The history of painting is a never-ending chain that began with the very first pictures ever made. Each style grows out of the styles that came before it. Every great artist adds to the accomplishments of earlier painters and influence later painters.
 
We can enjoy a painting for its beauty alone. Its lines, forms, colors, and composition (arrangement of parts) may appeal to our senses and linger in our memories. But enjoyment of art increases as we learn when and why and how it was created.
 
A painting always describes something. It may describe the artist’s impression of a scene or person. It also describes the artist’s feelings about the art of painting itself. Suppose, for example, the artist paints a picture of the birth of Venus, the Roman goddess of love—a subject that has been used many times. The viewer may not learn anything new about the subject from the more recent version that could not have been learned from the older one. Why, then, do painters bother to depict the same scene again? The answer is the way they want to tell us something new about the way the scene can be painted.
 
In a way, the artist is saying, “I have painted the birth of Venus as no other artist before me has painted it.” The artist not only depicts the birth of Venus but also makes a statement about the art of painting itself.
 
Many factors have influenced the history of painting. Geography, religion, national characteristics, historic events, the developments of new materials—all help to shape the artist’s vision. Throughout history, painting has mirrored the changing world and our ideas about it. in turn, artists have provided some of the best records of the development of civilization, sometimes revealing more than the written word.
 
Italian painters at the close of the 13th century were still working in the Byzantine style. Human figures were made to appear flat and decorative. faces rarely had any expression. Bodies were weightless and seemed to float rather than stand firmly on the ground.

In Florence, the painter Cimabue (1240-1302) tried to modernize some of the Byzantine methods. The angels in his Madonna Enthroned are more active than is usual in paintings of that time. Their gestures and faces show a little more human feeling. Cimabue added a new sense of monumentality, or largeness, to his paintings. However, he continued to follow many Byzantine traditions, such as the gold background and patternlike arrangement of objects and figures.