It is very disagreeable to unlearn the learning of one’s youth, and to give up belief in certain things that seem, from our long familiar acquaintance, as if they made up a part of the system of nature itself.

But so it must be, if we will give ourselves fair play in examining into the history of art or science, polity or commerce, in ancient Italy. In our early education it is Rome only to which the attention is directed. Rome is represented as first in arts and arms, as spreading civilisation along with her dominion: and, in short, Roman virtue and Roman greatness dazzle our young imaginations, till, seeing nothing but the glare of her meridian splendour, we forget to look whence and how it arose.

Yet Italy must have had a long and not inglorious history before the seven-hilled city could boast of a shepherd’s hut, or the politic Romulus, if such a king ever reigned, found a village considerable enough to tempt him to make himself a king contrary to the custom of the neighbouring federal states, one of which, Cœre, had, not very long before his time, expelled its Lucumon (Mezentius) for little reason but that he had sought to change the annual magistracy into a monarchy for life[34].

This history will probably remain for ever obscure as to the particular facts relating to it, and the names of those who might have figured in it; because, the vainglory of the Romans, infecting even their writers, desired that their own history and their own monuments should stand foremost in the eyes of posterity; and though the ancient books existed, and the ancient language was still understood to a late period[35], no use was made of them by those who recorded the achievements of the Romans; and it is because they found it so difficult to conquer the Italian tribes, one by one, that we are led to form an idea of their strength and importance.

Many men of learning and understanding in Italy, had, from time to time, thrown doubts on the early portion of the Roman history, some perhaps feeling that their own native provinces had been wronged by their gorgeous adversary.

But the fate of Italy,

had lowered the energies that, under other circumstances, would have boldly proclaimed these doubts long ago, and have shown Rome as she was, the destroyer of men and of happiness; a conqueror converting whole well-peopled and cultivated provinces into deserts, ever which a few wretched slaves wandered to their task work, instead of the free peasants who once gathered their own rich harvests; a tyrant at whose frown the liberal arts withered, and commerce deserted the useless ports and abandoned storehouses of the subdued merchants and spiritless artists.

But the pains-taking critics of Germany had no morbid sensibility to prevent them from attacking Rome; none of the hopeless feeling of those who would, but must not, vindicate the fame of their ancestors; and with something of roughness and much of justice, they have taught us to trample on ancient prejudice, and to dare to look upon Italy as not dependant entirely upon Rome.

There have not been wanting Italians to join in these views, and to acknowledge the merit of their trans-alpine critics. Among these Micali is conspicuous; and, as his late work, with its atlas, throws considerable light on a very early period of art in Italy, I shall make use of it in preference to any other in what I have to say of painting and its kindred arts, before the period of Roman authentic history begins.

The scattered notices to be found in ancient writers, leave no doubt as to a few facts: namely, that a rude tribe, or several rude tribes, called by the various titles of Opicians, Auruncians, Oscans, Cascans, or Priscan Latins, under the general name of Ausonians, and all speaking the same language, once possessed, at least, the hill countries of Italy; that these were succeeded by a race speaking a different dialect, resembling the Pelasgians, who appear in several countries as the first people possessing the arts of civilized life, beginning to build cities, and introducing regular government.

Then we read of Umbrians, Siculi, and colonies from Greece and Phrygia; and Italy next appears, long before the foundation of Rome, as chiefly possessed by a people whose native name seems to have been Ra-seni, who were called generally by the Greeks, Tyrrhenians, and by the Latins, Tuscans or Etruscans.

It is among this remarkable people, possessed of some of the sciences and most of the arts of social life, that the fine arts were first cultivated in Italy; and that they were no mean proficients, will not be disputed by any one who has beheld even a single Etruscan vase[36].

They had not pyramids or giant temples to boast of. Their works were not for kings or for the exclusive profit of the governing priests, like those of Egypt or India, but for the public. They have left walls of cities, solid quays and ports, drains and sluices, useful even at the present time, as their monuments.

But in their country, as well as in Egypt, it is in the repositories of the dead that we are to look for the relics of whatever was beautiful or ornamental among them[37].

The first steps of art have, doubtless, been the same among all nations; but the Tyrrhenians had some advantages in their early cultivation. They were early a maritime people; as merchants or as pirates they visited whatever ports the Phœnicians traded to, in the Mediterranean; and the effect of their foreign intercourse is to be traced in whatever we know of their institutions or see of their arts.

But I must not allow myself to be seduced into more than the very slightest mention of the resemblance of some of their institutions to those of Greece, and of others to those of Egypt; and that mention is only made because the influence of the intercourse with other nations, upon the arts of Etruria, is so conspicuous, that it is impossible to give the slightest sketch of them without a reference to it[38].

The relics, confessedly of Etruscan manufacture, that from time to time have been discovered in various parts of Italy, had convinced us that the nation was early acquainted with the arts, but there was little to guide antiquaries as to the age of the relics themselves, or the sources whence those arts had been derived. The fabulous as well as the true stories of colonies from Asia, Egypt, and Greece, which had been left by the ancients, became signals of battle for modern disputants, and much ink has been shed in support of all manner of contradictory theories.

The late historical disquisitions of the Germans and Italians cleared away a good deal of obscurity; the re-opening of the great cemeteries of Chuisi, Tarquinii, and Vulscii, have, as far as relates to art, done much more[39]; and we may safely conclude that the Etruscan artists, not mean in themselves, were improved by the importation of models from other countries, and probably by the settling of potters and metal founders from Sicyon, Corinth, and other Greek cities among them.

That they early adopted the deities of other countries is also proved by the opening of the tombs of Chuisi. It is impossible not to be struck with the close resemblance to the sculpture and coloured bas-reliefs of Egypt found there; and, saving that the Tuscans do not appear to have practised embalming, the mystic ceremonies in honour of the dead are shown to be the same.

The beautiful vases of different kinds and colours, of clay baked or unbaked, are covered with designs, in exquisite taste and delicately touched. They are mostly painted in one single colour, or at most two or three flat colours, picked out with black or white. Some have figures in slight relief; and, with few exceptions, the subjects are from the Greek mysteries of Bacchus, Hercules, and Ceres, when their attributes coincide with those of the Egyptian deities, Osiris and his family. The genii, with two or four wings, found in some of the most ancient, mark a very early intercourse with the priests of both countries; and though the most offensive particulars belonging to their mythologies are totally absent, the great Egyptian demon of destruction is common on cups, pateræ, and vases[40].

Among the great variety of designs found in the newly opened tombs, I cannot refrain from mentioning one which Micali has published, of a domestic rural scene, painted in several colours. Under a canopy there is a grave elderly man seated, and before him his servants are weighing corn, brought in nets from the field[41]. Below, as if in a vault, others are stowing sacks of corn, which we may suppose have been weighed. The resemblance of the subject on this patera or plate to some of those found by Mr. Wilkinson on the walls of the catacombs of Egypt, is very remarkable.

Besides the vases of clay, some utensils of wood and metal were found in the cemeteries. Gems also, with chased ornaments, of beautiful fancy and excellent workmanship, necklaces, armlets, rings, buckles, signets, besides armour, all designed with taste, and executed with skill, show, to our regret, against how civilized a people the Romans made war, and leave us to lament that the selfish vainglory of the conquerors thought of preserving no annals but their own.

To describe the painted sides of the tombs at Chuisi and other ruined Italian cities, would be to repeat what I have already said of those of Egypt, as far as their colouring is concerned, or their approach to the nature of a true picture; but I must remark that the designs, if not so imposing, have more nature and grace, though they are not to be compared in size, number, or variety, with those of Egypt.

But there is some reason to believe that the ancient Italians had true painters among them. Indeed I think the evidence for it as good as that we have for any other facts connected with the arts. Pliny[42], after refuting the story that painting was brought into Italy from Corinth, by Cleophantus, a friend of Tarquinius Priscus[43], who had fled from the tyranny of Cypselus, says expressly[44], “Extant there be at this day to be seen at Ardea, within the temples there, antique pictures, and indeed more ancient than the city of Rome. And I assure you no pictures ever came to my sight which I wonder so much at, namely, that they should continue so long fresh and as if they were newly made, considering the places where they be so ruinate and uncovered over head. Semblably at Lanuvium, there remain two pictures of Lady Atalanta and Queen Helena, close one to the other, painted naked, by one and the same hand: both of them are for beauty incomparable, and yet a man may discern one of them to be a maiden by her modest and chaste countenance, which pictures, notwithstanding the ruin of the temple where they stand, are not a whit disfigured or defaced[45];” and farther on he says, that at Cære there were pictures of still greater antiquity.

These were of course the works of Etruscan artists, and, as Pliny had opportunities of seeing and judging of the best Greek pictures which successive conquerors had brought to Rome before his time, his praises may be taken as good evidence for the general estimation of the skill of those early painters.

Happily, although the barbarous Romans had not taste enough to value and preserve the fame of their Etruscan rivals, they did not disdain to employ their artists. One of the Roman modes of honouring their forefathers was to preserve their effigies in plaster, wax, stone, or metal; and on the death of any member of a family, the figures or heads of the ancestors were taken from the family treasury to accompany the body to the place of burial, or to the funeral pyre.

This alone would render the Etruscan sculptors popular. One of the most ancient remaining works, executed by them for Rome, is the bronze wolf, “the thunder-stricken nurse of Rome,” preserved in the Capitol, and of which Micali has given an excellent figure. But this, and also the most ancient statues of the kings and consuls, must have been cast in Etruscan towns, and brought to Rome; for Pliny[46] tells us that the very first bronze statue cast within the city was that of the goddess Ceres, the expense being defrayed by the forfeited goods of Spurius Capius, who was put to death for aspiring to the dignity of king[47].

The Romans were so fond of the Tuscan statues that they collected them from all quarters. At the taking of Volsinum (now Bolsena) alone, they removed two thousand to their own city; and the practice of setting up statues, even in the public places, must have become a nuisance, before the senate made a decree that they should all be removed, excepting such as had been erected by public vote in honour of great personages. Thus, when the streets and market-places were cleared of the nameless crowd, the bronze portraits of Poplicola and of Cornelia became of double importance.

Among the most ancient of the monumental bronzes were several equestrian statues in honour of women as well as men. That of Clelia was especially prized, and there was another of the daughter of Poplicola held in the highest reverence.

Of colossal figures, there was an Etruscan Apollo, of fifty feet high, placed in the library of the Temple of Augustus; of which Pliny says, “But the bigness thereof is not so much as the matter and the workmanship; for hard it is to say, whether is more admirable the beautiful figure of the body, or the exquisite temperature of the metal[48].”

There was also the colossal Jupiter of the Capitol, cast by Corvillius out of the brazen armour taken from the dead bodies of the conquered Samnites.

Besides this taste for statues, the Romans were not slow to acquire a love for ornamented cups and bowls and dishes of the precious metals; nor were there wanting among the spoils conveyed to Rome from the Etruscan cities, lamps and candelabra and other furniture of elegant design, which the more rigid citizens looked upon as tending to the corrupting of the manners of the ancients, the moderate and aged dedicated to the gods, but the multitude used and enjoyed.

With all these examples of beautiful forms daily before them, and familiar enough with the sight of pictures in the neighbouring towns, the inhabitants of Rome could not long be without painters; indeed, painting seems to have been highly esteemed at one period, for the great and noble family of the Fabii cultivated it so fondly, that one of their distinguishing surnames was Pictor.

Fabius Pictor, the father of that Fabius Pictor who was sent to Delphos to consult the Oracle of Apollo, on the fate of his country, after the disaster at Cannæ, appears to have dedicated the first picture publicly to the gods in Rome. He himself painted the Temple of Salus, in such a manner as to be esteemed even after the introduction of Greek pictures; but the painting with the Temple itself was destroyed by fire in the reign of Claudius Cæsar[49].

Pacuvius, the poet and tragedian, is named as another great painter in the time of the Republic. He lived about sixty years later than Fabius Pictor, and was a native of Brundusium. As the nephew of Ennius, his works would have been sure of a favourable notice from all the wise and polished Romans of his time; but, by what we are told of them, they do not appear to have required indulgence. He painted the Temple of Hercules in the cattle market in Rome, and the pictures are said to have given dignity to the art itself.

But a singular use was made of painting by the Roman heroes. Their inordinate love of military fame discovered a mode of feeding that ruling passion by means of this charming art; and it appears that Valerius Maximus Messala was the first to adopt a practice of exhibiting pictures of his own actions, which became afterwards pretty common, though condemned by some of the chief men of the Republic. Messala then caused a picture to be hung up in the Portico Hostilia, representing the Battle of Messana[50], where he had vanquished both the Carthaginians and Hiero of Syracuse, who had joined his former enemies to resist the invasion of his country by the Romans.

By means of this picture, Messala kept himself before the eyes of the people, in the situation best calculated to further his views whenever he should be a candidate for the magistracy. Instead of sitting himself in the market-place, dressed in the white robe of humility, and pointing to his wounds, as Coriolanus says, to

the picture told the story of his achievements to the best advantage, and perhaps placed his personal and party enemies in doubtful situations or in disgrace.

That some injurious effects were occasionally produced by the practice is certain, from the displeasure entertained by Scipio Africanus against his brother Lucius Scipio, for placing in the Capitol a picture of the battle near Sardes, which won him the title of Asiaticus, but in which, his nephew, the son of Africanus, was taken prisoner.

Again, Scipio Emilianus was highly offended at the display of a picture of the taking of Carthage, exhibited in the market-place by Lucius Hostilius Mancinus. It appears that Mancinus was the first to enter Carthage on the taking of that city: and, on his return to Rome, being desirous of the consulship, he had a picture painted representing the strong situation of the town, with its fortifications, and all the machines employed in the attack and defence, besides the actions of the besiegers, in which care was taken that those of Mancinus should be most conspicuous. This he hung up in the Forum, and, seating himself by it, he explained to the people all the parts of the picture, particularly those in which he was concerned, in such a manner, that he won their good will, and gained the consulship at the very next election.

The lawyers of Rome also made use of pictures in their pleadings, as we learn from Quintilian, who censures the practice of hanging pictures of murders or other atrocious crimes, over the statue of Jupiter, in the Forum, for the purpose of moving the judges. As an example of the bad effects of such machinery, he relates the story of a pleader, who, having undertaken the cause of a young woman whose husband had been murdered, had a picture of the murder painted, in order to produce it at the proper moment, and thereby to affect the judges and the audience in her favour. But his design failed, and the painting produced excessive mirth instead of tears; for they who had received directions for showing it, not properly comprehending them, displayed the picture as often as the orator looked their way. This notice, attracted at a wrong moment, was mischievous enough; but when the lookers on perceived that the husband was an ugly old man, the contrast between his figure and the representation of the pleader was so ludicrous, that the pleading lost all its merit, and the young woman her cause.

It appears also that pictures of their disasters were hawked about, by shipwrecked mariners, persons whose houses had been burnt, and other unfortunate men, in order to move compassion and obtain assistance; and that painted tablets were also hung up by such persons in the temples in thankfulness to the gods for their escape.

It is probable that these pictures were but coarse; yet there must have been in them sufficient individual likeness for the people to recognise the portrait, and the painters must have had skill enough in grouping to have rendered their subjects intelligible.

To the early scene-painters the birds of Rome are reputed to have paid as great a compliment as those of Greece did to the grapes of Zeuxis; for when Claudius Pulcher, during his edileship, exhibited dramas publicly in Rome, the scenery representing houses and other buildings was so natural, that the ravens and other birds, deceived by their verisimilitude, came to perch there.

But by this time all Italy was merged in Rome the conqueror; and the posterity of the Etruscan artists was confounded with her other military Helots. Yet one last compliment was paid to painters in Rome by Augustus himself. The nephew or grandson of that Pœdius, who had been appointed by Julius Cæsar his coheir along with Augustus, was born dumb; and the Emperor consulting with Messala, the child’s maternal grandfather, determined that he should be brought up a painter. He displayed considerable talent, but died while yet a youth.

I mention this the more particularly, because some writers have asserted, that after the time of Pacuvius painting became disreputable, if not infamous, in Rome. Had that been the case, Augustus would not have chosen it as a profession for one so nearly allied to him. Nevertheless, centuries passed before native Italians again distinguished themselves in the fine arts.

From the time of the Consul Mummius, foreign pictures were daily brought to Rome. The first publicly exhibited was a Bacchus and Ariadne, painted by Aristides of Thebes, for which King Attalus had offered so large a sum, that Mummius suspected there must be some secret charm attached to the picture, and so broke off the bargain and took it himself to Rome, where he dedicated it in the Temple of Ceres.

After this example every general seems to have been ambitious of adorning the city with the finest pictures and statues from Greece, Asia Minor, and Sicily. Julius Cæsar enshrined the two exquisite pictures of Medea and Ajax[51] in the temple of Venus, where he had hung up the shield covered with British pearl.

Augustus hung his forum with pictures of the horrors of war and the glories of a triumph; and in the temple, which he dedicated to the deified Julius, he placed many choice pictures, the first and most beautiful of which was the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles.

Another work of the same painter, namely, Alexander in triumph leading War bound and manacled, was defaced by Claudius, who caused the face of Alexander to be erased, and that of Augustus to be painted instead. Among many pictures of note in the same temple was one of Castor and Pollux, of especial value.

In the Comitium also Augustus placed some excellent works of Nicias of Athens, and Philochares his friend, less attractive for their subjects than for the execution and beauty of the design.

The Temple of Peace was rich in pictures of the highest class. There was placed the most valued of all the works of Protogenes, namely, the hunter Ialysus with his dogs and game.

It is said that when Demetrius laid siege to Rhodes, and was upon the point of taking the city, he abstained from an attack that must have been successful, on learning that the picture of Ialysus was in the quarter of the town he might have carried, lest in the confusion the picture should be injured; and the workshop of the painter, being just without the walls at that point, was another reason for sparing it.

In the Temple of Peace also were the Cyclops of Timanthes, and the sea-monster Scylla by Nichomachus.

In the Temple of Concord there was a precious picture by Zeuxis, of Marsyas bound to a tree; and in private hands, the Muses and the Helen of the same painter adorned some of the villas of Rome.

In that shrine of Ceres, where Mummius had placed the Bacchus and Ariadne of Aristides, there were several other pictures by the same painter, which, having been trusted to a restorer that they might appear to advantage in some public procession, were utterly ruined. So ancient was the practice of consulting quack restorers for works of art!!

In the Temple of Minerva on the Capitol was the Theseus of Parrhasius, with the Rape of Proserpine and a victory by Nichomachus.

The portico of Octavia was adorned by pictures of Greek Mythology and History, painted by that finished artist Antiphilus; and that of Pompey boasted of a rare fragment by Polygnotus. It was a soldier upon a scaling ladder, and possibly stolen from some of the great battle pieces which he painted in honour of his countrymen[52].

The Romans were not more ceremonious than modern conquerors in their robberies; witness the conduct of the general who permitted the tombs of Corinth to be broken open, and in the sight of the people the urns containing the ashes of their forefathers torn from their sacred asylum, and publicly sold to the highest bidder among the Romans, who became for a time so passionately fond of them, that not a grave was left unviolated for miles round Corinth; and it was only when the market was glutted, and the fashion had passed away, that Corinthian vessels were laid aside.

A new school, if I may so express myself, of pottery was then established in Italy, where formerly the Etruscan workmen had excelled all others. But as fashion is all-powerful in all ages, a new rage for earthen dishes and bowls of enormous size grew to such a pitch, that the nickname of Patinarius was given to Vitellius, on account of one large platter which he had made for him, and which cost more than a fine wrought vessel of chalcedony would have done[53]; and the satirical poets of that age have named not a few of the lovers of large dishes.

But to return to our imported pictures. The portico of Pompey was still farther adorned with pictures by Nicias. There was a large portrait of Alexander, a figure of Calypso, and some animals painted by him which were much prized. The same Nicias painted that beautiful picture of Hyacinthus, which Augustus valued so highly, that, after his death, Tiberius consecrated it to his memory, in the temple dedicated to him.

But the greatest influx of Greek pictures at any one time into Rome was during the edileship of Scaurus; when, on account of a real or pretended debt owing by the people of Sicyon to Rome, the whole of the pictures of that city were seized and conveyed to Italy. Among these the most precious appears to have been a sacrifice by Pausius, the greatest painter of his native town, and one whose playful disposition and agreeable qualities we may gather from even the short notices we can at this distance of time collect[54].

Such were a few of the many pictures, the prizes of war, which were brought to adorn the temples, palaces, and public places of Rome; not to speak of those with which taste or fashion decorated private houses[55].

It is not to be doubted that such an influx of excellent statues and pictures caused a revival of the taste for the arts. And accordingly there grew up new schools of painting in Italy as a matter of course. But no name of note has been preserved. Pliny, to be sure, tells us of one Ludius, in the time of Augustus, who first devised the decoration of the walls of houses with rural scenery; and nearly at the same time lived Arellius, a man of talent, but of dissolute manners. These were followed by Aurelius, Cornelius Pinus, and Actius Priscus, who were employed by Vespasian to decorate some temples which he rebuilt; but their pictures are said scarcely to have attained mediocrity, much less excellence.

In sculpture there is proof still existing that great manual dexterity had survived the genius that produced the ideal Jupiter of Phidias, and the Venus of Praxiteles. That dexterity was happily applied to portraits.

There is an individual expression, notwithstanding some hardness, in the Roman portraits in marble down to a very late period, that must satisfy us that they are genuine likenesses, and that enables us to read the characters of the men as truly as if we sat in their company. But the artists that wrought in and for Rome were now Greeks, and with the exception of some of those who engraved gems[56], their works are universally of an inferior character.

Under the magnificent Hadrian there was indeed a temporary revival of art. All that the patronage of a Roman Emperor, ambitious of distinction as the reviver of art and elegance could do, was done. The portraits of Antinoüs, which he caused to be executed, whether with a flowery garland, and beautiful as Adonis, or in the character of an Egyptian priest, or as a Greek huntsman, rival the youthful gods and heroes of the sculptors of Greece[57]. But with Hadrian and the Antonines this prosperity ended[58].

The arts could not flourish where tyranny, vice, and civil war alternately reigned. They withered almost to death; and had Constantine not pillaged the monuments of his predecessors his own would have remained mere masses of deformity, to mark the degradation of art[59].

While such was the fate of sculpture, that of painting was little better. Some of the Roman conquerors had introduced, from the eastern provinces, a taste for that gross kind of painting, Mosaic. One of the finest pieces executed in Italy was the great pavement in the Temple of Fortune, at Prænesti[60], by Egyptian artists in the service of Sylla the dictator; and, as a pavement, the coolness and cleanliness of that kind of work must have had strong recommendations, besides whatever merit the designs might possess. This luxury soon became so general, that, even in the remote province of Britain, specimens of mosaic pavements, of no common beauty, are from time to time discovered in the neighbourhood of Roman stations. To the workers in mosaic we are probably indebted for part of what little art outlived the five dull ages preceding the twelfth century; and for a larger part to the illuminators of books, whose miniatures certainly preserved much that was afterwards used to great advantage by the revivers of painting in Italy and Germany.

Pliny mentions Aterius Labeo, a man of prætorian rank, who in his time was very skilful in small works of painting, which I conceive to have been miniature. He exercised his art in Gallia Narboniensis, where he was vice-consul; and I have sometimes fancied that his works might have assisted to form the early illuminators of missals in the southern provinces, nay, perhaps, the Monk of the Golden Isles himself.

I cannot omit to mention here, that the first persons who illustrated books appear to have been Varro and Atticus. In the books of their noble libraries, they each of them inserted small portraits of the authors at the head of their works. This was within a century of our era; and so diligent had they been in seeking out the portraits of authors, that M. Varro published a collection of seven hundred[61].

Cornelius Nepos says, that under each of the heads in his collection, Atticus wrote four or five verses, describing the deeds and honours of the original. Had but a few of these miniatures come down to our times, how precious they would have been to the artist and the antiquary.

Among the last names of ancient Italian painters given us by Pliny, is that of Turpilius, a noble Venetian, who painted at Verona in the first century, with considerable reputation; and it is remarkable that some of the earliest of modern painters appear at Verona, and that many of the most beautiful miniature illuminations extant were executed by very ancient monks of that city[62].

It was in this first century that the great catastrophe, which buried several ancient cities in one of the most cultivated parts of Italy, occurred. It proved fatal, too, to the extraordinary man to whom we owe not only the greatest part of our knowledge of the painters of antiquity, but all that is to be depended upon of the practice of the art. Pompeii with other towns was covered with ashes from Mount Vesuvius; and in them such works of art as were not portable, remained fresh as at the day of their disappearance, to gratify our curiosity: and it was in a visit to Pompeii to observe the phenomena connected with the eruption that Pliny lost his life.

Every one must be struck with the great disparity between the bronzes and marbles, and the pictures of Pompeii. Some of the bronze figures and most of the furniture of that metal are exquisite in taste and execution, and many of the marbles are not far behind them. But the pictures are of a very inferior character, generally speaking. Single figures there are indeed of great beauty, and some arabesques elegantly designed; but the groups are for the most part more like sculpture than painting; and the few landscapes are little better than those of the Chinese.

To account for this in some measure, I would suggest, that the pictures we have found are merely the decorations of small private houses, and that they must have been executed late in the decline of art, because the great earthquake which had destroyed the temples of Pompeii, but a few years before that eruption of the mountain which buried the town, must have shaken the stucco from the walls, and with it whatever specimens of art of a better time might have then existed[63]. Besides, the inhabitants of Pompeii had most of them time to escape with their most precious moveables. Now, if any of the residents in that small provincial town, which was to Rome as Folkestone may be to London, possessed any Greek pictures, or others of value, they were painted on light wooden pannels (larch or sycamore), and were easily removed, so that, if not saved, they must have been consumed in the fields by the fiery showers, that destroyed more persons without the gates of the town than within them. Hence I cannot think that the pictures of Pompeii furnish a fair criterion by which to judge of the real nature of antique painting, any more than the arabesques that have been found in the Roman baths and the subterranean chambers of the palaces, which we cannot suppose to have been the places where the choicest works of art were placed.

Two very beautiful pieces of antique painting, now in London, which were found near Rome, seem to corroborate my opinion that the pictures scattered through the Italian provinces were generally inferior to those belonging to Rome itself and the immediate neighbourhood. One of these is the half figure of a boy, with a double flute; broad in colour and effect, and round and fine in form, reminding one of the Venetian frescoes, particularly those of Paul Veronese. The other is a Ganymede, very beautiful in form, and remarkable for the effect of light and shadow. The light is principally on the body of the Ganymede, in the centre, and carried into the blue sky on the left; but a low, light stone altar on the right balances it. Over the altar, the eagle, with outstretched wings, is dark; and the dark is continued behind the lower part of the figure of the boy by a purple mantle.

These two pictures have none of the stiff, sculpture-like look of almost all the other antique pictures I have seen. They are real pictures, in which the artist has attended to light and shadow, and to general effect, as well as to colour and form. Whether they were the works of Greeks settled in Rome, or of their Italian scholars, they give me the notion of much more skill in painting, as an art quite distinct from sculpture, than any other antique picture I ever saw[64].

By the existing statues we perceive that the ancient writers did not exaggerate the merit of their sculptors; why therefore should we doubt their judgment as to their painters?

But to whatever perfection the art of painting might have arrived in the bright days of Greece, it is certain that, when Pliny wrote, it had sunk down to a very low degree in that country: and there is good reason to believe that under the Empire there were no great Roman painters; but this was not for want of encouragement. In the towns preserved by the ashes of Vesuvius there is scarcely a house where some apartment is not painted, where the precious red walls, varnished with wax[65], are not decorated with dancing figures and arabesques; and certainly not one where the doorways or the kitchens are not adorned or disfigured, as it may be, with portraits of all manner of utensils and articles of food.

I confess I have been charmed to observe that glass decanters, pretty like our own, were used for water, wine, and sherbet, at the drinking houses in those ancient fishing towns; that their sirloins were cut in true English fashion, as in the picture in what is called the surgeon’s house, that dog who is gnawing the bones of one could tell; and that hams and legs of mutton, to say nothing of broiled eels, must have looked just like our own when brought to table. But above all was my fancy diverted, when I perceived, by the sign over the school-master’s door, that the same remedies for dulness were prescribed eighteen centuries ago, as are found beneficial now.

Numerous, indeed, must the painters of the first century have been to supply such demands! But not even one name have they left for posterity to dwell upon.

There is no question but that portrait painters abounded. The numerous portraits of the period, in marble, attest it, if we had no other proof. But Nero himself patronised that branch of the art, and ordered a canvas[66], one hundred and twenty feet high, to be strained, whereon his colossal portrait might overlook the city, from the gardens of Marius. But his design was frustrated; the lightning blasted the portrait ere it was finished, and we have not even the name of the painter left, who was to have been immortalized along with the emperor!

Some small portraits of this period have been preserved among the catacombs, and it would be a matter of great interest to examine carefully those preserved in the cabinets of Christian antiquities, which fill one long gallery of the Vatican. I had too short a time when there to make any observations worth setting down. My first visit to these precious cabinets was in company with Canova, and my second, after a lapse of eight years, with Maia! They drew my attention to other objects; and as I then hoped to revisit Rome, I was willing to be led by such guides, trusting to the future for an opportunity of forwarding my own particular pursuits. But some other person must now take my place. Infirmity, not age, binds me to my own fire side. Happy that I have been permitted to see so much to occupy my thoughts and time with pleasant retrospect, under circumstances that without occupation would be dreary indeed.

In the first century of our era, we may consider painting as a merely decorative art, little better than upholstery, excepting when applied to portraits, for which human vanity will always create a demand. There might also be artists employed to copy the ancient pictures of Greece; and now and then, among that class of painters, one who would, in some original composition, imitate the style and manner of the older masters.

This is so natural that it scarcely wants the confirmation of authority to gain belief. But I think we have authority in the notices scattered through the dialogues of Lucian[67], and in the descriptions of pictures by Philostratus[68], who erects his imaginary gallery on the shores of the bay of Naples.

But a great change was taking place in the world: the gay and poetical, but licentious belief of Greece and Italy, was fading away. The images and actions of gods and heroes no longer delighted the multitude. A graver, purer, yet more impassioned faith, was gradually advancing through many impediments: and it was long ere its votaries had leisure to convert to its service the glorious arts that had adorned the temples of the old religion.

The interval during which the change was going on, could not be otherwise than hurtful to those arts; and accordingly, the first efforts of Christian painting, as far as we see in the few relics we possess, were gross and coarse.

Yet there is in them a certain dignity of expression, which saves them from contempt. But the revival of art in Christian times belongs rather to the Greeks than the Italians, as I shall have occasion to point out; for as the conquest of Greece by Rome brought art and artists into Italy, so the removal of the seat of government attracted them eastward again, to the new court, and they left the deserted Capitol of the Western Empire to seek the patronage of the rising city.

From what I have said in this Essay, it will be seen that the time when Italy could boast of native artists, equal to those of the surrounding nations, was before Rome existed.

That after the Roman conquests, native artists gradually disappeared, and the very few who have left a name seem only placed here and there as beacons, to show the nakedness of the land.

That the forced luxury of art, fostered by imported pictures and statues, foreign artists and imperial patronage, produced in Italy no painter or sculptor of eminence, even in the most flourishing times of Roman politeness; while the free cities of Greece had given birth to those men of sublime genius, whose borrowed works gave to Rome all the lustre she could ever boast of in art[69].