Fields Chromatography | Page 2

paid the most attention. The ordinary
colours employed by them were red, yellow, green, and blue. Of the
last there were two tints; black also was common. For white, the finely
prepared stone-coloured ground was deemed sufficient. These colours

were occasionally modified by mixture with chalk; but were always, or
nearly always, applied singly, in an unmixed state. With regard to their
composition, chemical analysis has shown several of the blues to be
oxide of copper with a small proportion of iron; none containing cobalt.
There is little doubt, however, that the most brilliant specimens--those
which retain all their original force and beauty in the temples of Upper
Egypt after an exposure of three thousand years, consist of
ultramarine--the celebrated Armenian blue, possibly, of the ancients.
The reds seem for the most part to be composed of oxide of iron mixed
with lime, and were probably limited to iron earths and ochres, with a
native cinnabar or vermilion. The yellows are said to have been, in
many cases, vegetable colours; but it is likely earths and ochres were
their chief source. The greens consist of yellow mixed with copper blue.
The bluish-green which sometimes appears on Egyptian antiquities, is
merely a faded blue. The blacks are both of vegetable and mineral
origin, having been obtained from a variety of substances in a variety of
ways.
But, as shown by Layard in his discoveries at Nineveh, a knowledge of
colouring was not confined to the Egyptians; it was likewise possessed
by the Assyrians. The painted ornaments of the latter are stated to have
been remarkably elegant; and although the colours were limited to blue,
red, white, yellow, and black, yet they were arranged with so much
taste and skill, and the contrasts were so judiciously preserved, that the
combinations were in general agreeable to the eye. The pale
yellowish-white ground on which the designs were painted, resembled
the tint on the walls of Egyptian monuments, and a strong well-defined
black outline was found to be as peculiar a feature in Assyrian as in
Egyptian painting, black frequently combining with white alone, or
alternating with other colours. As far as they have been analysed, the
pigments employed were mineral, the brightest being a blue derived
from copper. No traces of vegetable colours have been found; it is
presumed that they existed, but being subject to more rapid decay than
the mineral pigments, they have disappeared. That all the colours,
indeed, employed by the ancients were not permanent, was proved by
the fact of certain blues and reds, brilliant and vivid when the earth was
removed from them, fading rapidly when exposed to the air.

From Philocles, the Egyptian, and Gyges, a Lydian, both of whom,
according to Pliny, acquired the knowledge of the art of painting in
Egypt, the Greeks obtained the knowledge of their Ars Chromatica,
which they are said to have carried by gradual advances during several
centuries, from the monochromatic of their earlier painters, to the
perfection of colouring under Zeuxis and Apelles, 450 to 350 B.C.
Unfortunately, not long after, or about 300 B.C., art rapidly
deteriorated; the invasion of the Romans commenced; and the
principles of light, shade, and colours in painting as understood by the
Greeks, together with their valuable treatises on the subject were lost.
The early Roman and Florentine painters, so eminent in other respects,
were almost destitute of those principles, and of truly refined feeling
for the effects of colouring.
The partial restoration of this branch seems to have been coeval with
the earliest practice of painting in oil. The glory of it belongs to the
Venetians, to whom the art of painting passed with the last remains of
the Greek schools after the capture of Constantinople at the beginning
of the thirteenth century. Giovanni Bellini laid the foundation of
colouring, and Titian carried it to its highest practical perfection. From
the Venetian it extended to the Lombard, Flemish, and Spanish schools.
In the practice of these, however, there was perhaps as much of instinct
as principle, colouring still remaining to be established in its perfection
as a science.
According to the true, natural, and philosophical classification of
painting, there are but three principal classes or schools; viz.: the gross
and material which is content with mere nature, and to which belong
the Dutch and Flemish schools; the sensible, which aims at refined and
select nature, and accords with the Venetian school; and the intellectual,
which aspires to the ideal in beauty, grandeur, and sublimity, and
corresponds with the Greek, Roman, and Florentine schools. Modern
art as founded upon the intellectual school of the ancient Greeks,
became grand, scientific, and severe in the practice of Michael Angelo,
and Leonardo da Vinci; graceful, beautiful and expressive in Raphael,
Correggio, Dominichino, and Guido; and, aiming at sensible