History of Western Paintings – II – The Ancient Near East

Palaeolithic people led an unsettled life; this nomadic society of hunters and gatherers has little control over their food supply. Beginning around 8000 B.C. however, people began to grow their own food, raise their own animals, and organise into permanent communities. Although, like their Palaeolithic predecessors, the Neolithic people (from neos, meaning “new” in Greek) used stone to make basic weapons and tolls, organised agriculture and animal husbandry left more time and labour for other activities, including the production of clay vessels. Since their size and weight made them difficult to carry, clay vessels are characteristic of stationary communities.

Neolithic villages made their first appearance in the Near East, an area consisting roughly of modern-day Turkey, Iraq and Iran. A late example of Neolithic painted pottery from this region is a beaker from Susa (present day Shush in Iran) dating to c. 4000 B.C. The highly abstracted animal forms contained within patterned borders are common to many works of art from this area. Decoration takes precedence over naturalism to create designs with beautiful stylised animals, such as the thin band of elongated dogs beneath a frieze of graceful long necked birds around the top of the beaker, and the marvellous ibex with circular horns, it’s body composed of two curved triangles, that dominates the large central portion. In contrast with Palaeolithic depictions of animals, which may represent attempts to control the animal kingdom, animals, now domesticated, seem simply to decorate this Neolithic vase.

Beaker. c.4000 B.C. Susa (modern Shush, Iran). Ceramic, painted in brown glaze. Height: 11" (29cm). Musee du Louvre, Paris

The Paleolithic peoples who created cave paintings were monadic hunters and gathers. Neolithic culture (New Stone Age), which first appeared in the Near East c. 8000 B.C. is characterised by settled villages, domesticated plants and aminals, and the crafts of pottery and weaving. The highly abstracted, stylised animals forms, representative of the “Animal Style”, and patterns decorating this Neolithic beaker from Iran are commonly found in workds from the ancient Near East. An ibex (wild coat), with enlarged, circular horns and a body consisting of two curved triangles, decorates the centre of this vessel. The top band contains skinny, long-necked birds, and, directly below, a band of elongated dogs encircle the beaker.

The early Neolithic agricultural communities gradually evolved into more complex societies, with systems of government, law, formal religion, and, perhaps most importantly, the first appearance of writing, thus marking the end of prehistory and the beginning of recorded history. The political structures alternated between conglomerations of independently ruled city-states and centralised governments under a single leader.

The city-states of the Near East frequently fought one another. In addition, the lack of natural barriers made the area particularly vulnerable to invasion. This almost constant warfare was a frequent subject of art. A further destabilising factor was the unpredictable climate; floods, drought, storms, and the like plagued the inhabitants of this region. This, they understandably tended to worry considerably about survival in this world – a world of invasions, political instability and natural catastrophes.

From about the fourth millennium B.C. the Sumerians inhabited southern Mesopotamia, a Greek place name meaning “the land between the rivers”, that is the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. They invented the wheel and a form of writing in which a stylus, usually a length of reed cut at an angle, was used to impress characters on wet clay. Cuneiform, meaning “wedge shaped”, which aptly describes the appearance of this writing, has been deciphered; our ability to read ancient Mesopotamian texts makes the ancient art of the region more accessible to the contemporary viewer than the art of prehistoric societies. Ancient near Eastern images usually have clearly structured compositions, ground-lines and readable narratives emphasising human beings, their history, and their relation to their gods and goddesses. All of these characteristics enable us to interpret the art more easily than the more elusive prehistoric cave paintings discussed earlier.

Triumph of a King, the Standard of Ur. c.2700 B.C. Mesopotamia. Wooden panel inlaid with shell, lapis lazuli and red limestone. Approx. 8" x 19" (20cm x 48cm). British Museum, London

Neolithic village communities in the ancient Near East gradually developed into complex city-states, which were often politically unstable societies almost contstantly at war with east other and against invading peoples. War and victory are frequent subjects of ancient Near Eastern art. This image, an inlaid panel from the side of a box, may show an actual historical event, depicting the aftermath of war, with a victorious banquet scene in the top register. Historical narrative and a clear, formal composition distinguish this image from prehistoric cave paintings.

The various city states that comprised ancient Sumer were often at war with one another. The so called Standard of Ur is a box, the function of which is not known, that was found in a royal cemetery among daggers, helmets, and other military regalia. The box displays scenes of both war and peace, probably episodes of specific historical events. Stylistically, the depictions of human form in the Standard of Ur resemble those we will see in other ancient cultures. Frontal and profile views are combined in a single figure, emphasising the conceptual over the illusionistic, and the size of a figure directly corresponds to his importance; on the Standard of Ur, the seated, regal figure in the top row is bigger than this standing before him. Also typical is the arrangement of figures in the bands. There is little overlapping of forms, or any indication of a setting, resulting in a very two dimensional image. This straightforward, regimented presentation of figures contrasts markedly with the informal arrangement of imagery in prehistoric caves.

Priest Guiding a Sacrificial Bull. 2040-1870 B.C. Fragment of a mural painting from the palace of Zimri-Lim, Mari (modern Tell Hariri, Iraq). National Museum, Aleppo, Syria

A fragment of a wall painting from the palace of Zimri-Lim at Mari (today, Tell Hariri, Iraq) shows part of a religious ceremony: a priest leading a bull to sacrifice. Zimri-Lim was a ruler during the Amorite occupation of Mesopotamia. His palace was destroyed by the celebrated Hammurabi (ruled 1792-1750 B.C.) author of the famous legal code and a fellow Amorite leader. The fragmented murals of Zimri-Lim’s palace are some of the few wall paintings to survive from Mesopotamia.

Among the most famous achievements of the Mesopotamians are the construction and decoration of the Ishtar Gate, originally one of the main entryways to the ancient city of Babylon (Iraq). Babylon had been the political and cultural capital of Mesopotamia under Hammurabi, and towards the end of the seventh century B.C. with the decline of the Assyrians – probably the most powerful people to dominate Mesopotamia and the surrounding regions – The Babylonians reasserted their power. The best known ruler of this Neo-Babylonian period was Nebuchadnezzar II (ruled 604-562 B.C.), the famed leader mentioned in the Old Testament who was responsible for building the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as well as the Ishtar Gate, now reassembled in Berlin. The Ishtar Gate and the walls lining the Processional Way (the street leading from the Gate) were faced with glazed brick. Sacred animals, also of glazed brick – among them, lions, associated with the Goddess Ishtar, and dragons, sacred to Marduk, the patron God of Babylon – and these geometric borders ornamented both the Gate and Processional Way. The somewhat stylized forms of these animals, and their rhythmic arrangement within the decorative borders, recall the Neolithic vase from Susa, with which we began our discussion of the art of the ancient Near East.

Lion. c.575 B.C. Processional Way, Babylon. Glazed brick. Height: approx 38" (96.5cm). Achaeological Museum, Istanbul, Turkey

History of Western Paintings – I – Prehistoric Art

The history of Western painting beings approximately thirty thousand years ago, with prehistoric depiction if animals, various shapes and symbols, and human beings on the walls of caves. Some of the best examples of Cro-Magnon painting are the Palaeolithic paintings found in the caves at Altamira in Northern Spain and Lascaux in the Dordogne region of France. (“Palaeolithic” made up of the Greek words paleo, meaning “old” and lithos, meaning “stone”, is a term used by scholars to describe the early Stone Age, from c. 40,000 to 8,000 B.C.) The creators of these pictures used crushed minerals mixed with water and saliva as paints; “brushes” were most likely made of chewed twigs, blunt pigments were probably more commonly applied with the hand or by spitting them from the mouth or through tubes made of bone or reed. The resulting earth-toned images tend to be rather blurry. Given the undefined space and the uneven, rough surface of the ceilings and walls of the caves, these images appear to be positioned somewhat haphazardly, without ground-lines (baselines indicating the ground on which figures stand) or background settings, and only rarely combined to suggest a narrative.

The caves at Altamira were first found by a hunter in 1868; in 1879, Maria the young daughter of the Marquis Marcellino de Sautuola, an amateur archaeologist studying portable prehistoric artefacts, noticed the paintings by accident. Many of the Marquis’ late nineteenth-century colleagues would have thought the function of the painted images that adorn the vast walls and ceilings of prehistoric caves to be purely aesthetic. Clearly, those commentators might have mused, the desire to be surrounded by beauty has been inherent in human nature since the beginning.

Bison c 12,000 B.C. Altamira cave, Santander, Spain. Paint on limestone

The fact that animals are overwhelmingly the main subject of cave paintings may point to a more practical, less romantic interpretation. Palaeolithic peoples were hunters – animals were essential to their survival. Given that the pictures for the most part do not seem to be composed narratively, as if recording an actual episode, their purpose was more likely conjuration. Painting animals on cave walls might also have been an equally magical way to ensure their continued reproduction. In a few instances animals are depicted as if wounded, suggesting that a ritual injuring or killing of an animal rendered in paint perhaps guaranteed a successful hunt in real life. The frequent overlapping of imagery and the fact that entire cave surfaces appear to have been repainted many times suggest that the act of painting was more important that the pictures produced. This supports the interpretation that these images had a magical function, that they represented attempts to control the animal kingdom and thereby assure the survival of the human group.

The animals painted on the surface of prehistoric caves are depicted remarkably accurately; in some examples, the artists even suggest muscular bulk through deft shading. By comparison, the rarely found representations of humans are very schematic, often resembling stick figures. Added to this fact, the sheer number and the wide variety of animals portrayed – including horses, bison, mammoths, bears, ibexes, aurochs and deer – suggest the great significance of animals to Palaeolithic society. We will never know for certain what functions prehistoric cave paintings served. The various interpretations necessarily reflect more the interpreters’ theoretical frameworks than any verifiable reality: lacking a written language, the prehistoric people of the caves left no verbal records to help further our knowledge.

The Greeks colonized southern Italy, where they were in contact with the indigenous Etruscan culture. An ancient Greek wall painting from the so-called “Tomb of the Diver” in Paestum, Italy, probably reveals Etruscan influences. The dive taken by the figure could be interpreted as the passage of the deceased into the otherworld. The Greeks did not build large tombs to house their dead; for them, the realm of the dead seems to have been a vaguely defined, mysterious place.

Diver. c.480 B.C.

Ceiling fresco from a Greek tomb at Paestum, Italy. Height: approx. 40″ (102cm). Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Paestum

We know that in addition to vase painting, the Greeks painted large scale compositions on panel, what have not survived the tests of time. A few mural paintings do survive, like this one from a Greek tomb in Paestum, Italy. The dive taken by the youth perhaps symbolises the passage from life to death

In the fourth century B.C., the Greek city-states were dominated by the kings of Macedon, an area to the north of Greece. The most famous of these conquerors was Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.), who also subjugated the Persian Empire and Egypt. In a Roman floor mosaic, based on a Greek painting of the battle between Alexander the Great and the Persian king Darius III, the artist has applied foreshortening and shading techniques to create an effect of three-dimensional space. The emotional and physical intensity of this image – conveyed through the facial expressions of the participants and the depiction of dramatic movement – is probably typical of late Greek wall painting.

Perhaps by Philoxenos or Helen of Egypt. Alexander the Great and Darius III at the Battle of Issos. Roman mosaic copy after a Greek painting 310 B.C.

106″ x 200″ (270cm x 510cm), Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples

The 5th century Peloponnesian War weakened Greece considerably. By the end of the fouth century B.C. the Greeks were under Macedonian rule, the most famous leader of which was Alexander the Great. This Roman floor mosaic from a house in Pompeii is a copy of a large scale Greek painting and depicts the battle between Alexander and the Persian king Darius III. Foreshortening – note in particular the horse seen from behind in three quarter view in front of Darius’ chariot – is masterfully employed here. Light is reflected from the shiny surfaces of armour and figures cast shadows. The dramatic emotionalism of this image is probably typical of 4th century Greek panel painting, none of which survives