It is not probable that such perfection was reached in this art as in sculpture and architecture.  We have no means of forming incontrovertible opinions.  Most of the ancient pictures have perished; and those that remain, while they show correctness of drawing and brilliant coloring, do not give us as high conceptions of ideal beauties as do the pictures of the great masters of modern times.  But we have the testimony of the ancients themselves, who were as enthusiastic in their admiration of pictures as they were of statues.  And since their taste was severe, and their sensibility as to beauty unquestioned, we have a right to infer that even painting was carried to considerable perfection among the Greeks.  We read of celebrated schools,—­like the modern schools of Florence, Rome, Bologna, Venice, and Naples.  The schools of Sicyon, Corinth, Athens, and Rhodes were as famous in their day as the modern schools to which I have alluded.

Painting, being strictly a decoration, did not reach a high degree of art, like sculpture, until architecture was perfected.  But painting is very ancient.  The walls of Babylon, it is asserted by the ancient historians, were covered with paintings.  Many survive amid the ruins of Egypt and on the chests of mummies; though these are comparatively rude, without regard to light and shade, like Chinese pictures.  Nor do they represent passions and emotions.  They aimed to perpetuate historical events, not ideas.  The first paintings of the Greeks simply marked out the outline of figures.  Next appeared the inner markings, as we see in ancient vases, on a white ground.  The effects of light and shade were then introduced; and then the application of colors in accordance with Nature.  Cimon of Cleonae, in the eightieth Olympiad, invented the art of “fore-shortening,” and hence was the first painter of perspective.  Polygnotus, a contemporary of Phidias, was nearly as famous for painting as he was for sculpture.  He was the first who painted woman with brilliant drapery and variegated head-dresses.  He gave to the cheek the blush and to his draperies gracefulness.  He is said to have been a great epic painter, as Phidias was an epic sculptor and Homer an epic poet.  He expressed, like them, ideal beauty.  But his pictures had no elaborate grouping, which is one of the excellences of modern art.  His figures were all in regular lines, like the bas-reliefs on a frieze.  He took his subjects from epic poetry.  He is celebrated for his accurate drawing, and for the charm and grace of his female figures.  He also gave great grandeur to his figures, like Michael Angelo.  Contemporary with him was Dionysius, who was remarkable for expression, and Micon, who was skilled in painting horses.