GREEK PAINTING.
The art of painting was in as high esteem in Greece as the art of
sculpture and, if we may believe the testimony of Greek and Roman
writers, achieved results as important and admirable. But the
works of the great Greek painters have utterly perished, and
imagination, though guided by ancient descriptions and by such
painted designs as have come down to us, can restore them but
dimly and doubtfully. The subject may therefore here be dismissed
with comparative brevity.
In default of pictures by the great Greek masters, an especial
interest attaches to the work of humbler craftsmen of the brush.
One class of such work exists in abundance--the painted
decorations upon earthenware vases. Tens of thousands of these
vases have been brought to light from tombs and sanctuaries on
Greek and Italian sites and the number is constantly increasing.
Thanks to the indestructible character of pottery, the designs are
often intact. Now the materials and methods employed by the vase-
painters and the spaces at their disposal were very different from
those of mural or easel paintings. Consequently inferences must
not be hastily drawn from designs upon vases as to the composition
and coloring of the great masterpieces. But the best of the vase-
painters, especially in the early fifth century, were men of
remarkable talent, and all of them were influenced by the general
artistic tendencies of their respective periods. Their work,
therefore, contributes an important element to our knowledge of
Greek art history.
Having touched in Chapter II. upon the earlier styles of Greek
pottery, I begin here with a vase of Attic manufacture, decorated,
as an inscription on it shows, by Clitias, but commonly called
from its finder the Francois vase (Fig. 188). It may be assigned
to the first half of the sixth century, and probably to somewhere
near the beginning of that period. It is an early specimen of the
class of black-figured vases, as they are called. The propriety of
the name is obvious from the illustration. The objects represented
were painted in black varnish upon the reddish clay, and the vase
was then fired. Subsequently anatomical details, patterns of
garments, and so on were indicated by means of lines cut through
the varnish with a sharp instrument. Moreover, the exposed parts
of the female figures--faces, hands, arms, and feet--were covered
with white paint, this being the regular method in the black-
figured style of distinguishing the flesh of female from that of
male figures.
The decoration of the Francois vase is arranged in horizontal
bands or zones. The subjects are almost wholly legendary and the
vase is therefore a perfect mine of information for the student of
Greek mythology. Our present interest, however, is rather in the
character of the drawing. This may be better judged from Fig. 189,
which is taken from the zone encircling the middle of the vase.
The subject is the wedding of the mortal, Peleus, to the sea-
goddess, Thetis, the wedding whose issue was Achilles, the great
hero of the Iliad. To this ceremony came gods and goddesses and
other supernatural beings. Our illustration shows Dionysus
(Bacchus), god of wine, with a wine-jar on his shoulder and what
is meant for a vine-branch above him. Behind him walk three female
figures, who are the personified Seasons. Last comes a group
consisting of two Muses and a four-horse chariot bearing Zeus, the
chief of the gods, and Hera, his wife. The principle of isocephaly
is observed on the vase as in a frieze of relief-sculpture (page
145). The figures are almost all drawn in profile, though the body
is often shown more nearly from the front, e.g., in the case of
the Seasons, and the eyes are always drawn as in front view. Out
of the great multitude of figures on the vase there are only four
in which the artist has shown the full face. Two of these are
intentionally ugly Gorgons on the handles; the two others come
within the limits of our specimen illustration. If Dionysus here
appears almost like a caricature, that is only because the
decorator is so little accustomed to drawing the face in front
view. There are other interesting analogies between the designs on
the vase and contemporary reliefs. For example, the bodies, when
not disguised by garments, show an unnatural smallness at the
waist, the feet of walking figures are planted flat on the ground,
and there are cases in which the body and neck are so twisted that
the face is turned in exactly the opposite direction to the feet.
On the whole, Clitias shows rather more skill than a contemporary
sculptor, probably because of the two arts that of the vase-
painter had been the longer cultivated.
The black-figured ware continued to be produced in Attica through
the sixth century and on into the fifth. Fig. 190 gives a specimen
of the work of an interesting vase-painter in this style, Execias
by name, who probably belongs about the middle of the sixth
century. The subject is Achilles slaying in battle the Amazon
queen, Penthesilea. The drawing of Execias is distinguished by an
altogether unusual care and minuteness of detail, and if the whole
body of his work, as known to us from several signed vases, could
be here presented, it would be easily seen that his proficiency
was well in advance of that of Clitias. Obvious archaisms,
however, remain. Especially noticeable is the unnatural twisting
of the bodies. A minor point of interest is afforded by the
Amazon's shield, which the artist has not succeeded in rendering
truthfully in side view. That is a rather difficult problem in
perspective, which was not solved until after many experiments.
Some time before the end of the sixth century, perhaps as early as
540, a new method of decorating pottery was invented in Attica.
The principal coloring matter used continued to be the lustrous
black varnish; but instead of filling in the outlines of the
figures with black, the decorator, after outlining the figures by
means of a broad stroke of the brush, covered with black the
spaces between the figures, leaving the figures themselves in the
color of the clay. Vases thus decorated are called "red-figured."
In this style incised lines ceased to be used, and details were
rendered chiefly by means of the black varnish or, for certain
purposes, of the same material diluted till it became of a reddish
hue. The red-figured and black-figured styles coexisted for
perhaps half a century, but the new style ultimately drove the old
one out of the market.
The development of the new style was achieved by men of talent,
several of whom fairly deserve to be called artists. Such an one
was Euphronius, whose long career as a potter covered some fifty
years, beginning at the beginning of the fifth century or a little
earlier. Fig. 191 gives the design upon the outside of a cylix (a
broad, shallow cup, shaped like a large saucer, with two handles
and a foot), which bears his signature. Its date is about 480, and
it is thus approximately contemporary with the latest of the
archaic statues of the Athenian Acropolis (pages 151 f.). On one
side we have one of the old stock subjects of the vase-painters,
treated with unapproached vivacity and humor. Among the labors of
Heracles, imposed upon him by his taskmaster, Eurystheus, was the
capturing of a certain destructive wild boar of Arcadia and the
bringing of the creature alive to Mycenae. In the picture,
Heracles is returning with the squealing boar on his shoulder. The
cowardly Eurystheus has taken refuge in a huge earthenware jar
sunk in the ground, but Heracles, pretending to be unaware of this
fact, makes as though he would deposit his burden in the jar. The
agitated man and woman to the right are probably the father and
mother of Eurystheus. The scene on the other side of the cylix is
supposed to illustrate an incident of the Trojan War: two
warriors, starting out on an expedition, are met and stopped by
the god Hermes. In each design the workmanship, which was
necessarily rapid, is marvelously precise and firm, and the
attitudes are varied and telling. Euphronius belonged to a
generation which was making great progress in the knowledge of
anatomy and in the ability to pose figures naturally and
expressively. It is interesting to note how close is the
similarity in the method of treating drapery between the vases of
this period and contemporary sculpture.
The cylix shown in Fig. 192 is somewhat later, dating from about
460. The technique is here different from that just described,
inasmuch as the design is painted in reddish brown upon a white
ground. The subject is the goddess Aphrodite, riding upon a goose.
The painter, some unnamed younger contemporary of Euphronius, has
learned a freer manner of drawing. He gives to the eye in profile
its proper form, and to the drapery a simple and natural fall. The
subject does not call, like the last, for dramatic vigor, and the
preeminent quality of the work is an exquisite purity and
refinement of spirit.
If we turn now from the humble art of vase-decoration to painting
in the higher sense of the term, the first eminent name to meet us
is that of Polygnotus, who was born on the island of Thasos near
the Thracian coast. His artistic career, or at least the later
part of it, fell in the "Transitional period" (480-450 B.C.), so
that he was a contemporary of the great sculptor Myron. He came to
Athens at some unknown date after the Persian invasion of Greece
(480 B.C.) and there executed a number of important paintings. In
fact, he is said to have received Athenian citizenship. He worked
also at Delphi and at other places, after the ordinary manner of
artists.
Painting in this period, as practiced by Polygnotus and other
great artists, was chiefly mural; the painting of easel pictures
seems to have been of quite secondary consequence. Thus the most
famous works of Polygnotus adorned the inner faces of the walls of
temples and stoas. The subjects of these great mural paintings
were chiefly mythological. For example, the two compositions of
Polygnotus at Delphi, of which we possess an extremely detailed
account in the pages of Pausanias, depicted the sack of Troy and
the descent of Odysseus into Hades. But it is worth remarking, in
view of the extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief-
sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens,
alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks
and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical
scenes, a Battle of Marathon and a Battle of OEnoe. In fact,
historical battle-pieces were not rare among the Greeks at any
period.
As regards the style of Polygnotus we can glean a few interesting
facts from our ancient authorities. His figures were not ranged on
a single line, as in contemporary bas-reliefs, but were placed at
varying heights, so as to produce a somewhat complex composition.
His palette contained only four colors, black, white, yellow, and
red, but by mixing these he was enabled to secure a somewhat
greater variety. He laid his colors on in "flat" tints, just as
the Egyptian decorators did, making no attempt to render the
gradations of color due to varying light and shade. His pictures
were therefore rather colored drawings than genuine paintings, in
our sense of the term. He often inscribed beside his figures their
names, according to a common practice of the time. Yet this must
not be taken as implying that he was unable to characterize his
figures by purely artistic means. On the contrary, Polygnotus was
preeminently skilled in expressing character, and it is recorded
that he drew the face with a freedom which archaic art had not
attained. In all probability his pictures are not to be thought of
as having any depth of perspective; that is to say, although he
did not fail to suggest the nature of the ground on which his
figures stood and the objects adjacent to them, it is not likely
that he represented his figures at varying distances from the
spectator or gave them a regular background.
It is clear that Polygnotus was gifted with artistic genius of the
first rank and that he exercised a powerful influence upon
contemporaries and successors. Yet, alas! in spite of all research
and speculation, our knowledge of his work remains very shadowy. A
single drawing from his hand would be worth more than all that has
ever been written about him. But if one would like to dream what
his art was like, one may imagine it as combining with the
dramatic power of Euphronius and the exquisite loveliness of the
Aphrodite cup, Giotto's elevation of feeling and Michael Angelo's
profundity of thought.
Another branch of painting which began to attain importance in the
time of Polygnotus was scene-painting for theatrical performances.
It may be, as has been conjectured, that the impulse toward a
style of work in which a greater degree of illusion was aimed at
and secured came from this branch of the art. We read, at any
rate, that one Agatharchus, a scene-painter who flourished about
the middle of the fifth century, wrote a treatise which stimulated
two philosophers to an investigation of the laws of perspective.
The most important technical advance, however, is attributed to
Apollodorus of Athens, a painter of easel pictures. He departed
from the old method of coloring in flat tints and introduced the
practice of grading colors according to the play of light and
shade. How successfully he managed this innovation we have no
means of knowing; probably very imperfectly. But the step was of
the utmost significance. It meant the abandonment of mere colored
drawing and the creation of the genuine art of painting.
Two artists of the highest distinction now appear upon the scene.
They are Zeuxis and Parrhasius. The rather vague remark of a Roman
writer, that they both lived "about the time of the Peloponnesian
War" (431-404 B.C.) is as definite a statement as can safely be
made about their date. Parrhasius was born at Ephesus, Zeuxis at
some one or other of the numerous cities named Heraclea. Both
traveled freely from place to place, after the usual fashion of
Greek artists, and both naturally made their home for a time in
Athens. Zeuxis availed himself of the innovation of Apollodorus
and probably carried it farther. Indeed, he is credited by one
Roman writer with being the founder of the new method. The
strength of Parrhasius is said to have lain in subtlety of line,
which would suggest that with him, as with Polygnotus, painting
was essentially outline drawing. Yet he too can hardly have
remained unaffected by the new chiaroscuro.
Easel pictures now assumed a relative importance which they had
not had a generation earlier. Some of these were placed in temples
and such conformed in their subjects to the requirements of
religious art, as understood in Greece. But many of the easel
pictures by Zeuxis and his contemporaries can hardly have had any
other destination than the private houses of wealthy connoisseurs.
Moreover, we hear first in this period of mural painting as
applied to domestic interiors. Alcibiades is said to have
imprisoned a reluctant painter, Agatharchus (cf. page 278), in his
house and to have forced him to decorate the walls. The result of
this sort of private demand was what we have seen taking place a
hundred years later in the case of sculpture, viz.: that artists
became free to employ their talents on any subjects which would
gratify the taste of patrons. For example, a painting by Zeuxis of
which Lucian has left us a description illustrates what may be
called mythological genre. It represented a female Centaur giving
suck to two offspring, with the father of the family in the
background, amusing himself by swinging a lion's whelp above his
head to scare his young. This was, no doubt, admirable in its way,
and it would be narrow-minded to disparage it because it did not
stand on the ethical level of Polygnotus's work. But painters did
not always keep within the limits of what is innocent. No longer
restrained by the conditions of monumental and religious art, they
began to pander not merely to what is frivolous, but to what is
vile in human nature. The great Parrhasius is reported by Pliny to
have painted licentious little pictures, "refreshing himself"
(says the writer) by this means after more serious labors. Thus at
the same time that painting was making great technical advances,
its nobility of purpose was on the average declining.
Timanthes seems to have been a younger contemporary of Zeuxis and
Parrhasius. Perhaps his career fell chiefly after 400 B. C. The
painting of his of which we hear the most represented the
sacrifice of Iphigenia at Aulis, The one point about the picture
to which all our accounts refer is the grief exhibited in varying
degrees by the bystanders. The countenance of Calchas was
sorrowful; that of Ulysses still more so; that of Menelaus
displayed an intensity of distress which the painter could not
outdo; Agamemnon, therefore, was represented with his face covered
by his mantle, his attitude alone suggesting the father's poignant
anguish. The description is interesting as illustrating the
attention paid in this period to the expression of emotion.
Timanthes was in spirit akin to Scopas. There is a Pompeian wall-
painting of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, which represents Agamemnon
with veiled head and which may be regarded, in that particular at
least, as a remote echo of Timanthes's famous picture.
Sicyon, in the northeastern part of Peloponnesus--a city already
referred to as the home of the sculptor Lysippus--was the seat of
an important school of painting in the fourth century. Toward the
middle of the century the leading teacher of the art in that place
was one Pamphilus. He secured the introduction of drawing into the
elementary schools of Sicyon, and this new branch of education was
gradually adopted in other Greek communities. A pupil of his,
Pausias by name, is credited with raising the process of encaustic
painting to a prominence which it had not enjoyed before. In this
process the colors, mixed with wax, were applied to a wooden panel
and then burned in by means of a hot iron held near.
Thebes also, which attained to a short-lived importance in the
political world after the battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.), developed
a school of painting, which seems to have been in close touch with
that of Athens. There were painters besides, who seem to have had
no connection with any one of these centers of activity. The
fourth century was the Golden Age of Greek painting, and the list
of eminent names is as long and as distinguished for painting as
for sculpture.
The most famous of all was Apelles. He was a Greek of Asia Minor
and received his early training at Ephesus. He then betook himself
to Sicyon, in order to profit by the instruction of Pamphilus and
by association with the other painters gathered there. It seems
likely that his next move was to Pella, the capital of Macedon,
then ruled over by Philip, the father of Alexander. At any rate,
he entered into intimate relations with the young prince and
painted numerous portraits of both father and son. Indeed,
according to an often repeated story, Alexander, probably after
his accession to the throne, conferred upon Apelles the exclusive
privilege of painting his portrait, as upon Lysippus the exclusive
privilege of representing him in bronze. Later, presumably when
Alexander started on his eastern campaigns (334 B.C.), Apelles
returned to Asia Minor, but of course not even then to lead a
settled life. He outlived Alexander, but we do not know by how
much.
Of his many portraits of the great conqueror four are specifically
mentioned by our authorities. One of these represented the king as
holding a thunderbolt, i.e., in the guise of Zeus--a fine piece of
flattery. For this picture, which was placed in the Temple of
Artemis at Ephesus, he is reported, though not on very good
authority, to have received twenty talents in gold coin. It is
impossible to make exact comparisons between ancient and modern
prices, but the sum named would perhaps be in purchasing power as
large as any modern painter ever received for a work of similar
size. [Footnote: Nicias, an Athenian painter and a contemporary of
Apelles, is reported to have been offered by Ptolemy, the ruler of
Egypt, sixty talents for a picture and to have refused the offer.]
It has been mentioned above that Apelles made a number of
portraits of King Philip. He had also many sitters among the
generals and associates of Alexander; and he left at least one
picture of himself. His portraits were famous for their truth of
likeness, as we should expect of a great painter in this age.
An allegorical painting by Apelles of Slander and Her Crew is
interesting as an example of a class of works to which Lysippus's
statue of Opportunity belonged (page 239). This picture contained
ten figures, whereas most of his others of which we have any
description contained only one figure each.
His most famous work was an Aphrodite, originally placed in the
Temple of Asclepius on the island of Cos. The goddess was
represented, according to the Greek myth of her birth, as rising
from the sea, the upper part of her person being alone distinctly
visible. The picture, from all that we can learn of it, seems to
have been imbued with the same spirit of refinement and grace as
Praxiteles's statue of Aphrodite in the neighboring city of
Cnidus. The Coans, after cherishing it for three hundred years,
were forced to surrender it to the emperor Augustus for a price of
a hundred talents, and it was removed to the Temple of Julius
Caesar in Rome. By the time of Nero it had become so much injured
that it had to be replaced by a copy.
Protogenes was another painter whom even the slightest sketch
cannot afford to pass over in silence. He was born at Caunus in
southwestern Asia Minor and flourished about the same time as
Apelles. We read of his conversing with the philosopher Aristotle
(died 322 B.C.), of whose mother he painted a portrait, and of his
being engaged on his most famous work, a picture of a Rhodian
hero, at the time of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius (304 B.C.).
He was an extremely painstaking artist, inclined to excessive
elaboration in his work. Apelles, who is always represented as of
amiable and generous character, is reported as saying that
Protogenes was his equal or superior in every point but one, the
one inferiority of Protogenes being that he did not know when to
stop. According to another anecdote Apelles, while profoundly
impressed by Protogenes's masterpiece, the Rhodian hero above
referred to, pronounced it lacking in that quality of grace which
was his own most eminent merit. [Footnote: Plutarch, "Life of
Demetrius," Section 22.] There are still other anecdotes, which give an
entertaining idea of the friendly rivalry between these two
masters, but which do not help us much in imagining their artistic
qualities. As regards technique, it seems likely that both of them
practiced principally "tempera" painting, in which the colors are
mixed with yolk of eggs or some other sticky non-unctuous medium.
[Footnote: Oil painting was unknown in ancient times.] Both
Apelles and Protogenes are said to have written technical
treatises on the painter's art.
There being nothing extant which would properly illustrate the
methods and the styles of the great artists in color, the best
substitute that we have from about their period is an Etruscan
sarcophagus, found near Corneto in 1869. The material is
"alabaster or a marble closely resembling alabaster." It is
ornamented on all four sides by paintings executed in tempera
representing a battle of Greeks and Amazons. "In the flesh tints
the difference of the sexes is strongly marked, the flesh of the
fighting Greeks being a tawny red, while that of the Amazons is
very fair. For each sex two tints only are used in the shading and
modeling of the flesh. ... Hair and eyes are for the most part a
purplish brown; garments mainly reddish brown, whitish grey, or
pale lilac and light blue. Horses are uniformly a greyish white,
shaded with a fuller tint of grey; their eyes always blue. There
are two colors of metal, light blue for swords, spear-heads, and
the inner faces of shields, golden yellow for helmets, greaves,
reins, and handles of shields, girdles, and chain ornaments."
Our illustration (Fig. 193) is taken from the middle of one of the
long sides of the sarcophagus. It represents a mounted Amazon in
front of a fully armed foot-soldier, upon whom she turns to
deliver a blow with her sword. "Every reader will be struck by the
beauty and spirit of the Amazon, alike in her action and her
facial expression. The type of head, broad, bold, and powerful,
and at the same time young and blooming, with the pathetic-
indignant expression, is preserved with little falling off from
the best age of Greek art. ... In spirit and expression almost
equal to the Amazon is the horse she bestrides." [Footnote: The
quotations are from an article by Mr. Sidney Colvin in The Journal
of Hellenic Studies, Vol. IV., pages 354 ff] The Greek warrior is
also admirable in attitude and expression, full of energy and
determination.
Although the paintings of this sarcophagus were doubtless executed
in Etruria, and probably by an Etruscan hand, they are in their
style almost purely Greek. The work is assigned to the earlier
half of the third century B.C. If an unknown craftsman was
stimulated by Greek models to the production of paintings of such
beauty and power, how magnificent must have been the achievements
of the great masters of the brush!
For examples of Greek portrait painting we are indebted to Egypt,
that country whose climate has preserved so much that elsewhere
would have perished. It will be remembered that Egypt, having been
conquered by Alexander, fell after his death to the lot of his
general, Ptolemy, and continued to be ruled by Ptolemy's
descendants until, in 30 B.C., it became a Roman province. During
the period of Macedonian rule Alexandria was the chief center of
Greek culture in the world, and Greeks and Greek civilization
became established also in the interior of the country; nor did
these Hellenizing influences abate under Roman domination. To this
late period, when Greek and Egyptian customs ere largely
amalgamated, belongs a class of portrait heads which have been
found in the Fayyurn, chiefly within the last ten years. They are
painted on panels of wood (or rarely on canvas), and were
originally attached to mummies. The embalmed body was carefully
wrapped in linen bandages and the portrait placed over the face
and secured in position. These pictures are executed principally
by the encaustic process, though some use was made also of
tempera. The persons represented appear to be of various races--
Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew, negro, and mixed; perhaps the Greek type
predominates in the specimens now known. At any rate, the artistic
methods of the portraits seem to be purely Greek. As for their
date, it is the prevailing opinion that they belong to the second
century after Christ and later, though an attempt has been made to
carry the best of them back to the second century B.C.
The finest collection of these portraits is one acquired by a
Viennese merchant, Herr Theodor Graf. They differ widely in
artistic merit; our illustrations show three of the best. Fig. 194
is a man in middle life, with irregular features, abundant, waving
hair, and thin, straggling beard. One who has seen Watts's picture
of "The Prodigal Son" may remark in the lower part of this face a
likeness to that. Fig. 195 is a charming girl, wearing a golden
wreath of ivy-leaves about her hair and a string of great pearls
about her neck. Her dark eyes look strangely large, as do those of
all the women of the series; probably the effect of eyes naturally
large was heightened, as nowadays in Egypt, by the practice of
blackening the edges of the eyelids. Fig. 196 is the most
fascinating face of all, and it is artistically unsurpassed in the
whole series. This and a portrait of an elderly man, not given
here, are the masterpieces of the Graf collection. It is much too
little to say of these two heads that they are the best examples
of Greek painting that have come down to us. In spite of the great
inferiority of the encaustic technique to that of oil painting,
these pictures are not unworthy of comparison with the great
portraits of modern times.
The ancient wall-paintings found in and near Rome. but more
especially in Pompeii, are also mostly Greek in character, so far
as their best qualities are concerned. The best of them, while
betraying deficient skill in perspective, show such merits in
coloring, such power of expression and such talent for
composition, as to afford to the student a lively enjoyment and to
intensify tenfold his regret that Zeuxis and Parrhasius, Apelles
and Protogenes, are and will remain to us nothing but names.