So does this date back to Rome? We see all those fancy painted walls in Pompeii.

No, I don't think that the Roman painters intended to deceive anyone. The paintings weren't "realistic" or "photographic" enough. I think that they're just another example of the famous Roman lack of originality in anything except military and governmental innovations (and even those were more evolution than revolution). The artists painted what they "saw". They borrowed most of their artistic devices from the Greeks (along with literary styles and a fair chunk of the language).

Even then, it could be argued that Greek sculpture showed more flair than the Roman. Roman sculpture tended to be painfully life-like and stiff; I don't know about you, but Greek sculpture to me always seems to flow by comparison! And I also remember reading, yonks ago, that most of the "Roman" sculptors were actually Greek artisans and/or slaves. How true this is I couldn't say.

Although the Romans whupped the Greeks and took over their country, you can't help feeling that the Greeks were laughing at the Romans behind their backs ...



The idiot also known as Capfka ...