The History of Painting

• The painting is the art of graphical representation using pigments mixed with other
organic or synthetic binders. In this art painting techniques, knowledge of color theory
and pictorial composition, and drawing are used.

• The painting is one of the oldest artistic expressions and one of the seven Fine Arts.
In aesthetics or art theory, painting is considered a universal category that includes all
artistic creations made on surfaces. A category applicable to any technique or type of
physical or material support, including media or ephemeral techniques as well as
media or digital techniques.
 Prehistory
(From the origin of Humanity to 3.500 B.C)
Paleolithic
• The Palaeolithic art was born in the Upper
Paleolithic , about the year 40.000 B.C.
• The first pictorial manifestations appear in
caves, the so-called cave painting.
• As a means of expressing the interrelation
between primitive human beings and nature.
• As pictorial material used mainly red of iron
he cross- shaped man, the triangular-
shaped womanoxide, black oxide
manganese and ocher of clay.
• Rock painting was mainly developed in the
Franco-Cantabrian region: they are paintings
of a magical - religious character, of
naturalistic sense, with representation of
animals, highlighting the caves of Altamira,
Tito Bustillo, Trois Frères, Chauvet and
Lascaux.
Neolithic
• This period - initiated around 8,000 BC in
the Middle East - was a profound
transformation for the former human
being, who became sedentary and
devoted himself to agriculture and
livestock , emerging new forms of social
coexistence and developing religion.
• The human figure was given, very
schematic, with notable examples in El
Cogul, Valltorta, Alpera and Minateda.
• This type of painting was also given in
North Africa ( Atlas , Sahara) and in the
area of present-day Zimbabwe.
• Neolithic painting used to be schematic,
reduced to basic strokes.
• Also noteworthy are the cave paintings of
the Pinturas River in Argentina ,
especially the Cave of the hands .
Paleolithic

Bison of Altamira, Spain. Human figures in Twyfelfontein,

Namibia.

Cave of the hands of Santa Cruz, Animals figures in Lascaux Cave,

Argentina. France.
Neolithic

Rock painting of the Rock of the Men hunting in the Barranco de

Moors, in El Cogul . Valltorta, Spain.

Humans and animals figures of Minateda in Hellin, Spain.

 Ancient Age
(From 3.500 B.C to 476 A.C)
Egypt
• Initiated around 3,000 BC,
Egyptian art lasted until the
conquest of Alexander the Great,
although its influence persisted
in Coptic and Byzantine art .
• This art was intensely religious
and symbolic, with a strongly
centralized and hierarchical
political power, giving great
relevance to the religious
concept of immortality.
• The Egyptian painting is mainly
characterized by juxtaposed
figures in superposed planes.
• The images were represented
with hierarchical criteria, for
example: the pharaoh has a
larger size than the subjects or
the enemies that are at his side.
Greece
• Greek art developed in three
periods: archaic, classical and
Hellenistic, from the middle of
the 8th century B.C until two
centuries later when it was
Greece conquered by the
Romans.
• The Greek painting was
developed mainly in ceramics, in
everyday or thematic historical or
mythological scenes.
• With a style based on nature and
on the human being , where
harmony and balance prevailed ,
the rationality of forms and
volumes, and a sense imitation
of nature that laid the
foundations of the so-called
classical art.
Rome
• Roman art developed quite
homogeneously and
autonomously from the 3th
century B.C. until the fall of
Rome in the year 476.
• With a clear precedent in
Etruscan art, the Roman art was
greatly influenced Greek art.
• Thanks to the expansion of the
Roman Empire, classical Greco-
Roman art reached almost every
corner of Europe, North Africa
and the Middle East, laying the
evolutionary basis of future art
developed in these areas.
• The Roman painting is best
known for the remains found at
Pompeii, where four styles are
perceived: The Embedding, The
Architectural one, The
Ornamental and The Fantastic.
Egypt

The agricultura in Ancient Egypt. The great goddess Isis.

The tomb of Ramses II.

Greece

Ferchu and his victim. Tomb of Augurs

Paint on vessel
late 6th century BC Tarqunia, Italy.
Rome

Mosaic of the Battle of Issos, House of the Faun, Pompeii.

Villa Boscotrecase, Pompeii. Second style. Mosaic found in a villa in Palencia (Spain)
 Middle Ages
(From 472 A.C to 1492 A.C)
Paleochristian Art
• The early Christian painting or
Latin-Christian developed during
the Roman Empire, due to its
theme and characteristics, it is
the beginning of medieval
painting.
• The classical forms were
reinterpreted to serve as an
expression vehicle for the new
official religion, and there was an
atomization of styles by
geographical areas.
• The painting was mainly in the
catacombs, with religious and
allegorical scenes, and the
miniature, manuscript lighting,
with two main schools: the
Hellenistic-Alexandrian and the
Syrian.
Byzantine Art
• Despite the fall of the
Western Roman Empire, in
the East it lasted - known as
the Byzantine Empire - until
the conquest of
Constantinople in 1453 by
the Ottoman Turks.
• This art collected the main
oriental artistic traditions, of
which it was the gateway to
Europe, where Byzantine art
influenced pre-Romanesque
and Romanesque art.
• Three "golden ages" are
distinguished in Byzantine
art.
Gothic Art
• The Gothic art developed between
the centuries XII and XVI , time of
great economic and cultural
development.
• The Gothic painting longer wall to
pass reredoses located on the altar
of churches, and began to develop
painting canvas, the temple or oil .
Four pictorial styles followed: Linear
Gothic or Franco-Gothic, Gothic italic
or thirtentist, International Gothic and
Flemish Gothic.
• The end of the feudal era meant the
consolidation of centralized states,
with greater predominance of cities
over the countryside, while a
growing sector of society had access
to culture, which ceased to be the
exclusive patrimony of the Church.
Paleochristian

Apse of the basilica of San Detail of the scene of the Annunciation (above)
Cosme and San Damián (Rome). and the Adoration of the Magi (below).

Adam and Eve, catacombs of saints Peter Christ teaching the apostles, Domitilla
and Marcellin. catacombs, early 4th century.
Byzantine

The Evangelist Saint Luke in a Icon of the crucifixion in Santa

painting on parchment, 10th century. Catalina del Sinaí , 13th century.

Mosaics on the north side of the central nave of San Apolinar Nuevo (scenes from the life of Christ,
entourage of the virgin martyrs, magi and Theotokos ).
Gothic

«The devil and a woman», stained glass The Arnolfini Marriage (1434), by Jan
1248, of the Holy Chapel of Paris. van Eyck , National Gallery, London .

Maestá del Duomo of Siena, the work of Duccio di Buoninsegna, one of the most famous works of
Italian painting; temple on wood, 214 x 412 cm Museo dell'Opera Metropolitana del Duomo, Siena.
 Modern Age
(From 1.492 A.C to 1789 A.C)
Renaissance
• Born in Italy in the fifteenth century (Quattrocento), it
expanded throughout the rest of Europe since the
end of that century and the beginning of the XVI.
• The artists were inspired by Greco-Roman classical
art, so there was talk of artistic "rebirth" after
medieval obscurantism.
• Nature- inspired style, new models of representation
emerged, such as the use of perspective. Without
renouncing the religious theme.
• The representation of human beings and their
environment became more relevant, appearing new
themes such as mythological or historical, or new
genres such aslandscape, still life and even the
nude.
• Beauty ceased to be symbolic, as in the medieval
era, to have a more rational and measured
component, based on harmony and proportion .
Mannerism
• It also emerged in Italy in the mid- 16th century as
an evolution of Renaissance forms.
• Mannerism abandoned nature as a source of
inspiration to seek a more emotional and expressive
tone, taking into account the subjective interpretation
that the artist makes of the work of art.
• The Mannerist painting had a whimsical, quirky,
warmly seal by the sinuous and stylized form,
distorting reality, with distorted perspectives and
gimmicky atmospheres. In the first place,
Michelangelo stood out - author of the decoration of
the Sistine Chapel-, followed by Bronzino, Andrea
del Sarto, Pontormo, Correggio, etc,
• Maarten van Heemskerck and Abraham Bloemaert
in the Netherlands, and Bartholomeus Spranger in
Germany. In Spain, Juan Fernández de Navarrete,
Juan Pantoja de la Cruz and, especially, El Greco ,
an exceptional artist who created a personal and
unique style.
Renaissance

La Gioconda (1503-1506), by
The school of Athens, painted by Rafael.
Leonardo da Vinci, Louvre Museum.

Jesus among the doctors ( 1548 ) by the Veronese.

Mannerism

Venus de Urbino (1538), by Titian, Uffizi

Bronzino, Portrait of Bia de'Medici.
Gallery ( Florence ).

Tintoretto, Last Supper, 1592 - 1594.

 Baroque
• The baroque was developed
between the seventeenth and
early eighteenth centuries.
• The art became more refined
and ornamented, with the
survival of a certain classicist
rationalism but with more
dynamic and effective forms,
with a taste for the surprising
and anecdotal, for the optical
illusions and the blows of effect.
• The Baroque painting was
developed in two contrasting
trends: Naturalism, based on
strict natural reality, with a taste
for chiaroscuro -the called
tenebrismo - which include a
Caravaggio, Orazio and
Artemisia Gentileschi, etc.
• And Classicism, which is equally
realistic but with a more
intellectual and idealized concept
of reality, encompassing
Annibale Carracci, Guido
Reni ,Domenichino, Guercino,
etc.
Rococo
• Developed in the eighteenth
century - in coexistence at the
beginning of the century with the
Baroque, and at the end with the
neoclassicism -, it meant the
survival of the main artistic
manifestations of the Baroque.
• With a more emphasized sense
of decoration and ornamental
taste, which are brought to a
paroxysm of wealth,
sophistication and elegance.
• The rococo painting moved
between religious exaltation or
landscaping vedutista in Italy
(Giambattista Tiepolo,
Canaletto), and courtly scenes of
Jean-Antoine Watteau, Jean-
Baptiste-Siméon Chardin and
Jean-Honoré Fragonard in
France, going through the
English portrait of Joshua
Reynolds and Thomas
Gainsborough .
Neoclassicism
• It is a pictorial movement born in
Rome in the 1760s and
developed throughout Europe,
especially taking root in France
until about 1830, when the
Romanticism became the
dominant pictorial trend.
• The archaeological discovery of
Pompeii and Herculaneum
influenced this atmosphere of
assessment of the Greco-Roman
classical legacy, together with
the dissemination of an ideology
of perfection of the classical
forms made by Johann Joachim
Winckelmann.
• The neoclassical painting
maintained an austere and
balanced seal, influenced by
Roman sculpture or figures as
Rafael and Poussin . Especially
Jacques-Louis David , "official"
painter of the French Revolution.
Baroque

Rembrandt van Rijn, The Night Round or The Company of Las Meninas (1656), by Diego
Captain Frans Banning Cocq, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam . Velázquez ( Prado Museum).

Detail of Apollo and Marsias by José de Ribera,

Dinner in Emmaus, painted in 1601 by Caravaggio.
1637, Museo N. di San Martino, Naples.
Rococo

The Swing (1767), by Jean-Honoré Fragonard,

Jean-Baptiste Chardin: The Laundress, 1735. Wallace Collection, London.

Work without title; but coined as The Shrimp Vendor or The

Nicolas Lancret: The Earth, c. 1730. Quiche Vendor (ca. 1740-1745), by William Hogarth.
 Neoclassicisms

Antoine-Jean Gros : Bonaparte visiting the stinking Oath of the Horatii (1784), by Jacques-Louis David,
of Jaffa , 1804. Louvre Museum.

Mengs: The Parnassus, 1761.

 Comtemporary Age
(From 1.789 A.C to the present)
19th Century
Romanticism
• The romantic painting happens to the neoclassical
painting of the late eighteenth century, with new
tastes developed by all artistic facets of
Romanticism. It is twinned with the social and
political movements, which gained body with the
French Revolution.
• Movement of deep renewal in all artistic genres, the
romantics paid special attention to the field of
spirituality, imagination, fantasy, feeling, dreamy
evocation, love of nature, together with a darker
element of irrationality, of attraction for the occult,
madness, sleep.
• The popular culture, the exotic, the return to art
forms of the past - especially the medieval ones -
was especially valued, and the landscape , which
gained prominence on its own, gained notoriety.
Realism
• This style or pictorial movement that occurred in
France in the mid- nineteenth century, whose main
representative is Gustave Courbet.
• From the mid-nineteenth century a trend emerged
that emphasized reality, the description of the
surrounding world, especially of workers and
peasants in the new framework of the industrial
era, with a certain component of social
denunciation, linked to political movements such as
socialism utopian.
• In painting, Camille Corot, Gustave Courbet ,
Jean-François Millet, Honoré Daumier, Adolph von
Menzel, Hans Thoma, Ilya Repin and Mariano
Fortuny stood out .
 Romanticism

Freedom leading the people (1830), by Eugène

Light and Color (Goethe's Theory) - The Morning after the
Deluge - Moses writing the Book of Genesis, by Turner.
Delacroix, Louvre Museum, Paris.

The Death of Sardanápalo, of Delacroix, h. 182, Dramatism in The shipwreck in an icy sea, painted in
Louvre Museum. 1798 by Caspar David Friedrich.
Realism

La Vérité au fond d'un puits , by Gérome (made

several more versions of the same theme) The wagon of third, of Daumier, 1862.

The painter's workshop, from Courbet, 1855 painting that gave rise to the definition of the movement.
 Symbolism
• The Symbolist painting was one of the main artistic
manifestations of symbolism, a cultural movement
that emerged at the end of the century XIX in France
and was developed by several European countries.
• Fantastic and dreamlike cutting style, it emerged as
a reaction to the naturalism of the realistic and
impressionist trend, with special emphasis on the
world of dreams, as well as on satanic and terrifying
aspects, sex and perversion.
• A main characteristic of the symbolism was the
aestheticism, reaction to the utilitarianism prevailing
at the time and to the ugliness and materialism of
the industrial era. Faced with this, symbolism gave
art and beauty its own autonomy, synthesized in
Théophile Gautier's formula "art for art" (L'art pour
l'art), even speaking of "aesthetic religion“.
• Beauty moved away from any moral component,
becoming the ultimate goal of the artist, who comes
to live his own life as a work of art - as can be seen
in the figure of the dandy -.
• The following stand out: Gustave Moreau, Odilon
Redon, Pierre Puvis de Chavannes, James McNeill
Whistler, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, etc.
Modernism
• It is the term that designates a current of artistic
renewal developed in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries , during the period called end of
siècle and belle époque.
• Modernist painting was closely linked to the world of
design and illustration, especially posterism, a new
artistic genre between painting and graphic arts,
since it was based on a design made by a painter or
illustrator, to be then reproduced in series. Artists
such as Alfons Mucha, Aubrey Beardsley, Jan
Toorop, Fernand Khnopff, etc.
• Parallel to the architecture - the most outstanding
aspect of this movement - modernism also
developed in painting, emerging a notable school in
Catalonia , with artists such as Ramon Casas ,
Santiago Rusiñol, Alexandre de Riquer, Adrià Gual
and Joan Llimona, while in a so-called
"postmodernism" - not to be confused with
postmodern art, applied to the latest artistic trends of
the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty
- first - are names like Isidre Nonell and Joaquim Mir.
 Symbolism

The Kiss (1908), by Gustav Klimt, Österreichische

The death of the gravedigger of Carlos Schwabe. Galerie Belvedere ( Vienna ).

Coin de table, collective portrait of the symbolists. Paul Verlaine and Arthur Rimbaud sitting on the left by Henri
Fantin-Latour.
 Modernism

The valley of the orange trees, Biniaraix (Mallorca)

(1901), by Santiago Rusiñol. First issue of Jugend Munich, May 30, 1896.

Sunflower, of Ephraim Moses Lilien, 1893.

 20th Century
Vanguardismo
• In the early years of the twentieth century the
foundations forged the so-called avant-garde
art.
• The concept of reality was challenged by new
scientific theories (the subjectivity of time
Bergson, the relativity of Einstein, the quantum
mechanics); also he influenced the theory of
psychoanalysis of Freud.
• On the other hand, the new technologies
caused that the art changed of function, since
the photography and the cinema already were
in charge to capture the reality.
• Thanks to the ethnographic collections
promoted by colonialism European artists had
contact with the art of other civilizations
(African, Asian, oceanic), which provided a
more subjective and emotional vision of art. All
these factors led to a change in sensitivity that
resulted in the search for new forms of
expression by the artist.
• Fovism (1905-1908), Cubism (1907-1914),
Futurism (1909-1930), Abstract art (1910-
1932), Constructivism (1914-1930), Dadaism
(1916-1922) and Surrealism (1924-1955).
Latest trends
• Since World War II, art has experienced a
vertiginous evolutionary dynamic, with styles and
movements that follow each other faster and
faster in time.
• The modern project originated with the historical
vanguards reached its culmination with various
styles antimatéricos highlighting the intellectual
origin of art on its material realization, such as
performance art and conceptual art.
• Having reached that level of analytical
prospecting of art, the inverse effect was
produced, returning to the classical forms of art,
accepting its material and aesthetic component,
and renouncing its revolutionary and
transformative character of society.
• This is how postmodern art emerged , where the
artist travels modestly between various
techniques and styles, without claiming
character, returning to artisan work as the
essence of the artist
• Informalism (1945-1960), New figuration (1945-
1960), New realism (1958-1970), Minimalism
(1963-1980), Hyperrealism (since 1965) and
Postmodern art (since 1975).
Fovism Cubism

Surrealism
Informalism Minimalism

Postmodern art
End
Lucy