Apelles was famed for his industry; he is said never to have allowed a day to pass without exercising his pencil. “Nulla dies sine linea,” is a saying that arose from one of his maxims. His principal works appear to have been generally single figures, and rarely of more than a single group. The only large compositions of his execution that are mentioned by the ancient writers are, Diana surrounded by her Nymphs, in which he was allowed to have surpassed the lines of Homer from which he took the subject; and the Procession of the High Priest of Diana at Ephesus.

In portraits, Apelles was unrivalled. He is said to have enjoyed the exclusive privilege of painting Philip and Alexander the Great, both of whom he painted many times. In one of his portraits of Alexander, which was preserved in the temple of Diana at Ephesus, he represented him wielding the thunderbolts of Jupiter: Pliny says the hand and lightning appeared to start from the picture; and, judging from an observation in Plutarch, the figure of the king was lighted solely by the radiance of the lightning. Apelles received for this picture, termed the Alexander Ceraunophorus, twenty talents of gold (about $20,000). The criticism of Lysippus, upon this picture, which has been approved by ancients and moderns, that a lance, as he had himself given the king, would have been a more appropriate weapon in the hands of Alexander, than the lightnings of Jupiter; is the criticism of a sculptor who overlooked the pictorial value of the color, and of light and shade. The lightning would certainly have had little effect in a work of sculpture, but had a lance been substituted in its place in the picture of Apelles, a totally different production would have been the result. This picture gave rise to a saying, that there were two Alexanders, the one of Philip, the invincible, the other of Apelles, the inimitable.

Competent judges, says Pliny, decided the portrait of Antigonus (king of Asia Minor) on horseback, the master-piece of Apelles. He excelled greatly in painting horses, which he frequently introduced into his pictures. The most celebrated of all his works was the Venus Anadyomene, which was painted for the people of Coös, and was placed in the temple of Æsculapius on that island, where it remained until it was removed by Augustus, who took it in lieu of 100 talents tribute, and dedicated it in the temple of Julius Cæsar. It was unfortunately damaged on the voyage, and was in such a decayed state in the time of Nero, that the Emperor replaced it with a copy by a painter named Dorotheus. This happened about 350 years after it was executed, and what then became of it is not known. This celebrated painting, upon which every writer who has noticed it has bestowed unqualified praise, represented Venus naked, rising out of the ocean, squeezing the water from her hair with her fingers, while her only veil was the silver shower that fell from her shining locks. This picture is said to have been painted from Campaspe, a beautiful slave of Apelles, formerly the favorite of Alexander. The king had ordered Apelles to paint her naked portrait, and perceiving that the painter was smitten with the charms of his beautiful model, he gave her to him, contenting himself with the painting. He commenced a second Venus for the people of Coös, which, according to Pliny, would have surpassed the first, had not its completion been interrupted by the death of the painter: the only parts finished were the head and bust. Two portraits of Alexander painted by Apelles, were dedicated by Augustus, in the most conspicuous part of the forum bearing his name; in one was Alexander, with Castor and Pollux, and a figure of Victory; in the other was Alexander in a triumphal car, accompanied by a figure of War, with her hands pinioned behind her. The Emperor Claudius took out the heads of Alexander, and substituted those of Augustus. The following portraits are also mentioned among the most famous works of this great artist: Clitus preparing for Battle; Antigonus in armor, walking by the side of his Horse; and Archelaus the General, with his wife and daughter. Pausanias mentions a draped figure of one of the Graces by him, which he saw in the Odeon at Smyrna. A famous back view of a Hercules, in the temple of Antonius at Rome, was said to have been by Apelles. He painted many other famous works: Pliny mentions a naked figure by him, which he says challenged Nature herself. The same author says he covered his pictures with a dark transparent liquid or varnish, which had the effect of harmonising the colors, and also of preserving the work from injury.

Pliny says Apelles was the first artist who painted tetrachromes, or paintings executed with four colors, viz.; lamp black, white chalk, ruddle, and yellow ochre; yet, in describing his Venus Anadyomene, he says she was rising from the green or azure ocean under a bright blue sky. Zeuxis painted grapes so naturally as to deceive the birds. Where got he his green and purple? There has been a great deal of useless disquisition about the merits of ancient painters, and the materials they employed. When we take into consideration their thorough system of education; that the sister arts had been brought to such perfection as to render them the models of all succeeding times; that these painters enjoyed the highest honors and admiration of their polished countrymen, who, it must be admitted, were competent to judge of the merits of their works; that the Romans prized and praised them as much as the Greeks themselves; that there were in Rome in the time of Pliny many ancient paintings 600 years old, still retaining all their original freshness and beauty, it can scarcely be doubted that the paintings of the great Greek artists equaled the best of the moderns; that they possessed all the requisite colors and materials; and, if they did not possess all those now known, they had others unknown to us. It is certain that they employed canvass for paintings of a temporary character, as decorations; and that they treated every subject, both such as required those colors suitable to represent the solemnity and dignity of the gods, as well as others of the most delicate tints, with which to depict flowers; for the Venus of Apelles, and the Flower-Girl of Pausias must have glowed with Titian tints to have attracted such admiration. Colonel Leake, in his Topography of Athens, speaking of the temple of Theseus, says that the stucco still bears the marks or stains of the ancient paintings, in which he distinctly recognized the blue sky, vestiges of bronze and gold colored armor, and blue, green, and red draperies. What then becomes of the tetrachromes of Apelles, and the monochromes of previous artists? for Mycon painted the Theseum near 200 years before the time of Apelles.

APELLES AND THE COBBLER.

It was customary with Apelles to expose to public view the works which he had finished, and to hide himself behind the canvass, in order to hear the remarks made by spectators. He once overheard himself blamed by a shoemaker for a fault in the slippers of some figure; having too much good sense to be offended with any objection, however trifling, which came from a competent judge, he corrected the fault which the man had noticed. On the following day, however, the shoemaker began to animadvert upon the leg; on which Apelles, with some anger, looked out from the canvass, and reproved him in these words, which are also become a proverb, “ne sutor ultra crepidam”—“let the cobbler keep to his last,” or “every man to his trade.”

APELLES’ FOAMING CHARGER.

In finishing a drawing of a horse, in the portraiture of which he much excelled, a very remarkable circumstance is related of him. He had painted a war horse returning from battle, and had succeeded to his wishes in describing nearly every mark that could indicate a high-mettled steed impatient of restraint; there was wanting nothing but a foam of bloody hue issuing from the mouth. He again and again endeavored to express this, but his attempts were unsuccessful. At last in vexation, he threw against the mouth of the horse a sponge filled with different colors, which produced the very effect desired by the painter. A similar story is related of Protogenes, in painting his picture of Jalysus and his Dog.

APELLES AND ALEXANDER.

Apelles was held in great esteem by Alexander the Great, and was admitted into the most intimate familiarity with him. He executed a portrait of this prince in the character of a thundering Jove; a piece which was finished with such skill and dexterity, that it used to be said there were “two Alexanders, the one invincible, the son of Philip, and the other inimitable, the production of Apelles.” Alexander appears to have been a patron of the fine arts more from vanity than taste; and it is related, as an instance of those freedoms which Apelles was permitted to use with him, that when on one occasion he was talking in this artist’s painting room very ignorantly of the art of painting, Apelles requested him to be silent lest the boys who ground his colors should laugh at him. On another occasion, when he had painted a picture of his famous war-horse, Alexander did not seem to appreciate its excellence; but Bucephalus, on seeing his own portrait, began to prance and neigh, when the painter observed that the horse was a better judge of painting than his master.