in the ninetieth olympiad lived aglaophon, cephisodorus, erillus, and evenor, the father of parrhasius, one of the greatest of painters, and of whom we shall have to speak when we come to the period at which he flourished. all these were artists of note, but not sufficiently so to detain us by any further details, in our haste to arrive at the luminaries of the art; first among whom shone apollodorus of athens, in the ninety-third olympiad. he was the first to paint objects as they really appeared; the first too, we may justly say, to confer glory by the aid of the pencil.[230] of this artist there is a priest in adoration, and an ajax struck by lightning, a work to be seen at pergamus at the present day: before him, there is no painting of any artist now to be seen which has the power of riveting the eye.
the gates of art being now thrown open by apollodorus, zeuxis of heraclea entered upon the scene, in the fourth year of the ninety-fifth olympiad, destined to lead the pencil, for which there was nothing too arduous, to a very high pitch of glory. of him apollodorus wrote a verse to the effect, that zeuxis had stolen the art from others and had taken it all to himself. zeuxis also acquired such a vast amount of wealth, that, in a spirit of ostentation, he went so far as to parade himself at olympia with his name embroidered on the checked pattern of his garments in letters of gold. at a later period, he came to the determination to give away his works, 297 there being no price high enough to pay for them, he said. he gave an alcmena to the people of agrigentum, and a pan to archelaüs, king of macedonia. he also painted a penelope, in which the peculiar character of that matron appears to be delineated to the very life; and a figure of an athlete, with which he was so highly pleased, that he wrote beneath it the line which has since become so famous, to the effect that it would be easier to find fault with him than to imitate him.[231] his jupiter seated on the throne, with the other deities standing around him, is a magnificent production: as, also, is his infant hercules strangling the dragons, in presence of amphitryon and his mother alcmena, who is struck with horror. still, however, zeuxis is generally censured for making the heads and articulations of his figures out of proportion. and yet, so scrupulously careful was he, that on one occasion, when he was about to execute a painting for the people of agrigentum, to be consecrated in the temple of the lacinian juno there, he had the young maidens of the place stripped for examination, and selected five of them as models, in order to adopt in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each. he also painted some monochromes in white.
the contemporaries and rivals of zeuxis were timanthes, androcydes, eupompus, and parrhasius. the last, it is said, entered into a pictorial contest with zeuxis, who represented some grapes painted so naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. parrhasius, on the other hand, exhibited a curtain, drawn with such singular truthfulness, that zeuxis, elated with the judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside to let the picture be seen. upon finding his mistake, with a great degree of ingenuous candor he admitted that he had been surpassed, for 298 while he himself had only deceived the birds, parrhasius had deceived him, an artist.
there is a story, too, that at a later period, zeuxis painted a child carrying grapes, and the birds came to peck at them: upon which, with a similar degree of candor, he expressed himself vexed with his work, and exclaimed—“i have surely painted the grapes better than the child, for if i had fully succeeded in the latter, the birds would have been in fear of it.” zeuxis executed some figures also in clay, the only works of art that were left behind at ambracia, when fulvius nobilior transported the muses from that city to rome. there is at rome a helena by zeuxis, in the porticos of philippus, and a marsyas bound, in the temple of concord there.
parrhasius of ephesus also contributed greatly to the progress of painting, being the first to give symmetry to his figures, the first to give play and expression to the features, elegance to the hair, and gracefulness to the mouth: indeed, for contour, it is universally admitted by artists that he bore away the palm. this, in painting, is the very highest point of skill. to paint substantial bodies and the interior of objects is a great thing, no doubt, but at the same time it is a point in which many have excelled: but to make the extreme outline of the figure, to give the finishing touches to the painting in rounding off the contour, this is a point of success in the art which is but rarely attained. for the extreme outline, to be properly executed, requires to be nicely rounded, and so to terminate as to prove the existence of something more behind it, and thereby disclose that which it also serves to hide.
such is the merit conceded to parrhasius by antigonus and xenocrates, who have written on the art of painting; and in this as well as in other points, not only do they admit his excellence, but enlarge upon it in terms of the highest commendation. there are many pen sketches by him still in 299 existence, both upon panel and on parchment, from the study of which, even artists may greatly profit.
in his allegorical picture of the people of athens, he has displayed singular ingenuity in the treatment of his subjects; for in representing it, he had to depict it as at once fickle, choleric, unjust, and versatile; while, again, he had equally to show its attributes of implacability and clemency, compassionateness and pride, loftiness and humility, fierceness and timidity—and all these at once. he painted a theseus also, which was formerly in the capitol at rome, a naval commander wearing a cuirass, and, in one picture, now at rhodes, figures of meleager, hercules, and perseus. this last painting, though it has been thrice struck by lightning, has escaped being effaced, a circumstance which tends to augment the admiration which it naturally excites. he painted an archigallus[232] also, a picture which the emperor tiberius greatly admired. according to deculo, that prince had it shut up in his chamber, the price at which it was valued being six hundred thousand sesterces.
parrhasius also painted a thracian nurse, with an infant in her arms, a philiscus, a father liber attended by virtue, two children, in which we see portrayed the careless simplicity of childhood, and a priest attended by a boy, with a censer and chaplet. there are also two most noble pictures by him; one of which represents a runner contending for the prize, completely armed, so naturally depicted that he appears covered with perspiration. in the other we see the runner taking off his armor, and can fancy that we hear him panting aloud for breath. his ?neas, castor, and pollux, all represented in the same picture, are highly praised, as well as his telephus, achilles, agamemnon, and ulysses.
parrhasius was a most prolific artist, but at the same time there was no one who enjoyed the glory conferred upon him by his talent with greater arrogance. he went so far as 300 to call himself “habrodi?tus” (liver-in-luxury), and the “prince of painters,” and asserted that in him the art had arrived at perfection. he boasted that he had sprung from the lineage of apollo, and that he had painted his hercules, a picture now at lindos, just as he had often seen him in his sleep. upon being defeated by timanthes, at samos, by a great majority of votes, the subject of the picture being ajax and the award of the arms,[233] he declared in the name of his hero, that he felt himself quite disgraced on thus seeing himself a second time defeated by an unworthy opponent.
as to timanthes, he was an artist highly gifted with genius, and loud have some of the orators been in their commendations of his iphigenia, represented as she stands at the altar awaiting her doom. upon the countenance of all present, that of her uncle menelaus in particular, grief was depicted; but having already exhausted all the characteristic features of sorrow, the artist adopted the device of veiling the features of the victim’s father, agamemnon, finding himself unable adequately to give expression to his feelings. there are also some other proofs of his genius, a sleeping cyclops, for instance, which he has painted upon a small panel; but, being desirous to convey an idea of his gigantic stature, he has painted some satyrs near him measuring his thumb with a thyrsus. indeed, timanthes is the only one among the artists in whose works there is always something more implied by the pencil than is expressed, and whose execution, though of the very highest quality, is always surpassed by the inventiveness of his genius. he painted the figure of a hero, a master-piece of skill, in which he carried the art to the very highest pitch of perfection, in the delineation of the warrior: this work is now at rome, in the temple of peace.
at this period, too, euxinidas had for his pupil aristides, who became a most illustrious artist; and eupompus instructed pamphilus, who afterwards became the instructor of 301 apelles. there is by eupompus, a victor in a gymnastic contest, holding a palm. so high was the reputation of this artist, that he established a school of painting, and so divided the art into three styles; whereas till then there had been but two, known respectively as the helladic and the asiatic. in honor of him, a native of sicyon by birth, the helladic school was divided into two, and from this period there were three distinct styles recognized, the ionic, the sicyonian, and the attic.
we have, by pamphilus, a picture representing the alliance and the battle that was fought at phlius; a victory also and a representation of ulysses in his ship. he was a macedonian by birth, but was the first painter who was also skilled in all the other sciences, arithmetic and geometry more particularly, without the aid of which he maintained that the pictorial art could not attain perfection. he gave instruction to no one for a smaller sum than one talent, at the rate of five hundred denarii per annum,[234] and this fee both apelles and melanthius paid. it was through his influence that, first at sicyon, and then throughout the whole of greece, all children of free birth were taught the graphic art, or in other words, the art of drawing upon boxwood; in consequence of which this came to be looked upon as the first step in the liberal arts. it is the fact, however, that this art has always been held in high estimation, and cultivated by persons of free birth, and that, at a more recent period, men of rank even began to pursue it; it having always been forbidden that slaves should receive instruction in it. hence no celebrated work of painting or drawing has been executed by a slave.
in the hundred and seventh olympiad, flourished a?tion and therimachus. by the former we have some fine pictures; a father liber, tragedy and comedy, semiramis from 302 the rank of a slave elevated to the throne, an old woman bearing torches, and a new-made bride, remarkable for the air of modesty with which she is portrayed.
but it was apelles of cos, in the hundred and twelfth olympiad, who surpassed all the other painters who either preceded or succeeded him. single-handed, he contributed more to painting than all the others together, and even went so far as to publish some treatises on the principles of the art. the great point of artistic merit with him was his singular charm of gracefulness, and this too, though the greatest of painters were his contemporaries. in admiring their works and bestowing high eulogiums upon them, he used to say that there was still wanting in them that ideal of beauty so peculiar to himself, and known to the greeks as “charis;” others, he said, had acquired all the other requisites of perfection, but in this one point he himself had no equal. he also asserted his claim to another great point of merit: admiring a picture by protogenes, which bore evident marks of unbounded laboriousness and the most minute finish, he remarked that in every respect protogenes was fully his equal, or perhaps his superior, except in this, that he himself knew when to take his hand off a picture—a memorable lesson, which teaches us that over-carefulness may be productive of bad results. his candor was equal to his talent; he acknowledged the superiority of melanthius in his grouping, and of asclepiodorus in the niceness of his measurements, or, in other words, the distances that ought to be left between the objects represented.
a circumstance that happened to him in connection with protogenes is worthy of notice. the latter was living at rhodes, when apelles disembarked there, desirous of seeing the works of a man whom he had hitherto only known by reputation. he repaired at once to the studio; protogenes was not at home, but there happened to be a large panel upon the easel ready for painting, with an old woman who 303 was left in charge. to his inquiries she made answer, that protogenes was not at home, and then asked whom she should name as the visitor. “here he is,” was the reply of apelles, and seizing a brush, he traced with color upon the panel an outline of a singularly minute fineness. upon his return, the old woman mentioned to protogenes what had happened. the artist, it is said, upon remarking the delicacy of the touch, instantly exclaimed that apelles must have been the visitor, for that no other person was capable of executing anything so exquisitely perfect. so saying, he traced within the same outline a still finer outline, but with another color, and then took his departure, with instructions to the woman to show it to the stranger, if he returned, and to let him know that this was the person whom he had come to see. it happened as he anticipated; apelles returned, and vexed at finding himself thus surpassed, took up another color and split[235] both of the outlines, leaving no possibility of anything finer being executed. upon seeing this, protogenes admitted that he was defeated, and at once flew to the harbor to look for his guest. he thought proper to transmit the panel to posterity, just as it was, and it always continued to be held in the highest admiration by all, artists in particular. i am told that it was burnt in the first fire which took place at c?sar’s palace on the palatine hill; but in former times i have often stopped to admire it. upon its vast surface it contained nothing whatever except the three outlines, so remarkably fine as to escape the sight: among the most elaborate works of numerous other artists it had all the appearance of a blank space; and yet by that very fact it attracted the notice of every one, and was held in higher estimation than any other painting there.
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it was a custom with apelles, to which he most tenaciously adhered, never to let any day pass, however busy he might be, without exercising himself by tracing some outline or other; a practice which has now passed into a proverb.[236] it was also a practice with him, when he had completed a work, to exhibit it to the view of the passers-by in some exposed place; while he himself, concealed behind the picture, would listen to the criticisms that were passed upon it; it being his opinion that the judgment of the public was preferable to his own, as being the more discerning of the two. it was under these circumstances, they say, that he was censured by a shoemaker for having represented the shoes with one shoe-string too little. the next day, the shoemaker, quite proud at seeing the former error corrected, thanks to his advice, began to criticise the leg; upon which apelles, full of indignation, popped his head out, and reminded him that a shoemaker should give no opinion beyond the shoes, a piece of advice which has passed into an equally proverbial saying.[237] apelles was a person of great amenity of manners, a circumstance which rendered him particularly agreeable to alexander the great, who would often come to his studio. the monarch had forbidden, by public edict, that any other artist should represent him. on one occasion, however, when the prince was in his studio, talking a great deal about painting without knowing anything about it, apelles quietly begged that he would quit the subject, telling him that he would get laughed at by the boys who were there grinding the colors: so great was the influence which he rightfully possessed over a monarch, who was otherwise of an irascible temperament. and yet, irascible as he was, alexander conferred upon him a very signal mark of the high estimation in which he held 305 him; for having, in his admiration of her extraordinary beauty, engaged apelles to paint pancaste undraped, the most beloved of his wives, the artist, while so engaged, fell in love with her; upon which, alexander, perceiving this to be the case, made him a present of her, thus showing himself, though a great king in courage, a still greater one in self-command, this action redounding no less to his honor than any of his victories. some are of opinion that pancaste was the model of apelles in his painting of venus rising from the waters.
it was apelles too, who, courteous even to his rivals, first established the reputation of protogenes at rhodes. held as he was in little estimation by his own fellow-countrymen, a thing that generally[238] is the case, apelles inquired of him what price he set upon certain finished works of his, which he had on hand. upon protogenes mentioning some very trifling sum or other, apelles made him an offer of fifty talents, and then circulated a report that he was buying these works in order to sell them as his own. by this contrivance, he aroused the rhodians to a better appreciation of the merits of their artist, and only consented to leave the pictures with them upon their offering a still larger price.
he painted portraits, too, so exactly to the life, that a fact with which we are made acquainted by the writings of apion the grammarian seems altogether incredible. one of those persons, he says, who divine events by the traits of the features, and are known as physiognomists, was enabled, by an examination of his portraits, to tell the year of their death, whether past or future, of each person represented. apelles had been on bad terms with ptolem?us in former times, when they formed part of the suite of alexander. after ptolem?us had become king of egypt, it so happened that apelles was driven by the violence of a tempest to alexandria. upon 306 this, some of his rivals fraudulently suborned a jester, who was attached to the court, to carry him an invitation to dine with the king. accordingly, apelles attended; upon which ptolem?us was highly indignant, and, summoning before him his stewards of the household, requested that the artist would point out the one that had given him the invitation. thus challenged, apelles seized a piece of quenched charcoal that lay in the fire-place, and traced a likeness upon the wall, with such exactness, that the king, the moment he began it, recognized the features as those of the jester.
he also made a portrait of king antigonus; and as that monarch was blind of one eye, he painted him in profile, in order that what in reality was wanting to the person might rather have the semblance of being wanting to the picture. among his works, too, there are some figures representing persons at the point of death; but it is not easy to say which of his productions are of the highest order of excellence. his venus rising from the sea, known as the venus anadyomene, was consecrated by the late emperor augustus in the temple of his father c?sar; a work which has been celebrated in certain greek lines, which, though they have outlived it, have perpetuated its fame. the lower part of the picture having become damaged, no one could be found to repair it; and thus did the very injury which the picture had sustained, redound to the glory of the artist. time, however, and damp at last effaced the painting, and nero, in his reign, had it replaced by a copy, painted by the hand of dorotheus. apelles also commenced another venus for the people of cos, which would have outshone even the former one; but death invidiously prevented its completion, nor could any one be found to complete the work in conformity with the sketches of the outline. he painted also, in the temple of diana at ephesus, alexander the great wielding the thunderbolts, a picture for which he received twenty talents of gold. the fingers have all the appearance 307 of projecting from the surface, and the lightning seems to be darting from the picture. the price paid in golden coin for this picture was ascertained by weight, there being no specific sum agreed upon.
he also painted a procession of the megabyzus, the priest of diana at ephesus; and a clitus on horseback, hastening to the combat, his armor-bearer handing him his helmet at his command. how many times he painted alexander and philip, it would be quite superfluous to attempt to enumerate. at samos, there is a habron by him, that is greatly admired; at alexandria, a gorgosthenes, the tragedian; and at rome, a castor and pollux, with figures of victory and alexander the great, and an emblematical figure of war with her hands tied behind her, and alexander seated in a triumphal car; both of which pictures the late emperor augustus, with a great degree of moderation and good taste, consecrated in the most frequented parts of his forum: the emperor claudius, however, thought it advisable to efface the head of alexander in both pictures, and substitute likenesses of his predecessor augustus. it is by his hand too, it is generally supposed, that the hercules, with the face averted, now in the temple of anna, was painted; a picture in which, one of the greatest difficulties in the art, the face, though hidden, may be said to be seen rather than left to the imagination. he also painted a figure of a naked hero, a picture in which he has challenged nature herself.
there exists too, or did exist, a horse that was painted by him for a pictorial contest; as to the merits of which, apelles appealed from the judgment of his fellow-men to that of the dumb quadrupeds. for, finding that by their intrigues his rivals were likely to get the better of him, he had some horses brought, and the picture of each artist successively shown to them. only at the sight of the horse painted by apelles did they begin to neigh; a thing that has always been the case since, whenever this test of his artistic skill has been employed. 308 he also painted a neoptolemus on horse-back, fighting with the persians; an archel?us, with his wife and daughter; and an antigonus on foot, with a cuirass on, and his horse led by his side. connoisseurs in the art give the preference, before all other works of his, to his paintings of king archel?us on horseback, and of diana in the midst of a throng of virgins performing a sacrifice; a work in which he would appear to have surpassed the lines[239] of homer descriptive of the same subject. he also essayed some things, which in reality do not admit of being portrayed—thunder, lightning, and thunderbolts, in pictures which are known by the respective names of bronte, astrape, and ceraunobolia.
his inventions, too, in the art of painting, have been highly serviceable to others; but one thing there was in which no one could imitate him. when his works were finished, he used to cover them with a black varnish, of such remarkable thinness, that while it gave more vivacity to the colors, and preserved them from the contact of dust and dirt, its existence could only be detected when one was close enough to touch it.[240] the brightness of the colors was softened and harmonized to the sight, as though they had been viewed from a distance, and through a medium of specular-stone, the contrivance, by some indescribable means, giving a sombreness to colors which would otherwise have been too florid.
one of the contemporaries of apelles was aristides of thebes; the first of all the painters to give full expression to the mind and passions of man, known to the greeks as ηθη. he painted a battle with the persians, a picture which contained one hundred figures, for each of which he was paid at the rate of ten min? by mnason, the tyrant of elatea. he 309 also painted chariots with four horses in full career; a suppliant, which almost speaks; huntsmen with game; and a damsel pining to death from love for her brother. there was also to be seen, in the temple of faith, in the capitol, a picture of his, representing an aged man giving instructions to a child on the lyre. he executed also a painting of an invalid, upon which endless encomiums have been lavished. indeed, so great was the excellence of this artist, that king attalus is said to have purchased one picture of his at the price of one hundred thousand dollars.
at the same period flourished protogenes, native of caunus, a place held in subjection by the rhodians. great poverty in his early days, and extreme application to his art, were the causes of his comparative unproductiveness. it is not known with certainty from whom he received his instruction in the art: indeed some say that he was only a ship-decorator down to his fiftieth year; a proof of which, it is asserted, is the fact, that in decorating the propyl?um of the temple of minerva, situated in one of the most celebrated spots in athens, where he has painted the fine picture of paralus and hammonias, known by some as the nausicaa, he has added in the side pieces of the picture, by painters called “parerga,” several small ships of war; wishing thereby to show in what department that skill had first manifested itself which had thus reached the citadel of athens, the scene of his glory. of all his compositions, however, the palm has been awarded to his ialysus, grandson of apollo, now at rome, consecrated in the temple of peace. so long as he was at work upon it, he lived upon nothing but soaked lupines; by which means he at once appeased both hunger and thirst, and avoided all risk of blunting his perception by too delicate a diet. in order to protect this picture against the effects of ill-usage and old age, he painted it over four times, so that when an upper coat might fail, there would be an under one to succeed it. there is in this picture the figure 310 of a dog, which was completed in a very remarkable manner, inasmuch as accident had an equal share with design in the execution of it. the painter was of opinion that he had not given the proper expression to the foam at the mouth of the animal, panting for breath, as it was represented; while, with all other parts of the picture he was perfectly satisfied, a thing extremely unusual with him. the thing that displeased him was, the evident traces of art in the execution of it, touches which did not admit of any diminution, and yet had all the appearance of being too labored, the effect produced being far removed from his conception of the reality—the foam bore the marks of being painted, and not natural. vexed and tormented by this dilemma, it being his wish to depict truth itself, and not something that only bore a semblance of truth, he effaced it again and again, changed one brush for another, and yet by no possibility could satisfy himself. at last, quite out of temper with an art, which, in spite of him, would still obtrude itself, he dashed his sponge against the vexatious spot; when behold! the sponge replaced the colors that it had just removed, exactly in accordance with his utmost wishes. thus did chance reproduce nature in a painting.
following his example, nealces succeeded in representing the foam at a horse’s mouth; for on one occasion, when engaged in painting a man holding in a pair of horses and soothing them with his voice, he also dashed his sponge against the picture, with the view of producing a like effect.
on account of this ialysus, which he was apprehensive of destroying, king demetrius forbore to set fire to the only side of the city of rhodes by which it was capable of being taken; and thus, in his anxiety to spare a picture, did he lose his only opportunity of gaining a victory. the dwelling of protogenes was in a little garden in the suburbs in the midst of the camp of demetrius. the combats that were taking place made no difference whatever to the artist, and in no 311 way interrupted his proceeding with the work which he had commenced. at last he was summoned before the king, who inquired how he could have the assurance thus to remain without the walls. “because i know,” was his answer, “that you are waging war with the rhodians, and not with the arts.” upon this, the king, delighted at having the opportunity of protecting the hand which he had thus spared, ordered a guard to be placed at his disposal for the especial purpose of his protection. in order, too, that he might not distract the artist’s attention by sending for him too often, he would often go, an enemy albeit, to pay him a visit, and, abandoning his aspirations for victory, in the midst of arms and the battering down of walls, would attentively examine the compositions of the painter. even to this day, the story is still attached to the picture which he was then engaged upon, to the effect, that “protogenes painted it beneath the sword.”
protogenes executed also a cydippe; a portrait of philiscus, the tragic poet, in an attitude of meditation: an athlete; a portrait of king antigonus, and one of ph?stis, the mother of aristotle.
