indications of knowledge of chiaroscuro as is displayed in contemporary bas-reliefs, — and, above all, we find no trace of appreciation of linear or aerial perspective. Nothing, on the other hand, can be more beautiful than the system of ornamentation of early Greek vases, in which different surfaces are admirably contrasted with each other ; or more spirited or graceful than the figures represented, in spite of their strictly conventional treatment. Different vases in the British Museum furnish us with illustrations of these remarks : the Meidias vase with the subject of the Rape of the Leucippides, and the Apuleian amphora with the Frenzy of Lycurgus, may be cited as characteristic examples. (See Figs. 93 and 117.) Authentic descriptions of the works of the Greek masters prove that easel or movable pictures of great size, repre- senting complicated subjects, were painted for the temples and public buildings of Greece, and were very highly prized. The mural paintings appear to have been executed in fresco, and the movable pictures in tempera on wood, the