During the
period three and four hundred years B.C.
"Greek art was almost entirely devoted to civic and religious
purposes. The Greeks did not deify or attribute especial glory to a
monarch, nor did they experience the herd instinct of a mass of
subject people... In the civic field it was manifested through the
collective activities of free men in the service of the community;
in the religious field... on a human scale. In Greek art the gods,
far from removing themselves to some remote heaven, took part in the
human world, with the form, the dress and the behaviour of men, so
that the noble beauty of the human form became the most convincing
image of the idea of the divine principle." (187)
Around the time of the birth of Christ, Roman art catered to the
needs of the `masses', building huge forums, public baths, theatres
and circuses. Although the Romans considered grandiosity as a symbol
of power they were more practical in their use of art. (188)
Later, in the sixteen hundreds A.D. "Rembrandt Van Rijn was the
most profound portraitists of protestant humanism. The portraits and
self-portraits, the scenes from the Bible and from everyday life,
the broad landscapes and the meditative studies are the products of
an endless enquiry into every aspect of man and his existence."
(189) Rembrandt's painting `Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp' shows a
dissection, one of the first showing human anatomy. (190)
In the eighteen hundreds A.D., "Daumier attacked the world of
judges, lawyers... that alarming pomp which calls itself `justice'.
The same kind of satire appeared, too, in the plebeian humour with
which he captured the common people of Paris in their daily life,
with its suffering, its vices, its pleasures." (191)
At the same time as Daumier, Millet painted the peasants in the
fields, (192) and was an influence on one of the greatest painters
of the everyday people, Vincent Van Gogh. With painters such as
Degas, Monet, Toulouse Lautrec, Renoir, and Gauguin, the ordinary
person would forever more be subjects for the contemporary palette.
187. Gina Pischel, A World History of Art, (New York, Golden Press,
1968), p. 88
188. ibid., p. 122
189. ibid., p. 521
190. ibid., p. 523
191. ibid., p. 606, 607
192. ibid., p. 608
