Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

CHAPTER XII

greek painting

We pass next to the consideration of Greek painting. Here,
alas ! our losses are far greater than they are in the field of
architecture and sculpture. The sculpture preserved in our
museums, injured though it be, is yet amply sufficient to inform
us as to the character and history of the plastic art in Greece,
and to enable us to judge it fairly. But the extant remains of
the contemporary painting are very few and slight, and by no
means adequate to enable us to understand the works of artists
like Zeuxis and Apelles.

We are obliged to content ourselves as best we can with two
classes of works, the Greek vases of the good period of art,
and the fresco wall-paintings of the Roman age found at Pom-
peii, at Rome and elsewhere. These are all, of course, far
below the level of the best Greek art. Of the fresco-paintings
of the later age I shall scarcely be able to treat in this work.
We shall mainly concern ourselves with vases. And the paint-
ings of vases, however slight when regarded as works of art,
are important, as bringing us nearer than do works of sculp-
ture to the mythology, the literature and the daily life of the
Greeks.

The true method in this as in other cases is to put together
the statements of ancient writers in regard to art and works of
art, such writers as Pliny, Pausanias and Lucian, and to com-
pare them with the remains of frescoes and the vase-paintings
which have come down to us. Each of these sources of in-
formation, the literary and the archaeological, requires the

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