Western Art History (Theory)

This paper of Western art is the art of European Countries, and works created in the high art forms accepted by those countries. The art of Ancient Egypt represented the dominant high culture in the Mediterranean and exerted a strong influence on Minoan art. Egypt was a civilization with very strong traditions of architecture and sculpture (both originally painted in bright colours) also had many mural paintings in temples and buildings, and painted illustrations on papyrus manuscripts. Egyptian wall painting and decorative painting is often graphic, sometimes more symbolic than realistic. Around 1100 B.C., tribes from the north of Greece conquered Greece and the Greek art took a new direction. Ancient Greece had great painters, great sculptors, and great architects. Roman art was influenced by Greece and can in part be taken as a descendant of ancient Greek painting and sculpture, but was also strongly influenced by the more local Etruscan art of Italy. The other major influence upon Western art has been Christianity, the commissions of the Church, architectural, painterly and sculptural, providing the major source of work for artists.