[Illustration: FIG. 10.--CYPRIOTE VASE DECORATION. (FROM PERROT AND CHIPIEZ.)] As for painting, there was undoubtedly figured decoration upon walls of stone and plaster, but there is not enough left to us from all the small nations like Phoenicia, Judea, Cyprus, and the kingdoms of Asia Minor, put together, to patch up a disjointed history. The first lands to meet the spoiler, their very ruins have perished. All that there is of painting comes to us in broken potteries and color traces on statuary. The remains of sculpture and architecture are of course better preserved. None of this intermediate art holds much rank by virtue of its inherent worth. It is its influence upon the West--the ideas, subjects, and methods it imparted to the Greeks--that gives it importance in art history. ART REMAINS: In painting chiefly the vases in the Metropolitan Museum, New York, the Louvre, British and Berlin Museums. These give a poor and incomplete idea of the painting in Asia Minor, Phoenicia and her colonies. The terra-cottas, figurines in bronze, and sculptures can be studied to more advantage. The best collection of Cypriote antiquities is in the Metropolitan Museum, New York. A new collection of Judaic art has been recently opened in the Louvre. CHAPTER III. GREEK PAINTING. BOOKS RECOMMENDED: Baumeister, _Denkmaeler des klassischen Altertums_--article "_Malerei_;" Birch, _History of Ancient Pottery_; Brunn, _Geschichte der griechischen Kuenstler_; Collignon, _Mythologie figuree de la Grece_; Collignon, _Manuel d'Archaeologie Grecque_; Cros et Henry, _L'Encaustique et les autres procedes de Peinture chez les Anciens_; Girard, _La Peinture Antique_; Murray, _Handbook of Greek Archaeology_; Overbeck, _Antiken Schriftquellen zur geschichte der bildenen Kunste bie den Griechen_; Perrot and Chipiez, _History of Art in Greece_; Woerman, _Die Landschaft in der Kunst der antiken Volker_; _see also books on Etruscan and Roman painting_. GREECE AND THE GREEKS: The origin of the Greek race is not positively known. It is reasonably supposed that the early settlers in Greece came from the region of Asia Minor, either across the Hellespont or the sea, and populated the Greek islands and the mainland. When this was done has been matter of much conjecture. The early history is lost, but art remains show that in the period before Homer the Greeks were an established race with habits and customs distinctly individual. Egyptian and Asiatic influences are apparent in their art at this early time, but there is, nevertheless, the mark of a race peculiarly apart from all the races of the older world.