228 ANCIENT TAINTING AS AMONG THE LOST AKTS. 



in the small Republics of Greece, about 400 j^ears before Christ; 

 and last in the States of Italy, and 1,500 years after Christ. But 

 between the two periods every trace of the first era had entirely 

 disappeared. Painting was for more than a thousand years one 

 of the Lost Arts. 



The causes that brought about this total extinction of one of 

 the brightest lights in human progress, will be that of which we 

 will discourse mainly to-night. But first we must tell the story 

 of Grecian Art, in as few words as possible, and gather from the 

 scattered accounts given in the old authors, as clear and correct 

 an idea as we can of the process, materials, and varieties of Gre- 

 cian painting. 



It must be borne in mind that all we know of these things 

 comes from the incidental allusions of ancient writers, who had 

 not the remotest thought that their works would outlast the 

 beautiful specimens they were praising, or that the time would 

 ever come when their writings would be searched to find out 

 what was that mysterious handicraft called Grecian painting. 

 Therefore it never occurred to them to say, whether their artists 

 used canvas or wood, oil paints or water colors, brushes or sponge 

 or stylus, colors or sketches or outline. ~No more would a travel- 

 ing correspondent in Europe at the present time think to tell the 

 same things about the pictures he saw. Why, every one knows 

 that paintings are made on cloth, with brush and oil paints and 

 all varieties of colors. But unfortunately these are the very 

 things that we are most in doubt about, that we cannot reconcile, 

 in regard to ancient art. The more one studies, the more is he 

 convinced that the modes and materials of picture making in the 

 olden times were essentially different from those of the present, 

 that the process of Grecian painting is to this day a Lost Art. 



It is probable that for portable pictures the Greeks painted 

 mainly on wood. In the early stages of the art the wooden tab- 

 let was stained black or white, a covering of wax was spread 

 over the surface, the picture was drawn in outline with a stylus 

 or pen, and then burnt in. Afterwards colors mixed with wax 

 and oil were put on with a brush or sponge, and then burnt in. 

 All tabular pictures on wood were what was called encaustic. 



