PAINTING. – It can be defined as that complex of subjective and objective requirements and rules which an artist fulfills to translate onto a surface (the plane of a panel, plaster, canvas, etc.) the image of his own imagination through figurative elements such as lines, colors, chiaroscuro, etc. In reality, from the 17th century onward, painting (both in theory and in practice) has appeared essentially as an expression of the artist’s inner vision, which is called pictorial, to allude generally to a set of motifs inherent to this vision (movement, blot, brushstroke, chiaroscuro, impressionistic research, etc.), abstractly distinct from the figurative vision that is termed plastic or sculptural. However, these are schematic distinctions that, at most, are indicative of a particular period in the development of painting, or have merely grammatical value for the purposes of critical activity.
Beginning with Cennino Cennini, painting is regarded as an art founded upon drawing. In 15th-century theory, painting is conceived as a science in the service of imitation; the art of imitation. The body of rules concerning painting is based on drawing, perspective, light, shadow, and color, according to the division of painting itself into three parts: circumscription, composition, and reception of light (L. B. Alberti). Similarly, for L. Dolce, painting is “the imitation of nature through lines and colors,” preceded by its division into “drawing, colors, invention.” Even for Leonardo (see), painting is a science, and “aerial perspective” constitutes precisely its “pictorial” aspect, as opposed to the “linear” one. The importance of the concepts of imitation, drawing, and invention in relation to painting is confirmed by the ideas of G. Vasari (see). In the 17th century, it is worth noting the definition—no longer theoretical but practical, and yet 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 other; which, by virtue of lines, shadows, lights, and good drawing, shows figures rounded, detached, and raised.”
Without dwelling on other definitions of the concept of painting, we may turn to technical procedures and linguistic development. As regards the former, the individual entries on “fresco” (see), “encaustic” (see), “tempera,” “watercolor,” etc., considered separately, will be explanatory. Here it will suffice to recall that in fresco painting, the wall, properly prepared (plaster, arriccio), must remain damp to absorb the colors, which are simply diluted in water. Encaustic, on the other hand (a wall or panel technique), presupposes the dissolution of colors in hot wax; and tempera (especially used in panel painting) presupposes the dilution of color in equal parts by means of egg yolk or 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 to the High Renaissance; and the panels, sometimes lined with canvas, were always covered with a layer of gesso and glue (ground, priming). The oil painting technique does not represent a single invention by the van Eyck brothers, diffused in Italy by Antonello da Messina (Vasari), but rather the fruit of collective achievements, perhaps initially due to the various ways of diluting colors together with varnishes using oils, including turpentine. That the Flemish had achieved, in the 15th century, remarkable results from such experiments in transparency, vivacity or depth of tones, and enamel-like density of surfaces is proven by their works. But oil painting, understood in a more openly “pictorial” sense, had its development in Venice at the beginning of the 16th century, with Giorgione, Palma the Elder, Titian, etc.; and it coincides also with the discovery (in which Piero della Francesca, Antonello, and Giovanni Bellini were not uninvolved) of tone. The novelty of “tonal” painting consists in assigning to the quality of hues a mutual concordance, based on a predominant tonality, while at the same time referring to color itself the generative property of light and shadow. Elements of “tonal” painting would increasingly become the brushstroke and the touch, so that Venetian painting becomes distinctly “painting of blot,” up to the impressionism of certain late Titian works. On the other hand, “tonal” painting also implies other individual interpretations that would have important developments within the Venetian school itself. It will suffice to mention the coloristic and mannerist luminism of Tintoretto and the Bassanos; and the chromaticism of Paolo Veronese (see).
“Watercolor,” as well as “pastel,” is a more recent technique. Executed essentially on a white support such as paper, it excludes the mixing of colors with white lead and implies a light, blot-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 into sticks, by means of which one paints directly by rubbing, was used especially in Venice (Rosalba Carriera), France, and England, beginning in the 18th century.
With regard to linguistic development, important for the history of taste, it should be noted at once that among primitive or prehistoric peoples, painting is to be considered rather in the sense of pictography, that is, colored drawing, generally lacking volume and having decorative-narrative value. In the repeated paintings of the Upper Paleolithic hunting civilization, the depictions of bison, in their intuitive stylization, reveal this narrative intent of recalling a battle, a hunt, or have magical and propitiatory value.
In ancient Egypt, painting was initially "polychromy," serving architectural and sculptural functions; whereas in the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization, painting had pictographic-decorative aims, marked by striking chromatic vividness. Among the Greeks, painting first (8th century B.C.) pursued geometric abstraction and stylization. The stylistic development is discernible through vase painting and the accounts preserved especially by Pliny. Cimon of Cleonae was known for his foreshortening of the human figure; while to Agatharchus, Polygnotus, and Parrhasius were attributed further technical achievements in painting: from perspective to expressive linearism (5th century B.C.). Later, Pausias would be remembered for his use of encaustic and for particular researches in perspective and chiaroscuro (4th century B.C.). Finally, Apelles attained sfumato and grace in his portraits and paintings.
The Etruscans, for their part, were active in painting, as confirmed by the frescoes in numerous hypogea. While in the so-called Ionic phase, their painting is linear, stylized, and superficial; in the archaic phase, greater naturalism is observed in movement and proportions; and in the Hellenistic phase, volume, foreshortening, chiaroscuro, and movement combine to suggest a high mastery of expressive means.
The Romans covered their walls with painting, either in fresco or encaustic, especially in their domestic interiors. A "Greco-Roman" pictorial style has been posited; and in any case, the classification of mural paintings into four styles (incrustation; architectural perspective; the "real" wall; and illusionistic architecture) points to two 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 rapid, bold technique, using broken tones with an impressionistic effect. These are the methods of the *ars comica* (a concept found in Pliny and Petronius); of that "patchwork" painting of probable Hellenistic-Alexandrian origin, which is still appreciated in the landscapes with scenes from the Odyssey now in the Vatican Library; or, variously interpreted, in the frescoes of the catacombs. Moreover, Early Christian painting (including the so-called "musical" variety) generally continued these "summary" methods up to the 5th century.
During the long period of Byzantine art, painting, emphasizing predominantly decorative-ornamental values in a chromatic system that relies on surface forms enclosed by increasingly abstract linearism (symbolism, conventionalism, stylization), unfolds on a plane dominated by rhythm rather than narrative or three-dimensional effect.
The Romantic age, beyond the ever-growing dominance of panel painting, saw, from the 13th century onward, the formation of the first Italian schools of painting: at Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Rome, and Siena. The Trecento was a great century for painting (one need only think of Giotto, Simone Martini, and the Lorenzetti). A closer relationship was then developing between painting and miniature, mutually engaged in giving singular interpretations of the Gothic idiom, influencing each other and giving rise, toward the end of the century, to the so-called International Gothic.
Regarding the demands of the Renaissance in painting, it has been noted above; here it will suffice to reaffirm the decisive role played, in support of these demands, by theoretical principles rooted in the conviction of the identity of art and science. Principles that would remain active even during Mannerism. In this connection, the *cangiantismo* of Federico Barocci's paintings is significant, representing an evident, programmatic, and intellectualized elaboration of Correggio's *sfumato* (q.v.).
For the 17th century, it will suffice to recall the decisive factor constituted by the light-shadow antithesis in Caravaggesque painting. While Caravaggism's "luminism" and Caravaggio's reform in a naturalistic direction (q.v.) would have the value of a plastic-pictorial synthesis with European scope, in Velázquez (q.v.) and Rembrandt (q.v.) Caravaggism would form the basis of a neo-Venetian revival. This neo-Venetianism, from about 1630, found diverse interpretations among numerous Italian painters of Bolognese derivation. The influence of Flemish painters such as Rubens and van Dyck extended to the Genoese school and elsewhere. In Bologna, moreover, it is worth noting the importance assumed by the so-called neo-Cinquecento of the Carracci.
During the 18th century, the most significant developments in Italian painting occurred especially in Venice, Bologna, and Naples. For Venice, it is enough to consider the Tiepolos (q.v.), the *vedutisti*, and landscape painters (Canaletto, Guardi, Zuccarelli, etc.) to understand how the foundations had been laid for a "modern" painting relative to the time. In France, too, painting boasted famous names such as Fragonard, Watteau, and Boucher, subtle interpreters of 18th-century pictorial lightness. And in the English school, the Van Dyck tradition found further developments and singular expressions in Romney, Reynolds, Gainsborough, and others.
The idea of a "sculptural" and classicizing painting would become concrete in the second half of the century, though informed by abstract aesthetic principles (Neoclassicism, q.v.). Parallel to Romanesque values, the conception of a "pure" painting, linked to the concept of the "sublime," would come to prevail. Indeed, the "sublime" includes that concept of the "picturesque" which, in Italy, was elaborated in England up to 1830. The European manifestations of the first half of the 19th century, decisive in the sense of a painting valid in itself, without borrowings from other arts, are represented by the names of Goya, Turner, Constable, Corot, Courbet, and Delacroix.
Finally, in France, with Impressionism (q.v.), and in Italy, with the Macchiaioli (q.v.), Divisionism, etc., modern painting led toward the research and expressions of the contemporary era, which, identifying with the well-known movements of Futurism (q.v.), Cubism (q.v.), Surrealism (q.v.), and Abstractionism, pushed to an extreme the demand for a painting as an expression of pure forms, independent of the values of verisimilitude and illustration.