Pliny, paintings of
a still earlier date were to be seen at Caere, another Etruscan city.
Those paintings mentioned by Pliny were commonly believed to be
earlier than the foundation of Rome. At the present day the tombs of
Etruria afford examples of Etruscan painting in every stage of its
development, from the rudeness and conventionality of early art in the
tomb of Veii to the correctness and ease of design, and the more
perfect development of the art exhibited in the painted scenes in the
tombs of Tarquinii. In one of these tombs the pilasters are profusely
adorned with arabesques, and a frieze which runs round the side of the
tomb is composed of painted figures draped, winged, armed, fighting,
or borne in chariots. The subjects of these paintings are various; in
them we find the ideas of the Etruscans on the state of the soul after
death, combats of warriors, banquets, funeral scenes. The Etruscans
painted also bas-reliefs and statues.

The Greeks carried painting to the highest degree of perfection; their
first attempts were long posterior to those of the Egyptians; they do
not even date as far back as the epoch of the siege of Troy; and Pliny
remarks that Homer does not mention painting. The Greeks always
cultivated sculpture in preference. Pausanias enumerates only
eighty-eight paintings, and forty-three portraits; he describes, on
the other hand, 2,827 statues. These were, in fact, more suitable
ornaments to public places, and the gods were always represented in
the temple by sculpture. In Greece painting followed the invariable
law of development. Its cycle was run through. Painting passed through
the successive stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline, and decay.
The art of design in Greece is said to have had its origin in Corinth.
The legend is: the daughter of Dibutades, a potter of Corinth, struck
by the shadow of her lover's head cast by the lamp on the wall, drew
its outline, filling it in with a dark shadow. Hence, the earliest
mode of representing the human figure was a silhouette. The simplest
form of design or drawing was mere outline, or monogrammon, and was
invented by Cleanthes, of Corinth. After this the outlines were filled
in, and light and shade introduced of one color, and hence were styled
mono-chromes. Telephanes, of Sicyon, further improved the art by
indicating the principal details of anatomy; Euphantes, of Corinth, or
Craton, of Sicyon, by the introduction of color. Cimon, of Cleonae,