Parrhasius of Ephesus also contributed greatly to the progress of painting, being the first to give symmetry to his figures, the first to give play and expression to the features, elegance to the hair, and gracefulness to the mouth: indeed, for contour, it is universally admitted by artists that he bore away the palm. This, in painting, is the very highest point of skill. To paint substantial bodies and the interior of objects is a great thing, no doubt, but at the same time it is a point in which many have excelled: but to make the extreme outline of the figure, to give the finishing touches to the painting in rounding off the contour, this is a point of success in the art which is but rarely attained. For the extreme outline, to be properly executed, requires to be nicely rounded, and so to terminate as to prove the existence of something more behind it, and thereby disclose that which it also serves to hide.
Such is the merit conceded to Parrhasius by Antigonus and Xenocrates, who have written on the art of painting; and in this as well as in other points, not only do they admit his excellence, but enlarge upon it in terms of the highest commendation. There are many pen sketches by him still in existence, both upon panel and on parchment, from the study of which, even artists may greatly profit.
In his allegorical picture of the People of Athens, he has displayed singular ingenuity in the treatment of his subjects; for in representing it, he had to depict it as at once fickle, choleric, unjust, and versatile; while, again, he had equally to show its attributes of implacability and clemency, compassionateness and pride, loftiness and humility, fierceness and timidity—and all these at once. He painted a Theseus also, which was formerly in the Capitol at Rome, a Naval Commander wearing a cuirass, and, in one picture, now at Rhodes, figures of Meleager, Hercules, and Perseus. This last painting, though it has been thrice struck by lightning, has escaped being effaced, a circumstance which tends to augment the admiration which it naturally excites. He painted an Archigallus[232] also, a picture which the Emperor Tiberius greatly admired. According to Deculo, that prince had it shut up in his chamber, the price at which it was valued being six hundred thousand sesterces.
Parrhasius also painted a Thracian Nurse, with an Infant in her arms, a Philiscus, a Father Liber attended by Virtue, Two Children, in which we see portrayed the careless simplicity of childhood, and a Priest attended by a Boy, with a censer and chaplet. There are also two most noble pictures by him; one of which represents a Runner contending for the prize, completely armed, so naturally depicted that he appears covered with perspiration. In the other we see the Runner taking off his armor, and can fancy that we hear him panting aloud for breath. His Æneas, Castor, and Pollux, all represented in the same picture, are highly praised, as well as his Telephus, Achilles, Agamemnon, and Ulysses.
Parrhasius was a most prolific artist, but at the same time there was no one who enjoyed the glory conferred upon him by his talent with greater arrogance. He went so far as to call himself “Habrodiætus” (Liver-in-Luxury), and the “prince of painters,” and asserted that in him the art had arrived at perfection. He boasted that he had sprung from the lineage of Apollo, and that he had painted his Hercules, a picture now at Lindos, just as he had often seen him in his sleep. Upon being defeated by Timanthes, at Samos, by a great majority of votes, the subject of the picture being Ajax and the Award of the Arms,[233] he declared in the name of his hero, that he felt himself quite disgraced on thus seeing himself a second time defeated by an unworthy opponent.
As to Timanthes, he was an artist highly gifted with genius, and loud have some of the orators been in their commendations of his Iphigenia, represented as she stands at the altar awaiting her doom. Upon the countenance of all present, that of her uncle Menelaus in particular, grief was depicted; but having already exhausted all the characteristic features of sorrow, the artist adopted the device of veiling the features of the victim’s father, Agamemnon, finding himself unable adequately to give expression to his feelings. There are also some other proofs of his genius, a Sleeping Cyclops, for instance, which he has painted upon a small panel; but, being desirous to convey an idea of his gigantic stature, he has painted some Satyrs near him measuring his thumb with a thyrsus. Indeed, Timanthes is the only one among the artists in whose works there is always something more implied by the pencil than is expressed, and whose execution, though of the very highest quality, is always surpassed by the inventiveness of his genius. He painted the figure of a Hero, a master-piece of skill, in which he carried the art to the very highest pitch of perfection, in the delineation of the warrior: this work is now at Rome, in the Temple of Peace.
At this period, too, Euxinidas had for his pupil Aristides, who became a most illustrious artist; and Eupompus instructed Pamphilus, who afterwards became the instructor of Apelles. There is by Eupompus, a Victor in a gymnastic contest, holding a palm. So high was the reputation of this artist, that he established a school of painting, and so divided the art into three styles; whereas till then there had been but two, known respectively as the Helladic and the Asiatic. In honor of him, a native of Sicyon by birth, the Helladic school was divided into two, and from this period there were three distinct styles recognized, the Ionic, the Sicyonian, and the Attic.
We have, by Pamphilus, a picture representing the Alliance and the Battle that was fought at Phlius; a Victory also and a representation of Ulysses in his ship. He was a Macedonian by birth, but was the first painter who was also skilled in all the other sciences, arithmetic and geometry more particularly, without the aid of which he maintained that the pictorial art could not attain perfection. He gave instruction to no one for a smaller sum than one talent, at the rate of five hundred denarii per annum,[234] and this fee both Apelles and Melanthius paid. It was through his influence that, first at Sicyon, and then throughout the whole of Greece, all children of free birth were taught the graphic art, or in other words, the art of drawing upon boxwood; in consequence of which this came to be looked upon as the first step in the liberal arts. It is the fact, however, that this art has always been held in high estimation, and cultivated by persons of free birth, and that, at a more recent period, men of rank even began to pursue it; it having always been forbidden that slaves should receive instruction in it. Hence no celebrated work of painting or drawing has been executed by a slave.
In the hundred and seventh Olympiad, flourished Aëtion and Therimachus. By the former we have some fine pictures; a Father Liber, Tragedy and Comedy, Semiramis from the rank of a slave elevated to the throne, an Old Woman bearing torches, and a New-made Bride, remarkable for the air of modesty with which she is portrayed.
But it was Apelles of Cos, in the hundred and twelfth Olympiad, who surpassed all the other painters who either preceded or succeeded him. Single-handed, he contributed more to painting than all the others together, and even went so far as to publish some treatises on the principles of the art. The great point of artistic merit with him was his singular charm of gracefulness, and this too, though the greatest of painters were his contemporaries. In admiring their works and bestowing high eulogiums upon them, he used to say that there was still wanting in them that ideal of beauty so peculiar to himself, and known to the Greeks as “Charis;” others, he said, had acquired all the other requisites of perfection, but in this one point he himself had no equal. He also asserted his claim to another great point of merit: admiring a picture by Protogenes, which bore evident marks of unbounded laboriousness and the most minute finish, he remarked that in every respect Protogenes was fully his equal, or perhaps his superior, except in this, that he himself knew when to take his hand off a picture—a memorable lesson, which teaches us that over-carefulness may be productive of bad results. His candor was equal to his talent; he acknowledged the superiority of Melanthius in his grouping, and of Asclepiodorus in the niceness of his measurements, or, in other words, the distances that ought to be left between the objects represented.