The stage which was erected for the games celebrated by Claudius Pulcher, brought the art of painting into great admiration, for the ravens were so deceived by the resemblance, as to light upon the decorations which were painted in imitation of tiles.
The late Emperor Augustus placed in the most conspicuous part of his forum, two pictures, representing War and Triumph. He also placed in the Temple of his father, Cæsar, a picture of the Castors, and one of Victory, in addition to those which we shall mention in our account of the works of the different artists. He also inserted two pictures in the wall of the Curia which he consecrated in the Comitium, one of which was a Nemea seated upon a lion, and bearing a palm in her hand. Close to her is an old man, standing with a staff, and above his head hangs the picture of a chariot with two horses. Nicias has written upon this picture that he “inburned”[229] it.
In the second picture the thing to be chiefly admired is the resemblance that the youth bears to the old man his father, allowing, of course, for the difference in age; above them soars an eagle, which grasps a dragon in its talons. Philochares attests that he is the author of this work, an instance, if we only consider it, of the mighty power wielded by the pictorial art; for here, thanks to Philochares, the senate of the Roman people, age after age, has before its eyes Glaucion and his son Aristippus, persons who would otherwise have been altogether unknown.
Cimon of Cleonæ first invented foreshortenings, or in other words, oblique views of the figure, and first learned to vary the features by representing them in the various attitudes of looking backwards, upwards, or downwards. It was he, too, who first marked the articulations of the limbs, indicated the veins, and gave the natural folds and sinuosities to drapery. Panænus, the brother of Phidias, even executed a painting of the battle fought by the Athenians with the Persians at Marathon: and so common had the employment of colors become, and to such a state of perfection had the art arrived, that he was able to represent the portraits of the various generals who commanded at that battle, Miltiades, Callimachus, and Cynægirus, on the side of the Athenians, and, on that of the barbarians, Datis and Artaphernes.
Polygnotus of Thasos was the first to paint the figures of women in transparent drapery, and to represent the head covered with a parti-colored head-dress. He, too, was the first to contribute many other improvements to the art of painting, opening the mouth, for example, showing the teeth, and throwing expression into the countenance, in place of the ancient rigidity of the features.
CHAPTER XV.
ARTISTS WHO PAINTED WITH THE PENCIL.
In the ninetieth Olympiad lived Aglaophon, Cephisodorus, Erillus, and Evenor, the father of Parrhasius, one of the greatest of painters, and of whom we shall have to speak when we come to the period at which he flourished. All these were artists of note, but not sufficiently so to detain us by any further details, in our haste to arrive at the luminaries of the art; first among whom shone Apollodorus of Athens, in the ninety-third Olympiad. He was the first to paint objects as they really appeared; the first too, we may justly say, to confer glory by the aid of the pencil.[230] Of this artist there is a Priest in Adoration, and an Ajax struck by Lightning, a work to be seen at Pergamus at the present day: before him, there is no painting of any artist now to be seen which has the power of riveting the eye.
The gates of art being now thrown open by Apollodorus, Zeuxis of Heraclea entered upon the scene, in the fourth year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, destined to lead the pencil, for which there was nothing too arduous, to a very high pitch of glory. Of him Apollodorus wrote a verse to the effect, that Zeuxis had stolen the art from others and had taken it all to himself. Zeuxis also acquired such a vast amount of wealth, that, in a spirit of ostentation, he went so far as to parade himself at Olympia with his name embroidered on the checked pattern of his garments in letters of gold. At a later period, he came to the determination to give away his works, there being no price high enough to pay for them, he said. He gave an Alcmena to the people of Agrigentum, and a Pan to Archelaüs, King of Macedonia. He also painted a Penelope, in which the peculiar character of that matron appears to be delineated to the very life; and a figure of an athlete, with which he was so highly pleased, that he wrote beneath it the line which has since become so famous, to the effect that it would be easier to find fault with him than to imitate him.[231] His Jupiter seated on the throne, with the other Deities standing around him, is a magnificent production: as, also, is his Infant Hercules strangling the Dragons, in presence of Amphitryon and his mother Alcmena, who is struck with horror. Still, however, Zeuxis is generally censured for making the heads and articulations of his figures out of proportion. And yet, so scrupulously careful was he, that on one occasion, when he was about to execute a painting for the people of Agrigentum, to be consecrated in the Temple of the Lacinian Juno there, he had the young maidens of the place stripped for examination, and selected five of them as models, in order to adopt in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each. He also painted some monochromes in white.
The contemporaries and rivals of Zeuxis were Timanthes, Androcydes, Eupompus, and Parrhasius. The last, it is said, entered into a pictorial contest with Zeuxis, who represented some grapes painted so naturally that the birds flew towards the spot where the picture was exhibited. Parrhasius, on the other hand, exhibited a curtain, drawn with such singular truthfulness, that Zeuxis, elated with the judgment which had been passed upon his work by the birds, haughtily demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside to let the picture be seen. Upon finding his mistake, with a great degree of ingenuous candor he admitted that he had been surpassed, for while he himself had only deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived him, an artist.
There is a story, too, that at a later period, Zeuxis painted a child carrying grapes, and the birds came to peck at them: upon which, with a similar degree of candor, he expressed himself vexed with his work, and exclaimed—“I have surely painted the grapes better than the child, for if I had fully succeeded in the latter, the birds would have been in fear of it.” Zeuxis executed some figures also in clay, the only works of art that were left behind at Ambracia, when Fulvius Nobilior transported the Muses from that city to Rome. There is at Rome a Helena by Zeuxis, in the Porticos of Philippus, and a Marsyas Bound, in the Temple of Concord there.