Renaissance

With paper becoming common in Europe by the 15th century, drawing was adopted by masters
such as Sandro Botticelli, Raphael, Michelangelo, and Leonardo da Vinci who sometimes treated
drawing as an art in its own right rather than a preparatory stage for painting or sculpture.

Painting
Painting taken literally is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or
medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas
or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense it means the use of this activity in
combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order
to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is
also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas; sites of this kind of painting range
from artwork depicting mythological figures on pottery to The Sistine Chapel to the
human body itself.

Origins and early history

Like drawing, painting has its origins in caves and on rock faces. The finest
examples, believed by some to be 32,000 years old, are in the Chauvet and Lascaux
caves in southern France. In shades of red, brown, yellow and black, the paintings
on the walls and ceilings are of bison, cattle, horses and deer.

Paintings of human figures can be found in the tombs of ancient Egypt. In the great
temple of Ramses II, Nefertari, his queen, is depicted being led by Isis.

The Greeks contributed to the development of painting but much of their work has
been lost. One of the best remaining representations is the mosaic of the Battle of
Issus found at Pompeii which was probably based on a Greek painting. Greek and
Roman art contributed to Byzantine art in the 4th century BC which initiated a
tradition in icon painting.

The Renaissance

Apart from the illuminated manuscripts produced by monks during the Middle Ages,
the next significant contribution to European art was from Italy's renaissance
painters. From Giotto in the 13th century to Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael at the
beginning of the 16th century, this was the richest period in Italian art as the
chiaroscuro technique was used to create the illusion of 3-D space.

Painters in northern Europe too were influenced by the Italian school. Jan van Eyck
from Belgium, Pieter Bruegel the Elder from the Netherlands and Hans Holbein the
Younger from Germany are among the most successful painters of the times. They
used the glazing technique with oils to achieve depth and luminosity.
Dutch masters

The 17th century saw the emergence of the great Dutch masters such as the versatile Rembrandt
who is especially remembered for his potraits and Bible scenes, and Vermeer who specialized in
interior scenes of Dutch life.

Impressionism

Impressionism began in France in the 19th century with a loose association of

artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Paul Cézanne who
brought a new freely brushed style to painting, often choosing to paint realistic
scenes of modern life outside rather than in the studio. They achieved intense
colour vibration by using pure, unmixed colours and short brush strokes.

Post-impressionism

Towards the end of the 19th century, several young painters took impressionism a
stage further, using geometric forms and unnatural colour to depict emotions while
striving for deeper symbolism. Of particular note are Paul Gauguin, who was
strongly influenced by Asian, African and Japanese art, Vincent van Gogh, a
Dutchman who moved to France where he drew on the strong sunlight of the south,
and Toulouse-Lautrec, remembered for his vivid paintings of night life in the Paris
district of Montmartre.

Symbolism, expressionism and cubism

Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist, developed his symbolistic approach at the end of
the 19th century, inspired by the French impressionist Manet. The Scream (1893),
his most famous work, is widely interpreted as representing the universal anxiety of
modern man. Partly as a result of Munch's influence, the German expressionist
movement originated in Germany at the beginning of the 20th century as artists
such as Ernst Kirschner and Erich Heckel began to distort reality for an emotional
effect. In parallel, the style known as cubism developed in France as artists focused
on the volume and space of sharp structures within a composition. Pablo Picasso
and Georges Braque were the leading proponents of the movement. Objects are
broken up, analyzed, and re-assembled in an abstracted form. By the 1920s, the
style had developed into surrealism with Dali and Magritte.