A History of Greek Art / With an Introductory Chapter on Art in Egypt and Mesopotamia

by F. B. Tarbell

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."