The color has fascinated culture through history, every age and every region has produced dyes and pigment depending on the resources available. The color has been with us for over 20,000 years. Evidence survives in cave paintings. The color was widely used by the ancient Egyptians and was considered to have magical healing properties and around this time, 1500 BC, while painting was an art quite widely established in Crete and Greece with the Egyptians passing their skills the Romans. EGYPT: Egyptians used a technique of Temple, bringing together the pigments with water and glue, apply glue and egg and separate the colors without mixing them with each other. The discovery of the tomb of Thebes released many of the implements used in his painting: the colors grinding stones, paddle with holes or containers, etc.. The colors used were blue enamel, cinnabar, red, Indian yellow, ocher, brown, green and black.
His paintings were resolved on a white preparation. GREECE: The Greeks continued to use the Temple. The invention of Encaustic is attributed to Polygnotus. Pliny is the only one who has made a short and clear indication of the procedure. With a kind of hot punch the color applied on the wall or table. ROME: The Temple and Encaustic painting retains the character of Greek origin. It is not clear in which period it was discovered the technique of Fresco.
This was well developed in Roman civilization, as evidenced by the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii. MIDDLE AGES: The rivals Temple Fresco painting in the church, houses and cabinets. This technique and Fresco are contained in manuscripts of the monks Heraclius and Theophilus. Christianity, through the work of the monks away by a rigid discipline of human interests, had to find a distraction that would break the monotony of their lives, with the study of science and especially the practice of the arts. Appears in the eleventh century Romanesque art. The first teachers of Siena (Italy), based on the influences Byzantine, around which revolves around the Romanesque, seeking greater fluidity in the composition of his paintings. The monk Theophilus wrote in 1200 a treatise on painting, Artium Diversarum Schedule, recommending the use of linseed oil and gum of Arabia, also known as Glass or FORNIS. There were painters applying a layer of linseed oil on a painting to the Temple, the colors revived, recovered their strength and luster of newly painted Temple. Some painters precursors of Art: Italian painter Pietro Caballini 1250-1330. His work is in line characterized Byzantine mural painting of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the West. Master Cimabue. Cimabue 1240-1303 Italian painter and architect. It represents the last phase of painting and the Italian Romanesque to Gothic painting traffic. His work is distinguished in two styles: a Byzantine influence, with rigid figures. And another remarkable for the realism he gives to his figures. From mid-thirteenth century Gothic art appears. Life returns to town, crafts and trade result a new bourgeoisie. The artist belongs to a guild. It does not always work indoors of churches and monks under the guidance of architects. Now place the orders in his own workshop.