PITTURA. – It may be defined as that complex of subjective and objective requirements and rules which an artist realizes in order to translate onto a surface (the plane of a panel, plaster, canvas, etc.) the image of his own imagination, by means of figurative elements such as lines, colors, chiaroscuro, and so forth. In reality, from the seventeenth century onward, p. appeared (in theory and in practice) essentially as an inner expressive need, or vision of the artist, which is called pictorial, to allude generally to a set of motifs inherent in that vision (movement, macchia, touch, chiaroscuro, impressionistic research, etc.), abstractly distinguished from the figurative vision said to be plastic or sculptural. These, however, are schematic distinctions which, at most, indicate a particular period in the development of p.; or possess merely grammatical value for the purposes of critical activity.
Beginning with Cennino Cennini, p. was considered an art founded upon drawing. In fifteenth-century theory, p. took shape as a science serving imitation; the art of imitating. The body of rules concerning p. is based on drawing, perspective, lights, shadows, and colors, according to the division of p. itself into three parts: circumscription, composition, and the reception of light (L. B. Alberti). In the same way, for L. Dolce p. is “imitation of nature by means of lines and colors,” preceded by its division into “drawing, coloring, invention.” LEO, LEONARDO (v.), too, p. is a science; and “aerial perspective” precisely constitutes its “pictorial” aspect, as opposed to the “linear” one. The importance, in relation to p., of the concepts of imitation, drawing, and invention is confirmed by the ideas of G. Vasari (v.). In the seventeenth century, it is worth citing the definition—not theoretical any longer, but practical and therefore implying the Baroque motif of optical illusion—which F. Baldinucci (1681) gives of painting: “a plane covered with various colors, on the surface of a wall, panel, canvas, or something else; which, by virtue of lines, shadows, lights, and good drawing, shows figures as round, detached, and relief-like.”
Leaving aside other definitions of the concept of p., we shall mention its technical procedures and linguistic development. With regard to the former, the individual entries “fresco” (v.), “encaustic” (v.), “tempera,” “watercolor,” etc., considered separately, may provide explanations. Here it will suffice to recall that, in fresco p., the suitably prepared wall (plaster, roughcast) must remain moist so that it can absorb the colors, simply diluted in water. Encaustic, on the other hand (a wall or panel technique), presupposes the dissolution of colors in hot wax; and tempera (used especially in p. on panel) presupposes the dilution of the color in equal parts, by means of egg yolk, or of a glue to which honey and vinegar were added. This was the technique most commonly used by Italian and European painters from the Middle Ages through the High Renaissance; and the panels, sometimes covered with canvas, were in any case coated with a layer of gypsum and glue (imprimitura, ground). The process of oil p. does not represent the individual invention of the brothers van Eyck, disseminated in Italy by Antonello da Messina (Vasari), but rather is the fruit of collective results, perhaps initially deriving from the practice of diluting colors in various ways together with varnishes, using oils, among them turpentine oil. That the Flemish, in the fifteenth century, obtained marvelous results from such experiments—in the transparency, brilliance, or depth of tones and the enameled density of surfaces—is demonstrated by their works. But oil p., understood in the more openly “pictorial” sense, developed in Venice at the beginning of the sixteenth century, with Giorgione, Palma il Vecchio, Tiziano, and others; and it also coincides with the discovery (to which Piero della Francesca, Antonello, and Giovanni Bellini were not unrelated) of tone. The novelty of “tonal” p. consists in assigning the qualities of hues a mutual concordance, based on a predominant tonality, while at the same time attributing to color itself the generative property of light and shadow. Elements of “tonal” p. would increasingly become touch and brushstroke, so that Venetian p. became distinctly “macchia p.,” leading up to the Impressionism of certain late paintings by Tiziano. On the other hand, “tonal” p. also implies other individual interpretations, which would likewise undergo important developments within the Venetian school itself. It will suffice to mention the coloristic and Mannerist luminism of Tintoretto and the Bassano; Paolo Veronese (v.).
“Watercolor,” like “pastel,” is a more recent process. Executed essentially on a white support such as paper, it excludes the mixing of colors with white lead, and entails a light, macchia-like execution, using extremely liquid and transparent colors. “Pastel,” that is, the use of colors mixed in powder (white clay, Armenian bole, etc.) and then dried and reduced to sticks, with which one paints directly by rubbing, was used especially in Venice (Rosalba Carriera), in France, and in England, beginning in the eighteenth century.
As regards linguistic development, which is important for the history of taste, it should immediately be noted that, among primitive or prehistoric peoples, p. should be understood rather in the sense of pictography, that is, colored drawing, generally lacking volume and possessing decorative-narrative value. In the cave paintings of the hunting civilization of the Upper Paleolithic, the figures of bison, in their intuitive stylization, reveal this narrative intention of recalling a combat or a hunt, or possess a magical and propitiatory value.
In ancient Egypt, painting was initially “polychromy,” serving the purposes of architecture and sculpture; whereas among the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization, painting had pictographic-decorative aims, with astonishing chromatic vivacity. Among the Greeks, painting initially (8th century B.C.) pursued aims of geometrization or abstract stylization. On the other hand, its stylistic development can be intuited through vase painting and the accounts transmitted especially by Pliny. Cimone of the Peloponnese was known for representing the human figure in foreshortening; while Agatarco, Polignoto, and Parrasio were credited with further technical advances in painting: from perspective to expressive linearism (5th century B.C.). Later, Pausia would be remembered for the use of encaustic and for particular experiments in perspective and chiaroscuro (4th century B.C.). Apelle, finally, would attain sfumato and grace in his portraits and paintings. The Etruscans, for their part, were active in painting, as confirmed by the frescoes in their numerous hypogea. In the so-called Ionic phase, their painting is a linear, stylized vision on a surface; whereas in the archaic phase greater naturalism is observed in movements and proportions; finally, in the Hellenistic phase, volume, foreshortening, chiaroscuro, and movement combine to suggest a high mastery of expressive means. The Romans covered, with painting in fresco or encaustic, especially the walls of their houses. A Greco-Roman pictorial style has been discussed; and in any case, the classification of wall paintings into four styles (incrustation; architecture in perspective; the real wall; architectural illusionism) points to certain important observations: on the one hand, the optical and decorative relationship between painting and geometric perspective; on the other, the figurative images of the third style are executed with a rapid, audacious technique, in disintegrated hues, producing an impressionistic effect. These are the modes of the ars compendiaria (a concept found in Pliny and Petronius); of that “patchwork” painting, probably of Hellenistic-Alexandrian origin, which can still be appreciated in the landscapes with scenes from the Odyssey, now in the Vatican Library; or, variously interpreted, in the frescoes of the catacombs. On the other hand, early Christian painting (including mosaics), generally speaking, continued the “compendiary” modes until the 5th century.
During the long period of Byzantine art, painting, chiefly exalting decorative-ornamental values through a chromaticism that made use of forms on a surface, enclosed by increasingly abstracting linearisms (symbolism, conventionalism, stylization), developed on a plane dominated by rhythm, not by narration or three-dimensional effect. The Romanesque age, besides witnessing the increasingly dominant establishment of the technique of painting on panel, saw, beginning in the 13th century, the formation of the first Italian schools of painting: in Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Siena. The Trecento was a great age for painting (one need think only of Giotto, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti). At that time the relationship between painting and miniature was becoming closer, as both were engaged in providing singular interpretations of the Gothic language, influencing one another; and, toward the end of the century, giving rise to the so-called International Gothic.
With regard to the requirements of the Renaissance in the field of painting, mention has already been made of them; here it will suffice to reaffirm the determining role played, in support of those requirements, by the theoretical principles deriving from the conviction of the identity of art and science. These principles would remain active during Mannerism as well. In relation to painting, the “cangiantismo” of the paintings of Federico Barocci is important in this sense: it evidently represents a programmatic and intellectualistic elaboration of Correggio’s “sfumato” (v.).
For the Seicento, it will suffice to recall the decisive factor constituted by the light-shadow antithesis in Caravaggesque painting. And while Caravaggio’s “luminism,” as well as his pictorial reform in a naturalistic sense (v.), would have the value of a plastic-pictorial synthesis and a European scope, Velazquez (v.) Rembrandt (v.) Caravaggism would form the basis of a revival of the neo-Venetian style. This neo-Venetianism, around 1630, would find different interpretations in numerous Italian painters of Bolognese descent. The influence of Flemish painters such as Rubens and van Dyck was also exerted upon the Genoese school and elsewhere. At Bologna, moreover, it is worth mentioning the importance assumed by the so-called neo-sixteenth-century style of the Caracci.
During the Eighteenth century, the most significant developments in Italian painting occurred above all in Venice, Bologna, and Naples. As for Venice, it will suffice to refer to the Tiepolo (v.), and to the “view painters” and landscape painters (Canaletto, Guardi, Zuccarelli, etc.), to understand how the foundations had by then been laid for a “modern” painting in relation to its time. In France too, painting was adorned with famous names, such as Fragonard, Watteau, and Boucher, subtle interpreters of eighteenth-century pictorial lightness. And in the English school, the van Dyck tradition found further developments and singular individual expressions in Romney, Reynolds, Gainsborough, etc.
The idea of a “sculptural” and classicizing painting would become concrete in the second half of the century, yet would be informed by abstract aesthetic principles (neoclassicism, v.). Parallel to Romanesque values, the conception of a “pure” painting, connected with the concept of the “sublime,” would ultimately prevail. The concept of the “picturesque,” which arose in Italy and was elaborated in England until 1830, indeed falls within the “sublime.” And the European manifestations of the first half of the Nineteenth century, decisive in the sense of a painting valid in itself, without borrowings from the other arts, are represented by the names of Goya, Turner, Constable, Corot, Courbet, and Delacroix.
Finally, in France, with “impressionism” (v.), and in Italy, with the “Macchiaioli” (v.), “divisionism,” etc., modern painting moves toward contemporary investigations and experiments which, identifying themselves futurism (v.), cubism (v.), surrealism (v.), and abstractionism, intensify the demand for a painting as the expression of pure forms, independent of the values of verisimilitude and illustration.
BIBLI: K. Voermann, Malerei des Altertums. Leipzig 1878; P. Girard, La peinture antique, Paris 1892; E. Beget, Die Maltechnik des Altertums, Munich 1904; G. Previati, La tecnica della p., Turin 1905; C. Lounyer, Les traditions techniques de la peinture médiévale, Brussels 1920; G. E. Rizzo, La p. ellenistico-romana, Rome-Milan 1929; F. Wittgens (E. Modelliani), Mentore, Guida allo studio dell'arte italiana, Milan 1940; M. Unold, Della p., there 1950. Luigi Grassi