in this art, which probably arose from the coloring of statues and reliefs.  The wooden chests of Egyptian mummies are covered with painted and hieroglyphic presentations of religious subjects; but the colors were laid without regard to light and shade.  The Egyptians did not seek to represent the passions and emotions which agitate the soul, but rather to authenticate events and actions; and hence their paintings, like hieroglyphics, are but inscriptions.  It was their great festivals and religious rites which they sought to perpetuate, not ideas of beauty or of grace.  Thus their paintings abound with dismembered animals, plants, and flowers, with censers, entrails,—­whatever was used in their religious worship.  In Greece also the original painting consisted in coloring statues and reliefs of wood and clay.  At Corinth, painting was early united with the fabrication of vases, on which were rudely painted figures of men and animals.  Among the Etruscans, before Rome was founded, it is said there were beautiful paintings, and it is probable that these people were advanced in art before the Greeks.  There were paintings in some of the old Etruscan cities which the Roman emperors wished to remove, so much admired were they even in the days of the greatest splendor.  The ancient Etruscan vases are famous for designs which have never been exceeded in purity of form, but it is probable that these were copied from the Greeks.

Whether the Greeks or the Etruscans were the first to paint, however, the art was certainly carried to the greatest perfection among the former.  The development of it was, like all arts, very gradual.  It probably began by drawing the outline of a shadow, without intermediate markings; the next step was the complete outline with the inner markings,—­such as are represented on the ancient vases, or like the designs of Flaxman.  They were originally practised on a white ground; then light and shade were introduced, and then the application of colors in accordance with Nature.  We read of a great painting by Bularchus, of the battle of Magnete, purchased by a king of Lydia seven hundred and eighteen years before Christ.  As the subject was a battle, it must have represented the movement of figures, although we know nothing of the coloring or of the real excellence of the work, except that the artist was paid munificently.  Cimon of Cleona is the first great name connected with the art in Greece.  He is praised by Pliny, to whom we owe the history of ancient painting more than to any other author.  Cimon was not satisfied with drawing simply the outlines of his figures, such as we see in the oldest painted vases, but he also represented limbs, and folds of garments.  He invented the art of foreshortening, or the various representations of the diminution of the length of figures as they appear when looked at obliquely; and hence was the first painter of perspective.  He first made muscular articulations, indicated the veins, and gave natural folds to drapery.