PAINTER. 309 



carried on in Cyprus by Mr. Arthur Smith, of the British 

 Museum, have disclosed 



&quot;a series of limestone stelse or tombstones, on which is painted the 

 figure of the person commemorated. The surface of the limestone is 

 prepared with a white ground, on which the figure is painted in col 

 ours and in a manner which strongly recalls the frescoes of Pompeii.&quot; 

 The painting being here used in aid of ancestor-worship, is 

 in that sense, religious. Very little evidence seems forth 

 coming concerning other early uses of painting among the 

 Greeks. We read that before the Persian war, the applica 

 tion of painting &quot; was almost limited to the decoration of 

 sacred edifices, and a few other religious purposes, as colour 

 ing or imitating bas-reliefs, and in representations of reli 

 gious rites on vases or otherwise.&quot; In harmony with this 

 statement is the following from Winckelmann: 



&quot; The reason of the slower growth of painting lies partly in the art 

 itself, and partly in its use and application. Sculpture promoted the 

 worship of the gods, and was in its turn promoted by it. But painting 

 had no such advantage. It was, indeed, consecrated to the gods and 

 temples ; and some few of the latter, as that of Juno at Samos, were 

 Pinacothecae, or picture galleries ; at Rome, likewise, paintings by the 

 best masters were hung up in the temple of Peace, that is, in the upper 

 rooms or arches. But paintings do not appear to have been, among 

 the Greeks, an object of holy, undoubting reverence and adoration.&quot; 



This relatively slow development of painting was due to its 

 original subordination to sculpture. Independent develop 

 ment of it had scope only when by such steps as those above 

 indicated it became separate; and, employed at first in 

 temple-decoration, it gained this scope as sculpture did, in 

 the ancillary and less sacred parts. 



Partly because the Greek nature, and the relatively inco 

 herent structure of the Greek nation, prevented the growth, 

 of an ecclesiastical hierarchy, with the normal developments 

 arising from it, and partly perhaps chiefly because Greek 

 civilization was in so large a measure influenced by the 

 earlier civilizations adjacent to it, the further course of evo 

 lution in the art and practice of painting is broken. We 



