Tomb of Itimad ud Daula

The emperor Akbar (1556–1605) built largely, and the style developed robustly during his reign. As in the Gujarat and other styles, there is a combination of Muslim and Hindu features in his works. Akbar constructed the royal city of Fatehpur Sikri, located 26 miles (42 km) west of Agra, in the late 16th century.

The various structures at Fatehpur Sikri best illustrate the style of his works, and the great mosque there is scarcely matched in elegance and architectural effect; the south gateway which is known as Boland Darwaza, from its size and structure excels any similar entrance in India.

The Mughals built impressive tombs, which include the fine tomb of Akbar's father Humayun, and Akbar's tomb at Sikandra, near Agra, which is a unique structure of the kind and of great merit.

Under Jahangir (1605–1627) the Hindu features vanished from the style; his great mosque at Lahore is in the Persian style, covered with enamelled tiles. 

At Agra, the tomb of Itmad-ud-Daula completed in 1628, built entirely of white marble and covered wholly by pietra dura mosaic, is one of the most splendid examples of that class of ornamentation anywhere to be found. Jahangir also built the Shalimar Gardens and its accompanying pavilions on the shore of Dal Lake in Kashmir. He also built a monument to his pet deer, Hiran Minar in Sheikhupura, Pakistan and due to his great love for his wife, after his death she went on to build his mausoleum in Lahore.

Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb

In the time of Shah Jahan, the Deccan had been controlled by three Muslim kingdoms: Ahmednagar (Nizams), Bijapur (Adilshahi) and Golconda (Qutbshahi). Following a series of battles, Ahmednagar was effectively separated, with large portions of the kingdom ceded to the Mughal and the balance to Bijapur. One of Ahmednagar's generals, a Hindu Maratha named Shahaji, joined the Bijapur court. Shahaji sent his wife Jijabai and young son Shivaji in Pune to look after his Jaggier.

In 1657, while Aurangzeb attacked Golconda and Bijapur, Shivaji, using guerrilla tactics, took control of three Adilshahi forts formerly controlled by his father. With these victories, Shivaji assumed de facto leadership of many independent Maratha clans. The Marathas harried the flanks of the warring Adilshahi and Mughals, gaining weapons, forts, and territories. Shivaji small and ill-equipped army survived an all out Adilshahi attack, and Shivaji personally killed the Adilshahi general, Afzal Khan. With this event, the Marathas transformed into a powerful military force, capturing more and more Adilshahi and Mughal territories.

Just before Shivaji Raje's his coronation in 1659, Aurangzeb sent his trusted general and maternal uncle Shaista Khan the Mughal Viceroy to the Deccan to recover lost forts occupied by the Maratha rebels. Shaista Khan drove into Maratha territory and took up residence in Pune. In a daring raid, Shivaji attacked the governor's residence in Pune during a midnight wedding celebration. The Marathas killed Shaista Khan's son, even hacking off most of Shaista Khan's hand. Shaista Khan however barely survived and was re-appointed as the administrator of Bengal and was a key commander in the war against the Ahoms.

Aurangzeb ignored the rise of the Marathas for the next few years as he was occupied with other religious and political matters including the rise of Sikhism. Shivaji captured forts belonging to both Mughals and Bijapur. 

At last Aurangzeb sent his powerful general Raja Jai Singh of Amber, a Hindu Rajput, to attack the Marathas. Jai Singh won fort of Purandar after fierce battle in which the Maratha commander Murarbaji fell. Foreseeing defeat, Shivaji agreed for a truce and meeting Aurangjeb at Delhi. Jai Singh also promised the Maratha hero his safety, placing him under the care of his own son, the future Raja Ram Singh I. 

However, circumstances at the Mughal court were beyond the control of the Raja, and when Shivaji and his son Sambhaji went to Agra to meet Aurangzeb, they were placed under house arrest, from which they managed to effect a daring escape.

Akbar Religious Policy

Jalaluddin Muhammad Akbar, also known as Shahanshah Akbar-e-Azam or Akbar the Great (15 October 1542 – 27 October 1605, was the third Mughal Emperor. He was of Timurid descent; the son of Humayun, and the grandson of Babur, the ruler who founded the Mughal dynasty in India. At the end of his control in 1605 the Mughal Empire enclosed most of the northern and central India and was one of the most powerful empires of its age.

Akbar, as well as his mother and other members of his family, are believed to have been Sunni Hanafi Muslims. His early days were spent in the backdrop of an atmosphere in which liberal sentiments were encouraged and spiritual narrow-mindednness was frowned upon. From the 15th century, a number of rulers in various parts of the country adopted a more liberal policy of religious tolerance, attempting to further communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims.

 These sentiments were further encouraged by the teachings of popular saints like Guru Nanak, Kabir and Chaitanya, the verses of the Persian poet Hafez which advocated human sympathy and a liberal outlook, as well as the Timurid ethos of religious broadmindedness that persisted in the polity right from the times of Timur to Humayun, and influenced Akbar's policy of tolerance in matters of religion.

One of Akbar's first actions after gaining actual control of the administration was the elimination of jizya, a tax which all non-Muslims were required to pay, in 1562. The tax was reinstated in 1575, a move which has been viewed as being representative of vigorous Islamic policy, but was again repealed in 1580.

Akbar adopted the Sulh-e-Kul concept of Sufism as official policy, integrated many Hindus into high positions in the administration, and unconcerned restrictions on non-Muslims, thereby bringing about a composite and diverse character to the nobility. As a mark of his respect for all religions, he ordered the observance of all religious festivals of different communities in the imperial court.

The Iranian Paintings

There are nearly numerous numbers of traditional teahouses throughout Iran, and each region features its own unique cultural presentation of this ancient tradition. However, there are certain character which is common to all teahouses, especially the most visible aspects, strong chai (tea) and the ever-present ghalyan hookah.

Almost all teahouses serve baqleh, steam boiled fava beans (in the pod), served with salt and vinegar, as well as a variety of desserts and pastries. Many teahouses also serve full meals, typically a variety of kebabs as well as regional specialties.

Throughout the history of Persia, both men and women used make-up, wore jewellery and colored their body parts. Moreover, their garments were both detailed and colorful. Rather than being marked by gender, clothing styles were distinguished by class and status.

Women in modern Iran (post 1935 "Persia") are of various mixes and appearances, both in fashion and social norm. Traditionally however, the "Persian woman" had a pre-defined appearance set by social norms that were the standard for all women in society.

The Persian ladies' hair is very luxuriant and never cut. It is nearly always dyed red, or with indigo to a blue-black tinge. It is naturally a glossy black. Fair hair is not esteemed. Blue eyes are not uncommon, but brown ones are the rule.

A full moon face is much admired, and a dark complexion is the native idea of the highest beauty. The eyebrows are widened and painted until they appear to meet, and color is used freely in painting the faces.

The Scrovegni Chapel

Giotto's most famous works are the mural paintings in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua. These were painted sometime between 1303 and 1310. The Scrovegni Chapel is frequently called the Arena Chapel because it is on the site of a Roman arena.

Giotto was "commissioned “by a rich Padua man called Enrico degli Scrovegni. Enrico built the chapel and had it painted as a place to pray for the soul of his dead father. It was next to a very old palace that Enrico ws restoring to live in. The palace has gone now, but the chapel is still standing. The outside of the building is very plain, pinkish-red bricks.

The inside of the chapel is also very simple. It is long, with a chancel at one end where a priest can say the mass, an arched roof and windows down one side. The walls have been painted with three tiers of pictures. The "theme" in the pictures is God's Salvation of people through Jesus Christ.

In the usual way for churches of that date, the wall above the main door has a huge painting of the Last Judgement. At the other end of the building, on either side of the chancel archway is paintings of the Annunciation. One side shows the Virgin Mary and the other side show the Angel Gabriel who is bringing her the message that she will have a son, Jesus.

Around the walls, early at the top layer, are scenes which tell the life of the Virgin Mary. Under them, in two layers, are the stories of the life of Jesus. There are 37 scenes altogether.

A Children’s Puppet Show

Puppetry is an extremely ancient art form, thought to have originated about 30,000 years ago. Puppets have been used since the earliest times to animate and communicate the ideas and needs of human societies. Some historians maintain that they pre-date actors in theatre. There is evidence that they were used in Egypt as early as 2000 BC when string-operated figures of wood were manipulated to perform the action of kneading bread. Wire controlled, articulated puppets made of clay and ivory have also been found in Egyptian tombs.

Hieroglyphs also describe "walking statues" being used in Ancient Egyptian spiritual dramas.
The oldest written record of puppetry can be found in the written records of Xenophon dating from around 422 BC.

Evidence of earliest puppetry comes from the excavations at the Indus Valley Civilization. Archaeologists have unearthed terracotta dolls with removable heads capable of manipulation by a string dating to 2500 BC. Other excavations include terracotta animals which could be manipulated up and down a stick, achieving minimum animation in both cases.

The epic Mahabharata, Tamil literature from the Sangam Era, and various literary works dating from the late centuries BC to the early centuries of the Common Era, including Ashokan edicts, describe puppets. Works like the Natya Shastra and the Kamasutra elaborate on puppetry in some detail.

 The Javanese Wayang Theater was prejudiced by Indian traditions. Europeans developed puppetry as a result of extensive contact with the Eastern World. Some scholars trace the origin of puppets to India 4000 years ago, where the main character in Sanskrit plays was known as "Sutradhara", "the holder of strings". China has a history of puppetry dating back 2000 years, originally in "pi-ying xi", the "theatre of the lantern shadows", or, as it is more commonly known today, Chinese shadow theatre. By the Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD), puppets played to all social classes including the courts, yet puppeteers, as in Europe, were considered to be from a lower social stratum.

In Taiwan, budaixi puppet shows, somewhat similar to the Japanese Bunraku, occur with puppeteers working in the background or underground. Some very knowledgeable puppeteers can manipulate their puppets to perform various stunts, for example, somersaults in the air.
   

The Morning walk

During Sergeant’s long career, he painted more than 2,000 watercolors, wandering from the English countryside to Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Each destination obtainable pictorial stimulation and treasure. Even at his leisure time, in escaping the pressures of the portrait studio, he painted with restless intensity, often painting from morning until night.

His hundreds of watercolors of Venice are especially remarkable, many done from the perspective of a gondola. His colors were sometimes extremely stunning and as one reviewer noted, everything is given with the intensity of a dream.

In the Middle East and North Africa Sergeant painted Bedouins, goatherds, and fisherman. In the last decade of his life, he produced many watercolors in Maine, Florida, and in the American West, of fauna, flora, and native peoples.

With his watercolors, Sergeant was able to indulge his earliest artistic inclinations for nature, architecture, exotic peoples, and noble mountain landscapes.

And it is in some of his late works where one senses Sergeant painting most only for himself. His watercolors were executed with a joyful fluidness. He also painted extensively family, friends, gardens, and fountains.

In watercolors, he playfully portrayed his friends and family dressed in Orient list costume, relaxing in brightly lit landscapes that allowed for a more vivid palette and experimental handling than did his commissions.

His first major solo exhibit of watercolor works was at the Car fax Gallery in London in 1905.[68] In 1909, he exhibited eighty-six watercolors in New York City, eighty-three of which were bought by the Brooklyn Museum. Evan Charters wrote in 1927.

Almina Wertheimer's exotic beauty

John Singer Sargent was an American painter, and a leading portrait painter of his era. During his career, he created nearly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as numerous sketches and charcoal drawings. His work documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida.

Sargent painted a sequence of three portraits of Robert Louis Stevenson. The second, Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson and his Wife (1885), was one of his best known.

Asher Wertheimer, a prosperous Jewish art dealer living in London, commissioned from Sargent a series of a dozen portraits of his family, the artist's biggest commission from a single patron. The paintings reveal a pleasant familiarity between the artist and his subjects. In 1888, Sargent released his portrait of Alice Vanderbilt Sheppard, great-granddaughter of Cornelius Vanderbilt.

By 1900, Sargent was at the height of his fame. Cartoonist Max Beerbohm completed one of his seventeen caricatures of Sargent, making well-known to the public the artist's paunchy physical type. Though only in his forties, Sargent began to travel more and to devote relatively less time to portrait painting.

His An Interior in Venice (1900), a portrait of four members of the Curtis family in their elegant palatial home, Palazzo Barbara, was a resonant success. But, Whistler did not approve of the looseness of Sergeant’s brushwork, which he summed up as "smudge everywhere."

One of Sergeant’s last major portraits in his bravura style was that of Lord Ribblesdale, in 1902, finely attired in an elegant hunting uniform. Between 1900 and 1907, Sargent continued his high productivity, which integrated, in addition to dozens of oil portraits, hundreds of portrait drawings at about $400 each.

Homer Harper's Weekly Paintings

Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and print maker, best known for his oceanic subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th century America and a most excellent figure in American art.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1836, Homer was the second of three sons of Charles Savage Homer and Henrietta Benson Homer, both from long appearance of New England. His mother was a gifted unpaid watercolorists and Homer’s first teacher, and she and her son had a close relationship throughout their lives. Homer took on many of her character, including her quiet, strong-willed, terse, sociable nature; her dry sense of humor; and her artistic talent. Homer had a happy childhood, growing up mostly in the rural Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was an average student, but his art talent was on display early.

 

After Homer’s high school graduation, his father saw an ad in the newspaper and arranged for an apprenticeship. Homer’s apprenticeship to a Boston commercial lithographer at the age of 19 was a formative but “treadmill experience”. He worked repeatedly on sheet music covers and other commercial work for two years. By 1857, his self-employed career was underway after he turned down an offer to join the staff of Harper's Weekly. “From the time I took my nose off that lithographic stone”, Homer later stated, “I have had no master, and never shall have any.”

Homer’s career as an illustrator lasted nearly twenty years. He contributed to magazines such as Ballou's Pictorial and Harper's Weekly, at a time when the market for illustrations was growing rapidly, and when fads and fashions were changing quickly. His early works, mostly commercial engravings of urban and country social scenes, are characterized by clean outlines, simplified forms, and dramatic contrast of light and dark, and lively shape groupings— qualities that remained important throughout his career.

His quick success was mostly due to this strong understanding of graphic design and also to the adaptability of his designs to wood engraving.

About Portrait Paintings

Portrait painting is a variety of painting, where the intent is to depict the visual appearance of the subject. Beside human beings, animals, pets and even inanimate objects can be chosen as the subject for a portrait. In addition to portrait painting, portraits can also be made in other media such as marble, bronze, ivory, wood, ceramic, etching, lithography, and photography, even video and digital media.

The term 'portrait painting' can also explain the actual painted portrait. Portraitists create their work by commission, for public and private persons, or are inspired by admiration or affection for the subject. Portraits are often important state and family records, as well as remembrances. If an artist portrays him- or herself, the result is called a self-portrait.
Portrait painting can depict the subject 'full length', 'half length', 'head and shoulders', or ‘head’, as well as in profile, "three-quarter view", or "full face", with varying directions of light and shadow.

Occasionally, artists have created portraits with multiple views, as with Sir Anthony van Dyck's  Triple Portrait of Charles I. There are even a few portraits where the front of the subject is not visible at all. Andrew Wyeth's Christina's World (1948) is a famous example, where the pose of the crippled girl with her back turned to the viewer integrates with the setting in which she is placed to convey the artist's interpretation.

Among the other possible variables, the subject can be clothed or nude; indoors or out; standing, seated, reclining; even horse-mounted. Portrait paintings can be of individuals, couples, parents and children, families, or collegial groups.

They can be created in various media including oils, watercolor, pen and ink, pencil, charcoal, pastel, and mixed media. Artists may employ a wide-ranging palette of colors, as with Pierre-Auguste Renoir's On the Terrace (1881) or restrict themselves to mostly white or black, as with Gilbert Stuart's Portrait of George Washington (1796).

Brief About Angels

Angels are messengers of God in the Hebrew Bible, the new testimony and the Quran. The term "angel" has also been extended to various notions of spiritual beings found in many other religious traditions.

Other roles of angels include shielding and guiding human beings, and carrying out God's tasks.

The theological reading of angels is known as angelology. In art, angels are frequently depicted with wings, ultimately reflecting with the descriptions in the Hebrew Bible, such as the chayot in Ezekiel's Merkabah vision or the Seraphim of Isaiah.

In the postexilic period, with the development of unambiguous monotheism, these divine beings- the "sons of God" who were members of the heavenly council- were in effect demoted to what are now known as "angels," understood as beings created by God, but everlasting and thus superior to humans.

One of these "sons of God" is "the Satan", an outline depicted in, among other places, the story of Job. The concept of angels is best understand in contrast to demons and is often thought to be influenced by the ancient Persian religious tradition of Zoroastrianism, which viewed the world as a battleground between forces of good and forces of evil, between light and darkness

Greek Panel Paintings

Panel painting is very old; it was a very high-status medium in Greece and Rome, but only very few examples of ancient panel paintings have survived. A series of 6th century BC painted tablets from Pitsa (Greece) represent the oldest surviving Greek panel paintings.

Wood panels, especially if kept with too little humidity, often damage and crack with age, and from the 19th century, when reliable techniques were developed, many have been transferred to canvas or modern board supports.

Wood panel is now rather more useful to art historians than canvas, and in recent decades there has been great progress in extracting this information - and many fakes discovered and mistaken datings corrected. Specialists can identify the tree species used, which varied according to the area where the painting was made. Carbon-dating techniques can give an approximate date-range, and dendrochronology sequences have been developed for the main source areas of wood for panels.

In theory, dendro-chronology gives an exact felling date, but in practice allowances have to be made for a interest period of several years, and a little panel may be from the centre of the tree, with no way of knowing how many rings outside the panel there were. So dendro-chronological conclusions tend to be expressed as a "terminus post quem" or an earliest possible date, with a tentative estimation of an actual date, that may be twenty or more years later.

The supposed called Panel Paintings Initiative is a multi-year project in collaboration between the Getty Conservation Institute, the Getty Foundation, and the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Panel Paintings Initiative is a response to the growing recognition that significant collections of paintings on wood panels may be at risk in coming decades due to the declining numbers of conservators and craftspeople with the highly specialized skills necessary for the conservation of these complex works of art.

About Murals Paintings

Murals of sorts date to Upper Paleolithic times such as the paintings in the Chauvet Cave in Ardeche department of southern France (around 30.000 BC).

Many olden murals have survived in Egyptian tombs (around 3150 BC), the Minoan palaces.

In modern times the term became more well-known with the Mexican "muralist" art movement. There are many different styles and techniques. The best-known is almost certainly fresco, which uses water-soluble paints with a damp lime wash, a rapid use of the resulting mixture over a large surface, and often in parts.

The colors lighten as they dry. The camouflage method has also been used for millennia.

Murals today are painted in a mixture of ways, using oil or water-based media. The styles can vary from abstract to trompe-l'œil (a French term for "fool" or "trick the eye"). Initiated by the works of mural artists like Graham Rust or Rainer Maria Latkes in the 1980s, trompe-l'oeil painting has experienced a new beginning in private and public buildings in Europe.

Today, the beauty of a wall mural has become much more widely available with a method whereby a painting or photographic image is transferred to poster paper or canvas which is then pasted to a wall surface to give the effect of either a hand-painted mural or realistic scene.

The development of digital wide set-up printers offered new time and cost effective production methods for printed murals and became an important alternative to actual, hand-painted murals in the last decade. Already existing murals can be photographed and then be reproduced in near-to-original quality.

The disadvantages of pre-fabricated murals are that they are often mass produced and lack the attraction and exclusivity of an original artwork. They are often not fitted to the individual wall sizes of the client and their personal ideas or wishes cannot be added to the mural as it progresses. The Frescography method, a digital manufacturing method (CAM) invented by Rainer Maria Latzke addresses some of the personalization and size restrictions.

Digital techniques are also used in advertisement. A "walls cape" is a large advertisement on or attached to the outside wall of a building. Walls capes can be painted directly on the wall as a mural, or printed on vinyl and securely attached to the wall in the manner of a billboard. Although not strictly classed as murals, large scale printed media are often referred to as such.

Advertising murals were traditionally painted onto buildings and shops by sign-writers, later as large scale poster billboards.

About WaterColor Paintings

Watercolor (US) or watercolor (UK), also aquarelle from French, is a painting method. A watercolor is the medium or the resultant artwork, in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water soluble vehicle. The traditional and most common support for watercolor paintings is paper; other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum or leather, fabric, wood, and canvas.

Watercolor painting has the reputation of being quite demanding; it is more accurate to say that watercolor techniques are unique to watercolor. Unlike oil or acrylic painting, where the paints fundamentally stay where they are put and dry more or less in the form they are applied, water is an active and complex partner in the watercolor painting process, changing both the absorbency and shape of the paper when it is wet and the outlines and appearance of the paint as it dries.

Many difficulties occur because watercolor paints do not have high hiding power, so previous efforts cannot simply be painted over; and the paper support is both absorbent and delicate, so the paints cannot simply be scraped off, like oil paint from a canvas, but must be laboriously lifted by rewetting and blotting. This often induces in student painters a pronounced and inhibiting anxiety about making an irreversible mistake.

Watercolor has a longstanding association with drawing or impression, and the common procedure to curtail such mistakes is to make a precise, faint outline drawing in pencil of the subject to be painted, to use small brushes, and to paint limited areas of the painting only after all adjacent paint areas have completely dried.
Another characteristic of watercolor paints is that the carbohydrate binder is only a small proportion of the raw paint volume, and much of the binder is drawn between the hydrophilic cellulose fibers of wet paper as the paint dries.

As a result, watercolor paints do not form an enclosing layer of vehicle around the pigment particles and a continuous film of dried vehicle over the painting support, but leave pigment particles scattered and stranded like tiny grains of sand on the paper. This increases the scattering of light from the pigment and paper surfaces, causing characteristic whitening or lightening of the paint color as it dries. The exposed pigment particles are also naked to damaging ultraviolet light, which can compromise pigment permanency.

Watercolor paint is traditionally and still commonly applied with brushes, but modern painters have experimented with many other implements, particularly sprayers, scrapers, sponges or sticks, and have combined watercolors with pencil, charcoal, crayon, chalk, ink, engraving, monotype, lithography and collage, or with acrylic paint.

Many watercolor painters, perhaps uniquely among all modern visual artists, still adhere to prejudices dating from the 19th century rivalry between "transparent" and body color painters. Among these are injunctions never to use white paint, never to use black paint, only to use transparent color, or only to work with "primary" color mixtures. In fact, many superb paintings flout some or all of these guidelines, and they have little relevance to modern painting practice.

Contempo Technologies PVT LTD

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The Roman Egyption oil paintings

Portraiture's roots are likely found in prehistoric times, although few of these works live on today. In the art of the ancient civilizations of the Fertile Crescent, especially in Egypt, depictions of rulers and gods abound. However, most of these were done in a highly stylized fashion, and most in profile, usually on stone, metal, clay, plaster, or crystal. Egyptian portraiture placed relatively little emphasis on likeness, at least until the period of Akhenaton in the 14th century BC. Portrait painting of notables in China probably goes back to over 1000 BC, though none survive from that age. Existing Chinese portraits go back to about 1000 AD.

From literary proof we know that ancient Greek painting included portraiture, often highly accurate if the praises of writers are to be believed, but no painted examples remain. Sculpted heads of rulers and famous personalities like Socrates survive in some quantity, and like the individualized busts of Hellenistic rulers on coins, show that Greek portraiture could achieve a good likeness, and subjects were depicted with relatively little flattery - Socrates' portraits show why he had a reputation for being ugly. The successors of Alexander the Great began the practice of adding his head to their coins, and were soon using their own.

Roman portraiture adopted traditions of portraiture from both the Etruscans and Greeks, and developed a very strong tradition, linked to their religious use of ancestor portraits, as well as Roman politics. Again, the few painted survivals, in the Fayum portraits, Tomb of Aline and the Severan Tondo, all from Egypt under Roman rule, are clearly regional productions that reflect Greek rather than Roman styles, but we have a wealth of sculpted heads, including many individualized portraits from middle-class tombs, and thousands of types of coin portraits.

Much the largest group of painted portraits is the funeral paintings that survived in the dry climate of Egypt's Fayum district, dating from the 2nd to 4th century AD. These are almost the only paintings of the Roman period that have survived, aside from frescos, though it is known from the writings of Pliny the Elder that portrait painting was well recognized in Greek times, and practiced by both men and women artists. In his times, Pliny complained of the declining state of Roman portrait art, The painting of portraits which used to transmit through the ages the accurate likeness of people has entirely gone out laziness has destroyed the arts. These full-face portraits from Roman Egypt are fortunate exceptions.

They present a somewhat reasonable sense of proportion and individual detail. The Fayum portraits were painted on wood or ivory in wax and resin colors or with tempera, and inserted into the mummy wrapping, to remain with the body through time without end.

While free-standing portrait painting diminished in Rome, the art of the portrait flourished in Roman sculptures, where sitters demanded realism, even if unflattering. During the 4th century, the sculpted portrait dominated, with a retreat in favor of an idealized symbol of what that person looked like.

Campanile di Giotto Paintings

Giotto di Bond one (c.1267–January 8 1337), usually known as Giotto, was an Italian painter and architect from Florence. He is generally thought of as the first in a line of great artists of the Italian Renaissance.

Giovanni Villani, who lived at the same time as Giotto, wrote that he was the king of painters, who drew all his figures as if they were alive. Villani says that, because he was so clever, the city of Florence gave him a salary.

In the 16th century, the dramatist Giorgio Vasari says that Giotto changed painting from the Byzantine style of other artists of his day, and brought to life the great art of painting as it was made by the later Renaissance painters like Leonardo da Vinci. This was because Giotto drew his figures from life, rather than copying the style them from old well-known pictures in the way that the Byzantine artists like Cimabue and Duccio did.

Giotto's greatest work is the decoration of the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, finished around 1305. The building is sometimes called the "Arena Chapel" because it is on the site of an Ancient Roman arena. This fresco series shows the life of the Virgin and the life of Christ. It is thought of as one of the greatest masterpieces of the Early Renaissance.

In 1320 Giotto finished the Stefaneschi Triptych, now in the Vatican Museum, for Cardinal Jacopo, who also commissioned him the decoration of St. Peter's apse, with a cycle of frescoes destroyed during the 16th century renovation. According to Vasari, Giotto remained in Rome for six years, subsequently receiving numerous commissions in Italy and in the Papal seat at Avignon, though some of these works are now recognized to be by other artists.

In 1328, after completing the Baroncelli Polyptych, he was called by King Robert of Anjou to Naples, where he remained with a group of pupils until 1333. In Naples few of his works have survived: a fragment of a fresco portraying the Lamentation of Christ in the church of Santa Chiara, and the Illustrious Men painted on the windows of the Santa Barbara Chapel of Castel Nuovo . In 1332 King Robert named him "first court painter" with a yearly pension.

In 1334 Giotto was appointed chief architect to Florence Cathedral, of which the Campanile (founded by him on July 18 1334) bears his name, but was not completed to his design.
Before 1337 he was in Milan with Azzone Visconti, though no trace of works by him remain in the city. His last known work is the decoration of Pedestal Chapel in the Barceló, Florence.

In his final years Giotto had become friends with Boccaccio and Sacchetti, who featured him in their stories. In The Divine Comedy, Dante acknowledged the greatness of his living contemporary through the words of a painter in Purgatorio (XI, 94–96): Cimabue believed that he held the field/In painting, and now Giotto has the cry,/ So the fame of the former is obscure.

The Fresco painting

Fresco is a way of painting pictures. A fresco is a painting that is ended on a wall. All wall paintings are sometimes called frescoes by mistake. A true fresco is painted onto plaster that is fresh.

The plaster has been laid on the wall that day and is still damp. The word fresco comes from the Italian for "fresh “Advantages and disadvantages of fresco painting.

The good things about fresco painting:

Fresco is a very good way of painting pictures on walls. It is much easier than painting on dry plaster because when paint is put onto dry plaster, it sinks straight in. Painting on fresh plaster means that the artist can spread the paint much easier.

Another reason why it is a good way to paint pictures on plastered walls is that the paint joins with the plaster so that the colors will not rub off. Frescoes last for hundreds of years. If they are reserved clean and dry, the colors will stay bright for a very long time.

Fresco is the "green" method of painting because it doesn't use dangerous chemicals. The water, the calcite and the colors do not cause pollution.

The bad things about fresco painting:

The problems with painting frescos come from the plaster. It must be mixed up and put on the wall freshly every day and left to partly dry before it can be used.

As the plaster begins to dry or "set", the artist can start the picture. The plaster becomes very hot while it is drying, giving off steam, and a psaltery smell.

The artist must work very quickly and carefully. If he/she makes a mistake, the plaster must be scraped off. Unlike most other types of painting, frescos can't be moved from place to place, or rearranged.

Paolo Veronese Paintings

Oil painting is a way of painting pictures with pigments (colors) that are held together by the medium of oil. The most usual type of oil that is used in paint is linseed oil. A picture that is painted using oil paint is called an "oil painting". Oil paint takes a long time to dry.

Artists find this useful because they can keep working on the painting for a long time. People say that Leonardo da Vinci worked on his painting of the Mona Lisa for four years, even although it is not a very big picture. Oils paints and oil paintings are often just called "oils" for short. If someone talks about "painting in oils" they mean that the painting is done in oil paints.

No-one knows when oil paint was first used. Caves in Afghanistan are decorated with ancient paintings in paint mixed with oils. It is believed that this type of paint was used in other countries of Asia as well.

It is believed that oil paint was used in Europe in the middle Ages at first for decorating shields, because oil paint lasted better than the traditional paint of tempera when it was in the weather, or if it was roughly treated. In 1125 a writer called Theophilus gives information for how to make oil paint in his book called On Diverse Arts.

The Renaissance art historian, Giorgio Vasari, said that the art of oil painting came from Northern Europe and the person who invented it was the famous Flemish painter Jan van Eyck.

Artists from the areas of modern Belgium and the Netherlands were the first artists to make oil painting their usual method of painting. This trend spread to other parts of Northern Europe.

A famous painting called the Portinari Altarpiece by Hugo van der goes arrived in Florence in the 1470s at a time when Leonardo da Vinci was young. Oil paintings at this date were usually done on wooden panels, in the way that tempera pictures were.

Leonid aftermov oil paintings

Leonid Afremov is a Belarus born, Israeli modern painter who creates unique landscapes, cityscape and figures using a palette knife rather than a brush to paint. Here is what he himself says about his work and the technique he uses:

I tried different techniques during my career, but I especially fell in love with painting with oil and palette-knife.

Every artwork is the result of long painting process; every canvas is born during the creative search; every painting is full of my inner world.

Each of my paintings brings different mood, colors and emotions. I love to express the beauty, harmony and spirit of this world in my paintings.

My heart is completely open to art. Thus, I enjoy creating inspired and beautiful paintings from the bottom of my soul.

Each of my artworks reflects my feelings, sensitivity, passion, and the music from my soul. True art is alive and inspired by humanity. I believe that art helps us to be free from violence and depression.