Painting

PAINTING. - It can be defined as that complex of requirements and rules, subjective and objective, which an artist fulfills in order to translate onto a surface (panel plane, plaster, canvas, etc.) the image of his own imagination, by means of figurative elements such as lines, colors, chiaroscuro, etc. In reality, painting, from the 17th century onward, has appeared (in theory and in practice) essentially as an inner expressive requirement, or vision of the artist, which is called pictorial, to allude in general to a set of motifs inherent in that vision (movement, blot, touch, chiaroscuro, impressionistic research, etc.) abstractly distinguished from the figurative vision that is called plastic or sculptural. However, these are schematic distinctions that are at most indicative of a particular period in the development of painting; or they have merely grammatical value, for the purposes of critical activity.

Starting from Cennino Cennini, painting is considered an art whose foundation is drawing. In 15th-century theory, painting takes shape as a science in the service of imitation; an art of imitating. The set of rules concerning painting is based on drawing, perspective, lights, shadows, colors, according to the division of painting itself into three parts: circumscription, composition, reception of lights (L. B. Alberti). Likewise, for L. Dolce painting is "imitation of nature by means of lines and colors,"

with the prior division of the same into "drawing, coloring, invention." For Leonardo (v.) too, painting is a science; and "aerial perspective" constitutes precisely its "pictorial" aspect, as opposed to its "linear" one. The importance of the concepts of imitation, drawing, and invention with regard to painting is confirmed by the ideas of G. Vasari (v.). In the 17th century it is worth reporting the definition — no longer theoretical, but practical and yet implying the Baroque motif of optical illusionism — that F. Baldinucci (1681) provides of painting: "a plane covered with various colors, on the surface of a wall, of a panel, of canvas, or of something else; which by virtue of lines, shadows, lights, and good drawing, shows the figures round, detached and in relief."

Leaving aside other definitions of the concept of painting, we shall touch upon technical procedures and linguistic development. As regards the former, the individual entries: "fresco" (v.), "encaustic" (v.), "tempera," "watercolor," etc., considered individually, may be explanatory. Here it will suffice to recall how, in fresco painting, the wall, suitably prepared (plaster, roughcast), must remain damp for the absorption of the colors, simply diluted in water. Encaustic, on the other hand (a wall or panel technique), presupposes the dissolving of colors in hot wax; and tempera (especially used in painting on panel) presupposes the dilution of the color in equal parts, by means of egg yolk, or a glue to which honey and vinegar were added. It was the technique most commonly used by Italian and European painters, from the Middle Ages up to the full Renaissance; and the panels, sometimes lined with canvas, were in any case covered with a layer of chalk and glue (priming, mestica). The process of oil painting does not represent the single invention of the van Eyck brothers, diffused in Italy by Antonello da Messina (Vasari), but is rather the fruit of collective results, due perhaps initially to the manner of variously diluting colors together with varnishes, by means of oils, among them oil of turpentine. That the Flemish had obtained, in the 15th century, from such experiments, admirable results in the transparency, vivacity or depth of tones and the enameled density of surfaces, is proved 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 il Vecchio, Titian, etc.; and it coincides likewise with the discovery (to which Piero della Francesca, Antonello and Giovanni Bellini were not extraneous) of tone. The novelty of "tonal" painting consists in assigning to the quality of the tints a mutual concordance, on the basis of a predominant intonation, at the same time referring to color itself the generative property of light and shadow. Elements of "tonal" painting would increasingly become the touch and the brushstroke, so that Venetian painting becomes markedly

"painting of the blot," down to the impressionism of certain late paintings by Titian. On the other hand, "tonal" painting still implies other individual interpretations, which likewise would have important developments within the Venetian school itself. And it will suffice to allude to the coloristic and mannerist luminism of Tintoretto and the Bassano; and to the chromatism of Paolo Veronese (v.).

"Watercolor," as well as "pastel," is a more recent procedure. Executed essentially on a white support such as paper, it excludes the mixing of colors on the palette, and implies a light and blot-like execution, by means of 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), in France and in England, from the 18th century onward.

As regards linguistic development, important for the purposes of the history of taste, it should immediately be noted how, among primitive or prehistoric peoples, painting is to be considered rather in the sense of pictography, that is, colored drawing, generally devoid of volume, and of decorative-narrative value. In the rock paintings of the civilization of the hunters of the Upper Paleolithic, the figurations of bison, in their intuitive stylization, reveal this narrative intent of the memory of a combat, of a hunt, or have a magical and propitiatory value.

In ancient Egypt, painting was initially "polychromy," in the service of architecture and sculpture; whereas among the Cretan-Mycenaean civilization, painting had pictographic-decorative aims, with surprising chromatic vivacity. Among the Greeks, painting at first (8th century B.C.) had aims of geometrization or abstract stylization. On the other hand, the stylistic development can be inferred through vase painting and the accounts handed down especially by Pliny. Cimon of Cleonae was known for the foreshortened representation 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 investigations of perspective and chiaroscuro (4th century B.C.). Apelles, finally, would attain sfumato and grace in his portraits and paintings. The Etruscans, in turn, were active in painting, as the frescoes in the numerous hypogea confirm. While in the so-called Ionic phase, their painting is a linear, stylized vision, on the surface; whereas in the archaic phase one observes greater naturalism in movements and proportions; finally, in the Hellenistic phase, volume, foreshortening, chiaroscuro and movement combine to suggest a high mastery of the means of expression. The Romans covered with painting, in fresco or in encaustic, especially the walls of their houses. There has been talk of a Greco-Roman pictorial style; and in any case the classification of wall paintings into four styles (incrustation; architectural perspective; the real wall; architectural illusionism) alludes to some important observations: on the one hand, the relationship, both optical and decorative, between painting and geometric perspective; on the other, the figurative images of the third style are executed with a rapid, bold technique, in broken tones, with an impressionistic effect. These are the methods of the ars compendiaria (a concept found in Pliny and Petronius); of that "spot" 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. On the other hand, Early Christian painting (including mosaics), up to the 5th century, generally continues the "compendiary" methods.

During the long period of Byzantine art, painting, exalting predominantly decorative-ornamental values in a chromatism that makes use of forms on the surface, enclosed by ever more abstracting linearisms (symbolism, conventionalism, stylization), unfolds on a plane where rhythm dominates; not narration or three-dimensional effect. The Romanesque age, besides the ever more dominant affirmation of the technique of panel painting, saw, from the 13th century onward, the establishment of the first Italian pictorial schools: at Lucca, Pisa, Florence, Rome, Siena. The fourteenth century was great in painting (one need only think of Giotto, Simone Martini, the Lorenzetti). At that time the relationship between painting and miniature was developing more closely, each mutually engaged in giving singular interpretations of the Gothic language, influencing one another; and giving rise, toward the end of the century, to the so-called International Gothic.

Regarding the demands of the Renaissance in the field of painting, mention has been made: and here it will suffice merely to reaffirm the decisive role that, in support of such demands, was played by the theoretical principles stemming from the conviction of the identity of art and science. Principles that would then remain active even during Mannerism. With regard to painting, important in this sense is the "cangiantismo" of Federico Barocci's paintings: which evidently represents a programmatic and intellectualistic elaboration of the sfumato of Correggio (v.).

As for the seventeenth century, it will suffice to recall the decisive factor constituted by the light-shadow antithesis in Caravaggesque painting. And while Caravaggesque "luminism," the very pictorial reform in a naturalistic sense of Caravaggio (v.), would have the value of a plastic-pictorial synthesis and European scope, in Velázquez (v.) and Rembrandt (v.) Caravaggism would be at the basis of a neo-Venetian revival. A neo-Venetianism that, ca. 1630, would find different interpretations in numerous Italian painters of Bolognese descent. And the influence of Flemish painters such as Rubens or van Dyck was exercised on the Genoese school and elsewhere. At Bologna, moreover, it is worth mentioning the importance assumed by the so-called neo-Cinquecentism of the Carracci.

During the eighteenth century the most significant developments in Italian painting occurred especially in Venice, Bologna and Naples. For Venice, it will suffice to refer to the Tiepolo (v.), and to the "vedutisti" and landscape painters (Canaletto, Guardi, Zuccarelli, etc.), to understand how by then the foundations had been laid for a "modern" painting relative to its time. Still in France, painting was adorned with famous names, such as Fragonard, Watteau, Boucher, subtle interpreters of eighteenth-century pictorial lightness. And in the English school the Van Dyckian tradition would find further developments and singular individualizations in Romney, Reynolds, Gainsborough, etc.

The idea of a "sculptural" and classicizing painting would become, in the second half of the century, concrete and yet informed by abstract aesthetic principles (Neoclassicism, v.). In parallel with Romantic values, the conception of a "pure" painting, linked to the concept of the "sublime," would end up prevailing. Indeed, into the "sublime" enters that concept of the "picturesque" which, having arisen in Italy, was elaborated in England, until 1830. And the European manifestations of the first half of the nineteenth century, decisive in the sense of a painting that is valid for itself, without borrowings from the other arts, answer to the names of Goya, Turner, Constable, Corot, Courbet, Delacroix.

Finally, in France, with "Impressionism" (v.), and in Italy, with the "Macchiaioli" (v.), "Divisionism," etc., modern painting leads toward contemporary investigations and experiments which, identifying themselves in the well-known movements of Futurism (v.), Cubism (v.), Surrealism (v.), abstractionism, exacerbate the demand for a painting as expression of pure forms, disregarding the values of verisimilitude and illustration.

Luigi Grassi