Painting is a very prominent part of art and a very complex and modern style of art that has changed over many years.
The world went from da Vinci's painting in the 16th century to Picasso's Cubism and Kandinsky's abstract art in the 20th century. Painting is a significant part of world history and the cultures that have dominated the world.
From the Renaissance to Contemporary art, painting has always been important to societies, even ancient civilizations.
Ancient Rome
Painting did exist in the Roman Empire. The Roman Empire was quite an advanced civilization when it lived, so their arts and crafts were not all that primitive.
The Romans mostly used plaster to paint and decorate the walls and surfaces in buildings (including religious ones) and on just many wooden surfaces.
The Ancient Greeks, Etruscans, and Egyptians were the source of the style and culture of painting that was taken and used. Many frescoes (mural paintings placed on lime plaster) have been physically found in the land around the Bay of Naples known as Campania.
Artists executed these works in the common themes of religious subjects, still life, animal and human events, and topics based on Roman mythology with materials like plaster and wooden surfaces to paint on, using animal glue, gum, wax, and ground pigments.
There are numerous amount of paintings from the Catacombs of Rome, beginning in the third century AD and ending around 400, showing the later prolongation of the domestic decorative tradition in a version modified for use in burial chambers in what was quite a modest social environment than the biggest houses in Pompeii. Painted plastered murals have also survived mainly from places like Pompeii and Rome.
In Roman Egypt, there are a large number of what are known as Fayum mummy portraits, bust portraits on wood added to the outside of mummies by a Romanized middle class; despite their very distinct local character, they are probably broadly representative of Roman style in painted portraits, which are otherwise entirely lost.
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