that he was excelled by his contemporary Parrhasios of Ephesos, who, in
regard to style, was akin to him in many respects. In subject the works
of Parrhasios may be divided like those of Zeuxis. The deities were
seldom chosen; his Dionysios with Arete was not one of his most
celebrated productions, and his Hermes was really a portrait of the
artist himself. Among the heroes represented were Prometheus, Heracles,
Meleager, Perseus, and Theseus. The greater part of his productions
refer to the Trojan epics, as the Assumed Madness of Odysseus, the
Healing of Telephos, the Strife of Ajax with Odysseus for the Armor of
Achilles, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and Æneas. The others are the Demos
of Athens, and portraits like the comedian Philiscos, the Archigallos, a
ship-captain, a Thracian nurse with a child; and, finally, pictures like
the priest with a temple-boy, two boys, two heavily armed warriors, and
lewd genre paintings, closing with the celebrated “curtain” of the
master. In many respects these betray a relationship to Zeuxis, and yet
much that is independent. There are numerous characteristic heads
illustrative of temperament, and other psychological subjects, among the
fore-most of which should be named the Demos, who, according to Pliny,
was shown as changeable, angry, unjust, inconstant; also as exorable,
kind, compassionate, boastful, sublime, low, undisciplined, and fickle.
This would be so impossible in a single head, without making it a
chaotic, incomprehensible caricature, that the author has no hesitation
in describing the painting as a group, in each figure of which one of
the characteristics named was expressed. That representing the assumed
madness of Odysseus must have had great psychological meaning, as also
the Prometheus, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and the Telephos. Parrhasios
had by these works placed himself above Zeuxis through more correct and
careful drawing, and a marked technical progress in the art. Pliny says
that, according to the judgment of artists, Parrhasios had reached the
highest perfection in the representation of figures; that previously
painters had succeeded in giving only to the outlines of the figure a
truthful appearance and action, but that the edges of color should be so
rounded that one might be led to imagine the continuation of the body
upon the other side, suggesting what could not be seen. This may be
conceived to mean that, by attention to chiaroscuro and reflections, the
illusive effect was increased from that of a relief to that of a figure
in the round, whereby figures first appeared to free themselves from the
background; that, for instance, he made clear to the observer the
distinction between a globe, only one side of which is seen, and a
hemisphere affixed to a plane. The illusion consequently became more
perfect, the capacity for motion being thus brought into the
“outstepping” figures. The grapes of Zeuxis did not need this power of
action to tempt the birds as did the boy in order to frighten them. The
curtain of Parrhasios possessed this capacity for movement, with the
freeing of the objects from the background, and could therefore deceive
even Zeuxis himself, who thought it possible really to withdraw it from
the panel.
If his proud rival Zeuxis bowed before this skill, it cannot be thought
strange that such a result should have moved Parrhasios to outdo his
competitor in arrogance also. Among other follies, he proclaimed himself
a descendant of Apollo; as King of Art he was crowned with a diadem and
golden wreath, and donned the purple mantle of royalty. By adopting the
cognomen of Habrodiaitos, or high-liver, he brought upon himself the
nickname of Rhabdodiaitos, or brush-man. Parrhasios also was surpassed
by a younger contemporary, though, as it appears, only in a single
instance. Timanthes of Kythnos won the victory in a competition--the
Strife of Ajax and Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles. Pliny gives
preference to the latter, because his compositions were so arranged that
more might be perceived in them than at first sight appeared. There was
withal a deeper motive than Zeuxis and Parrhasios had shown; this was
evident in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, in which every degree of
suffering was presented: Calchas being sad, Odysseus painfully moved,
Ajax crying aloud, Menelaos in an ecstasy of grief; but, as the
expression of anguish could not be carried beyond that of the latter,
the father, Agamemnon, was shown hiding his face. The murder of
Palamedes, perhaps, gave scope for the same depth of motive. A small
genre picture was conceived in a more jesting tone, representing a
sleeping Cyclops, and a satyr measuring the length of the giant’s thumb
with a thyrsos, thus adding a living scale of comparative dimensions.
The hero of Timanthes and the athlete of Zeuxis were equally celebrated
among Grecian paintings as ideals of manly form.
It would seem that Timanthes passed the latter part of his life in
Sikyon. The art of painting found a home in Ephesos during the
Peloponnesian war, but did not connect itself with any school, and
returned to Greece after the close of that disastrous conflict. Athens
could not at once recover the commanding position it had held under
Polygnotos and Apollodoros; but artistic activity, with its increasing
requirements, was concentrated in Sikyon and Thebes, where flourishing
academies were established with different aims.
Eupompos appeared about this time in the former city, as the founder of
an important school, but, with the exception of a few superficial
notices, we know nothing of him. His pupil, Pamphilos of Amphipolis or
Nicopolis, flourishing from 390 to 360 B.C., was at the head of this
school. His works are little known, having been described only by Pliny,
so scantily and unintelligibly that one may be taken for a family
picture, another as the appearance of Leucothea to Odysseus after the
shipwreck near the island of the Phæacians, and a third possibly as the
victory of the Athenians at Phlious. Pliny is more to the point when he
relates that Pamphilos considered education in science, particularly in
mathematics and geometry, indispensable to artistic work. As he thought
drawing an essential part of cultivation, he exerted himself, with good
result, to have it taught in the higher schools. He believed that from
this alone could proceed a rational conception of art grounded upon
science, in which the mutual relations of teacher and scholar should be
considered; and that Sikyon was the place best adapted to this purpose.
At a somewhat earlier period Polycleitos had established a canon for
sculpture by his system of proportions. Pamphilos, following in the
footsteps of Eupompos, now took the same position in respect to Greek
painting, with, perhaps, even greater success. He was pre-eminently a
teacher, and, as such, appears to have striven after correctness in
composition, drawing, and painting, to the disadvantage, it may be, of
freedom in artistic development. But this aim, which won for the school
of Sikyon the name of Chrestographia (correct drawing), operating upon
the pupil from the beginning to the close of his scholarship, must have
been serviceable both in laying a foundation and in purifying and
restraining. It certainly was for the advantage of Apelles to have
finished his studies in this school, which must indeed have had a
salutary influence upon the general development of Grecian painting. The
element of degeneracy in the tone of Zeuxis and Parrhasios was long held
in restraint among their followers by the academic authority of Sikyon.
Pamphilos turned his attention chiefly towards correctness of execution
in details, and, following Polycleitos, towards the human figure. His
pupil Melanthios was a master of composition; this, however, in
accordance with the whole character of the school, seems to have
consisted less in the choice of scenic situation and action than in a
formal distribution and balance of the grouping.
Pausias, a fellow-pupil of Melanthios, distinguished himself from this
somewhat doctrinal art by greater freedom of creation. The subjects of
his works show this by their individuality, as, for instance, the Boy,
painted in a day, the Girl Binding a Wreath, Methe Drinking from a
Glass, and a flower piece, which, from the descriptions, appears to have
resembled our still-life pictures. His Sacrifice of a Bull displayed a
new mastery; the animal, foreshortened from the front, as Pliny remarks,
showed his entire length. Pausias was the first to win fame in encaustic
painting, although its technical processes had for some time been known.
Of this it is only certain that the colors, mixed with wax, were melted
by a rod of metal, and thus affixed to the ground. This process, because
of the more brilliant, transparent, and deeper hue given by the wax, was
as far superior to the former distemper as our own more convenient
oil-painting is to every other method. That such peculiarities of
subject and treatment did not lead the master to renounce the artistic
earnestness of the school of Sikyon is shown in the direction imparted
to his pupils. The works of the most celebrated among these, Nicophanes,
were extremely labored; but, from the predominant brown, hard in color.
Aristolaos, the son of Pausias, was rigid and academical.
During this period a second school of painting, not less prominent,
flourished in Thebes, and, after the hastily acquired importance of this
city had as rapidly declined, was transferred to Athens. At its head was
Nicomachos--360 B.C.--son and pupil of the otherwise unknown artist,
Aristiæos. Eight of his pictures are mentioned; but, though he was
accounted one of the greatest masters, we have little information in
regard to the painter himself. As contrasted with the quiet, stately
works of the Sikyonians, we may conclude, from the subjects, that there
was greater excitement and action in those of Nicomachos, among which
are mentioned the Rape of Proserpine, Victory Ascending with a Quadriga,
and Bacchantins Surprised by Satyrs. His unsurpassed rapidity in
painting was praiseworthy only because united to great talents, with an
unusual and masterly sureness of hand. The character of his pupil
Aristides is more intelligible, and more important. If ever there was a
painter whose subjects alone sufficed to give an idea of his chief aim,
it was Aristides. One of his most celebrated works was the Conquest of a
City: a wounded mother, lying upon the ground, sees her infant creeping
towards her breast, and visibly betrays the fear that, when the milk
fails, the child will take the blood. Another, a woman who, “for love of
her brother, gives herself up to death.” A third, according to Pliny
most highly prized, represented a sick man. In these, and in one more,
perhaps also to be ascribed to Aristides, the Heracles Suffering from
the Poisoned Garment of Deianeira, a fundamental tone of great pathos is
unmistakable. In the praying man, whose voice one almost seemed to hear,
and in the old man teaching a boy to play upon the harp, the predominant
expression of feeling was unmistakable. The latter reminds us of that
beautiful Pompeian wall-painting of the Centaur Cheiron instructing the
boy Achilles. Pliny distinctly says that Aristides aimed at the
pathetic, by which is meant the expression of tender as well as painful
and passionate emotions. In this master, therefore, may be recognized
one whose aims were similar to those of Scopas and Praxiteles.
Euphranor, a pupil of Aristides--360 to 330 B.C.--was a remarkable
phenomenon in the domain of art. Few, either in sculpture or in
painting, have been so many-sided, and yet, though standing in the first
rank, the insufficient accounts of his pictures that have come down to
us prevent our forming any positive judgment about them. A certain
indication, however, lies in the remark of the artist himself, that the
Theseus of Parrhasios looked as if fed upon roses; his own, on the
contrary, as though nourished by the flesh of oxen. This comparison must
have included two points, color and drawing; the likeness to roses would
have been inapt if Parrhasios had not failed in depth of flesh-tint; on
the other hand, besides the healthy color, the strong nourishment
suggested by the Theseus of Euphranor proved an energetic development of
muscles. It was probably a somewhat massive figure, characteristic of
Euphranor, and, with certain limitations, reminding us of the Heracles
of Lysippos. It may be understood, from the noble expression of the
Theseus, how Euphranor brought his heroes to a typical perfection. In a
similar sense he had raised his Poseidon to such power that there
remained no further means at his command for surpassing it in his
conception of Zeus. The remark of Euphranor expressed not only the
difference, and his own superiority to Parrhasios, but suggested a
certain relationship in subject and aim, both masters having painted the
Theseus, and the Assumed Madness of Odysseus.
The Isthmian Euphranor had changed the scene of his labors, and, at the
same time, the centre of the entire school, to Athens, which continued
to be the artistic metropolis for his scholars and successors. Among the
latter, Nikias is especially celebrated--340 to 300 B.C. He devoted his
attention chiefly to feminine beauty, somewhat influenced, perhaps, by
his older contemporary Praxiteles, in connection with whom he is
mentioned. His taste was for extensive compositions, surprising for
their novelty of conception, and, like Parrhasios, he endeavored to give
roundness to his figures. The lack in the Theban-Attic school of that
individuality which existed in the Sikyonian was completely overcome by
Euphranor, and gave place to a more universal aim. He and Nikias were
artists whose tone came less from their school than from their own
personal convictions. They early learned to understand technical and
artistic acquisitions of all kinds, and to carry them forward
independently. We may conceive them as holding the same loose relations
towards their teachers which existed between the Sikyonian master
Pamphilos and their contemporary Apelles.
Apelles was destined to bear away the palm from all his predecessors and
successors. Although three cities--Colophon, Ephesos, and Cos--claimed
the honor of calling him their own, it is reasonably certain that the
first was the place of his birth, the second that where his labors
commenced, and the third may not improbably have been that of his death.
The Ephesian Euphoros is named as his first teacher, but his fame dates
from the time when he left the academy of Pamphilos for that of Sikyon.
Perhaps the fact that Pamphilos was a Macedonian by birth may have paved
the way for Apelles to the royal court at Pella, whence he appears to
have returned to Ephesos among the followers of Alexander the Great. He
seems never to have founded a permanent school; at least, we gather from
classical notices that he worked transiently at Athens, Corinth, Rhodes,
and even in Alexandria. We learn also that he outlived, by a
considerable time, his great patron Alexander. His works are to be
divided into three groups--paintings of gods and heroes, allegories, and
portraits; these were also sometimes combined. At the head of the first
group stands the Aphrodite Anadyomene, one of the most celebrated
pictures of antiquity. It was transferred to Augustus for the remission
of one hundred talents of taxes; by him carried to Rome and placed in
Cæsar’s Temple of Venus, where it became so much injured--thus obtaining
the sobriquet Monocmenon, one-legged--that Nero had it taken away and
replaced by a copy. She was represented as the “sea-born,” nude, and
pressing with her hands her dripping hair. Far from being an ideal
figure, it was rather patterned after the celebrated courtesans of the
time, two of whom are named--Pancaste, or Pancaspe, the paramour of
Alexander, who afterwards presented her to the artist himself; and
Cratine, or Phryne, mistress of Apelles, who may have been the more
direct model for the Venus, as, at the festival of Poseidon at Eleusis,
she bathed, naked, in the sea before the eyes of the assemblage. A
second Aphrodite, in which Apelles hoped to surpass the first, remained
unfinished at his death. Of these representations the first was
certainly without any devotional or even ethic character; but the
Artemis, in the Sacrifice of the Virgins, was something more than a
genre piece with a mythological motive; and his heroes, who, according
to Pliny, challenged nature itself, were more than mere stately
portraits.
The Heracles may be regarded as a study. Charis and Tyche were
allegories, the latter having been represented sitting “because
happiness does not stand fast.” The most celebrated of them all,
Calumny, is minutely described by Lucian. It portrayed a man, whose
inclination to credit evil reports was characterized by large ears,
sitting between two women, Ignorance and Mistrust, and receiving
Calumny, a magnificent woman excited with passion, preceded by Envy; she
drags in a youth by the hair, who vainly, with hands uplifted, calls the
gods to witness. Behind the train advances Repentance, a mourning female
figure in black, looking back with pain and shame upon the tardy
appearance of Truth. Similar in character is the picture of the chained
war demon, belonging partly to the group of portraits. A third allegory,
of little intrinsic worth, is set forth with great artistic
ability--Bronte, Astrape, and Keraunobolia--thunder, with the flash and
stroke of lightning.
Among the portraits, allegorical in nature, was the famous picture in
which Alexander, with lightning in his right hand, was represented as
Jupiter. The monarch himself was so well pleased with this that he said
there were two Alexanders--one the unconquered son of Philip, the other
the inimitable creation of Apelles. But little is known of the king’s
portraits, whether equestrian, in triumphal chariots, or surrounded by
deities and allegorical figures; nor of those of Philip and his
generals, of the tragic actor Gorgosthenes of Habron, nor of that of the
artist himself.
If Apelles be scrutinized more closely in order to make clear the chief
characteristics by which he won such brilliant renown, it will be found
that it was not in composition. In this, as in treatment of perspective,
he gave precedence to his fellow-pupils Melanthios and Asclepiodoros.
That he was aware of this weakness, and avoided occasion for manifesting
it, is shown by the fact that most of his paintings contained few
figures. When more appeared, instead of being picturesquely grouped and
treated, they were ranged in rows, almost like reliefs, better suited to
the allegorical subjects so prevalent with Apelles, and so common in his
time, than to mythological and historical representations. Though
allegory may, in great measure, be unfavorable to true art, because, as
Winckelmann says, it forces the painter “to tint his brush with reason,”
still that of Apelles has lately been too much depreciated. The Calumny
has been pronounced an error of fancy, rough symbolism, and an
inharmonious assemblage of persons and personifications. But these were
the legitimate materials of the artist, and he succeeded, at least, in
the representation of character and in truthfulness of drawing. The
lightning group was something more than a piece of technical bravura.
Who would prize the picture less because thunder and lightning were
represented instead of Zeus, a deity who would have been attempted by no
painter of antiquity, or, indeed, of later times? Though his motive may
have been purely intellectual, the painter remained the same, whether he
portrayed a Cassandra or a Diabole--whether he more or less displayed
his astounding mastery. Apelles will be more rightly judged if he be
treated as a painter rather than an artist; as such we recognize in him
a technical and many-sided perfection. Different accounts speak of him
as rapid and sure in drawing, his lines being not only correct, but in
the highest degree characteristic. The maxim of Apelles “No day without
a line”--that is, without exercise in drawing--has become a proverb, if
not quite in its original sense. Through this incessant practice his
hand acquired such sureness that it followed the will implicitly, and
made possible even the hair-splitting execution related in an anecdote
which has been unjustly discredited by critics. Apelles entered one day
the workshop of Protogenes, in the absence of the latter, and made known
his visit by drawing a line upon a tablet at hand with such swing and
surety, such purity and smoothness, that the Rhodian master, upon his
return, recognized the hand of Apelles. In order to show himself equal,
Protogenes split the line by a second one in a different color, but
acknowledged himself defeated when Apelles divided this through its
entire length by a third. An evidence of the sharpness and certainty of
his characterization with simple lines is given in the story of a
servant who had injured him, and whom Apelles, though he had seen him
only once, so sketched with charcoal upon the wall that the likeness was
recognized by King Ptolemy after the first strokes. It will readily be
understood that such capacity must have fitted the artist especially for
portraiture; and his portraits attained such striking likeness and
truthfulness that a physiognomist assumed to be able, by them, to
discern not only the exact age of the subject, but even the time of his
future death. No further testimony is needed than the Anadyomene to
prove that his works were perfect in correctness and expression as well
as in beauty.
The employment of color had fully kept pace with this matchless drawing,
though Apelles seems to have been limited to painting in distemper,
without the use of encaustic. The softened glazings are particularly
mentioned, which made the unbroken light all the more brilliant. In the
portrait of Alexander, the hand, outstretched with the lightning,
appeared to stand quite out from the panel, a result perhaps equally
owing to masterly foreshortening in the drawing. The beauty of his color
was noted, and especially its vigor; the fame of the Aphrodite cannot be
understood without the former, nor that of the Alexander and the
Lightning without the latter. This many-sided, technical perfectness,
unattained before Apelles, and in which Pliny says that he excelled all
other painters together, may have had its germ in the school of
Pamphilos, as the Sikyonians devoted especial attention to artistic
execution. To these eminent qualities, however, were added the intrinsic
merits of the master himself, upon which he laid the greatest stress,
and which he ascribed to that charm understood by the Greeks in the word
_charis_. That this was chiefly to be found in the just measure of
completeness was explained by Apelles when he declared himself to have
been surpassed by Protogenes in all but the knowledge of the right
moment to lay aside the brush, without which this charm, through
overmuch care, is lost.
By this technical mastery, clearness of characterization and grace,
Apelles so delighted all who saw his works that, according to the
numerous anecdotes that illustrate his position, he was the most popular
artist of all antiquity. In face of such authority, it would be unjust
to see in him, as some have done, the beginnings of the decline of art.
Though his artistic efforts may not have equalled those of Polygnotos,
because he could more easily satisfy the ethical demands of his time,
still it must be acknowledged that, as a painter, he surpassed him as
far as, in sculpture, Praxiteles surpassed Calamis and the other
predecessors of Pheidias. But in Pheidias a high ideal was united to an
absolute perfection of execution which, in painting, Polygnotos was far
from having attained. “In the history of painting,” says Brunn, “each of
these two fields has its separate point of greatest elevation; the fame,
therefore, which, in sculpture, undoubtedly raised Pheidias above all
others, appeared, in painting, divided between Polygnotos and Apelles.”
Protogenes of Caunos, or rather, with reference to his work, of Rhodes,
was a rival of Apelles. He seems to have been self-taught, or, at least,
to have been the pupil of an entirely obscure master. The admiration of
Apelles for Protogenes was so great that he expressed a desire to buy up
his works and publish them as his own; but numerous anecdotes show that
Apelles was in the way of bestowing his flattery upon every great and
celebrated man. Protogenes is said to have painted over his Ialysos four
times, the better to secure it from destruction, so that, on the peeling
of the outer layer of pigment, the surface below might present the same
color. But this can only be a foolish legend, invented to illustrate his
extreme care. Similar tales of a later time reported him to have worked
upon the Ialysos seven or eleven years, and to have fed upon nothing but
lupines, for fear that luxury might blunt the acuteness of his senses.
Perhaps this means that the painter’s genius was not recognized until
late in life, up to which time he had lived in great poverty. Of his
picture in the Propylæa at Athens, representing Paralos and
Hammonias--personifications of Athenian ships--there is an equally idle
story that he did not paint the ships themselves because, until his
fifteenth year, he had earned his bread as a ship-painter.
In Protogenes we may conceive a perfection such as only the most
unwearied care could attain. This perfection was neither in the ideas
nor in the composition; for the subjects of his pictures, known to us as
heroic or historical portraits, or, at most, as groups of few persons
without action, were in themselves far less important than those of
Apelles. But the illusive effect must have been complete if, as
Petronius says, one could not look even at the sketches without a
feeling of awe on account of their truthfulness to nature. This
carefulness extended even to the smallest accessories, like the wonder
of the partridge at the reclining satyr, and the foam on the mouth of
the dog in the Ialysos; an effect which, it is said, was at last
accomplished by the pressure--not the throwing--of a sponge. Yet the
wearisomeness of this perfection was not to be denied, and here, in the
eyes of Apelles, lay the weakness of this master.