COLIC

The peculiar disease, wliich PAINTING. usually terminates in palsy and mental imbecility, to which painters and others subject to lead poisons are subject. It is also called colic of Poitou and Devons hire colic; the miners employed in lead-works being also liable to its attacks. See Colic. PAl'NTING (Fr. peinture, Lat. pictura), strictly defined, is an art which, by means of lines and colours, represents on a plane surface all objects presented to the eye or to the imagination. The etjTnology of the word (yea^iiv) used to expre painting among the Greeks, being the same as that employed for writing, seems to identify the tools with which it was performed among that people: viz. a style or pen of wood, used on a levigated plane of wood, metal, or some other prepared ground; the mode, letters or lines. Until its operations become founded on the faithful representations of visible objects of nature, und is figured by mannerism and modification from the fashion and habits of a country, such, for instance, as we meet with in the Indian, Egyptian, and Chinese representations of the human form, it is scarcely entitled to the appellation of art; hence we shall, in this article, dismi , with very few remarks, its appearance in those countries where traces of it in that condition are to be found, reserving the principal part of this article for that development, simplicity of end, and uniformity of pursuit, which enabled the Greeks, the great arbiters of form, to carry it to a degree of excellence which no subsequent age or nation has been able to reach, or even rival. It seems probable that drawing and recorded language were coeval in invention. In Greek we have mentioned that the same word (yg«<f8<v) expre ed the act of performing one as well as the other. Goguet, in his Origine des Loix, says that the first e ay of the art of writing, using the expre ion in its most general sense, was by means of the representation of corporeal objects. Its invention %vould thus be carried back to a period almost as remote as that of the existence itself of the human race. The earliest people, he says, naturally used this method for exhibiting their thoughts, and commenced by representing to the eye the objects they wished to impre on the mind. The origin, however, of painting, properly so called, involved as it is in the greatest obscurity, presents one of the most difficult questions in the history of the arts; and opinions are very much divided as to the country that gave birth to it. Some authors have a igned its invention to a period antecedent to the siege of Troy. {Plin. 1. vii.) Others, to one long after. {Plin. 1. xxxv.) Pliny says, that the Egyptians boasted of being acquainted with the art six you sand years before the Grecians; but his words are, " Affirmant, van a praedicatione, ut palum est." Profane no le than sacred history rejects such a chimaera. But, though such a period of antiquity be fabulous, it is quite certain that painting was much used by them at a very early period. It is argued by Goguet that, aS' much as it was in his power, Cambyses destroyed the monuments of art he found in Egypt. Hence may be considered as posterior to his invasion such of the monuments as display specimens of the art. The epoch whereof we are speaking is 525 b. c. This, however, is an argument far from satisfactory, where all is conjecture. The specimens of Egyptian paintings now extant exhibit a collection of representations of human and other figures which indicate extremely slender advances in the art. They are all rudely and falsely draw n: no notion of grouping, as we understand it, nor sentiment, appears in any of their productions. As the Phoenicians were an early cultivated people, and have the credit of the invention of letters, they may, perhaps, have a claim to the invention equal to that of any other nation. In the time of Solomon, 992 B. c, they were so well skilled in the arts that that king employed them in building the temple. The Scriptures record the magnificence and splendour of their buildings, abounding with decorated apartments and sculptured ornaments; and we know, from the coins of the Phoenicians that have reached us, that in the design and execution of their coinage they were not far behind the Greeks. " Thou, also, son of man, take thee a tile, and lay it before thee, and pourtrav upon it the city, even Jerusalem," are the words with which the fourth chapter of Ezekiel commences; the words in the Septuagint being ^lay^i-^tif 6t' avry.v itbXiv Tr,v'lieo'jtrot.X-/iii A. This is about 590 B.C., and would tend to show that the art was practised by the Jews so early as that period. The commandment, " Thou Shalt not make to thyself any graven image," which some sects, even in the present day, construe into a prohibition against all art, was merely a prohibition of the worship of idols; for we find Moses himself, by the command of God, employing sculpture for the sanctuary. The employment of art of this nature is found, also, in many other pa ages of Scripture, which will doubtle occur to the reader. The Persians, the Arabians, and the Parthians, from the peculiar opinions they entertained, could have no claims either to the origin or improvem.ent of the art of painting. With them the representation of the humiia [s. 881]