History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

At a time when Cicero could say that in his opinion “the works of Polycleitos were perfectly beautiful” the master from Argos must have come into fashion. The artistic representative of this stage of appreciative development was Pasiteles, who worked in the time of Pompey, and whose important school has left traces of this influence in examples that have been preserved. The pathetic tendency was not entirely to be avoided, and, though not so evident in the academic male figure of the Villa Albani, which bears the name of Stephanos, the scholar of Pasiteles, is yet undeniable in the groups of Orestes and Electra in Naples, and of Orestes and Pylades in the Louvre. This trait is still more marked in a work of Menelaos, the scholar of Stephanos, the beautiful and celebrated group in the Villa Ludovisi (Fig. 244), designated by Winckelmann and Welcker as Electra and Orestes; by Jahn, as Merope and Cresphontes; by Kekulé, as Deianeira and Hyllos; and by Schulze and Burckhardt, as Penelope and Telemachos. Though the artist has here made concessions to more recent influences, they did not give the work an eclectic character, as asserted by Kekulé, but rather displayed a somewhat archaistic conception, and the short proportions of Polycleitos, long since abandoned for the canon of Lysippos. On the other hand, the remark of Kekulé appears just, that the characters do not seem conceived and modelled after nature, but rather as seen through the medium of the tragedy of Euripides.

When the reproductions had run through the entire circle of styles from the best period of art, the archaic was at last brought forward. It is known that Augustus ornamented his buildings, particularly the gable of the Palatine Temple of Apollo, with sculptures of the masters from Chios, Boupalos and Athenis, and that he also carried away from Tegea the Athene of the old Attic Endoios. Archaic art, always possessing a charm for devotional images which was doubled in a time of such satiety, came thus into fashion. A large number of archaistic works appeared, imitated after the antique, as has already been mentioned. They not seldom betray the influence of single figures from larger compositions in relief, as in the instance of the Amphora of the Athenian Sosibios in the Louvre.

The more or less free reproductiveness of this period, which we have to thank for a large proportion of the contents of our museums, naturally came to a conclusion in that unbridled mixture of style which combined in the same relief not only the various aims of different schools, but their well-known motives, as is the case with the relief of the Salpion upon the font of Gaeta. There was very little originality, and that was limited to genre, particularly to the idyllic, as in the play of Cupids, the best of which might be referred to old models. It is not known whether this was the case with the lioness of Arkesilaos, in the possession of Varro, which, according to Pliny’s description, bound by Cupids, was drinking from a horn, with mittens upon the paws to render them harmless. Models for this may be sought in the paintings of Alexandria. It is certain that the centaurs, bound and worried by Cupids, the best examples of which are preserved in the Louvre, the Vatican, the Doria Palace, and the Capitoline Museum, with that of Aristeas and Papias from Aphrodisias, are imitations of bronze originals. (Fig. 245.)

Hellenic architecture and sculpture, from their unsurpassed perfection, require a more comprehensive treatment than that accorded to those arts in any other ancient nation. This is especially the case with sculpture, because, in Greece, the demands of its nature were more completely fulfilled by the Greeks than has ever happened, at any time, with any other people; while Grecian architecture, notwithstanding its wonderful monumental perfection, did not deal with all the possibilities of the art. Both, however, demand our attention in a greater degree than does Hellenic painting. Architecture has left great masses of ruins, and sculpture numerous collections of antique treasures; but of Grecian painting there are no remains; its history is accordingly a history rather of artists than of art. If this necessitates for painting a more limited treatment, we must not therefore conclude that its development was, in reality, inferior to that of its sister arts, since, in fact, it fully equalled that of architecture and sculpture. This has often been unjustly doubted, but it would be fully evident were nothing more known than the almost measureless fame of the first masters.

The course of development of Grecian painting is by no means so obvious as that of sculpture: we have no sure date of its beginning, but it is at least equally remote. Conze shows painting to have been even the most primitive, it having existed among the aborigines in the decoration of pottery and terra-cotta. The notes of Pliny upon the matter (xxxv. 15) appear to be hardly more than a supplementary reconstruction of a conjectured state of development, garnished vaguely with the names of ancient artists. The first stages, the employment of a simple tone in the filling of outline figures with a color of brick-dust, called monochromatic painting, had long since been mastered by the neighboring peoples—the Mesopotamians, Phœnicians, and Egyptians, who were acquainted also with the use of bright colors. This work must early have been known to the Greeks through imported articles—Homer mentioning vessels and fabrics—even though they could not apply it to the productions of their own land. Monochromatic painting upon pottery, familiar to the primitive Ionians, seems to have originated upon the Syro-Phœnician coasts. A faint reminiscence of the ancient, widely extended employment of color may be found in Pliny, who designates an Egyptian, bearing the Greek name of Philocles, as the discoverer of linear painting. Works of this kind, however, were purely decorative, like the older Greek vase-paintings (Figs. 187 and 191), and of great similarity; it seems unnecessary to offer conjectures as to the source whence this impulse came. Of still less significance are the names of artists which have been fabulously attached to the various inventions, such as Cleanthes, Aridikes, and Ecphantos, of Corinth; Telephanes and Craton, of Sikyon; and Saurias, of Samos. Unless, from the fact that several are mentioned as dwelling in Corinth and Sikyon, it may be concluded that decorative painting probably flourished in those cities before the sixtieth Olympiad (530 B.C.). What Pliny says of Eumaros of Athens does not justify the supposition of any considerable progress, although, in figures, he distinguished between male and female, expressed in some slight degree age and characteristic peculiarities, and, at least, made an end to that crudeness which found satisfaction in writing names over forms otherwise precisely alike. Greater progress was made by his successor, Kimon of Cleonæ—500 to 480 B.C.—who improved the former sack-like garments (Fig. 191) by folds, and gave a more detailed drawing to the nude, placing the eye in a profile head also in profile, instead of making it look towards the front, as in the figure mentioned above. With him began truthfulness to nature, and correctness of drawing, at a time when sculpture in Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, and Argos was preparing for that highest perfection attained afterwards by Pheidias.

After the Persian war, through two generations, the progress of painting was proportionate to its former backwardness, until it attained a height little short of that reached by sculpture. The first master worthy of mention—and likewise one of the greatest artists we know—demands particular attention, from having been the founder of painting as an art. Polygnotos of Thasos (475 to 455 B.C.), the son of Aglaophon, who also is mentioned as a painter, executed the greater number of his works in Athens, where he was much respected by Kimon. Of the pictures in the Stoa Poikile, painted under his direction, at least the Conquest of Troy, and the Council of Princes sitting in judgment upon the sacrilege committed by Ajax against Cassandra, were by his hand. The Battle of the Amazons was by Micon, the Battle of Marathon by Panainos and Micon; the fourth, perhaps the latest, was the Battle between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians near Oinoe: the artist is not known. Polygnotos worked, together with Micon, upon other Athenian frescos, scenes from the lives of heroes in the Temple of Theseus. In the Temple of the Dioscuri he painted the Rape of the Daughters of Leukippos, next to which was the Return of the Argonauts, by Micon. In the Pinacotheca of the Propylæa was a series of representations, among which Brunn has recognized as companion pieces Diomedes Robbing Philoctetes of his Bow, and Odysseus Seizing the Palladion; the Murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, and the Sacrifice of Polyxena; Odysseus Appearing before Nausicaa and her Companions, and Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes. Of the other works by this master may be mentioned those at Thespeia and Plataia; that in the Temple of Athene at the latter place represented Odysseus attacking the suitors. The best of all the creations of Polygnotos, the paintings in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi, illustrating the conquest of Ilion and the nether world, are so minutely described by Pausanias (x. 25-31) that they furnish the most important material for an understanding of his art.

We should hardly be able justly to estimate this master were it not for the descriptions of Pausanias; for the other classic authors, with some exceptions in Aristotle, deal only with secondary matters. In regard to his coloring, Cicero, in his “Four Colors,” says nothing, speaking only of his drawing, while Quintilian merely wonders how, in his time, there could still be admirers of such primitive painting. It was merely a coloring without light and shade, a simple treatment by local tones of surfaces within outlines. That these tones were not unbroken, as upon the Nile and Tigris, but finely graded and everywhere characteristic, we learn from the special mention of the doves, of the shaded coloring of the fish in the Acheron, of the blackish-blue color of the corpse-devouring Eurynomos, and of the gray of the shipwrecked Ajax. The red cheeks of Cassandra, admired by Lucian, give evidence of several colors within the same outline. But though Cicero praises the drawing, the little which is intelligible in Pliny’s account of the master tends the other way. Still, it must be acknowledged that more is implied by the motive of the Olympian Jupiter, by the encomium upon Cassandra’s eyebrows by Lucian, and by the exaggerated expression of an epigram—“in the lids of Polyxena lay the whole Trojan war”—than the petty peculiarities with which Pliny invests the painter would lead us to expect. Ælian praises the strict carefulness and fineness of the outline drawing, the expression, and the garments. But the most remarkable testimony concerning this master is that of Aristotle, who describes his figures as surpassing nature; while artists like Dionysios contented themselves with equalling it, and others, like Pauson, were content to remain below it. Elsewhere he calls him the painter of ethics—that is, of character—in a grand style which the works of Zeuxis failed to attain. Combining this judgment with that of Ælian, who ascribes grandeur to Polygnotos, we may conclude that this artist drew in a broad and ideal style. That to this were united an epic clearness and liveliness of treatment, not only in the single figures and groups, but in the entire composition, is fully evident from the description which Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Lesche. In short, correctness, richness, and grandeur of composition must be accounted the chief merits of Polygnotos—merits to which none of his successors attained, though they may have far surpassed him in execution, as painters in a more restricted sense. Less painter than artist, he pursued, in his wall decorations, a thoroughly monumental direction, which after his time, through change of aim, was neglected.

The most celebrated companions of Polygnotos, but, as Ælian remarks, not equalling him in greatness, were Micon of Athens, whose name has already been mentioned, and Panainos, a cousin of Pheidias, who, besides the battle of Marathon in the Poikile, executed the paintings upon the throne of the Pheidian Zeus in Olympia. Dionysios of Colophon and Pauson have already been spoken of. The first seems to have carried out the strict carefulness of his model, Polygnotos, to a degree which was naturally unfavorable alike to grace and to greatness of style. Pauson, though accounted an artist by Aristotle, may be compared to Buffalmacco, scorned and derided, among the companions of Giotto; not fitted for productions of a grand style, he did not attempt them, and his nude paintings, without ethical significance, were harmful to young observers.