24. Although the names of the Grecian artists were carefully preserved, the time in which they lived was not distinctly marked until the 16th Olympiad, or 719 years before the commencement of our era. At this time, Candaules, king of Lydia, purchased a picture called the Battle of the Magnetes, for which he paid its weight in gold, although painted on boards. The name of the fortunate artist was Bularchus.

25. Notwithstanding the fame of this picture, Aglaophon and Polygnotus, of Thasos, who flourished 300 years after this period, were the first eminent painters. Polygnotus is said to have been the first who gave a pleasing air to the draperies and head-dresses of females, and to have opened the mouth so far as to exhibit the beauty of the teeth.

26. Still, painting is considered to have been in an inferior state, until the appearance of Timanthes, Parrhasius, and Zeuxis, who flourished about 375 years before Christ. These again were surpassed by their successors, Protogenes, Pamphilus, Melanthius, Antiphilus, Theon, Euphranor, Apelles, and Aristides, who carried the art to the greatest perfection to which it attained in ancient times.

27. Of the preceding list of artists, Apelles was the most famous, especially as a portrait painter. He was the intimate friend of Alexander the Great, who would never permit any other person to paint his likeness. His most celebrated painting, was this prince holding the lightning with which the picture is chiefly illuminated. By a happy application of perspective and chiaro-scuro, the hand with the lightning seemed to project from the picture.

28. From the time of these great masters, painting gradually declined, although the art continued to be practised by a succession of eminent men, who contended against the blighting influence of the luxury and the internal broils of their countrymen. But soon after Greece became subject to the Roman power, the practice of the fine arts nearly ceased in that country.

29. Before the foundation of Rome, the arts were cultivated, to some extent, in Etruria and Calabria; but the first Roman painter mentioned in history, was Fabius, a noble patrician, who painted, in the year of the city 450, the temple of the goddess Salus, and thereby obtained for himself and family the surname of Pictor. Yet the citizens do not seem to have profited by this example; for no other painter appeared among them until 150 years after that period. At this time, Pacuvius, the poet, amused himself, in the decline of life, with painting the temple of Hercules.

30. They were thus inattentive to the cultivation of this, as well as of the other fine arts, because they considered warfare, and the arts which tended directly to support this interest, as alone worthy of the attention of a citizen of their republic; and painting, even after the time of Pacuvius, was considered effeminate and disgraceful. Rome, therefore, cannot be said, at any time, to have produced a single artist who could approach the excellences of those of its refined neighbors, the Greeks.

31. They, however, having ornamented their metropolis and villas with specimens of the arts plundered from the cities of Greece and Sicily, began, at length, to appreciate their excellences; and finally, under the first emperors, they encouraged, with great munificence, the Greeks who resorted to their city for employment.

32. But, both sculpture and painting, as well as architecture, declined with Roman civilization. Still, they continued to exist, especially in the Byzantine or Eastern empire, although in a very inferior state. The art under consideration was preserved chiefly by its application to the purposes of Christianity. It was revived in Italy, in the beginning of the twelfth century, by means of several Grecian artists, who had been employed to ornament the churches, and other edifices at Pisa, Venice, and Florence.

33. The works of Apollonius, one of these Greeks, excited in Giovanni Cimabue a spirit of emulation; and, having been initiated into the practice of the art, he executed a picture of the Virgin Mary, as large as life, for a church dedicated to her, at Florence. This production excited enthusiastic delight in his fellow-citizens, who carried it in procession, with the sound of trumpets, to its place of destination, and celebrated the day as a public feast.