There are various literary works and books of prints, plain and coloured, which illustrate the painting in Rome of the time of the Emperors. Many of these works may have been executed at an earlier period, but some were certainly of this time, as those of the Baths of Titus, which contain the beautiful arabesques from which Raphael obtained his ideas for the arabesques of the Vatican. The paintings of the Tomb of the Nasoni (the family of Ovid) were likewise of this period.

Of all the ancient works, one of the most beautiful series of paintings is the Life of Adonis, discovered in 1668 in some ruins near the Colosseum, and close to the Baths of Titus. These pictures were engraved by Pietro Santi Bartoli for his well-known work, with text by Bellori, on the paintings of the grottoes of Rome—“ Le Pitture Antiche delle Grotte di Roma, e del Sepulcro de' Nasoni," folio, Rome, 1706. The four subjects from the Life of Adonis, engraved in plates iii.-vi. of this work, are worthy of any age of art, though they are characterised by great simplicity of composition.

The paintings of the Tomb of the Nasoni are good examples of the taste in decoration of the period.

Several costly works have been published on the remains of Pompeii, especially the great work of Zahn, which contains coloured representations carefully imitated from the originals, "Die Schönsten Ornamente und merkwürdigsten Gemälde aus Pompeii, Herculanum, und Stabiae," Berlin, 1828, ff. ("The most beautiful Ornaments and most remarkable Pictures of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and Stabiæ "). See also Mazois," Pompéi ;" Sir W. Gell, " Pompeiana ;" and the work on Pompeii of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge. Facsimiles of ancient paintings are given in the "Recueil de Peintures Antiques, imitées fidèlement pour les couleurs et pour le trait, d'après les desseins coloriés faits par P. S. Bartoli," Paris, 1757, folio; also in R. Rochette's "Peintures Antiques;" Gerhard's "Auserlesene Griechische Vasenbilder," Berlin, 1839, ff.; and other numerous works on the Greek vases. There are several specimens of Greek or Roman painting now in the British Museum: some few in the Temple collection, from Pompeii, are more especially worthy of notice; as an Apollo, from the house of Castor and Pollux; a Venus and Cupid, unfortunately much decayed; and some small pieces with a bird, and animals, very freely and skilfully executed.

Vase-painting cannot be adduced to determine the general nature or character of ancient painting, though the rude designs upon the vases throw considerable light upon the progressive development of the art as relates to style of design, and in some degree upon the principles of Greek composition of the early times; but their chief interest and value consist in the faithful pictures they afford of the traditions, customs, and habits of the ancients.

The ancient vase-painters were probably mere workmen attached to the potteries, or themselves constituted distinct bodies, or both; which, from the general similarity of style and execution of the designs upon the vases, is not improbable. They do not seem to have been held in any esteem, for their names have not been preserved by any ancient writer, and we are acquainted with the names of the very few only of whom we have the signatures on the vases themselves, as-Taleides, Assteas, Lasimos, Calliphon, and others. Vase-painting had evidently ceased long before the days of Pliny, for in his time the painted vases were of immense value, and were much sought after: but the manufacture of vases themselves still continued; they appear, however, to have been remarkable only for the fineness or durability of their clay and the elegance of their shapes. Even in the time of the Empire painted vases were termed "Operis Antiqui," old art, and were then sought for in the ancient tombs of Campania and other parts of Magna Græcia. Not a single painted vase has been discovered in Pompeii, Herculaneum, or Stabiæ. The majority of the vases that have been as yet discovered have been found in ancient tombs about Capua and Nola.

They may be divided generally into two great classes,-the black and the yellow; that is, those on which the figures are in black, or what the Greeks termed Skiagrams, the same as our Silhouettes, and those on which the figures are in outline, with black backgrounds to the designs. The black are the most ancient; the best of the others belong to about the time of Alexander; their outline designs being what the Greeks termed Monograms, executed with the hair-pencil in dark lines, the vehicle being the same as that with which the background is covered, a kind of black varnish made of gagates lapis, or jet; which Pliny tells us was used for earthenware. There appear to be no specimens of the perfect monochrom on the vases, and but very few examples of the polychrom, and these are rude and unfinished. The British Museum, however, affords abundant examples of the painting on the ancient vases.

As regards the colours used by the ancient painters, we are pretty well informed;' they were in this respect perhaps as well off as we are, though it is doubtful whether they possessed ultramarine as a colour. I will enumerate their varieties in the prismatic

order:

REDS-Kirváẞapı 'Ivdikóv, cinnabaris Indica, dragon's blood, or the resin of the Calamus palm. Míλroc, cerussa usta, red-lead;

1 See Vitruvius, Book vii.; Pliny, "Hist. Nat." xxxiii., xxxiv. and xxxv.; Dioscorides, v.; Theophrastus, "De Lapidibus;" Sir Humphry Davy, "Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc." 1815; and Professor John, " Malerei der Alten," Berlin, 1836, part iii. p. 103," Ueber die farben der alten nach Vitruv."

but this Greek word is used variously, sometimes signifying Cinnabaris, Minium and Rubrica. The last is common red ochre, and was called by the Greeks Zvwris, because the best came from Sinope. Minium is properly vermilion, but red-lead is sometimes so called by the Romans, and the Greeks called it aovdapákn, the Sandaracha artificialis of the Romans, of which again there were several varieties, as the pale or massicot, yellow oxide of lead, and a mixture of this with Minium: it was mixed also with calcined Rubrica, when it was called Závdvě, a colour supposed by Sir Humphry Davy to approach our crimson. When Sandyx was mixed with Rubrica Sinopica, it was called Syricum.

YELLOWSThe base of orange and yellows was expa, hydrated peroxide of iron, the Roman Sil, mixed with other colours and carbonate of lime. They had also 'ApoEvikóv, auripigmentum, orpiment, yellow sulphuret of arsenic.

GREENS:-Xpvoókoλλa, Chrysocolla, green verditer, green carbonate of copper or malachite; this was the principal green of the ancients, and was varied according to the degree of carbonate of lime mixed with it. Besides this they had many greens from verdigris, diacetate of copper; from acetate of copper, and from cupreous oxides. Of the last were an earth called Oɛodóriov; Appianum; and the creta viridis, the common green earth of Verona.

BLUES:-These likewise were numerous, but the celebrated 'Apμéviov, Armenium, from Armenian stone, was, according to Professor John, not the fine ultramarine; Lapis Armenius and Lapis Lazuli being distinct. The Kúavos, or cæruleum, azure, was a kind of verditer or blue carbonate of copper: there was a superior example of this colour known as the Alexandrian; it was called coelon: there were common examples known as Lomentum and Tritum. Indigo, 'Ivdikóv, Indicum, the ancients were well acquainted with; but cobalt has not been discovered in the remains of ancient painting.

PURPLES: Of this secondary colour varieties abounded, simple and compound. The best was the Purpurissum, prepared by mixing creta argentaria with the purple secretion of the murex-roрpúpa. Ostrum was a compound of red ochre with blue oxide of copper. voyivov, Hysginum (üoyn, woad), was a very red purple, according to Vitruvius, who mentions also a purple from cooling the ochra usta with wine vinegar. They had also the madder root, Rubia radix.

BROWNS were calcined ochres, and oxides of iron, and manganese, besides compounds.

BLACKS:--Of black Méλav, Atramentum, the varieties were also numerous, and mostly carbonaceous-'EXɛpártivov, Elephantinum, ivory black; Touyivov, Tryginum, vine black. The Atramentum Indicum was probably Indian ink; they had likewise sepia-Atramentum Sepia, and black woad, or hydrated binoxide of manganese.

And lastly, in WHITES the ancients were very rich, the best being Mnλiás, or Melinum, an earth of Melos; aparóvior, or parætonium, an African earth. The Melinum, says Professor John, was zinc white. There were also Eretrian earth, annulare or Creta anularia, made from soap stone, and white lead or cerussa; but this last deleterious pigment was not much used in ancient decoration or painting.

The above colours are only the principal of those known to and used by the ancient painters of Greece and Rome. They were made up into cerae (waxes), being fit either for the tempera or encaustic painter, and were kept in colour boxes such as are in use at the present time. The brushes, pallets, and easels also of the ancient painters were very similar to those used by the moderns.

ANCIENT art, as distinguished by its characteristics, may perhaps be said to have ceased at about the close of the third century of the Christian æra. The establishment of Christianity, the division of the empire, and the incursions of barbarians, were the first great causes of the important revolutions experienced by the imitative arts, and the serious check they received. It seems, however, to have been reserved for the fanatic fury of the earlier Iconoclasts most effectually to destroy all traces of their former excellence.

The foundation of Constantinople and the Exarchate of Ravenna were a great blow to the magnificence of Rome. Byzantium, the Rome of the East, became more rich in works of art than Rome herself: the principal cities of Europe and Asia were despoiled of their treasures to enrich the new city of Constantine: its principal streets were adorned with colossal statues in bronze; and before the church of St. Sophia alone were disposed several hundred statues by ancient masters. Of these many were melted down and plundered for the sake of the metal, others broken up. Immense collections also were destroyed accidentally by fire; much likewise was doubtless lost by neglect and indifference, though it appears that in Rome repeated efforts were made by the Popes and others to preserve what remained. In 410 Rome was plundered by Alaric;' and it suffered still greater misfortunes under Genseric, king of the Vandals, in 455, in the pontificate of Leo the Great, "when all that yet remained," says Gibbon, "of public or private wealth, of sacred or profane treasure, was diligently transported to the vessels of

1 Zosimus, v. 41; Orosius, vii. 39; Gibbon, “Decline and Fall," c. 31.