18. Я знаю, конечно, что при всем том она еще недостаточно отделана и оставляет желать лучшего; но трудно и ждать иного, так как он, без сомнения, по нашей исторической мерке настолько древний оратор, что до него никто не оставил речей, заслуживающих чтения.
Однако ведь, если не в красноречии, то в других искусствах старина пользуется очень большим почетом! (70) В самом деле, какой знаток этих меньших искусств не понимает, что статуи Канаха выглядят слишком застылыми и поэтому недостаточно правдоподобны; статуи Каламида еще тяжеловесны, но уже несколько искусней; статуи Мирона тоже еще не совсем точно передают природу, но уже могут быть названы прекрасными; а еще прекраснее статуи Поликлета, достигающие, на мой взгляд, уже полного совершенства. То же самое в живописи: у Зевксиса, Полигнота, Тиманфа и других художников, которые используют лишь четыре краски, мы хвалим только рисунок и чистоту линий; но у Аэтиона, Никомаха, Протогена, Апеллеса совершенно уже всё без исключения. (71) И я уверен, что то же самое происходит со всеми другими искусствами: только что возникшее не может быть совершенным. Можно не сомневаться, что и до Гомера были поэты: это видно по тем песням, которые поются у него на пирах у феаков и у женихов.
А где наши ранние стихи,
…коими встарь вещуны певали да фавны,
И на утес, обиталище Муз, не всходил ни единый?..
Энний с полным правом гордо говорит сам о себе:
…И до него ни один не трудился над слогом.
Так дело и обстояло. Ведь ни латинская "Одиссея", похожая на создания Дедала, ни драмы Ливия недостойны того, чтобы их перечитывать.
Еще в юные годы на него пало обвинение в близких отношениях с сестрой. Да и помимо того, говорят, Эльпиника была поведения не безупречного, но была близка и с живописцем Полигнотом, почему и утверждают, что, изображая троянок в Писианактовом портике, который теперь называют Расписным, художник в образе Лаодики написал Эльпинику9. Полигнот не принадлежал к числу художников-ремесленников и расписывал портик не из корысти, а безвозмездно, желая отличиться перед согражданами. Так, по крайней мере, пишут историки, и поэт Меланфий выразил это следующим образом: Храмы и площадь Кекропа украсил, затрат не жалея,
Кистью своей восхвалив славных героев труды.
Сократ. Так вот, видал ли ты кого-нибудь, кто способен объяснить, что в живописи Полигнота, сына Аглаофонта, {533} хорошо, а что нет, а когда дело коснется других художников — бессилен, и когда кто-нибудь говорит о произведениях всех прочих художников, то он дремлет, затрудняется и не может ничего объяснить; а когда нужно высказать мнение о Полигноте или об ином, но только одном каком-нибудь художнике, он вдруг просыпается, становится внимателен и нисколько не затрудняется, что сказать?
Ион. Нет, клянусь Зевсом, я не видал такого человека.
Плиний Старший, Естественная история 35 (AN ACCOUNT OF PAINTINGS AND COLOURS).25 (ATRAMENTUM):
Polygnotus and Micon, the most celebrated painters of Athens, made their black from grape-husks, and called it "tryginon."121
121 From τρύξ, "grape-husks," or "wine-lees."
Плиний Старший, Естественная история 35 (AN ACCOUNT OF PAINTINGS AND COLOURS). 35. (9.) (THE FIRST CONTEST FOR EXCELLENCE IN THE PICTORIAL ART):
And not only this, but, during the time that Panænus flourished, there were contests in the pictorial art instituted at Corinth and Delphi. On the first occasion, Panænus himself entered the lists, at the Pythian Games, with Timagoras of Chalcis, by whom he was defeated; a circumstance which is recorded in some ancient lines by Timagoras himself, and an undoubted proof that the chroniclers are in error as to the date of the origin of painting. After these, and yet before the ninetieth Olympiad, there were other celebrated painters, Polygnotus of Thasos,168 for instance, who was the first to paint females in transparent drapery, and to represent the head covered with a parti-coloured 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.
There is a picture by this artist in the Portico169 of Pompeius, before the Curia that was built by him; with reference to which, there is some doubt whether the man represented with a shield is in the act of ascending or descending. He also embellished the Temple170 at Delphi, and at Athens the Portico known as the Pœcile;171 at which last he worked gratuitously, in conjunction with Micon,172 who received pay for his labours. Indeed Polygnotus was held in the higher esteem of the two; for the Amphictyons,173 who form the general Council of Greece, decreed that he should have his lodging furnished him at the public expense.
168 See B. vii. c. 57. (Vol. II. p. 233), where he is mentioned as an Athenian. It is not improbable that he became a citizen of Athens in the seventy-ninth Olympiad, B.C. 463, when Thasos was brought under the power of Athens, and, as Sillig suggests, at the solicitation of Cimon, the son of Miltiades. It is generally supposed that he flourished about the eightieth Olympiad.
169 Belonging to the Theatre of Pompey, in the Ninth Region of the City.
170 With scenes from the Trojan War, and the adventures of Ulysses.
171 Or "Variegated;" from its various pictures.
172 See B. xxxiii. c. 56.
Плиний Старший, Естественная история 35 (AN ACCOUNT OF PAINTINGS AND COLOURS).39(ARTISTS WHO HAVE PAINTED IN ENCAUSTICS OR WAX, WITH EITHER THE CESTRUM OR THE PENCIL):
It is not agreed who was the inventor of the art of painting in wax and in encaustic.309 Some think that it was a discovery of the painter Aristides,310 and that it was afterwards brought to perfection by Praxiteles: but there are encaustic paintings in existence, of a somewhat prior date to them, those by Polygnotus,311 for example, and by Nicanor and Arcesilaüs,312 natives of Paros. Elasippus too, has inscribed upon a picture of his at Ægina, the word ἐνέχαεν;313 a thing that he certainly could not have done, if the art of encaustic painting had not been then invented.
309 See Chapter 41 of this Book, where the difficulties attending this description will be considered.
310 See Chapter 36 of this Book.
311 See Chapter 35 of this Book.
312 Possibly the artist of that name mentioned by Athenæus, B. x., as a tutor of Apelles. If so, he must have flourished about the ninety-seventh Olympiad.
313 Elasippus "inburned" this picture, i. e. executed it in encaustic. From the Attic form of this word, it has been conclnded that he was an Athenian. The spelling of his name is very doubtful.
Плиний Старший, Естественная история 35 (AN ACCOUNT OF PAINTINGS AND COLOURS).40 (THE FIRST INVENTORS OF VARIOUS KINDS OF PAINTING. THE GREATEST DIFFICULTIES IN THE ART OF PAINTING. THE SEVERAL VARIETIES OF PAINTING. THE FIRST ARTIST THAT PAINTED CEILINGS. WHEN ARCHED ROOFS WERE FIRST PAINTED. THE MARVELLOUS PRICE OF SOME PICTURES):
It is said, too, that Pamphilus,314 the instructor of Apelles, not only painted in encaustic, but also instructed Pausias315 of Sicyon in the art, the first who rendered himself distinguished in this branch. Pausias was the son of Bryetes, by whom he was originally instructed in the art of painting. He retouched also with the pencil316 some walls at Thespiæ, then undergoing repair, which had formerly been painted by Polygnotus. Upon instituting a comparison, however, it was considered that he was greatly inferior, this kind of painting not being in his line.
314 See Chapter 36 of this Book.
315 Two paintings of his at Epidaurus are mentioned by Pausanias, B. ii. c. 27.
316 And not in encaustic; though, as we shall see in Chapter 41, the brush was sometimes used in this branch.
Плиний Старший, Естественная история BOOK XXXIII. THE NATURAL HISTORY OF METALS:
CHAP. 36. (7.)—MINIUM: FOR WHAT RELIGIOUS PURPOSES IT WAS USED BY THE ANCIENTS.
It is also in silver-mines that minium356 is found, a pigment held at the present day in very high estimation; and by the Romans in former times not only held in the highest estimation, but used for sacred purposes as well. Verrius enumerates certain authors, upon whose testimony we find it satisfactorily established that it was the custom upon festivals to colour the face of the statue of Jupiter even with minium, as well as the bodies357 of triumphant generals; and that it was in this guise that Camillus celebrated his triumph. We find, too, that it is through the same religious motives that it is employed at the present day for colouring the unguents used at triumphal banquets, and that it is the first duty of the censors to make a contract for painting the statue of Jupiter358 with this colour.
For my own part, I am quite at a loss for the origin of this usage; but it is a well-known fact, that at the present day even, minium is in great esteem with the nations of Æthiopia, their nobles being in the habit of staining the body all over with it, and this being the colour appropriated to the statues of their gods. I shall therefore use all the more diligence in enquiring into all the known facts respecting it.
CHAP. 37.—THE DISCOVERY AND ORIGIN OF MINIUM.
Theophrastus states that, ninety years before the magistracy of Praxibulus at Athens—a date which answers to the year of our City, 439—minium was discovered by Callias the Athenian, who was in hopes to extract gold, by submitting to the action of fire the red sand that was found in the silver-mines. This, he says, was the first discovery of minium. He states, also, that in his own time, it was already found in Spain, but of a harsh and sandy nature; as also in Colchis, upon a certain inaccessible rock there, from which it was brought down by the agency of darts. This, however, he says, was only an adulterated kind of minium, the best of all being that procured in the Cilbian Plains,359 above Ephesus, the sand of which has just the colour of the kermes berry.360 This sand, he informs us, is first ground to powder and then washed, the portion that settles at the bottom being subjected to a second washing. From this circumstance, he says, arises a difference in the article; some persons being in the habit of preparing their minium with a single washing, while with others it is more diluted. The best kind, however, he says, is that which has undergone a second washing.
CHAP. 38.—CINNABARIS.
I am not surprised that this colour should have been held in such high esteem; for already, in the days of the Trojan War, rubrica361 was highly valued, as appears from the testimony of Homer, who particularly notices the ships that were coloured with it, whereas, in reference to other colours and paintings, he but rarely notices them. The Greeks call this red earth "miltos," and give to minium the name of "cinnabaris," and hence the error362 caused by the two meanings of the same word; this being properly the name given to the thick matter which issues from the dragon when crushed beneath the weight of the dying elephant, mixed with the blood of either animal, as already described.363 Indeed this last is the only colour that in painting gives a proper representation of blood. This cinnabaris, too, is extremely useful as an ingredient in antidotes and various medicaments. But, by Hercules ! our physicians, because minium also has the name of "cinnabaris," use it as a substitute for the other, and so employ a poison, as we shall shortly364 show it to be.
CHAP. 39.—THE EMPLOYMENT OF CINNABARIS IN PAINTING.
The ancients used to paint with cinnabaris365 those pictures of one colour, which are still known among us as " monochromata."366 They painted also with the minium of Ephesus:367 but the use of this last has been abandoned, from the vast trouble which the proper keeping of the picture entailed. And then besides, both these colours were thought to be too harsh; the consequence of which is, that painters have now adopted the use of rubrica368 and of sinopis, substances of which I shall make further mention in the appropriate places.369
Cinnabaris370 is adulterated by the agency of goats' blood, or of bruised sorb-apples. The price of genuine cinnabaris is fifty sesterces per pound.
CHAP. 40.—THE VARIOUS KINDS OF MINIUM. THE USE MADE OF IT IN PAINTING.
According to Juba minium is also a production of Carmania,371 and Timagenes says that it is found in Æthiopia. But from neither of those regions is it imported to Rome, nor, indeed, from hardly any other quarter but Spain ; that of most note coming from Sisapo,372 a territory of Bætica, the mine of minium there forming a part of the revennes of the Roman people. Indeed there is nothing guarded with a more constant circumspection; for it is not allowable to reduce and refine the ore upon the spot, it being brought to Rome in a crude state and under seal, to the amount of about two thousand pounds per annum. At Rome, the process of washing is performed, and, in the sale of it, the price is regulated by statute; it not being allowed to exceed373 seventy sesterces per pound. There are numerous ways, however, of adulterating it, a source of considerable plunder to the company.374
For there is, in fact, another kind375 of minium, found in most silver-mines as well as lead-mines, and prepared by the calcination of certain stones that are found mixed with the metallic vein—not the minerals, however, to the fluid humours of which we have given376 the name of quicksilver; for if those are subjected to the action of fire they will yield silver—but another kind of stone377 that is found with them. These barren378 stones, too, may be recognized by their uniform leaden colour, and it is only when in the furnace that they turn red. After being duly calcined they are pulverized, and thus form a minium of second-rate quality, known to but very few, and far inferior to the produce of the native sand that we have mentioned.379 It is with this substance, then, as also with syricum, that the genuine minium is adulterated in the manufactories of the company. How syricum is prepared we shall describe in the appropriate place.380 One motive, however, for giving an under-coat of syricum to minium, is the evident saving of expense that results therefrom. Minium, too, in another way affords a very convenient opportunity to painters for pilfering, by wash- ing their brushes,381 filled with the colouring matter, every now and then. The minium of course falls to the bottom, and is thus so much gained by the thief.
Genuine minium ought to have the brilliant colour of the kermes berry;382 but when that of inferior quality is used for walls, the brightness of it is sure to be tarnished by the moisture, and this too, although the substance itself is a sort of metallic mildew. In the mines of Sisapo, the veins are composed exclusively of the sandy particles of minium, without the intermixture of any silver whatever; the practice being to melt it like gold. Minium is assayed by the agency of gold in a state of incandescence: if it has been adulterated, it will turn black, but if genuine, it retains its colour. I find it stated also that minium is adulterated with line; the proper mode of detecting which, is similarly to employ a sheet of red hot iron, if there should happen to be no gold at hand.
To objects painted with minium the action of the sun and moon is highly injurious. The proper method of avoiding this inconvenience, is to dry the wall, and then to apply, with a hair brush, hot Punic wax, melted with oil; after which, the varnish must be heated, with an application of gall-nuts, burnt to a red heat, till it quite perspires. This done, it must be smoothed down with rollers383 made of wax, and then polished with clean linen cloths, like marble, when made to shine. Persons employed in the manufactories in preparing minium protect the face with masks of loose bladder-skin, in order to avoid inhaling the dust, which is highly pernicious; the covering being at the same time sufficiently transparent to admit of being seen through.
Minium is employed also for writing384 in books; and the letters made with it being more distinct, even on gold or marble, it is used for the inscriptions upon tombs.
356 The minium spoken of in this and the following Chapter is our Cinnabar, a bisulphurate of mercury. This ore is the great source of the mercury of commerce, from which it is obtained by sublimation. When pure, it is the same as the manufactured vermilion of commerce.
357 Intended, no doubt, to be typical of blood and carnage; and indicative of a very low state of civilization.
358 See B. xxxv. c. 45.
359 See B. v. c. 31.
360 See B. xvi. c. 12, and B. xxiv. c. 4.
361 The same as the miltos mentioned below, "miltos" being the word used by Homer, II. II. 637. This substance is totally different from the minium of the preceding Chapters, and from that mentioned in c. 40. It is our red ochre, peroxide of iron, mixed in a greater or less degree with argillaceous earth.
362 See B. xxix. c. 8; where he speaks of the mistake made by the physicians in giving mineral vermilion or minium to their patients instead of Indian cinnabar. The latter substance is probably identical with that which is now used for varnishes, being imported from India, and still known as " dragons' blood," the resin of the Ptero-carpus draco, or Calamus palm.
363 In B. viii. c. 12.
364 In Chapter 41.
365 The dragon's blood, mentioned in the preceding Chapter.
366 "Single colour paintings." See B. xxxv. cc. 5, 11, 34, 36.
367 Mentioned in Chapter 37.
368 The "miltos" of the preceding Chapter. See Note 55 above.
369 In B. xxxv. c. 13, et seq.
370 He is here speaking of our cinnabar, or vermilion, mentioned in Chapter 36.
371 See B. vi. cc. 27, 28, 32.
372 See B. iii. c. 3, Vol. I. p. 163. He alludes to the district of Almaden, in Andalusia, still famous for its quicksilver mines.
373 When sold by the "publicani," or farmers of the revenue.
374 Of the publicani.
375 Red oxide of lead, a much inferior pigment to cinnabar, or the minium of Chapter 36.
376 In Chapter 32 of this Book.
377 Dana informs us that minium is usually associated with galena and with calamine. Syst. Mineral, p. 495.
378 "Steriles." Barren of silver, probably; though Hardouin thinks that it means "barren of lead." Holland renders it "barraine and void of the right vermilion."
379 In Chapter 37.
380 B. xxxv. c. 24.
381 When hired by the job for colouring walls or objects of art. See B. xxxv. c. 12.
382 See B. xvi. c. 12, and B. xxiv. c. 4.
383 "Candelis." The Abate Requeno thinks that these "candelæ" were used as a delicate cauterium, simply to keep the wax soft, that it might receive a polish from the friction of the linen.
384 Hence the use of it in the middle ages; a reminiscence of which still exists in our word "rubric."
Плиний Старший, Естественная история 35 AN ACCOUNT OF PAINTINGS AND COLOURS:
CHAP. 5.—THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE ART OF PAINTING. MO- NOCHROME PAINTINGS. THE EARLIEST PAINTERS.
We have no certain knowledge as to the commencement of the art of painting, nor does this enquiry fall under our consideration. The Egyptians assert that it was invented among themselves, six thousand years before it passed into Greece; a vain boast, it is very evident.33 As to the Greeks, some say that it was invented at Sicyon, others at Corinth; but they all agree that it originated in tracing lines round the human shadow.34 The first stage of the art, they say, was this, the second stage being the employment of single colours; a process known as "monochromaton,"35 after it had become more complicated, and which is still in use at the present day. The invention of line-drawing has been assigned to Philocles, the Egyptian, or to Cleanthes36 of Corinth. The first who practised this line-drawing were Aridices, the Corinthian, and Telephanes, the Sicyonian, artists who, without making use of any colours, shaded the interior of the outline by drawing lines;37 hence, it was the custom with them to add to the picture the name of the person represented. Ecphantus, the Corinthian, was the first to employ colours upon these pictures, made, it is said, of broken earthenware, reduced to powder. We shall show on a future38 occasion, that it was a different artist of the same name, who, according to Cornelius Nepos, came to Italy with Demaratus, the father of the Roman king, Tarquinius Priscus, on his flight from Corinth to escape the violence of the tyrant Cypselus.
33 This period for the invention of painting by the Egyptians is evidently incorrect; but still there is sufficient reason for concluding that there now exist specimens of Egyptian art, which were in existence previous to the time of the earliest Grecian painters of whom we have any certain account.—B.
34 All the ancients who have treated of the history of the art agree, that the first attempt at what may be considered the formation of a picture, consisted in tracing the shadow of a human head or some other object on the wall, the interior being filled up with one uniform shade of colour.—B.
35 From the Greek μονοχρώματον "single colouring."—B.
36 He is mentioned also by Athenagoras, Strabo, and Athenæus.
37 Called "graphis," by the Greeks, and somewhat similar, probably, to our pen and ink drawings.
38 In Chapter 43 of this Book.—B.
CHAP. 21.—ERETRIA.
Eretria takes its name from the territory108 which produces it. Nicomachus109 and Parrhasius made use of it. In a medicinal point of view, it is cooling and emollient. In a calcined state, it promotes the cicatrization of wounds, is very useful as a desiccative, and is particularly good for pains in the head, and for the detection of internal suppurations. If the earth, when applied110 with water, does not dry with rapidity, the presence of purulent matter is apprehended.
108 See B. iv. c. 21.
109 As to both of these artists, see Chapter 36.
110 To the chest.
CHAP. 25.—ATRAMENTUM.
Atramentum,117 too, must be reckoned among the artificial colours, although it is also derived in two ways from the earth. For sometimes it is found exuding from the earth like the brine of salt-pits, while at other times an earth itself of a sulphurous colour is sought for the purpose. Painters, too, have been known to go so far as to dig up half-charred bones118 from the sepulchres for this purpose.
All these plans, however, are new-fangled and troublesome; for this substance may be prepared, in numerous ways, from the soot that is yielded by the combustion of resin or pitch; so much so, indeed, that manufactories have been built on the principle of not allowing an escape for the smoke evolved by the process. The most esteemed black,119 however, that is made in this way, is prepared from the wood of the torch-pine.
It is adulterated by mixing it with the ordinary soot from furnaces and baths, a substance which is also employed for the purpose of writing. Others, again, calcine dried wine-lees, and assure us that if the wine was originally of good quality from which the colour is made, it will bear comparison with that of indicum.120 Polygnotus and Micon, the most celebrated painters of Athens, made their black from grape-husks, and called it "tryginon."121 Apelles invented a method of preparing it from burnt ivory, the name given to it being "elephantinon."
We have indicum also, a substance imported from India, the composition of which is at present unknown to me.122 Dyers, too, prepare an atramentum from the black inflorescence which adheres to the brazen dye-pans. It is made also from logs of torch-pine, burnt to charcoal and pounded in a mortar. The sæpia, too, has a wonderful property of secreting a black liquid;123 but from this liquid no colour is prepared. The preparation of every kind of atramentum is completed by exposure to the sun; the black, for writing, having an admixture of gum, and that for coating walls, an admixture of glue. Black pigment that has been dissolved in vinegar is not easily effaced by washing.
117 "Black colouring substance."
118 "Carbones infectos." The reading is very doubtful. It may possibly mean "charred bones tainted with dirt." This would make an inferior ivory-black. The earth before-mentioned is considered by Ajasson to be a deuto-sulphate of copper, a solution of which, in gallic acid, is still used for dyeing black. The water near copper-mines would very probably be also highly impregnated with it. Beckmann considers these to have been vitriolic products. Vol. II. p. 265.
119 Our Lamp-black. Vitruvius describes the construction of the manufactories above alluded to.
120 Probably, our Chinese, or Indian ink, a different substance from the indicum of Chapter 27.
121 From τρύξ, "grape-husks," or "wine-lees."
122 Indian ink is a composition of fine lamp-black and size.
123 See B. ii. c. 29. Sepia, for sepic drawing, is now prepared from these juices.
...
CHAP. 32.—WHAT COLOURS WERE USED BY THE ANCIENTS IN PAINTING.
It was with four colours only,146 that Apelles,147 Echion, Melanthius, and Nicomachus, those most illustrous painters, executed their immortal works; melinum148 for the white, Attic sil149 for the yellow, Pontic sinopis for the red, and atramentum for the black;150 and yet a single picture of theirs has sold before now for the treasures of whole cities. But at the present day, when purple is employed for colouring walls even, and when India sends to us the slime151 of her rivers, and the corrupt blood of her dragons152 and her elephants, there is no such thing as a picture of high quality produced. Everything, in fact, was superior at a time when the resources of art were so much fewer than they now are. Yes, so it is; and the reason is, as we have already stated,153 that it is the material, and not the efforts of genius, that is now the object of research.
146 Pliny here commits a mistake, which may have arisen from an imperfect recollection, as Sir. H. Davy has supposed, of a passage in Cicero (Brutus, c. 18), which, however, quite contradicts the statement of Pliny. "In painting, we admire in the works of Zeuxis, Polygnotus, Timanthes, and those who used four colours only, the figure and the lineaments; but in the works of Echion, Nicomachus, Protogenes, and Apelles, everything is perfect." Indeed Pliny contradicts himself, for he speaks of two others colours used by the earliest painters, the testa trita, or ground earthenware, in Chapter 5 of this Book; and "cinnabaris," or vermilion, in B. xxxiii. c. 36. Also, in Chapter 21 of this Book he speaks of Eretrian earth as having been used by Nicomachus, and in Chapter 25 of ivory black as having been invented by Apelles.
147 These painters will all be noticed in Chapter 36.
148 See Chapter 19 of this Book.
149 See B. xxxiii. c. 56.
150 Blue is here excluded altogether, unless under the term "atramentum" we would include black and blue indicum, or in other words, Indian ink and indigo.
151 See Chapter 27 of this Book.
152 In allusion to "Dragon's blood." See B. xxxiii. c. 38.
153 In Chapter 2 of this Book.
CHAP. 34. (8.)—THE AGE OF PAINTING; WITH THE NAMES OF THE MORE CELEBRATED WORKS AND ARTISTS, FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE IN NUMBER.
I shall now proceed to enumerate, as briefly as possible, the more eminent among the painters; it not being consistent with the plan of this work to go into any great lengths of detail. It must suffice therefore, in some cases, to name the artist in a cursory manner only, and with reference to the account given of others; with the exception, of course, of the more famous pro- ductions of the pictorial art, whether still in existence or now lost, all of which it will be only right to take some notice of. In this department, the ordinary exactness of the Greeks has been somewhat inconsistent, in placing the painters so many Olympiads after the statuaries and toreutic156 artists, and the very first of them so late as the ninetieth Olympiad; seeing that Phidias himself is said to have been originally a painter, and that there was a shield at Athens which had been painted by him: in addition to which, it is universally agreed that in the eighty-third Olympiad, his brother Panænus157 painted, at Elis,158 the interior of the shield of Minerva, which had been executed by Colotes,159 a disciple of Phidias and his assistant in the statue of the Olympian Jupiter.160 And then besides, is it not equally admitted that Candaules, the last Lydian king of the race of the Heraclidæ, very generally known also by the name of Myrsilus, paid its weight in gold for a picture by the painter Bularchus,161 which represented the battle fought by him with the Magnetes? so great was the estimation in which the art was already held. This circumstance must of necessity have happened about the period of our Romulus; for it was in the eighteenth Olympiad that Candaules perished, or, as some writers say, in the same year as the death of Romulus: a thing which clearly demonstrates that even at that early period the art had already become famous, and had arrived at a state of great perfection.
If, then, we are bound to admit this conclusion, it must be equally evident that the commencement of the art is of much earlier date, and that those artists who painted in monochrome,162 and whose dates have not been handed down to us, must have flourished at even an anterior period; Hygiænon, namely, Dinias, Charmadas,163 Eumarus, of Athens, the first who distinguished the kexes164 in painting, and attempted to imitate every kind of figure; and Cimon165 of Cleonæ, who improved upon the inventions of Eumarus.
It was this Cimon, too, who first invented foreshortenings,166 or in other words, oblique views of the figure, and who 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, too, the brother of Phidias, even executed a painting167 of the battle fought by the Athenians with the Persians at Marathon: so common, indeed, had the employment of colours become, and to such a state of perfection had the art arrived, that he was able to represent, it is said, 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.
156 "Toreutæ." For the explanation of this term, see end of B. xxxiii.
157 In reality he was cousin or nephew of Phidias, by the father's side, though Pausanias, B. v. c. 11, falls into the same error as that committed by Pliny. He is mentioned likewise by Strabo and Æschines.
158 See B. xxxvi. c. 55.
159 See B. xxxiv. c. 19.
160 See B. xxxiv. c. 19.
161 See B. vii. c. 39.
162 Paintings with but one colour. "Monochromata," as we shall see in Chapter 36, were painted at all times, and by the greatest masters. Those of Zeuxis corresponded with the Chiariscuri of the Italians, light and shade being introduced with the highest degree of artistic skill.
163 These several artists are quite unknown, being mentioned by no other author.
164 It is pretty clear, from vases of a very ancient date, that it is not the kexual distinction that is here alluded to. Eumarus, perhaps, may have been the first to give to each kex its characteristic style of design, in the compositions, draperies, attitudes, and complexions of the respective kexes. Wornum thinks that, probably, Eumarus, and certainly, Cimon, belonged to the class of ancient tetrachromists, or polychromists, painting in a variety of colours, without a due, or at least a partial, observance of the laws of light and shade. Smith's Dict. Antiq. Art. Painting.
165 He is mentioned also by Ælian. Böttiger is of opinion that he flourished about the 80th Olympiad. It is probable, however, that he lived long before the age of Polygnotus; but some time after that of Eumarus. Wornum thinks that he was probably a contemporary of Solon, a century before Polygnotus.
166 "Catagrapha."
167 This picture was placed in the Pœcile at Athens, and is mentioned also by Pausanias, B. i. c. 15, and by Æschines, Ctesiph. s. 186.
CHAP. 36.—ARTISTS WHO PAINTED WITH THE PENCIL.
In the ninetieth Olympiad lived Aglaophon,175 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 glory176 by the aid of the pencil.177 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 rivetting the eye.
175 He was a native of Thasos, and father and instructor of Polygnotus. As Pliny has already stated that Polygnotus flourished before the ninetieth Olympiad, there is an inconsistency in his making mention of the son as flourishing before the father. Hence Sillig, with Böttiger, is inclined to think that there were two artists of this name, one about the seventieth, and the other about the ninetieth Olympiad, the former being the father of Polygnotus.
254 It has been well remarked by Wornum, in the article so often quoted, that "expression of the feelings and passions cannot be denied to Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Parrhasius, Timanthes, and many others."
176 "Primusque gloriam penicillo jure contulit." Wornum considers that "the rich effect of the combination of light and shade with colour is clearly expressed in these words."—Smith's Dict. Antiq. Art. Painting. This artist, who was noted for his arrogance, is mentioned by other ancient writers.
177 "Penicillus." This was the hair-pencil or brush, which was used by one class of painters, in contradistinction to the stylus or cestrum used for spreading the wax-colours. Painters with the brush used what we should term "water-colours;" oil-colours, in our sense of the word, being unknown to the ancients.
Where then can we get all that? Or shall
we call in the painters, of course, and particularly
those who excelled in mixing their colours and in
applying them judiciously? Come, then, let us call
in Polygnotus and Euphranor of old, and Apelles and
Action. Let them divide up the work, and let
Euphranor colour the hair as he painted Hera's : ^
let Polygnotus do the becomingness of her brows
and the faint flush of her cheeks, just as he did
Cassandra in the Lesche at Delphi,'^ and let him also
do her clothing, which shall be of the most delicate
texture, so that it not only clings close where it
should, but a great deal of it floats in the air. The
body Apelles shall represent after the manner of his
Pacate,^ not too white but just suffused with red ;
and her lips shall be done by Action like Roxana's.*
But stay ! We have Homer, the best of all painters,
even in the presence of Euphranor and Apelles.
Let her be throughout of a colour like that which
Homer gave to the thighs of Menelaus when he
likened them to ivory tinged with crimson ; ^ and
let him also paint the eyes and make her " ox-eyed."
The Theban poet, too, shall lend him a hand in the
work, to give her "violet brows."" Yes, and
Homer shall make her " laughter-loving " and
" white-armed ' and '' rosy-fingered," and, in a word,
shall liken her to golden Aphrodite far more fittingly
than he did the daughter of Briseus.'
Athena, for she overturned the wooden image from its
pedestal when Ajax dragged her out of the sanctuary."
(Pausanias 10, 25, 1 and 26, 3, Frazer's translation. )
8 Called Pancaste by Aelian ( Var. Hist. , 12, 34), Pancaspe
by Pliny (.35, 86). She was a girl of Larissa, the first sweet-
heart of Alexander the Great.
* In the famous "Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,"
described fully in Lucian's Herodotus, c. 4—6.
® Iliad 4, 141 sqq.
* Pindar ; the poem in which he applied this epithet to
Aphrodite (cf. p. 333) is lost.
This, then, is what sculptors and painters and
poets can achieve ; but who could counterfeit the
fine flower of it all — the grace ; nay, all the Graces
in company, and all the Loves, too, circling hand in
hand about her ?
POLYSTRATUS
It is a miraculous creature that you describe,
Lycinus; "dropt from the skies "^ in very truth,
quite like something out of Heaven. But what was
she doing when you saw her ?
Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (Trustees of Tufts University, Albemarle Street, London):
PICTURA
PICTU´RA
(
γραφή
,
γραφική
,
ζῳγραφία
), painting.
1. Definition of terms.
The word γράφω originally implies the engraving of signs of any kind, and from this it came to be used both for painting and writing: as in Greece the art of painting was known long before the introduction of writing, it is probable that the second meaning was derived from the first, the pictorial origin of writing being an obvious connexion. The same double usage was applied to γραφὴ and γράμμα: while γραφικὴ indicated painting as art in the abstract. As the representation of the living thing is the farthest removed from the mere signs which constitute writing, painting as distinguished from writing came to be called ζῳγραφία (ζῷα γράφειν) or ζωγραφική: with special names for the various branches of the art, as μεγαλογραφία, for large subjects; ῥωπογραφία, for trivial or miniature subjects; εἰκονογραφία, portraiture; and σκηνογραφία, scene-painting. In Latin we have not these distinctive terms, pingere and its derivatives (originally applied to embroidery) doing duty for all requirements.
It is evident that the rooted idea of the word γράφω includes both the elements of drawing and also that of colouring: of the two it seems natural to suppose that drawing is the earlier in point of origin, seeing that it forms the basis of painting: and this abstract idea is probably what we are intended to understand by the ancient legends of the origin of painting in Greece. These legends, to which we shall presently refer, seem to suggest that the earliest paintings were really only outline drawings,--a fact which is, however, not borne out by the evidence of the monuments. It has been suggested that what Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.15) alludes to as the earliest form of art,--Monochrome painting, monochromaton,--consisted in the filling in of such outline drawings with colour, and thus forming a silhouette, similar in idea to the paintings on the earliest vases. Donner, on the other hand, suggests that the art of writing preceded that of drawing; tablets of wax, pugillares, and the stilus may be traced, he says, back to the time of Homer. Pliny states (21.85) that the wax was coloured black with paper ash, and red with anchusa. From writing on these tablets people took to drawing: this, in Donner's view, is the explanation of the earliest form of art, Pliny's monochromaton. This explanation is obviously untenable: for one thing we have no evidence to show that such red and black drawings existed in early times: the theory that writing preceded drawing is contrary to all our preconceived notions of development; and, besides, another statement of Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 33.117; 35.64-Z2) proves that in his time monochromata meant something quite different, the pictures being executed in various tones of the same colour. Blümner suggests that the mere outline drawings should rather be called monogrammata, because μονόγραμμος is the term for a very lean man.
Another word which indicates outline rather than complete drawing is περιγραφή: and since outline must to a certain extent be said to underlie all design, it is further called διαγραφή, ὑπογραφή. Pollux gives σκιαγραφία, but in such terms as to leave it in doubt as to whether the word implies the actual shadow, or merely the outline of a shadow: in some instances it means certainly the outline of a shadow; more usually, when referring to the art of a good period, it applies to painting in strong light and shade, or is another expression for σκηνογραφία. A special word for a hasty, inefficient shadow outline or sketch is σκιαριφησμός. What we in painting call the drawing as opposed to the colouring, the Greeks called γραμμή: hence γραμμὰς ἑλκύειν, ἀποτίνειν, &c. (Blümner, iv. pp. 414-24).
The importance of deciding the exact application of these various terms will be seen when we approach the question of the early history of painting as given in the ancient authorities: where, as we shall see, there is good reason for supposing that the various stages of development as described by Pliny are partly at least based on his interpretations of the terms used in the Greek authorities which formed his sources of information.
In Latin, the art of drawing in the abstract was graphica, and the practice of it adumbrare or delineare: what we call outlining was circumscribere. The outline of a picture, or even the drawing, was linea (hence lineas ducere, lineamenta); outline drawing, linearis pictura.
For the practice of drawing, various materials were used: the most general would be the tablet of wood, which was covered with wax, and the stilus, γραφὶς or γραφεῖον: γραφὶς was also used for a fine brush, the penicillus, which was employed either on wood, such as box or cedar, or on parchment: the silver point seems alluded to in Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 33.98); and the usage of red pencil and of charcoal is likewise attested.
By the addition of colour, drawing becomes painting. For colouring matter, the ancients spoke of φάρμακον, medicamentum, pigmentum, as distinguished from χρῶμα, color, the actual colour prepared for use. Pollux speaks further of ἄνθη, χρώματα ἀνθηρά: a further distinction is made in the art writers between colores floridi and colores austeri. The laying on of colour is χρώζειν, χραίνειν (with compounds); also ἄνθεσι φαιδρύνειν. In a bad sense of daubing, καταποικίλλειν and ἐναλείφειν, inlinere: the Latin word, however, need not always signify the derogatory sense. Circumlinere is the working--up of the background from which the subject stands out.
For shading, Pollux gives σκίαν ὑποτυπώσασθαι or σκιάζειν. In artistic criticism we find lumen et umbra used in the modern sense: splendor, probably for strong gleaming lights or reflexion: τόνος, the assistance of light and shade, perhaps the general ground tone of the picture: ἁρμογή, commissurae et transitus colorum, the toning of one colour into another. These terms will give some idea of the kind of effects which an ancient art-critic would probably have had principally in his mind.
2. Technique.
With a view to a clearer understanding of the usage of terms in the descriptions which follow, it will be well to define first of all those terms mentioned in connexion with the various classes of ancient painting; to describe the technical processes which distinguish these classes; and to enumerate the materials used, as far as they can be identified either from ancient literature or from the actual monuments.
The most convenient division of the subject is that which depends on the ground upon which the painting is laid: the principal headings will be as follows, viz. Wall Painting, Easel Painting, and Encaustic. Of these the first two may be treated together, inasmuch as in both we have the employment of water-colour and the brush. The subject of encaustic, in which wax and a metal tool, the cestrum, are the distinguishing materials, involves numerous difficult and complicated questions, and will be best treated separately in connexion with the monuments which illustrate this branch of art.
For wall and easel painting the materials of the artist in antiquity were very much the same as those of a modern painter: of brushes, γραφεῖον, γραφίς, penicillus (or--um), he would have every variety at his disposal, the coarser ones made of bristles, saeta, the finer of a close-textured sponge; a larger piece of sponge would serve to erase errors or wash out the brush: a palette, or set of palettes, of which the existence is proved by numerous representations of ancient studios, but of which the ancient name is not known; and lastly, an easel precisely similar to those of to-day, called ὀκρίβας or κιλλίβας: the Latin equivalent is machina, but this word is also applied to the scaffold on which the fresco-painter worked.
3. Wall Painting.
The practice of decorating walls with coloured designs in fresco obtained in Greece long before the time at which actual authentic records may be said to begin. The excavations at Tiryns and Mycenae, which illustrate a civilisation of origin probably considerably earlier than the poems of Homer, have brought to light specimens of wall-painting which show us that at that period, whenever it was, artists on these sites were working in a technique very similar to that of the Egyptians. The walls were plastered with clay, and covered with a coating of lime; over this a design in spirited freehand has been drawn al fresco. In the Tiryns specimens five colours were used, as against six which are found in Egyptian art; but the omission of the green may here be merely accidental, and in point of fact the use of green seems to be indicated in the specimens found more recently at Mycenae. Of fresco-painting in Greece proper we hear nothing further until the time of Polygnotos: that it was kept up, however, in Italy at least, we know from the wall-paintings of the tombs in some of the early Etruscan sites, such as Veii, which must date from the end of the seventh century B.C.: some of these paintings show a decided connexion with Mycenaean art, both in the style and in the character of their ornamentation. It was not until the fifth century that the great historical compositions of Polygnotos and his contemporaries raised this art to its highest level; so that in this era we hear very little of any other kind of painting. In the fourth century, the work of the greater artists, such as Zeuxis and Parrhasios, lay almost entirely in the execution of easel pictures, and henceforward wall-decoration was reduced to a subordinate position, from which it never again rose.
In the literary accounts of ancient pictures it is often extremely difficult to decide whether the description refers to a wall-or an easel-picture, because the writers have no system of terminology to distinguish the two methods. The words πίναξ and tabula, which originally applied to an easel-painting on wood, came in course of time to be loosely applied to the general meaning of picture, without distinction of species; and to increase the difficulty, we know that the ancients both hung pictures on, and also let them into, their walls: so that γράφειν ἐπὶ τοίχου or ἐπὶ τοίχῳ can and certainly does mean any of these methods; on the other hand, it seems probable that τοιχογραφία is strictly only applied to fresco. The real distinction between fresco and other methods is in reality the fact that fresco demands a fresh or wet surface; and this is indicated by the expression ἐφ' ὑγροῖς ζωγραφεῖν, udo (tectorio) pingere or illinere.
The following account of the preparation of the wall and of the method of fresco-painting is taken from Blümner (4. p. 432).
The groundwork for fresco-painting is formed by a wet stucco, κονίαμα or tectorium, laid on the wall. This stucco for fresco was specially prepared: both ancient literature and modern research show that the ancients expended greater care on this than we do in modern times. Pliny says that three layers of sand mortar and two of marble stucco were employed; but Vitruvius gives the process in fuller detail. The wall is first treated with a rough-cast of coarse mortar; then follow three layers of sand mortar, so arranged that with the aid of ruler, plummet, and square, the due level is preserved; each fresh layer being put on when the lower one is dry. On these three layers of sand mortar follow three of marble mortar (i. e. mortar mixed with pounded marble in such a way as to detach freely from the trowel), varying in degree from coarse to fine. This is pressed down and smoothed with wood; special care being taken that it should be durable and not liable to crack, and, above all things, that the colours laid on it while wet should bind firmly with the lime. For the adhesion of these colours depends on a chemical process, in which the water of the water-colours, combining with that already existing in the mortar, releases a part of the hydrate of lime (into which the lime in the mortar has changed by slaking); and pressing through all the layers of colour, after an interval returns to the surface; here it attracts to itself carbonic acid from the air, changes again into carbonic acid lime, and is deposited over the colours in the form of a thin crystal skin, which is hard to dissolve, and strengthens and protects them in such a way that washing (without friction) causes no injury.
The thickness of the mortar has yet another advantage. The modern fresco-painter, who works on a much thinner layer of mortar, is obliged every morning to have only just so much fresh mortar laid on as he expects to cover in the day: when he breaks off his work, he cuts away all that he has not painted on, and next morning the mason must bring his new mortar up to this mark. This system involves all sorts of inconveniences: the artist cannot work so freely as on a large space; the seams remain visible, and the new stucco has never the same surface as the old. The ancient method avoided these difficulties, since the thick mortar lasted damp much longer. The researches into the wall-paintings of Pompeii, where fresco is certainly used, show that the walls there are not made with so much care as Vitruvius prescribes; but they are nevertheless generally thicker and more carefully constructed than the modern examples.
On this surface the painting was laid with a brush and water-colours. Certain colours, however, do not suit the fresco method; in such cases, a binding medium was necessary which was otherwise not employed in fresco, such as milk or gum: thus, for purpurissum it is expressly stated that the ground must be painted al fresco with red sandyx or blue, and the purpurissum is laid on this with egg as a binding, a tempera. Another special process for cinnabar, which readily sets up chemical action and changes colour in sunlight, was the καῦσις, which will be described under Encaustic. In Pompeii the cinnabar does not seem to have undergone this treatment, and consequently changes colour rapidly in the sunlight. A peculiar process, which has not been rightly understood, is attributed by Pliny to Panaenus: in the decoration of the temple of Athene at Elis he is said to have mixed the stucco ground with milk and saffron; but whether the saffron had also binding properties does not appear.
4. Easel Pictures.
The generality of easel pictures (excluding of course those painted in the encaustic method) were probably executed on a dry ground a tempera in water-colours. The materials for this ground were various: the most usual was a thin slab of wood (πίναξ, πινάκιον, sometimes σανίς, tabula, tabella), usually of box or cedar, also of cypress, pine, or larch; this was carefully dried, and, as a rule, constructed in several pieces, so as to guard against warping; finally it was primed with whitening (λελευκωμένος).
Canvas such as we now employ was probably rare; but that the ancients both knew of and used it, we see from the mention in Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.51, of a colossal portrait which Nero ordered to be painted of himself on linen (pingi in linteo). Blümner suggests that this was either a unique instance, where the unwonted size of the portrait rendered some such material necessary, or that the portrait may have been executed in embroidery, to which the term pingi would equally apply. We have however, among the mummy portraits from the Fayoum, which were executed under Greek influence and date from the second and third centuries A.D., undoubted instances of paintings executed on canvas: in these cases the canvas appears to be primed with whitening of a similar character to that which was used in preparing the wood. The canvas in one case has been stretched upon a wooden panel; in another case it is formed of several sheets stuck one over the other: these instances are both painted in tempera; but the material seems also to have been in requisition for encaustic.
Lastly, we have stone and marble: the colouring of architectural mouldings and reliefs may have suggested the substitution of these members in colour alone: at any rate we have instances as early as the first half of the sixth century B.C., in which the decoration of a funeral stele is indicated in colour alone, and consists of a portrait of the deceased or other scenes which would otherwise have been chiselled. That this work was not always delegated to mere handicraftsmen we see from a statement of Pausanias ZYZ(Paus. 7.22, 6-Z1), who says that the painter Nicias executed the picture on a stele which in his time was to be found at Triteia in Achaia. The Florence sarcophagus from Corneto (Hellenic Journal, 4. p. 354, pll. 36-38) is an instance in which painted scenes are introduced in lieu of sculpture; on the sides are contests of Greeks and Amazons painted with great beauty in tempera directly upon the unsmoothed surface of the marble, but with only a plain tinted background. Pictures on marble or stone were used in the decoration of rooms, where they were either hung or inserted in the walls: and to this practice we owe some of the finest examples which have come down to us from Herculaneum.
The colours of the ancients were kept in a dry and firm condition, and when required for use would be pounded (φάρμακα τρίβειν, colores terere) in a stone mortar by the assistants, in preparation for the mixing (χρώματα κεράσασθαι, συμμίξασθαι, colores miscere), done by the master himself according to the tints he required. [[ERROR: no link cross:]COLORES]
A binding material was necessary for fixing the colours: for this purpose they employed gum (Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 13.67, Gummis fit e sarcocolla . . . utilissima pictoribus ), glue (ib. 28.236, Rhodiacum glutinum fidelissimum ), and egg, which was also used in fresco for the same purpose.
Undoubtedly the ancient paintings in water-colour lacked durability, so that we meet with frequent complaints in literature of their fading and destruction: varnish as a protection of the surface was unknown, so was also the use of glass. Pliny tells us that Apelles used to lay a very fine coating of atramentum over his pictures after their completion: this toned down the over-bright colours, and lent reflexion to the outward appearance of the picture, besides protecting it against dust. What exactly this atramentum was, is uncertain, as it cannot imply here the ordinary sense of the word, lampblack : Pliny says that it was a secret of Apelles, which no one after him was able to discover. Possibly he is merely repeating studio gossip, as he certainly is when he relates of Protogenes, that this artist painted his celebrated picture of Ialysos four times over, in order that if by age or by any other injury one of the upper strata of colouring were lost, the under stratum would replace it! The only method of protection for pictures which is known to have existed was the practice of constructing folding doors, which fitted over the picture like the triptychs of early Italian art; on Pompeian paintings the open doors of such pictures are frequently represented in perspective.
5. Encaustic.
If the brilliant effects and deeper tones of our modern oil-paintings were beyond the sphere of the ancient artist in tempera and fresco, these qualities were more nearly accessible to the encaustic painter; but unfortunately it happens that this branch of ancient art is precisely the method of which we know least. When Donner wrote his great work on the wall-paintings of Campania, he was unable to point to a single specimen of ancient painting which could be definitely attributed to encaustic; while, on the other hand, the statements of ancient authors, which show us how extensive and developed the practice was, leave us in doubt as to important details. It is only within the last two years that a considerable series of encaustic mummy-portraits of the Roman period have been found in Egypt, which have enabled us to examine these statements with some hope of solution.
The principal sources of our literary authorities on this subject are two passages in Pliny, H. N. xxxv. In the first of these ( § 122) he says, It has not been ascertained who first devised the art of painting in wax-colours and of burning in the painting (ac picturam inurere). Donner takes this as implying two distinct operations, i. e. first the painting with variously coloured wax; and when this is done, the burning--in of that which has been painted, from which latter process originated the name of encaustic, i. e. burned--in painting. If this is so, then heat was not employed in the actual painting, and the wax must have been rendered ductile by the admixture of some solvent.
The second passage is in § 149, and runs as follows: Encausto pingendi duo fuere antiquitus genera, cera, et in ebore, cestro id est vericulo, donec classes pingi coepere. Hoc tertium accessit resolutis igni ceris penicillo utendi, quae pictura navibus nec sole nec sale ventisque corrumpitur. This Donner, in keeping with his theory, translates, There have been, time out of mind, two kinds of encaustic painting: with wax--also on ivory--by means of the cestrum, i.e. until men began to paint also the ships of war; then was adopted the third kind, that of causing the wax colours to melt over the fire, so as to lay them on with the brush. By this he understands that in the first two processes--viz. (i.) on wood (the ordinary material, and therefore not here specified), and (ii.) on ivory--ductile wax and the cestrum alone are employed, no heat being required; also that in these the brush was not used, because he thinks that Pliny lays special stress on the fact that it was only in the third process that liquid wax colour melted over the fire was employed and laid on with the brush.
The wax paste, he thinks, is laid on with the cestrum. This word has usually been described as a cutting or graving instrument (from caedo, to cut or engrave ). Donner, however, takes it as the Latinized form of κέστρον or κέστρος the Greek term for the betony plant, named by the Latins serratula, i.e. finely dentated, because it has a lancet-shaped, dentated leaf with a long stalk. The alternative word in Pliny, ver（r）icuslum, which had been interpreted as a small spit (veruculum), he derives from verro, to furrow or scrape. The cestrum is therefore, according to him, a lancet-shaped spatula, with a finely dentated edge and rather long handle, the point somewhat curved. The toothing of this instrument enables any agglomeration of the wax pastes to be equalised and smoothed by furrowing or scraping.
Pliny and Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.9) both describe a process which Donner thinks has some bearing on the present question, viz. the so-called καῦσις, by which the vermilion fresco paint on walls was protected from damage by sun or air. The painting was spread with a mixture of olive-oil and Punic wax melted, and, this done, the burning (καῦσις) took place: a cauterium, filled with hot wood-ashes, or a heated metal rod (ῥαβδίον), was passed over the surface to level it (ut peraequetur).
Here, Donner thinks, we have the key to the burning-in: it is merely required for the purpose of levelling down the surface of the wax, which, whether laid on with brush or cestrum, would present an uneven appearance; in his cestrum painting, moreover, it would soften the tones into one another. What Punic wax was, Pliny tells us (21.84): it was obtained by boiling the natural yellow beeswax three times in sea-water with an addition of a little nitrum, i.e. natural mineral soda, and then skimming it. The addition of the olive-oil prevents the wax from too rapidly congealing. But here comes the difficulty: too much oil would prevent the wax from drying, while a little would not render the wax sufficiently ductile. If Donner's theory is to hold good, there must have been something further added in order to make the wax in a cold state soft enough to lay on in the form of paste, while possessing at the same time the quality of hardening in a given time. This volatile matter he assumes to have been balm of Chios, the liquid resin of the Pistacia terebinthus, well known to the ancients. But for this assumption he can adduce no proof whatever.
It will be seen that Donner's somewhat farfetched and elaborate explanations arise out of his supposition that Pliny's statement in 35.149 precludes the use of the brush and of heat in the first two processes there described: he therefore is forced to imagine a kind of painting in which a pasty compound is laid on with a sort of spatula, a clumsy method at best. Now, it so happens that the evidence of the mummy-portraits goes entirely against his theory; for in these pictures it is absolutely certain that the brush was used, and that the wax was laid on in a melted condition.
The difficulty is surmounted if we interpret the passage in Pliny somewhat differently. The key to its solution seems to lie in another statement of the same author. In 35.147, or only a few lines previously, he has been discussing the works of the lady painter Jaia (or Lain): Et penicillo pinxit et cestro in ebore imagines mulierum maxume et Neapoli anum in grandi tabula, suam quoque imaginem ad speculum. Here there is no question but that the words cestro in ebore are to be taken together as opposed to penicillo: her two methods of portrait-painting are (i.) with the brush, i. e. probably in tempera, as Pliny elsewhere uses penicillum in this application; and (ii.) with the cestrum on ivory. It seems obvious that the usage of cestro in ebore in § 147 is the same as that of in ebore cestro in § 149, and that Welcker was so far right in supposing that these words in both cases must be taken together. We thus, in the two passages, have three methods of painting mentioned, viz. (i.) cera, i.e. encaustic painting proper; (ii.) cestro in ebore, encaustic painting on ivory; (iii.) penicillo or tempera. None of these terms as used by Pliny can possibly be taken as exclusive: the classification is merely popular, according to the prominent feature of each method; thus, though (i.) is called wax, it does not necessarily imply that wax was not used in (ii.), just as the cestrum may be used in both (i.) and (ii.), and so penicillum may equally be used in (i.) and (iii.)[ERROR: no link :]
This explanation renders unnecessary the assumption of Klein (Mittheil. aus Oest. 1887, p. 219) that Pliny, in 35. §. 149, did not understand his own statement. Klein considers with wax and also on ivory as implying only one method, and that the simplified mode of painting is nothing more than the abandoning of the cestrum and therewith of the tarda picturae ratio (Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.124). He takes the passage about Jaia as meaning, Jaia painted both in tempera (penicillo) and also in encaustic (cestro); in encaustic, she painted both in ivory, smaller pictures, and also larger (in grandi tabula, i.e. on wood).
The following account of the process adopted for the Egyptian portraits is given by Mr. Petrie (Hawara, &c., p. 18) as the result of close examination of over sixty originals, and consultation with various experts and artists:--The colours in powder were ground in thoroughly with the wax (which may have been bleached by heating it to boiling-point, as I have found), and they were then placed out in the sunshine when required, so as to fuse them, or a hot-water bath may have been used in cooler weather. The wooden panel was of cedar usually, sometimes of a pine wood, and about 1/16 inch thick, or occasionally as much as 1/2 inch; it was about 9 [multi] 17 inches in size. On this was laid a priming of distemper; then a grounding varied in tint, lead colour for the background and draperies, and flesh colour for the face; and then the surface colour was worked on, sometimes in a pasty state, more usually creamy and free-flowing. These details are shown by an unfinished attempt on a panel, which was afterwards turned and re-used; now at South Kensington. The broad surfaces of flesh were often laid on in thick creamy colour with zigzag strokes of the brush, about 1/6 inch apart, just joining up and uniting in an almost smooth surface: the draperies were usually laid on freely in very flowing colour, with long strokes of a full brush; in one case we see where the full drop of purple wax at the first touch of the brush thinned out as it went down, until at the end of the long stroke the brush was pressed flat out, and every hair has left its streak of wax on the panel. In Egypt one sees white beeswax not only softened, but fused on its surface by the ordinary sun of April and May: it is therefore evident that the wax used in painting might be worked in a flowing state without any artificial means during nearly half the year, by the mere heat of the sun. It is needless to suppose a solvent of the wax to have been used, such as turpentine or oils: and the perfect freedom from yellowing in the well-preserved pictures, or indeed of any change in the tints beyond superficial decomposition, makes it apparently impossible for any changeable organic material to have been added to the wax.
It will be observed, then, that in these Egyptian examples both the brush and a stump, possibly the cestrum, are used: the wax is laid on in a fluid condition; and apparently no solvent or drying compound is added. This method, as Mr. Petrie points out, would answer in the hot sun of Egypt; but for the cooler climate of Italy and Greece artificial substitutes for the sun's heat would have to be adopted. In these climates it was necessary, as Varro (3.17, 4) says, for the encaustes to have large boxes divided into compartments (loculatas magnas arculas) in which the different coloured waxes were kept, doubtless in a fluid condition, as Varro's simile of the fish-ponds (ibid.) shows. No wonder that under such difficulties encaustic painting was looked upon as a tedious process (tarda ratio), that only small pictures were attempted in it, and that the portrait of a boy by Pausias was esteemed as a wonderful feat and was known as Hemeresios, from the reason that it was painted in a single day.
The fact is, that this technique probably originated in Egypt, a climate where it presented little difficulty; and here throughout antiquity it was principally practised. The Egyptians made use of preparations of wax at least as early as the Eighteenth Dynasty for preserving paintings; and so we find that the names of most of the encaustic painters of antiquity may be traced to Alexandria or an Egyptian origin. We find a mention of the process in Greece proper in the ode, of doubtful date, falsely attributed to Anacreon: Paint me my mistress with her soft black tresses, and, if the wax can do it, paint them breathing of myrrh. Otherwise it does not seem to have been mentioned in literature until the conquests of Alexander had opened a closer communication between East and West. The practice continued in use late into mediaeval times: in Eusebius it is called κηρόχυτος γραφή; but from the ninth century downwards its usage seems to have declined.
To return to the preparation of the wax: we saw that Pliny, describing the application of encaustic to walls, spoke of Punic wax melted on the fire and mixed with a little oil. What was this oil? Pollux (Onom. 7.128) describes the implements of the painter as consisting of wax, colours, φάρμακα, and pigments: this word φάρμακον is described by Suidas, s. v., as ὅπερ Μῆδοι νάφθαν καλοῦσι, Ἕλληνες δὲ Μηδείας ἔλαιον: and it may be that in Greece and Italy it was usual to add some such material as naphtha to the compound, so as to enable the colours and wax to combine more readily.
As to the colours used, Mr. Petrie found in one grave at Hawara a set of six paint saucers, which seemed to have been the χρώματα of an artist, and are now in the British Museum: although these are water colours, it is probable that they would be similar to the pigments used by the encaustic painter (Hawara, p. 11). According to Dr. Russell's examination, they consist of (1) a dark red, oxide of iron with a little sand; a good burnt sienna: (2) yellow, ochre, oxide of iron, with hardly any alumina; becomes dark-reddish brown on heating: (3) white, sulphate of lime, amorphous powder: (4) pink, organic colour in a medium of sulphate of lime; probably madder, and can be exactly matched by that: (5) blue, glass coloured by copper: (6) red, minium, oxide of lead, with apparently some alumina.
In some of the Egyptian pictures Donner notes that a process is adopted which is a mixture of the pure wax-encaustic and egg-distemper: here he thinks the wax has been mixed with the yolk and a little white of egg, also a drop of olive-oil; and this enables the artist to add finishing strokes to the encaustic by means of the ordinary egg-distemper.
As regards the encaustic painting on ivory, our knowledge is very limited: it may be assumed that such pictures were small, and possibly, as has been suggested, in the nature of our miniature painting. The instance already quoted of the lady painter Jaia is the only mention of this technique in antiquity. There again the use of ivory seems to point to Africa, and the only specimen of work which it has as yet been proposed to identify with this technique is an ivory box from Egypt now in the British Museum. On the panels of this box are designs which are formed by engraving or hollowing out certain portions and filling in these spaces with a wax paste in various tones of colour. The specimen is rough in execution, but it shows that the process, if well treated, could be made very attractive. Donner thinks that this cannot be called encaustic, but that the second encaustic process attributed by Pliny to Jaia must have been something of which at present we have no representation.
The use of encaustic for the painting of ships was referred to in the statement quoted above from Pliny. In spite of the late date that he assigns to its use, there is no doubt that the colouring of ships is alluded to in Homer's frequent epithet of ships as μιλτοπάρῃοι: a fragment of Hipponax (Bergk, Poet. Lyr. Gr. p. 519) alludes to a serpent painted along the whole length of a trireme; and in a fragment of the Myrmidons of Aeschylus (130 Dind.), according to one interpretation of a corrupt passage, the poet describes how in the burning of a vessel the sign, a Hippalektryon painted with much trouble in wax colours, drops off. The wood was probably first treated with pitch and tar, and then had the wax colours laid on. Pliny states that Protogenes was a painter of ships until his fiftieth year; whence it is argued that this was not a mechanical process: but see p. 415.
6. Encaustic of Statues.
After the marble statue left the sculptor's hands, it was usually handed over to an assistant or another artist to undergo the processes of waxing and colouring. In the description of the process for protecting wall-painting by Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.9, 3-Z1) already quoted, the remark is added that it is the same process as is adopted for the preservation of nude marble statues (uti signa marmorea nuda curantur), and which in Greek = γάνωσις. As to this γάνωσις, Plutarch (Quaest. Rom. ch. 98, p. 287 remarks that the first duties of the Roman Censors were to provide for the feeding of the sacred geese and the γάνωσις of the statue in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter: for the vermilion with which statues were anciently coloured quickly fades. Blümner thinks that the process of waxing is therefore separate from that of colouring, and intended to preserve it; or in cases where no colour is used, to soften the tone of the marble: the word nuda implying that only the flesh of statues, and not the drapery, was so treated. He thinks that the colouring of the flesh was a habit only found on the older statues, or, if on the later statues at all, only in isolated cases: while Von Rohden (in Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 1345) denies altogether the colouring of the flesh. With regard to the mere toning of the marble by means of wax, it is pointed out that the Punic wax ordinarily used, as Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.9, 3-Z1) says, for the γάνωσις of statues, had undergone a special bleaching process; such wax would therefore not perceptibly affect the gleaming whiteness of marble. Treu, who has made a special study of the subject, considers that the toning of the marble by wax alone is out of the question; that the alternative lies between a dazzling whiteness, or, as is more probable, a transparent or opaque tone of colour for the flesh: these tones may be sometimes found side by side, or even one over the other, on the same statue. We shall have to consider this question further under the head of
7. Polychromy of Sculpture.
The question, formerly much discussed, as to whether the Greeks coloured their statuary, is no longer open to doubt: it is generally admitted that a statue in flawless white marble could never have suited Greek ideas, and that the chill and staring effect of modern sculpture is mainly due to the fact that the ancient originals which inspired the art of the Renaissance had, at the time of their discovery, retained no evidence of their former colouring. But while the Greeks certainly employed colour, this was only done within the strictest limits of artistic requirement, and never with the idea of aping nature or a wax figure. The surface of marble, as they treated it, presented a warm transparency of effect which recalled, without imitation, the human skin, a slight toning indicating the difference between the various surfaces of the body. It is evident that the prudent application of these laws demanded an artistic sense and experience of high order. Hence we can understand the point of the remark attributed to Praxiteles, who, when he was asked which of his statues he most admired, answered, Those to which Nicias (the great painter) had lent his hand ( quibus Nicias manum admovisset ); so highly, says Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.133), did Praxiteles esteem the circumlitio of that painter. We know from other passages that this word circumlitio implied, not a process like γανωσις, the mechanical treatment of the entire surface alike, but the decoration of details such as the borders of dress, &c. (Quintil. 1.11, 6-Z1). Plato (de Republ. 4. p. 420 C) speaks of οἱ ἀνδριάντας γράφοντες, the statue painters, as a well-known profession: the word ἀνδριὰς no doubt implied originally any kind of portrait, but in the time of Plato it could only have meant a statue; and the scope of the art is well defined in the remarks which follow: he says that it is not by applying a rich or beautiful colour to any particular part, but by giving its local colour to each part that the whole is made beautiful (ἀλλ' ἄθρει εἰ τὰ προσήκοντα ἑκάστοις ἀποδιδόντες, τὸ ὅλον καλὸν ποιοῦμεν). The colouring was in fact applied only to certain parts, such as the lips, eyes, hair, and decoration of the dress, while the remaining surface of the flesh was treated with a toning of wax; and this is borne out by the dialogue in Lucian (Imag. 5-8), where it is clearly, though indirectly stated, that the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles, and other celebrated statues, were not coloured, although they were ornamented in parts and covered with an encaustic varnish. In Anthol. Pal. 7.730, γραπτὸς τύπος evidently refers to a painted relief; and there are frequent passages in ancient literature in which certain parts of a statue are mentioned as coloured.
The distinct process of toning, γάνωσις, is alluded to in Plutarch (de Gloria Ath. 6) as ἀγαλμάτων ἔγκαυσις: where it is expressly distinguished from the colouring, ἀγαλμάτων ἐγκαυσταὶ καὶ χρυσωταὶ καὶ βαφεῖς, i. e. the waxers, gilders, and painters of statues. That a sculptor sometimes did the waxing himself we see from the inscription of an artist Aphrodisios (in Loewy, Inschr. Gr. Bildh. No. 551), who signs his name as ἀγαλματοποιὸς ἐγκαυστής.
Turning now to the monuments, we see that the earliest traditions of the Greeks, strongly influenced as they were by the gay colouring of the East, were naturally in favour of a system of polychromy; and further, that the meanness of the materials in which the earliest sculptures were executed, such as wood, terra-cotta, and limestone, rendered necessary a scheme of colour which should conceal this inferiority. A third important reason was the close connexion that existed between the arts of the sculptor and the architect. Greek architecture, as we shall show, was invariably coloured, more or less; and in order to adapt a statue or relief to the temple or other building for which it was intended, it was necessary to bring it also into the general scheme of the colouring of its surroundings. One result of this was an entirely conventional system of colour for sculpture, often far removed from that of nature: thus in the early pedimental sculptures in poros stone recently discovered on the Acropolis, the beards of two of the figures are coloured a bright blue, and the iris of their eyes green. Herein the advantages of colour were manifold: thus, for figures intended to stand in the background, painting often took the place of the more detailed modelling; and on reliefs such as the frieze of the Parthenon, details of dress, weapons, &c., could be indicated in this method. The sculptor was thus enabled to dispense with trivialities, and his work gained proportionately in breadth of style. The colouring of architectural marbles was necessarily subject to strict laws, dependent upon that of the architecture of the time: in these cases probably even the flesh was usually coloured, and the general effect was very much what we have in the terra-cotta statuettes of Tanagra. In case of independent sculpture, which had no tectonic intention, the artist had freer scope; and here probably, in the best period at any rate, most sculptors were content with circumlitio: thus the Hermes of Praxiteles, when it was first discovered, showed only traces of red and gold on the sandals.
The scale of colours employed in sculpture, originally restricted, became enlarged in later times, especially when under the Ptolemaic rule intercourse with the East became more established; and in Roman times it was no longer restrained by the prudent reserve of the Greeks. In Etruria, again, where from the earliest period sculpture had principally been executed in terra-cotta, a separate scheme of colours obtained; the more Oriental tastes of the Etruscans leading them to prefer lively primary colours, as we see in their wall-paintings and in the series of sarcophagi with reliefs which have come down to us from them. While for the γάνωσις a wax process was employed, it seems clear that the colour was laid on usually in tempera; and this probably accounts for the fact that so few traces of it have survived. The surfaces intended for this colour were generally left unpolished; thus in the head of Athene (Ant. Denkm. Taf. 3) the white skin is left unpainted and is polished smooth, while the coloured portions are worked with the tool and left rough. Gilding played an important part in polychromy; some have gone so far as to say that in the Parthenon, for instance, all the colour was laid on a ground which had been gilt. Probably the work of the χρυσωτὴς (see above) lay principally with bronzes, but certain portions of the marble, such as jewellery, as we see also in the Tanagra statuettes, were gilded: the Eros of Thespiae by Praxiteles had gilt wings; and we read frequently of the renewal of faded gilding on cult-statues, the cost of which had been borne as an ex voto by some pious devotee. Polychrome effects in bronzes were produced principally by this method, or by inlaying; and here only to distinguish those parts from one another which demanded it, such as the decoration of dress, the lips, and the eyes. The stories in the classics bearing on this point are misleading; thus we cannot credit the statement of Plutarch (Qu. Conv. 5.1, 2), who says of the statue of Iocasta that the face was rendered so as to represent a dying person, by the admixture of silver with the bronze: such stories were probably due to a misunderstanding of the terms applied to plating or inlaying. In sculpture also, inlaying was sometimes applied to give polychrome effect: the chryselephantine statues of gold and ivory had early given the idea of a mixture of materials, and we find in the marble statues such details as wings and armour sometimes added in metal. In Roman times realistic effects were frequently attained by composition in marbles of different colours; so that, as in a cameo, the helmet of a figure might be in one marble, the flesh in a second, and the drapery in a third: such processes did more credit to their ingenuity than to their taste.
8. Polychromy of Architecture.
As in the previous subject, so here also the main difficulty lies in the lack of material: one thing only seems certain, that while no Greek temple was left uncoloured, the colouring was applied only to certain parts and under strict laws of distribution. As in sculpture too, the usage differed considerably according to period and locality: in the best period, when marble was the principal material employed, very little colour was added; in the early period, and again in the later when stucco was freely introduced, colour was necessary in order to conceal the poverty or dissimilarity of materials. Broadly speaking, colour was reserved throughout for those members which projected from the surface, such as the cymatium, triglyphs, &c., and for those parts of the actual surface which gave a background for the sculptures: the background of a frieze or tympanum of a pediment being usually either red or blue. In the interior, the wooden roof was certainly coloured; but what these colours were, we cannot now judge, except from the imitations in stone which have come down to us, principally in Athens. Of the colouring of Ionic architecture still less is known than that of Doric; in such few traces as have survived, it seems to accord mainly with the principles of Doric. The colouring serves principally as a background for moulding; and as the moulding grows richer and higher in relief, the more compensation in colour is demanded. In Corinthian architecture, with its richer capitals due possibly to the Egyptian palm capitals, the colouring is still further enriched: a tendency which in Roman architecture shows itself in the use of mosaics, wall-paintings, and variously coloured marbles. The colours were probably for the most part laid on in the encaustic process: in the inscription from Athens which records the building accounts of the Erechtheion (C. I. A. 1.324 a, 50.42) occurs the entry of a sum paid to the encaustic painters for having painted the cymatium on the epistylium of the interior: ἐγκαυταῖς· τὸ κυμάτιον ἐγκέαντι τὸ ἐπὶ τῷ ἐπιστυλίῳ τῷ ἐντός.
9. Mosaic.
This subject is most naturally included under the head of Painting, for it is upon the major art that it depends for its inspiration as well as its intention, which is the representation of decorative and pictorial effects in floors and walls by the arrangement in them of coloured stones and glass.
In Greek we meet with no term for this branch of art until quite a late period, descriptions of mosaics in Greek authors usually showing, by the roundabout phrases employed, that there was no such term known. In Roman writers we find the word ἔμβλημα and λιθόστρωτον, which they seem to have adopted, with the process, from the Greeks; but it is a question whether these were not specially applied to distinct classes of mosaic.
The best known term is opus musivum or pictura de musivo (also museum or musium, hence musiarii, musivarii, and our mosaic ); but this does not appear until late, and its derivation is unknown.
Of the history of mosaic little is known: the Romans certainly borrowed the idea from the Greeks, probably in the time of Sulla; but there is no evidence as to whence, or when, the Greeks themselves adopted the process. It is natural to connect it with the brick and tile constructions of Egypt and Mesopotamia. Inlaying in various coloured glazes was of course known to the Egyptians from an early period, as the tiles of Tell el Yahoudiyeh show (Birch, Anc. Pottery,2 p. 50): it was equally familiar to the Assyrians and the Persians. The recent researches into the architecture of Persepolis have moreover shown that the bricks in these buildings were made in two tones of colour, and so disposed as to form a literal mosaic pattern. In all probability, then, Greek mosaic was inspired from the East, after the conquests of Alexander. The evidence for this date rests upon the fact that neither in literature nor the monuments can we prove the existence of any mosaic in Greece before this time. The earliest mosaic as yet known is that which decorates the floor of the pronaos of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, which, as has been shown (Arch. Zeit. 1879, p. 153), cannot be earlier than the first half of the fourth century B.C., and is probably considerably later. An anecdote of the cynic Diogenes mentioned by Galen (1. p. 19 k) refers to a floor in which the likenesses of gods were represented by arrangements of different kinds of tesserae (ἔδαφος ἐκ ψήφων πολυτελῶν . . . θεῶν εἰκόνας ἔχον ἐξ αὐτῶν διατετυπωμένας); but probably this, in common with most of the anecdotes of Diogenes, is a late invention. On the other hand, most of the literary notices of mosaic point to the period of the Diadochi: we hear of it in connexion with the names of Demetrius Phalereus and Hieron II., and with the Pergamene empire. In Greece proper a noted instance is given at Delphi: the Scholiast to Lucian περὶ ὀρχήσεως, 38, says that beside the omphalos at Delphi two eagles were represented in mosaic (γεγράφθαι ἀπὸ συνθέσεως λίθων); and Wieseler has suggested with great probability that this decoration must have originated at the restoration of the shrine after the Phocian War, when the golden eagles that formerly stood there had been looted and the ground torn up by treasure-seekers. Everything then points to the third century B.C. for the introduction of mosaic into Greece: probably it was never practised to any great extent there; we do not even know whether the Greeks were familiar with the various classes of mosaic which the Romans distinguished from each other.
The only artist in mosaic whose name is mentioned in ancient literature is Sosos of Pergamon (probably about the middle of the third century B.C.; Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 36.184), who made a mosaic which became famous as the οἶκος ἀσάρωτος, the unswept house, representing a floor covered with the remnants of a banquet: several reproductions of this have come down to us; one of these, now in Rome, is signed by the artist, Ἡράκλειτος ἠργάσατο. It is possible that representations of the objects likely to be found on an actual floor may have led to the imitation of figured scenes in mosaic: one such mosaic in the British Museum represents strewn leaves. On the other hand, it has been suggested that these floor pictures were due to another reason: in the time of the Diadochi in Alexandria the practice grew up of decorating the walls with marble slabs of different colours; and as there was in this case no space for pictures on the walls, these were supplied in the floor. One of the finest Pompeian mosaics, signed by Dioscorides of Samos, reproduces a wall-painting found at Pompeii; and the great mosaic at Naples of the Battle of Issus was probably inspired by the painting by a Graeco-Egyptian lady Helena. The Egyptian origin of the art is further marked by the occurrence of Egyptian landscapes reproduced in ancient mosaics: the finest is the Palestrina mosaic, ascribed to the first century A.D.
The connexion between wall-painting and tapestry hanging is obvious: and the same connexion may be traced between mosaic and textiles; both directly, from carpets, and indirectly, as at Pompeii, through wall-paintings. This connexion is further illustrated when we examine the Egyptian textiles, of which the design, colouring, and even the treatment are often exactly parallel to those of mosaic work.
The successive stages of the development of mosaic are well illustrated at Pompeii: the simplest kind is that in which different geometric or floral patterns of white rectangular stones are set in a floor of pounded brick and lime; gradually the inlaid portion becomes larger and richer, the tesserae smaller and more coloured, and less of the actual floor is seen; until finally the ground, as well as the design, is constructed also of mosaic tesserae.
The simplest kind of mosaic consisted in laying in a simple pounded cement a pavimentum testaceum or opus signinum, i.e. a series of patterns, figures, or inscriptions in white or coloured tesserae or tessellae. These tesserae are in later Greek called ψῆφοι, ψηφῖδες (hence ψηφολόγημα, a mosaic pavement; ψηφοθέτης, a mosaic worker): we also have ἀβακίσκοι, which however seems to correspond more to abaculi or crustae, i.e. slabs of marble for inlaying. They were made of all kinds of material: besides marble, stone of different kinds and colours, terra-cotta of various degrees of baking and mixed with other substances, glass of all shades of colour; the gilding of glass tesserae, frequent in Byzantine work, was only rarely employed in Roman mosaic. In the earlier and simpler kind they are as a rule square in form, but the imitation of elaborate designs made special cutting necessary.
In preparing the ground, Vitruvius recommends the employment of three layers, viz. (i.) the lowest foundation, statumen; (ii.) on this a rough mass of mortar, rudus; and (iii.) topmost of all, the cement proper, nucleus, of pounded brick and lime, in which the tesserae are laid: this seems to have been mixed further with a binding material such as bitumen.
Of the ordinary mosaic, the finest kind was the opus vermiculatum, so called probably because in this work tesserae of the minutest proportions are arranged in long wavy lines suggesting the movement of worms, vermes. Possibly the Greek λιθόστρωτον corresponds to this finest work, inasmuch as the passages in which it occurs invariably refer to a luxurious pavement. It was used not only for floors, but also for walls, columns, and even vaults, where the difficulty of attachment made special preparations necessary.
Opus sectile was, broadly speaking, a mosaic made of slabs of different coloured marbles: these slabs were of different sizes, and cut in triangles, shields, squares, and other geometric forms. A special kind of this class was the opus Alexandrinum, in which only two kinds of marble were used, generally speaking red and green, porphyry and Lacedaemonian marble. This is said to have been introduced by Alexander Severus, and to have been named after him; but there is no doubt that it was of much older origin: probably it came originally from Alexandria. Under this head is also included a process of mosaic in which figures, &c., are imitated, not with tesserae, but with variously coloured slabs: the flesh for instance of a figure being cut out in one stone, the clothes in another, and the hair in another. A notable instance of this class is given in a mosaic representing the Rape of Hylas, from the Basilica of Junius Bassus (Consul A.D. 317), engraved in the Archaeologia, xlv. (1880), pl. 47.
10. Mosaic reliefs.
Raoul-Rochette, in his Peintures antiques, pl. xii., gives a specimen of a mosaic figure in relief, said to have been found at Metapontum: he pronounces it to be of pure Greek style, intended for insertion in a wall. A similar specimen is in the Wilton House Collection, of which Michaelis (Ancient Marbles, p. 678) remarks: After the thorough disquisition of R. Engelmann (Rhein. Mus. xxix. pp. 561-589) it can no longer be doubted that mosaic relief is an invention of the last century only, and that all the known examples are impostures, forged at that period. Again, the style of the setting of the several stones, so that broad white seams of cement are to be seen between them, is not antique.
11. Vase Painting.
The art of painting fictile vases with decorative subjects was in antiquity a separate art, peculiar to the Greeks; although the idea may have been in the first place borrowed from the Egyptians, it was never extensively practised except among the Greeks, and may be said to have lived and died among that people. The Etruscans, it is true, were large importers of Greek vases, and produced occasional imitations of their ware; and recent evidence seems to show that, for a brief period, Latin (possibly Roman) artists were following their example: but these imitations were as a rule clumsy or vulgar, and can be readily distinguished from the ware to which they owed their origin. The figured scenes on Greek vases commence towards the end of the seventh century B.C., and continue down to the first half of the third century B.C.; and within this period we now have, scattered in the different museums and private collections, many thousands of examples, which form a most important running commentary on every conceivable phase of Greek life and thought. Of the mine of information thus afforded, much yet remains to be explored: and the history of Painting, in the earlier stages at any rate, looks to ceramography as its principal witness. While therefore we must fully recognise the importance of this branch of the subject, it must not be forgotten that vase-painting among the Greeks was only a subsidiary art, or rather a handicraft; and that, of the century or so of vase-painters whose signed works we possess, there is not one name mentioned in the whole field of classic literature. Their works were mainly intended for the temple, for sacred or semi-sacred functions such as the great games, and for the tomb: vase artists and painted vases alike were a class apart. For this reason, and in order to prevent overcrowding this article with a separate voluminous subject, Greek ceramography is treated in a distinct article, VAS; to which the reader must be referred for the numerous allusions which will be found in the course of the present article.
12. Vases painted in Encaustic.
There is, however, one class of vase-paintings mentioned in Athenaeus ZYZ(Athen. 5.200 , which, if the passage is rightly understood, seem to have been a separate class, distinct from the true ceramography of the Greeks. That writer, in describing the pompa of Ptolemy Philadelphus, says that among other elements of the procession were 300 boys carrying κεράμια κεκηρογραφημένα χρώμασι παντοίοις (vessels painted in wax with colours of all kinds). It does not seem at all clear, however, what these vessels were. Birch (Hist. of Pottery, p. 427) proposes to identify them with a fabric of which specimens were found at Centorbi and elsewhere: the specimen he describes is of terra-cotta, the colours on which are prepared in wax and laid upon a rose-coloured ground: it is ornamented with gilding, and is of a late style and period. Raoul-Rochette (Peintures antiques, p. 430, pl. xiii.) gives a specimen of this fabric: but even supposing that this process is really encaustic, it is not likely that it was ever extensively practised, nor does it seem certain that these examples illustrate the passage in Athenaeus: the vessels there alluded to are probably of wood; the habit of painting polychrome decorations on vases of wood was common in Egypt in later times, and the encaustic process would be more appropriately applied to wood than to terra-cotta. Blümner suggests that the κηραγγέες of Maneth. 4.332 are to be explained as the painters of such vessels.
13. Drawings on other Materials: Bronze.
The outline drawings on bronze must be referred to here, as giving important evidence of the ancient art of design, although the subject is more fully treated under [ERROR: no link cross:]SCALPTURA The earliest examples of engraved design on bronze are the celebrated swords found at Mycenae, of which the blades are decorated with lion-hunts and other scenes in engraving. These, however, form a class by themselves, being inlaid as well in various metals; a process which as yet is unknown in subsequent Greek art. Of engraved design pure and simple we have a fine specimen of Greek work of the sixth century B.C. in the bronze cuirass (Bulletin de Cor. Hell. vii. pp. 1-5, pll. 1-3), and smaller specimens from Olympia: there is no doubt that the art flourished in Greece, although very few examples have been found there, while great numbers have come from Etruria. These Etruscan specimens consist mainly of mirrors and cistae dating from the fourth century B.C. downwards; principal among the latter being the Ficoroni cista, of which an engraving is given in Vol. 1. p. 440, Vol. 2. p. 213: the subjects represented on these mirrors are for the most part of Greek origin, though treated in an Etruscan dress and accompanied by Etruscan inscriptions. Probably, if more specimens of the pure Greek engraving had survived, we should recognise the qualities of spirited and firm drawing which are reflected in the best Etruscan specimens, and which ancient critics admired in the works of the great Greek artists.
14. Boxwood.
Pliny tells us that the great painter Pamphilus gave lessons in drawing on boxwood; and the words πυξίον (named by Pollux, 10.59, among the implements of the painter) and πυξογραφεῖν (Artemid. 1.53) are referred to as further evidence of this process: but neither of these words in themselves necessarily imply reference to a distinct art; they may allude merely to the tablet of box which, as was before mentioned, was one of the principal grounds on which the easel painter worked. In a tomb in the Crimea (Ant. de Bosp. Cimm. pl, 79) certain slabs were found which were engraved with fine drawings in the style of the early part of the fourth century B.C., the lines being filled with colour. The material of these slabs was supposed to be boxwood, and they were adduced as illustrations of the process of Pamphilus: but Stephani (Compte Rendu, 1866, p. 6, n. 2) says that this is an error, and that they are in reality slabs of ivory. It is quite possible that the Greeks practised the art of engraving designs on boxwood, just as they did graving upon ivory (see also above under Encaustic) and on bronze; but it does not seem necessary at present to consider that the teaching of Pamphilus meant more than the rudiments which every easel painter would have to know as a preliminary to painting on boxwood.
15. Parchment.
It would appear from a statement of Pliny that sketches or cartoons for pictures were sometimes executed by the great masters on parchment, and, as in the subsequent history of art, were handed down for the tuition and profit of successive ages of artists (35.68: et alia multa graphidis vestigia extant in tabulis ac membranis ejus, ex quibus proficere dicuntur artifices; see infra, p. 412). Here also belongs the subject of illustrated MSS.: unfortunately, we have scarcely any illustrated classical MS. which does not date from a debased age: although we know that doctors and architects were in the habit of adding explanatory illustrations to their scientific works, and that M. Varro, for instance, adorned his great biographical work the Imagines with 700 portraits of Greek and Roman celebrities.
16. History.
The history of Painting in classical antiquity is one which is difficult to treat comprehensively within the limits of an article like the present, on account of the wide field of speculation which it offers, and with which a close student of the subject must necessarily be familiar. As in the case of Sculpture, so here, our knowledge must be based upon the examination of the statements of ancient authors in the light of modern remains: but whereas in the study of Sculpture we have before us an almost complete series of the works of the greatest masters, in that of Painting we are met by the fact that no single example of a great masterpiece has come down to us; nay more, that of one great branch of the art, that of easel-painting, not a single specimen (if we except a few late Roman portraits) has survived. And yet we have every reason to believe that the Greeks achieved as signal success in Painting as they had done in the sister art: the art critics of antiquity, whose judgment we can test in the light of the actual monuments, are no whit less enthusiastic, nor less explicit, about their painting; and although in some branches the ancient painters may not have attained to the technical perfection of modern times, yet we may be sure that, within the limits which they set themselves, the masterpieces of the Greek painters were worthy to rank beside the marbles of Pheidias or the bronzes of Lysippus.
In default therefore of any evidence at first hand, we are forced to accept such other monumental evidence as we can collect of objects which illustrate or reflect the major art. Of such fortunately a fairly large supply has come down to us. This secondary evidence consists of painted vases, painted works in stone or marble, mosaics, and principally the large store of mural paintings which have been rescued, mainly from the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. It is true that the great majority of these echoes of Greek painting are of a late date and were executed under Roman influence; but as both in sculpture and in painting the art of the Romans is hardly separable from that which Greek artists had taught and were still teaching, it will be convenient in this article to treat the two nationalities together.
With regard to the other peoples of Italy, such as the Etruscans, the same system will equally hold good. If Etruscan painting had for a brief period an independent existence, it was nevertheless subject to much the same influences, and exhibits a similar development during this period to that of the Greeks; while in any case the time soon came when it was first impregnated, and finally absorbed, in the influence which spread abroad from the Greek colonies in Magna Graecia: and though both in Italian and Etruscan art there are certain local elements always separable, these are not of sufficient importance to demand a separate treatment here.
In studying ancient painting, it is necessary to keep constantly in view the parallel between it and sculpture. The problems which are involved in the questions as to which was the earlier art of the two, and as to how much the Greeks borrowed from the Egyptians and Assyrians, are out of the present sphere, and not much is gained by their elucidation. It is sufficient to know that the Greeks were the first people to raise to the level of independent arts what had previously been merely descriptive and decorative processes; and though in Greece sculpture may be said to have reached its culminating point more than a century sooner than painting, yet both are throughout closely allied, and are constantly acting and reacting upon each other. In reliefs especially painting plays a prominent part, and in statuary even of the best period its growing influence is clear: painting was in fact of the sister arts that which led the way in the whole history of Greek development; and when Winckelmann, following Pliny's statement that there was no painting in Greece at the time of the Trojan War, says that sculpture has the earlier origin, this statement is true only in so far that painting did not attain its full development until the end of the fourth century, whereas the bloom of sculpture is assigned to the middle of the fifth century B.C.
The great difficulty of our inquiry is that of reconciling the literary records with the monumental remains, and of establishing accurately the continuous connexion between them. The wealth of new material which has accumulated, especially during the past ten years, and the more scientific methods of investigation which have thus been rendered possible, have together produced this result--that we are now in many respects in a better position to judge of Greek art than were the art critics and historians of antiquity. The literary records of painting indeed, scanty as they are, are not to be accepted without the closest scrutiny: thus it is now generally accepted that Pliny, our chief informant as to the early history of Painting, adopted without criticism and often without understanding the statements of his authorities; these authorities being apparently for the most part certain Greek works περὶ εὑρημάτων: that he seems to ignore everything but easel pictures: and that his historical arrangement is altogether untenable. Pliny connects each successive improvement in the early history of Painting with the name of a master: even when these names have an appearance of reality, it is probable that they represent, not the inventors of definite steps, but pictures associated with their names which showed the first instances of these improvements.
Under these circumstances, it is obvious that the traditions of ancient writers as to the commencement and earliest development of the art of painting in Greece must not be taken as literal contributions to the history of our subject: in some points, indeed, it is quite impossible to reconcile them with the evidence of the monuments of this period which are before us. The principal authority is Pliny in his H. N. 35.15 foll., who himself acknowledges the uncertainty of his subject. The Egyptians, he says, falsely claim to have invented painting 6000 years before it crossed into Greece: of the Greeks, some ascribe the invention to Sicyon, others to Corinth, but all agree that the first step consisted in tracing the shadow of a man with lines. This was followed by the introduction of single colours, so called menochromaton; and even after the art had advanced, this style was still carried on. Linear drawing was invented by Philocles the Egyptian or Cleanthes of Corinth, and was first practised by Aridices of Corinth and Telephanes of Sicyon: even these made no use of colour, but scattered lines within their paintings (spargentes lineas intra), and attached the names to the figures of their paintings. It was Ecphantus of Corinth who first invented those (pictures?) of the colour of pounded potsherd: this was not the Ecphantus who is said by Cornelius Nepos to have followed Demaratus into Italy.
Painting had already an independent footing in Italy. Even to this day there are pictures in the temples of Ardea of which the date is earlier than the foundation of Rome; also at Lanuvium are two pictures of Atalante and Helena by the same artist; and at Caere some still earlier: so that the connoisseur may well say that no art was more speedily brought to perfection (consummata), seeing that in Trojan times it appears to have had no existence. Pliny then proceeds briefly to note celebrated painters or works of art: the picture of Bularchus, in which was a battle of the Magnetes, of such merit that Candaules paid for it its weight in gold (repensam auro): the painters of monochrome (monochromatis) Hygiainon, Dinias, Charmadas, who must have lived shortly before, but whose period is not given: Eumarus of Athens, who first in painting distinguished male from female and dared to imitate every sort of figure ( qui primus in pictura marem a femina discreverit,.... figuras omnis imitari ausum ): and lastly, Cimon of Cleonae, who developed the inventions of his predecessor: he found out catagrapha, hoc est obliquas imagines, et varie formare voltus, respicientis, suspicientisve vel despicientis. Articulis membra distinxit, venas protulit praeterque in veste rugas et sinus invenit. (The difficulties of this passage will be referred to later on.)
In H. N. 7.205, Pliny says further, that painting was a discovery of the Egyptians, but was in Greece invented by Eucheir, kinsman of Daedalus: so also says Aristotle: Theophrastus, however, ascribes it to Polygnotus of Athens. Athenagoras (Leg. pro Chr. 14, p. 59, ed. Dechair) relates how in the days before sculpture and painting and statuary were Saurias of Samos, and Craton of Sicyon, and Cleanthes of Corinth, and a Corinthian maiden: shadow-pictures, σκιαγραφία, were invented by Saurias of Samos, who traced the outline of his horse in the sun: and painting (γραφικὴ) by Craton, who smeared in (ἐναλείψαντος) the shadow of a man and woman on a whitened slab (ἐν πινάκι λελευκωμένῳ) The legend of the Corinthian maiden is referred to by him (ibid.) as the origin of the koroplastic art; and Pliny (ZYYPlin. Nat. 35.151) refers to the same story: the legend related how the daughter of a certain Butades, a Sicyonian potter at Corinth, struck by the shadow of her lover's face cast by her lamp upon the wall, drew its outline (umbram ex facie lineis circumscripsit) with such force and fidelity that her father cut away the plaster within the outline and took an impression from the wall in clay, which he baked with the rest of his pottery.
The main difficulty which confronts us in these various descriptions is that of distinguishing between linear (i. e. outline) drawing and silhouette. It will be best to take the statements as to the inventions first, and afterwards to examine in detail the artists' names. We may for the present disregard the reference to Egypt: the name Philocles being a Greek and not an Egyptian name, it is suggested that the author of this statement had seen the work of an Egyptising Greek, possibly that of an inhabitant of Naucratis, a Greek colony founded in Egypt in the seventh century; or that some such work, originally painted by Philocles in Greece, had been exported to Naucratis, and, being still on view there, had caused the mistake of describing the artist as an Egyptian. We may also disregard the name of Polygnotus in this connexion, wrongly introduced here by Pliny: Theophrastus only meant that Polygnotus was the first who developed monumental painting. The remaining list of inventors points almost exclusively to Corinth and Sicyon: this is in keeping with the intimate connexion which we know existed between these two cities, and the importance of their art, in the sixth century B.C.; they lay close together, and used almost identical alphabets; and the rule of a powerful dynasty of tyranni in each place gave scope for the artistic activity of the Daedalidae to flourish there. The extensive spread of this Corinthian-Sicyonian art may well account for such legendary wanderings of artists as that of Eucheir, Eugrammus, Diopus, and Ecphantus (Pliny, ZYYPlin. Nat. 35.152) into Italy: on the other hand, there is no reason why these artists should belong wholly to legend: we know of the actual existence of a Eucheir in antiquity; and the other names present no further difficulty. There is no reason to suppose the priority of either city; in fact the Butades legend suggests an attempt to compromise this question, by making him a potter of Sicyon working at Corinth.
Pliny says, All agree that the first step consisted in tracing the shadow of a man with lines : it is evident that in the various accounts no distinction is intended as to the priority of drawing over painting or vice versâ; on the other hand, the expression umbra lineis circumducta certainly seems to imply outline drawing; and all the accounts except that of Craton seem to refer to the priority of linear drawing, a fact which is not borne out by the evidence of the monuments. The best suggestion for the explanation of this difficulty is that of Klein, who points out that the real distinction between these various inventions lies, not in the method, but in the subject adopted by the legendary artists; and shows that each legend may be respectively traced to one of the different terms applied in Greek to painting. Thus, the existence of a term σκιαγραφία would suggest a general basis for the various shadow-theories: ζωγραφία, as distinguished from γραφική, might mean the drawing of animals, ζῶα, as opposed to the drawing of the human figure, and hence the legends of the horse of Saurias, and the man and woman of Craton. The story of the Corinthian maiden is really more connected with fictile art than with painting, though drawing is doubtless equally at the basis of such works in terra-cotta as are here referred to: the elements of this legend are all supplied in the term for terra-cotta modelling, κοροπλαστικη. As to this Corinthian maiden, we have two conflicting accounts: Athenagoras says that the lover was asleep, and that the terra-cotta was in his time still preserved in Corinth: whereas Pliny describes the lover as departing, says that the face only was outlined, and that it fell a victim in the sacking of Corinth in B.C. 146: it has been thought, therefore, that the source of Athenagoras' information must have been earlier, that of Pliny later, than B.C. 146: but probably there is no need for supposing the work to have existed except in legend: the circumstantial character of the narrative, as is demonstrable in other similar cases, proves nothing.
With the names of Cleanthes, Aridices, and Telephanes, we come to more definite ground, apparently of the seventh and sixth centuries before however we approach this period, wherein literary and monumental evidence are both available, we must first go back to the far earlier period which we know only from the actual monuments.
As to the actual origin of painting in Greece, various theories have equally been advanced in modern times. One critic argues that the idea was originally suggested by polychrome embroidery or textile work, and points to the fact that in Homer no mention of painting occurs, while on the other hand mention is more than once made of scenes woven on garments, such as the robe of Helen and of Odysseus, and the veil of Hera; and that two of the earliest recorded names of artists are those of Acesas and Helicon, weavers of Salamis in Cyprus. In this connexion we shall see that the influence of Oriental tapestries is largely felt in the Greek paintings, especially of the coast and islands of Asia Minor, but this probably did not take effect until the end of the seventh century B.C. [see [ERROR: no link cross:]VAS].
Another theory is that of Klein and Milch-höfer, who suggest that both sculpture and painting are jointly preceded by coloured relief. Klein says, Sculpture and painting are in the earliest period united in a coloured and flat style of relief, which Greece received from Asia Minor and developed (e. g. the Cypselus chest and the throne at Amyclae). Painting is at first intended to do no more than replace the actual colour of the metal or wood stuff, in the character of a surrogate. The technical process of engraving (where this is unnecessary) of the painted figure and its surroundings, points still more clearly to an imitation of the hammered, beaten out, and inlaid work: and this explains the striving after gaudiness; herein referring to the class of Protocorinthian paintings in which these characteristics occur, and which he suggests are the result of imitation of inlaid metal. The suggestion may be perfectly true of this particular class of paintings: but these by no means represent the first beginnings of the art in Greece.
Strictly speaking, the subject of Painting embraces every material, even to the humblest, to which it is applied; and for the earliest beginnings of the art, we may accept the evidence of vases where other evidence fails. The earliest painted vases in Greece are a class which come at the end of the Hissarlik and at the commencement of the Mycenae period [[ERROR: no link cross:]VAS]. These show the first introduction of painted ornament, at the point where it takes the place of the primitive engraved patterns with which the decoration of Greek pottery begins. First it occupies itself with decorative devices borrowed from marine fauna and flora; afterwards, in the bloom of Mycenaean art, a wonderful dexterity is attained, which leaves little in the range of nature unattempted. In Mycenaean art we see for the first time the elements of that artistic selection and dramatic force which it was the mission of the Greeks first to introduce; we see these qualities strongly marked in the scenes inlaid and engraved on the famous bronze swords found at Mycenae: especially on one which represents a scene of panther-like animals chasing birds by a river-side; although executed in metals, this is a complete picture of animal life, of which even the requisite colours are indicated by the various metals employed. But the more recent excavations at Tiryns and Mycenae have given us still clearer evidence of the pictorial art of this period. In both these sites fragments have been discovered of wall-paintings which seem to have formed parts of extensive compositions in fresco. The largest fragment represents a bull charging, coloured white with red spots on a blue background: above the bull's back is the figure of a man, whose peculiar position has been explained as that of an acrobat, but is more probably due to a defect of perspective. Besides this are on other fragments part of a frieze of figures with animals' heads, warriors, female figures, &c. The range of subjects is that which we are accustomed to meet with on the so-called island gems which begin in this period [[ERROR: no link cross:]SCALPTURA], and which perhaps more than anything show us the connexion between Mycenaean art and the art of later Greece. These subjects are marked by a strong native originality, tinged with the influence partly of Egypt, partly of Asia Minor: in the bronze swords and the wall-paintings the influence of Egypt is especially noticeable, both in point of technique and in the treatment of subject; so that perhaps Pliny's authority was unconsciously correct when he asserted that the art of painting had crossed from Egypt into Greece; though it is certain that his information could never have extended so far back as the times of Mycenae and Tiryns.
With the downfall of the Mycenaean power, the progress of art in Greece doubtless received a check. We see this especially in the vases: the brilliant ware of Mycenae gives place to the rude Geometric system of the conquerors, and survives only in a degraded ware which represents the decadence of the earlier art. In Greece proper the heritage of Argos and Mycenae was doubtless passed on to the neighbouring towns of Corinth and Sicyon; a process which is reflected in the legends narrated by Pliny and others referred to above. On the other hand, the traditions of Mycenae had passed to Asia Minor and the islands: the early pottery of Rhodes shows that late down into the seventh century B.C. vase-painters were still employing a floral system which was a direct survival from Mycenae; and the Euphorbus pinax found at Camirus in Rhodes shows, in the Argive inscriptions which it bears, a direct connexion of this style with Argolis. Unfortunately, we know as yet very little of the early painting in the Greek cities of Asia Minor; but the little evidence which we do possess seems to show that in the seventh century B.C. this style of painting was practised throughout an extensive area of Eastern Hellas. Probably, as the early Greek sites of Asia Minor become more thoroughly explored, we shall see that the painting of this period, like the sculpture and the poetry, centred in some one or more of these cities of the border. Recent excavations at Naucratis, a city in Egypt colonised principally from this district, have shown us what the conditions of this art were in the end of the seventh century; and we have still further important evidence from the locality in question. From Clazomenae has come a series of terra-cotta sarcophagi painted with figured decorations in the style of these schools. These sarcophagi are of various dates, which cover a considerable period; the earliest was probably not made before the first half of the sixth century B.C.; but it seems to represent a tradition which traces its origin back to a period considerably earlier. In these paintings the reddish clay is first covered with a yellowish white pigment, upon which the design is first outlined, and afterwards filled in, in a brownish black. The subjects are for the most part friezes of animals, combats of warriors, and hunting scenes.
The technique of the sarcophagi corresponds with that of the earliest class of the so-called Protocorinthian and Corinthian vases, in which, if their attributions to Corinth are correct, we may trace an unbroken line of connexion between the art of Corinth and that of Mycenae. The most important evidence of this art is afforded by the painted pinakes found at Penteskuphia [[ERROR: no link cross:]FICTILE]. Here we have a series of actual pictures, painted as pictures and not as mere decoration, which throw an interesting light on the various branches of art in the seventh century, and illustrate the close connexion then existing among them. These, dedicated principally to Poseidon, are the combined product of the painter and the potter; one of them is signed by an artist already otherwise known to us as a vase-painter; some of the plaques have moulded decoration; and the scenes represent episodes in the arts of the potter, the painter, the sculptor, and possibly also the bronze worker. This close connexion is very much what is reflected in the versatility imputed to the Daedalidae in the early traditions respecting the first art-workers, wherein the members of one family furnish the representatives of all the various branches of art. The range of myths here depicted is as yet small, as in the Hesiodic shield; the time is not yet come for that fulness of mythological material which is set forth in the famous description of the Chest of Cypselus [STATUARIA], equally a work of Corinthian origin.
With the end of the seventh century we reach a more definite standpoint, and it is here that we seem for the first time to find a historical background for the early artists of literary record. Again, in the absence of other evidence, we are obliged to turn to vase-paintings but inasmuch as vase-painting in its later history certainly reflects the influence and the progress, of the major art, we may take this analogy as true of the earlier periods also.
After the invention of linear drawing, Pliny mentions APIDICES of Corinth and TELEPHANES of Sicyon, spargentes lineas intra, and who also attached the names to their figures; the term lineas has usually been misunderstood as an allusion to the inner markings of the figure, giving the drawing of the eyes, nostrils, all in short which goes beyond mere silhouette. We cannot, however, suppose that all previous artists drew their figures as blind; and it is obvious moreover from vases, that inner markings must have been adopted long before the practice of writing in the names. Klein therefore suggests that this expression in Pliny refers to the linear ornaments, borrowed probably from the imitation of textile fabrics, which fill in the background in the designs of the end of the seventh and beginning of the sixth centuries B.C. And though this explanation upsets the chronological sequence of Pliny's statements, we need not reject it on that ground, for in this, as well as many other points, Pliny is demonstrably incorrect.
Next comes ECPHANTUS of Corinth, with whose name are associated the pictures of the colour of pounded potsherd: probably this expression merely refers to the deep purple colour which is added in the earliest vase-paintings of Corinthian style, and which to Pliny's authority may have seemed their most striking characteristic: that writer may have seen some early painting signed by Ecphantus, and was thus led to connect this improvement with his name. Like Eucheir and Eugrammus, he is said to have come out of Corinth with Demaratus. Pliny tries to explain away this difficulty by the stock method of imagining two Ecphanti; but while the journey is of course legendary, there is no reason why we should not accept Ecphantus as a real personality; it is even possible that we possess a monumental record of this very artist in the Columna Naniana (Löwy, Inschr. Gr. Bildh. No. 5), of which the inscription runs thus:--
*pai= *dio/s, *)ekfa/ntw| de/cai to/d' a)memfe\s a)/galma
(soi\ ga\r e)peuxo/menos tou=t' e)te/lesse gra/fwn.
It seems likely that this column, which was found at Melos, and which, from its inscription, dates from the seventh century, supported a painting; possibly this was a Melian vase-painting, by the artist Ecphantus, who thus dedicates his own handiwork.[ERROR: no link :]
No. 25 ibid. is the fragment of a similar dedication by a Melian (vase) painter Ka-----.
CLEANTHES of Corinth is by Pliny ranked among the inventors of linear drawing; but Pliny's order cannot be accepted here, for it seems clear that the place of Cleanthes is at least posterior to that of Ecphantus. In this case we are not left to Pliny's information alone. Strabo (8.343) notes two works by this master in the temple of Artemis Alpheia: an Iliupersis, and a Birth of Athene. Of the first of these pictures we know nothing more: the Birth of Athene, however, is further mentioned by Athenaeus ZYZ(Athen. 8.346 c), who describes in this picture the figure of Poseidon offering a tunny fish to Zeus in travail. This is of course an error; the tunny is merely the attribute of Poseidon, whose type is thus distinguished on the Penteskuphia pinakes; and the whole description seems to point to a votive pinax of this kind, dating probably from the seventh century. In all probability it was one among many in this temple. Strabo couples with this picture another from the same temple by AREGON, representing Artemis on a Gryphon; this type, however, seems inconsistent with what we know of the methods of this period, and it is likely that either Aregon was of a much later date, or that Strabo's information was incorrect.
CRATON of Sicyon painted a man and woman on a whitened pinax; we are naturally led to think of the vase-paintings in black figures on a white ground: the term λελευκωμένος, however, need not imply more than the practice common to all the paintings of this period, which obtains equally in the Penteskuphia tablets and in the Clazomenae sarcophagi, of preparing the ground of the design with a yellowish-white pigment. The man and woman of Pliny's statement suggests the symmetrical pairs of figures which are commonly mentioned in the descriptions of works of this period, such as the Chest of Cypselus and the Spartan basis.
Of HYGIAINON, DINIAS, and CHARMADAS, Pliny tells us that his information supplies no date; they are painters in monochrome, a technique which is mentioned nowhere except in Pliny, and which he himself does not seem to understand: if it means anything, it may mean that the colouring of their pictures had faded, or else that they worked in one colour with the natural background, as in the vases with black or red figures. In the latter case, these artists must necessarily range much later in date.
Among the painters of this period we may now include those whose names we know from monuments which they have signed, and who are apparently Corinthian artists of the first half of the sixth century,--BIAS, CHARES the son of Bias, and TIMONIDAS, who signed one of the Penteskuphia pinakes.
EUMARUS of Athens was the first who distinguished male from female, and who dared to imitate every sort of figure. On the vases with black figures we can trace the epoch at which a white colour is gradually introduced to indicate the flesh of female figures. It is not necessary that this should be precisely the change initiated by Eumarus, but it must evidently have been something analogous to this.[ERROR: no link :]
See, however, Murray in Hellenic Journal, 10. p. 243.
The two facts we are told of Eumarus thus lead us naturally to think of the early Athenian vases with black figures. While the Corinthian and Chalcidian painters probably went on using their creamy white background, the Athenians used for background the natural brilliant red of their clay, and laid the white in their design on a surface of black paint. The white on these vases is a feature sufficiently striking to have attracted Pliny's informant; and the wealth of mythological material lavished on the François vase by CLITIAS and ERGOTIMUS, and their boldness in attempting difficult motives, may well have justified his expression figuras omnis. Like these two artists, Eumarus was also an Athenian; and in the recent excavations on the Acropolis an inscription has been found which seems to mention his name, and fixes his date, if this identification be correct, at the Solonic period in which Athenian art is beginning to take a foremost place. The vases and pinakes show us the influence of Corinthian painting on Athens at this period.
Pliny's description of CIMON of Cleonae presents grave difficulties. Most critics agree to the general conclusion that the inventions ascribed to him are represented broadly by what we see in the red-figured vases of the school of EPICTETUS, the date of which is now assigned to the age of the Peisistratidae. With the growing popularity of the athletic exercises of the palaestra, comes in the preference for representation of the nude figure, in attitudes and movements hitherto untried; the innovations in the drawing of dress, the improved treatment of the eye, the fine inner markings indicating veins and muscles, are all to be traced to these vases.
Catagrapha in this connexion is difficult to explain. Pliny's interpretation, which represents Cimon as the inventor of profile drawing, seems altogether untenable; in early sculptures in relief, figures which would naturally be in profile are frequently represented in full face; but there is no evidence of any such priority of full-face treatment in Painting. On the other hand, it is probable that the great paintings of this time must have consisted of outline drawings with washes of colour, as on the alabastos of Pasiades in the British Museum. One explanation refers it to linear perspective, or what we should term projection! The most generally accepted interpretation refers it to the practice, common in the vase-paintings of this period, of indicating the outline of the body underneath the dress, which adapts itself to the movements of the figure.
A notable monument of this period is the Stele of Lyseas, an inscribed marble shaft of about 550-525 B.C., with an inscription stating that it is the tombstone and portrait of Lyseas; on the front is painted the full-length figure of the deceased, holding in one hand a cantharus, in the other the twigs of lustration; the chiton is purple, the himation white with a coloured edge, the twigs green, the cantharus black. The outline was first drawn in a dark colour, and the background is red. Below is a minute figure of a galloping horseman. The similarity of this figure to the carved stele of Aristion shows the close connexion that then existed between marble painting and marble relief. Probably such paintings were much in vogue, though naturally very little beyond mere fragments of them have come down to us. The technique corresponds most nearly to that of the black-figured vases. Loeschcke has tried to show that the change from black to red figures in vase-painting was brought about by the influence of marble paintings, such as the Stele of Lyseas; but this suggestion has been generally opposed (see Klein, Euphronios,2 p. 30, and Arch.-Epig. Mitth. 1887, p. 209). We referred above to the statement of Pausanias ZYZ(Paus. 7.22, 6-Z1) that the great artist Nicias painted a sepulchral stele at Triteia: this is important as showing that, even if the Stele of Lyseas is not by a great master, it belongs to a class of work which was not beneath the dignity, and probably reflects the methods, of the great masters.
Another interesting monument, which may probably be referred to this period, has recently been discovered in or near Athens; it is a disk of white marble pierced with two bronze nails for attachment to a wall; on it is painted[ERROR: no link :]
In the Ἀρχ. Δελτίον, 1889, p. 151, this portrait is said to be painted in encaustic, but this is certainly an error; it is probably painted in tempera, like the Stele of Lyseas.
a bearded man seated in a chair, and around the picture is an archaic inscription recording that this is the monument of the excellent physician Aineos or Aineios. The name is an uncommon one, and has been identified with that of the great uncle of the famous Hippocrates; assuming this to be a contemporary portrait, the date would thus fall at about 520 B.C.
The decoration of walls by designs painted on them had probably a direct descent in Greece from the time of Mycenae; unfortunately we have no Greek Pompeii to tell us in what this decoration in early times consisted. There have recently been found at Athens two fragments of a marble painting intended for insertion into the wall, probably of a tomb, which give us, perhaps better than anything else, an idea of the methods employed in decorative painting previously to Polygnotos; it also offers strong confirmation of the close connexion between those methods and the methods of vase-painters The groundwork is a creamy yellow, on which is painted a warrior charging; his figure is drawn in outline, and filled in with different-coloured washes for the various parts and for the drapery. The drawing is strong and spirited, though still retaining traces of archaism; in the field is an inscription which seems to connect it with the vase-painters of the last quarter of the sixth century (Ἐφ. Ἀρχ. 1887, pl. 6).
But if wall-paintings are thus seldom found in Greece, this lack of material is in some degree compensated for when we turn to Italy. It is true that, here again, the actual houses and temples of early times have not survived; but the Etruscans were accustomed to decorate the chamber of their dead as much as possible to resemble that of the living; and the tombs of Veii, Caere, and Tarquinii have given us valuable series of early wall-paintings. These paintings, if not always the work of Greeks, are the living reflection of Greek art. All internal evidence goes to show this, and it further enables us to control the statement of Pliny. In order to show that the Ecphantus of Cornelius Nepos cannot be the same as that early painter of Corinth, he says that already (in the time of Demaratus) painting had attained an independent footing in Italy, and mentions a series of fully-coloured paintings at Ardea, Lanuvium, and Caere, which existed before the foundation of Rome. Pliny's statement is here affected by his sense of patriotism; the vases found in Italy show us beyond a doubt that the earliest Italian paintings were executed under foreign influence. The wall-paintings of Italy are the only class of remains beside vases which enable us to trace the development of the art continuously through all phases; allowance being of course made for the time which must elapse before each innovation of the Greeks could make way among the tomb decorators of Italy.
It is generally accepted that the earliest examples of the art in Italy are the wall-paintings from tombs at Veii; these consist principally of friezes of animals, conventionally or fantastically drawn with long bodies and long slender legs,--a style of art which we know to be essentially Oriental, and which is doubtless connected with the tapestry work of Mesopotamia. In keeping with this textile idea, the groundwork is filled in with conventional designs, which at Veii take the form of floral devices: these floral devices are drawn in many respects identical with the flora of Mycenaean art; it seems therefore that the art of Veii represents the same stage as that which we saw in the vase-paintings of Eastern Hellas at the end of the seventh century B.C., in which the traditions of Mycenae were being combined with the lessons derived from Oriental tapestry. The presence of Mycenaean elements may imply that this form of art traced its origin to a much earlier date, as it certainly also lasted down to a much later period in Etruria. In the Polledrara tomb at Vulci were found a series of imported objects of Egyptian character, including a scarab of Psammetichus I., which probably fixes the date to B.C. 656-611. Among these objects was a large amphora painted in a developed form of the Veii style, and a hydria of a ware which is apparently Graeco-Egyptian, painted in red and blue with a Graeco-Egyptian rendering of the Minotaur legend; a connexion with the Egyptian town of Naucratis, which this same Psammetichus gave to the Greek traders, seems an obvious deduction. The Naucratian traders came principally from the coasts of Asia Minor so that we have, at the end of the seventh century, evidence of a combined Egypto-Asiatic influence on Italian art. It is this influence which we may suppose reflected in Pliny's statement about Philocles quoted above, p. 400.
The same influence was also communicated through another channel, that of Phoenician trade. The site of Caere in Etruria marked a Phoenician settlement, and had been known in earlier times by the Phoenician name Agylla; and the general character of Phoenician importations would be very much what is found in the Polledrara tomb. At present the earliest paintings which we have from Caere are certain terra-cotta slabs, of which a series of five is in the British Museum; another series, somewhat later in date, is in the Louvre. These slabs served as the wall-decorations of a tomb, so that they may be considered in reality as wall-paintings. The surface is covered with a white slip, on which the design is laid in outline, with washes in reds and blacks the white ground is left to stand for the flesh of women, while that of the men is coloured red. The technique is thus very much the same as that which we have on the Corinthian vases of the seventh century. The subject consists of a frieze of figures who seem to represent mourners, and carry various offerings to the dead. On each side of the doorway stood a slab painted with a large Sphinx, the drawing of which bears an analogy to that of the animals of Veii, while that of the human figures seems to show the artist's want of familiarity with this class of subject. It would seem then that these slabs must be very little, if at all, later than the Polledrara hydria, and in publishing them Mr. Murray suggests B.C. 600 as an approximate date for them (Hellenic Journal, 10. p. 247). This date brings us to the period when Etruscan art may have been stimulated by the advent of the artists escaping from the rule of the Cypselidae at Corinth, always supposing that this journey had any ground in fact. In any case, these artists probably chose Etruria as being a district already advanced in art; and this would be some ground for crediting Pliny's statement (35.17) as to the antiquity of the art at Caere. In the details of these paintings Mr. Murray finds traces of a marked Asiatic influence, which, coming primarily from Assyria and Chaldaea, was communicated either by the Asiatic Greeks settled in Egypt, or, more directly, from the Greeks of Asia Minor. The Etruscans themselves claimed a Lydian origin, and some such influence is at least apparent in their early art. Dümmler has tried to establish a connexion with Aeolis in the early pottery of Caere. From this site has come a series of vases which are closely related to certain fragments from Cyme, and which seem to have been imported, possibly from Phocaea; in Etruria they gave rise to a local fabric [[ERROR: no link cross:]VAS], which represents the decadence of this imported style.
Though Etruscan art is everywhere characterised by a certain sturdy realism which is unmistakable, it is always based upon the conceptions and technique which it borrowed principally from the Greeks; it has justly been compared with the art of the Tuscan School of the Renaissance, which sought to bring its own realistic feeling for form into harmony with the results of a renewed study of classical antiquity. The transition from native realism to Greek idealism is especially marked in the comparison between the earlier and later paintings of Corneto (Tarquinii), the best of which seem to point to a period corresponding to, though not necessarily contemporary with, the art of Polygnotus. Of this painter, and of the school of Greek painters who followed him, an account will be found below on pages 407 and 408.
From the dawn of the fifth century we begin to hear the names of painters in Italy, but at first, at any rate, these are exclusively Greeks. In the time of the kings at Rome, painting seems to have been principally in use for the decoration of works in terra-cotta, an example of which has been already mentioned, the vermilion-coloured Jupiter of the Capitol. The earliest painters named in connexion with Rome are DAMOPHILUS and GORGASUS (Plin. Nat. 35.154): these were both painters and modellers, and decorated in both branches of their art the temple of Ceres at the Circus Maximus; this temple was dedicated in 493 B.C., and this date has consequently been assigned to them; Urlichs, however, thinks that Damophilus is to be identified with the teacher of Zeuxis (mentioned ib. § 61), and in this case his date would be about 460 B.C., or contemporary with Polygnotus. Pliny's description leaves us uncertain as to the nature of the paintings of Damophilus and Gorgasus: he says that when the temple was restored crustas parietum excisas tabulis marginatis inclusas esse, an expression which certainly seems to imply that they were wall-paintings which were at a later date cut out and framed. That this plan of preserving the works of old masters was not unusual in antiquity we know from examples at Pompeii and elsewhere. From this time forward we hear little of painting in Rome: there were no local artists of any importance, and communication with the outside world was cut off on the one hand by the wars with Veii, on the other by the Volsci. Nothing further is heard of Roman painting until the middle of the third century B.C.
Returning now to the history of the art among the Greeks themselves, we have seen that in the sixth century B.C. the most important centres were in, or bordering upon, Asia Minor, and that it was only towards the end of this century that Athens began to take a foremost part. This is borne out in the little that we know from literary sources of the painters of the sixth century. Candaules, king of Lydia (died B.C. 708), is said to have purchased at a high price a painting of BULARCHUS, which represented a Battle of the Magnetes (35.55) It would appear from the expression of Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 7.126) that Candaules paid the painter as much gold as would cover the picture (repensam auro). The tradition, however, is very doubtful: it was probably borrowed without understanding from a book by Cornelius Nepos, and is mentioned by Pliny on account of the correspondence between the dates of the death of Candaules and that of Romulus.
The old Ionic or Asiatic painting, the genus picturae Asiaticum, as Pliny terms it, most probably flourished at the same time with the Ionian architecture, and continued as an independent school until the middle of the sixth century B.C., when the Ionians lost their liberty. Herodotus ZYZ(Hdt. 1.164) mentions that when Harpagus besieged the town of Phocaea (B.C. 548) the inhabitants collected into their ships all their valuables, their statues and votive offerings from the temples, leaving only their paintings, and such works in metal or of stone as could not easily be removed, and fled with them to the island of Chios; from which we may conclude that paintings (probably wall-paintings) were not only valued by the Phocaeans, but were also common among them. Long, however, before the conquest of Ionia, Samos seems to have become a prominent seat of the arts (Hdt. 3.60, 4.152-Z2). We know that a school of sculpture was early in existence there; and although the so-called invention of Saurias of Samos is legendary, he may well have had a real existence as a painter. Painting and sculpture went hand in hand in those early times, and the island that boasted the sculptor Theodorus would probably have made its mark in painting as well. Pausanias indeed twice mentions cursorily a celebrated Samiote painter CALLIPHON, who painted the Homeric battle of the ships in the Artemision at Ephesus: the terms used by Pausanias clearly point to the art of the first half of the sixth century B.C. In the temple of Hera at Samos was the celebrated picture dedicated by Mandrocles, a native of the place; we are not told the name of the (doubtless local) artist; it was painted for Mandrocles, who had constructed for Darius Hystaspes the bridge of boats across the Bosporus, and represented the passage of Darius' army, with the king seated on a throne reviewing the troops as they passed. Such a dedication would be quite in keeping with what we know of Samian art tradition, and there is nothing in the epic character of the subject which would make it impracticable. The date of the bridging of the Bosporus must fall between 516-514 B.C., and the picture must have been nearly contemporary with this date. Another painter, possibly also a Samian,[ERROR: no link :]
Klein (Arch.-Epig. Mitth. 12. p. 87) Claims Sillax as a Samian, but on no very strong grounds. He is contemporary with Pythagoras and Clearchus, both of whom are called of Rhegium, but are in reality of Samos.
is mentioned by Athenaeus (5. p. 210 --SILLAX´OF RHEGIUM, whose pictures in the Stoa at Phlius had been described by Polemo; his importance is marked by the fact that his name is recorded in the poetry both of Epicharmos and Simonides; and this fact would mark his date at about B.C. 470. The contemporary porary sculptor Pythagoras of Samos (Rhegium) is stated to have begun life as a painter (ab initio pictor); another instance of the close connexion then existing between the arts. We may conclude the list of Samian painters in the fifth century with the name of AGATHARCHUS, SON OF EUDEMUS: unfortunately of this painter not a single work is described in literature, and we know no more of him than what can be inferred from the three anecdotes which different writers associate with his name. The first is given in Vitruvius (vii. praef. 10), who says that Agatharchus primum Athenis, Aeschylo docente tragoediam, scaenam fecit et de ea commentarium reliquit. From this it has been supposed that this artist invented scene-painting, and that from him, therefore, dates the feeling for landscape in art and the Striving after pictorial illusion. On the other hand, this statement does not coincide with that of Aristotle (Poet. 4), that Sophocles invented scene-painting; nor with what we know of the later painter Apollodorus. Klein proposes, in the light of recent discoveries as to the history of the Greek theatre, to refer scaenam fecit to the innovation brought about by the addition of the σκηνὴ (the stage proper) to the old dancing ring: this expression might well have been misunderstood by Vitruvius, whose references to treatises left by artists and architects are rarely to be trusted. The second anecdote represents him as set down by a reply of the celebrated younger master Zeuxis, to whom he had boasted of his rapid rate of work (Plut. Per. 13). The third anecdote relates how Agatharchus, refusing on the score of overwork to decorate the house of Alcibiades, was locked up by him until the decoration was completed; or, according to another version, until the artist escaped. We thus see, at any rate, that Agatharchus was a contemporary of Aeschylus, of Zeuxis, and of Alcibiades; Aeschylus died in B.C. 456, and the speech of Andocides recording the Alcibiades story was probably delivered in B.C. 416. It has therefore been supposed that there must have been two Agatharchi (see Dict. Biogr. s. v.), but this supposition is not generally accepted.
Here for the present ends our information about the Samian School: between this time and the period of the Diadochi, when Theon comes forward, Samos is only represented by one or two insignificant names. But that Samos preserved always the tradition of a great school of painting, we see from the act that the famous contest between Parrhasius and Timanthes took place there; moreover, the temple of the Samian Hera was a perfect storehouse of pictures, which lasted even down to the time of Strabo (14. p. 637 C), who says, The ancient shrine and large temple of Hera is now a picture gallery [ crossPINACOTHECA]; and besides the quantity of pictures here exhibited, there are also other galleries and little shrines which are full of specimens of ancient art. We saw that Agatharchus' sphere of activity lay in Athens, and it is to Athens on the one hand, to Colophon and Ephesus on the other, that the heritage of Samian painting is now passed.
The art of the sixth century at Athens has unfortunately offered hitherto but little direct monumental evidence either to the ancients or ourselves. The recent excavations on the Acropolis have brought to light, however, monuments which, fragmentary as they are, yet throw a brilliant light upon a period of which the ancients knew but little. The sack of the Acropolis by the Persians in B.C. 480 must have destroyed most of what would otherwise have served for the art history of pre-Persian times. Possibly some scattered pieces were saved from the wreck, and may have been set up at the time of Cimon's administration in the pinacotheca of the Propylaea; and on these chance survivals the knowledge of the ancients was principally based. If therefore such a painter as Clitias is not named by Pliny as well as Eumarus, this is merely owing to the chance that the father of art history found no picture by this artist on the Acropolis. Art and handicraft are originally, as we have seen at Corinth, not separated; and probably the early red-figured vases, made at Athens and exported thence to various: sites, reflect the art of the painters of Peisistratid times; a developed drama did not yet exist; and it would appear that these artists, both great and small, drew their inspiration from the Cyclic and the Lyric poets. As time went on, the gulf between art and handicraft gradually widened; and the genius of POLYGNOTUS, in the middle of the fifth century, finally raised painting to a level far above that of the handicraftsmen.
With Polygnotus the history of Greek painting as an independent art may be said to begin, and in this sense we may accept the statement of Theophrastus (ante) that this artist was the inventor of painting. It is the period of the great reaction at Athens succeeding to the Persian wars, and for the first time we hear of great historical compositions, and of painters recognised as public characters. The limited space of this article necessarily precludes anything like a general notice of all the various productions of Greek painters incidentally mentioned in ancient writers. With the exception, therefore, of occasionally mentioning works of extraordinary celebrity, the notices of the various Greek painters of whom we have any satisfactory knowledge will be restricted to those who, by the quality or peculiar character of their works, have contributed towards the establishment of any of the various styles of painting practised by the ancients. A fuller account of each artist will be found under their respective names in the Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography.
The fame of Polygnotus is chiefly associated with Athens; he was born at Thasos, and came of a family of Thasiote artists; his father Aglophon, and his brother Aristophon, being both recorded as painters of note. Of the details of his life we know very little; just as his great contemporary Pheidias started life as a painter, so Polygnotus is spoken of as having had some experience in sculpture: an association between the two arts which is clearly reflected in the sculpture of the time. His period of activity seems to have lain between B.C. 475 and 430. Attracted to Athens among the artists whom Cimon was employing for the reconstruction and adornment of the city, he won for himself the freedom of that city, and a special honour from the Amphictyons, by his gratuitous work at Athens and at Delphi. He became the leader of a school of painters who worked on the same monuments, and probably much in the same manner, as himself; principal. among these were Panaenus, a relation of Pheidias, and Micon, like his leader both sculptor and painter, and, like him too, of Ionic origin.
Unfortunately, in many cases where these artists were employed conjointly, we cannot always decide which subjects to assign to each of the respective masters. In all probability, the earliest works which can with certainty be attributed to Polygnotus were the large compositions with which he decorated the Lesche or assembly hall of the Cnidians at Delphi, representing the Sack of Troy and the Vision of Hades. These paintings are celebrated in an epigram of Simonides: now we know that in B.C. 477 the poet went to Sicily, and that in B.C. 467 he died; so that the paintings were probably executed at least before B.C. 470. Pausanias devotes seven chapters (10.25-31) to their description, and from this we can gather a very fair idea of the general character of the compositions. The figures were arranged in an extended form of frieze, but grouped on different levels, and lacking that pictorial unity which a definitive background supplies in modern painting. Each figure had the name written over it, and the wall was covered with distinct groups, each telling its own story, but all contributing together to relate the tale of the general composition. They were in fact painted histories, and each group was no further connected with the contiguous groups, than that they all tended to illustrate different facts of the same story. Intended as they were for the decoration of architecture, they were subservient to tectonic laws; as in sculpture in relief, what was not absolutely necessary to illustrate the principal object was indicated merely by symbolism: thus, in default of more elaborate scenery, locality was suggested rather than expressed,--a tree, a house, or a piece of water representing what the knowledge of each spectator would easily supply for himself.
If we consider the narrow limits thus imposed on Polygnotos by his obedience to ancient laws and canons not yet broken through, we shall expect to find his real claims to the advancement of art more set forth in the details of his style and treatment of his subject; and this is precisely what is most noted of him by ancient writers. While he inherits the strength and firmness of his more archaic predecessors, he adds a breadth of style and an aesthetic beauty which is less external than inherent within the character of his subject. This is what Aristotle means when he (Poet. 100.6) speaks of him as an ἀγαθὸς ἠθογράφος,, an excellent delineator of moral character, and assigns to him in this respect a complete superiority over Zeuxis; and again (ibid. 100.2), speaking of imitation, when he remarks that it must be either superior, inferior, or equal to its model, illustrating his point by the cases of three painters: Polygnotus, he says, paints men better than they are, Pauson worse than they are, and Dionysius as they are.
Pliny says (35.58) that he was the first to paint women with translucent drapery, and to decorate their heads with various coloured head-dresses; but that his greatest contributions to painting were those of opening the mouth, showing the teeth, and that he gave expression to the countenance by altering its archaic stiffness. It is in these last characteristics that we see the revolution brought about by Polygnotus; he endeavours, in the whole treatment of the body, to impart an individual character; especially in the face, so that a poet of the Anthology (Anth. Gr. 3.147 might say of his Polyxena that in her eyelids lay the whole of the Trojan war. It is probably more than a coincidence that in his works we have the first glimpse of portrait painting in the modern sense. The artist loved Elpinice, the sister of the great Cimon; and her portrait, as Laodice, figured among the Trojan women represented by him in the Stoa.
With Polygnotus the art of Painting was in point of conception and spiritual beauty at its zenith; but, unlike sculpture, it was as yet lacking in technical power; as Woermann (p. 43) says, It truly entered into possession of its full technical means in a later generation, when the arts of Greece were no longer bent upon their ideal mission in the same high earnest as of old. The range of colours was scanty;[ERROR: no link :]
Cicero says he used only four colours; Plutarch names ὤχρα, σινωπίς, μέλας, μηλιάς.
and though we hear of special local tints being applied (e. g. the Eurynomus in the Nekyia coloured blue-black, like a carrion fly, as Pausanias says), there is no suggestion of a transition of tones or of local light and shade. Indeed, this is the more natural when we remember that no determinate background was used, but probably the figures stood out on the white ground of the wall.
If we wish to realise the spirit of Polygnotus' paintings, it is principally to the sculptures of the time that we must look; and specially to the series of reliefs upon the marble lekythi and sepulchral stelae, which breathe the same qualities of pathos that underlay the paintings of this master, and the bloom of which art falls just in his time. Possibly even the motives of these sculptures may suggest the types which Polygnotus had created for his great picture of Hades. The influence which his art exercised upon sculpture is best shown in the frieze of the Graeco-Lycian monument of Gjölbaschi, where more than one motive (e. g. the Slaying of the Suitors by Odysseus) is directly inspired by the painting of the same subject. But as far as mere types are concerned, much is probably still to be obtained from the study of vases. The gulf between art and handicraft is widening, and the polychrome vase-paintings (on a white ground) are a last attempt to keep pace with the greater art, but for the most part are not worthy of the simple colouring of Polygnotus. On some red-figured vases, however, of the time of Meidias,[ERROR: no link :]
It is worth noting that one vase-painter of this period is named Polygnotus: a vase signed by him is in the British Museum.
it is now shown that the scenes depicted have a close relationship with the painter,--a fact borne out by the inscriptions which they bear, and which are written in the Parian-Thasian, and not the Attic, alphabet. Dümmler has collected as many as six such instances, and more will doubtless be now identified.
For a list of the various works of Polygnotus and his contemporaries, we must refer the reader to Overbeck's Schriftquellen. It is sufficient to say here that their principal sphere seems to have been Athens, and the wealth of Athenian local myths supplied them with the most varied and extensive themes. It was a time when the luxuriance of Ionic art was taking a hold upon Athens, not in painting alone, but in the whole range of Attic culture; and this movement is continued in the greatest of the colleagues of Polygnotus, Micon and Panaenus.
Both had, like their leader, strong instincts in the direction of sculpture. Panaenus was of the family of Pheidias; MICON was himself a sculptor. He is the only great painter of whom we have as yet a direct monumental record; and, curiously enough, this record is concerned, not with a picture, but with a statue. At Olympia a square base was found (Löwy, Inschr. Gr. Bildh. No. 41) which had supported a bronze statue; the inscription showed that this statue had recorded the victory in the pancration of Callias, son of Didymion, an Athenian; and added Μίκων ἐποίησεν Ἀθηναῖος. This very statue is described by Pausanias ZYZ(Paus. 6.6, 1-Z1), who gives further in another passage (5.9, 3) the date of Callias' victory as the 77th Olympiad (B.C. 472-469); the statue must have been set up soon after this date. Another inscribed base (Löwy, No. 42), found at Athens, records a statue made by Micon, son of Phanomachus, thus correcting the form of the name (Phanochus) given in the Scholiast to Aristoph. Lysist. 679. These statues of Athletes remind us of Pliny's statement that Micon was specially esteemed for this class of work ( Micon athletis spectatur ).
Of Micon's birth and life we know otherwise very little. In spite of the evidence afforded by the Olympia base, he has usually been considered as of un-Attic origin, on account of the Ionic character of his writing. But the evidence of his work all points to his being an Athenian; the subjects both of his sculpture and of his painting are Attic, and it is here that his activity was chiefly displayed. Six of his works are known to us, viz. (1) Battle of Amazons, and (2) Battle of Marathon, both in the Stoa Poikile; (3) an Argonautic scene, possibly the funeral games of Pelias, in the Anakeion; (4) Battle of Amazons, (5) Battle of Centaurs, and (6) The Recognition of Theseus, all in the Theseion. In describing this last, Pausanias goes on to relate the end of Theseus; and this has generally been considered as the description of a seventh picture: Klein, however, shows good reason for the opinion that this is merely an excursus of the garrulous topographer, and must not be included among Micon's paintings. The close connexion existing between the great artists of this period, and the probable similarity of their style, is shown in the fact that the Marathon ascribed to Micon. (No. 2) was probably painted by Panaenus, and that some of the works in the Theseion are in one author attributed to Polygnotus.
PANAENUS, if, as is nearly certain, he was the brother[ERROR: no link :]
Strabo calls him the ἀδελφιδοῦς, which would seem to mean nephew, of Pheidias. Pausanias, Pliny, and Plutarch, on the other hand, call him the brother; and this would seem better to suit the chronology, seeing that he painted in the Stoa Poikile contemporaneously with Polygnotus and Micon.
of Pheidias, probably in that case began his training under their father Charmides, who must have been also a painter. His personality is overshadowed somewhat by the superior claims of his greater brother; but the fact of his being chosen to paint the Battle of Marathon, and to decorate the throne rails and walls of the great temple of Olympian Zeus, show the high esteem in which his art was held. From the description which Pausanias gives (5.11, 5) of his Olympian paintings, it is evident that his method corresponded to that of his contemporaries already described. With him we hear for the first time of those contests of painters which seem to have attracted the great masters in subsequent times to exhibit competitive works usually at the great games or religious festivals. Panaenus is recorded by Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.58) as having been defeated in such a competition at the Pythia by Timagoras of Chalkis, an Ionic master who is otherwise unknown. Probably Pliny had derived this story from a copy that he may have seen of a metrical inscription of Timagoras, and this would explain the Timagorae vetusto carmine in the passage of Pliny.
Of ARISTOPHON the brother of Polygnotus, and by Plato reckoned as his equal, some well-known pictures are quoted in Pliny and Plutarch: of these a numerosa tabula is probably to be identified as the principal scene of an Iliupersis, in which Priamus, Helena and Πειθώ, Ulixes and Ἀπάτη, and Deiphobus appear, possibly (as numerosa would seem to imply) as an excerpt from a large composition. Besides this, we have an Astypalaea grieving for her son Ancaeus, wounded by a boar (suggestive of Adonis and Aphrodite); a Philoctetes (probably the same which Pliny saw in the Pinacotheca of the Propylaea at Athens); and a picture commemorating the agonistic victories of Alcibiades. This last subject has given rise to much discussion; one author (Satyrus) makes of it two pictures, the one representing Olympias and Pythias crowning Alcibiades, the other Nemea sitting with Alcibiades in her lap. The other authority (Plutarch) names simply Nemea seated with Alcibiades in her arms, and adds that it caused quite a furore in Athens; but the elders took it ill, as savouring of tyrannia and lawlessness (παρανόμοις). Klein explains the παρανόμοις as referring to a psephisma of the Athenians forbidding any one from attaching to a female slave or hetaira the name of a Penteteris. The terms of the description make it clear that it was one picture. Satyrus says that the painting was Ἀγλαοφῶντος γραφήν; if this is so, we must imagine an Aglophon the second, for it is not possible that the father of Polygnotus could have lived so long. Probably either Satyrus or his quoter (Athenaeus) must have omitted the name of the son, and the quotation should run Ἀριστοφῶντος τοῦ] Ἀγλαοφῶντος.
Two more painters must be named here, the tragedian EURIPIDES (B.C. 480-406), who began life in this profession, and whose pictures were to be seen at Megara and PAUSON, whose name is thrice mentioned by Aristophanes in plays which give for him a margin of date between B.C. 426-389; only one work of Pauson is recorded, a horse painted to order, which from one aspect appeared to be galloping, and when, inverted seemed to be rolling in the dust; but he is brought by Aristotle into comparison with Polygnotus in the passage already quoted (Poet. 2), where he says that Polygnotus painted men as better, Pauson as worse than reality, while DIONYSIUS (of Colophon) represented them as, they are. Of this last painter, we learn from Aelian (Var. Hist. iv 3) that he imitated the technique and style of Polygnotus in everything except its grandeur (μεγέθους); while from Plutarch (ZYYPlut. Tim. 36) it would seem that his method was lacking in ease.
With APOLLODORUS of Athens a new epoch is commenced, of such importance that Pliny says of him that he was the first to give the appearance of reality to his pictures (exprimere species), and to bring the brush into just repute. The great discovery here alluded to is the invention of aërial perspective, the treatment of different planes, the right management of chiaroscuro and the fusion of colours (Plut. de gloria Ath. 2, ἐξευρὼν φθορὰν καὶ ἀπόχρωσιν σκιᾶς), so that he earned the title of σκιαγράφος, and Pliny can say that before him no easel picture (tabula) had existed fit to charm the eyes of the spectator. Doubtless the school of Polygnotus had paved the way for this change: such a detail as that in the Vision of Hades by Polygnotus, representing the river of Acheron with fish and pebbly bed seen through the water his practice of placing his figures on different, levels; and the figures on upper levels half hidden by a line of hill,--these seem to bespeak a step immediately preceding that of true perspective; and it was Apollodorus who took this step. The scarcity of actual records of his works prevents our knowing whether his great fame (ὁ κλεινὸς ἀν' Ἑλλάδα πᾶσαν, says Nicomachus the painter-historian) is due to their individual excellence as much as to the value of his new discovery. Two of his works are recorded; a priest in prayer, and an Ajax struck by lightning, at Pergamon. This last picture has been quoted as an example of the pictorial treatment of Apollodorus; as if it had shown Ajax in his ship, with startling effects of light and shade. Furtwängler, however, is probably right in suggesting that it was not Ajax, but the picture itself, that had suffered disaster; the same thing had happened to a painting of Parrhasius: Pliny records (35.69) that a painting of this artist at Rhodes had been thrice struck by lightning and not consumed (miraculo). Possibly the Ajax picture also contained the picture of Odysseus, of which the Scholiast to Il. 10.265 says that this artist was the first to represent him wearing a seaman's cap, pilos (πρῶτος ἔγραψε πῖλον Ὀδυσσεῖ). His date is specially given by Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.60) as the 93rd Olympiad (B.C. 408-405); but if we may judge from his relations with Zeuxis, it must go back considerably before that time. It is from this age that the establishment of easel-painting may be supposed to date; for although paintings on slabs of marble and terra-cotta were naturally in vogue from early times, it is only now that they begin to occupy the front place, hitherto held by the monumental paintings of Polygnotus; and this is the meaning of Pliny's statement, neque ante eum tabula ullius, &c.; apart from which, Pliny's sources of information seem to deal with easel pictures alone, and to practically ignore the great epoch of monumental painting.
During the period which now terminates, Athens takes the lead in painting, under Polygnotus and Apollodorus, as she had done under Pheidias in sculpture. Though the artists who brought this about were not all Athenians by birth, Athens was the chief seat of their industry; and even afterwards, when by the Peloponnesian wars Athens had lost her supremacy, she still continued an important centre, although the art of painting now branches off into other directions, and is no longer so centralised. It has been customary to consider the sequence of the new schools as (1) Ionian, (2) Sicyonian, and (3) Theban-Attic. But since Athens continues to have an important share, it is better to accept two main branches only, viz. (1) the Helladic, of which Athens is the centre, as opposed to (2) the Asiatic.
Chief of the successors of Apollodorus was ZEUXIS of Heraclea. Of the many towns of this name, we cannot be sure which one is meant. Most critics have explained it as the town in Lucania, on account of the subsequent connexion of Zeuxis with that region, the pictures he painted for Agrigentum and Kroton, and because his teacher is named Damophilus of Himera. Klein, however, points out that this Heraclea was not founded until B.C. 432, whereas Aristophanes already in the Acharnians (50.991) names a picture by Zeuxis; the date of this play is B.C. 426, so that the picture mentioned must have been painted in the seventh year of his age. Klein thinks that the Heraclea in Pontus is referred to, the Heraclea par excellence, and that would account for his being taught by a Thasian, Neseas. At any rate, he came early to Athens, and Xenophon tells us of the warm interest which Socrates felt in the young artist. In the Protagoras of Plato he is spoken of as a νεανίσκος, just arrived at Athens from Heraclea; this would give us a date for the youth of Zeuxis as between Ol. 89-90 (B.C. 424-417). Pliny, following some chronological authority, says that Zeuxis entered the doors of art which had been opened by Apollodorus in Ol. 95. 4; . . . others assert falsely Ol. 89. [ERROR: no link :]
The same idea in a poetic form is expressed in a verse of Babrius (see Rhein. Mus. 1850, p. 479). Klein suggests that the Apollodorus mentioned in the second part of Pliny's passage, in eum Apollodorus supra scriptus versum fecit, was not the painter, but the chronologist of that name; this does away with the necessity of supposing personal relations to have existed between the painter Apollodorus and Zeuxis, and disposes of the grave difficulties which remain in the passage even if we accept the emendation ipsi for ipsis.
It is evident at any rate that he belongs to the last years of the fifth and beginning of the fourth century. That he adopted and extended the improved methods of Apollodorus is evident; and that he won for his art a social standing far above what had hitherto been attained, is shown by the anecdotes recorded of him: how that he gave away his works as being beyond all price (usually, it is true, to the most influential patrons); how he composed an epigram μωμήσεταί τις μᾶλλον ἢ μιμήσεται,, easier to carp than to copy; and how he acquired so much wealth ut in ostentatione earum (opum) Olympiae aureis litteris in palliorum tesseris intextum nomen suum ostentaret. This has usually been explained as implying that Zeuxis wore at Olympia a robe in which his name was woven in gold letters. Such an interpretation involves a difficulty, both in the ablative ostentatione of the MSS. (which must then be altered to the accusative), and also in the plural palliorum. Klein‘s explanation gets rid of this difficulty: Zeuxis really exhibited his treasures at Olympia, and the pallia allude to the curtains hung in front of his pictures there. That curtains were thus used is shown by the well-known story of the curtain painted by Parrhasius, and by the passage in Lucian where Zeuxis, indignant at the dull comprehension of his picture by the public, tells Miccion his pupil to draw the curtain over it (περίβαλε ἤδη τὴν εἰκόνα).
Of the style of Zeuxis we have one excellent criterion in the detailed description of one of his paintings by Lucian, a Centauress nursing her young upon a meadow: the Centaur, half seen upon an elevation overlooking the scene, looks smilingly down, holding in his right hand, up-lifted above his head, a lion cub to frighten the children. Two monuments have come down to us, which, though they do not bear out the actual words of this passage, yet seem undoubtedly inspired by the style of Zeuxis, and possibly by some such picture. The one, a Centauress suckling her young, is known only from the description of Philostratus, 2.3; the other is a fine mosaic of the Alexandrine time from the villa of Hadrian (Mon. 4.50). This also represents a scene from Centaur life, but in this case we have, as it were, the antithesis of Zeuxis' picture: a lion and tiger have overthrown and killed the Centauress; the Centaur, rushing up, has killed the lion, and swings over his head with both hands a mass of rock to strike the tiger which growls over its victim. On a rocky ledge above the scene on the left is a second tiger couched ready to spring. The mixture of idyllic and heroic motive combined in these pictures, in a strikingly novel situation, corresponds perfectly with what we can otherwise gather of the method of Zeuxis.
The most famous perhaps of his paintings was the Helena, executed for the temple of Hera Lakinia at Croton; in Cicero's time this picture was in Rome. Urlichs thinks that Pyrrhus must have removed it from Croton to Ambracia, that Fulvius Nobilior brought it thence to Rome (cf. Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.66), and that it was removed from the temple of Hercules there by Philippus, and placed in the colonnade (porticus) built by him, where in Pliny's time it still was standing. In Cicero (de Invent. 2.1, 1) we have the story in full Zeuxis wished to paint a consummate picture, and asked the: Crotoniates for the five most beautiful of their maidens, in order that he might combine the fairest qualities of each in his picture. Like Rosalind, his Helena
of many parts
By heavenly synod was devised;
Of many faces, eyes and hearts, To have the toufches dearest prized.
He was therefore allowed to choose out of all the maidens the five whose names, Cicero says, many poets have handed down to memory. In Cicero's account there are apparently two versions combined; in the one case Zeuxis inspects all the maidens, in the other he only sees their brothers in the palaestra. Probably both stories are legendary. Klein suggests that they may have arisen in. this way. We cannot, he says, suppose that the. Helena picture was a solitary figure; no one. woman, however composed, could represent her adequately to the Greek mind; iii the Iliupersis of Polygnotus Helena is accompanied by five women (Paus. 10.25, 4-Z1); and on a vase-painting from Kertch, which is certainly influenced by the style of Zeuxis (Compte Rendu, 1861, pl. 5.1), we have a representation of her among her women, who are drawn in various stages of nudity. If we imagine some such picture painted for the people of Croton, if we think of names written over the figures of the maidens, if we conceive them clothed as in the Kertch vase, we have the elements together of which the Crotoniate legend might be, I might almost say, must be, composed. [ERROR: no link :]
A vase in the British Museum (E 241) of this period shows ΕΛΕΝΗ at her toilet assisted by a small Eros and seven maidens.
It seems certain that there existed a second Helena by Zeuxis, which stood in the Corn Exchange (στοὰ ἀλφίτων) at Athens (Eustath. ad Il. p. 868, 37); and it is difficult to say to which of the two some of the references in literature, which are not distinctly specified, apply. It was doubtless the Athenian picture which was exhibited for gate-money, and which therefore received the nickname Hetaira: such an exhibition would certainly be better suited to a stoa than to a temple; and it was this to which Plutarch and Aelian must allude in the anecdote of the carping critic who did not admire the picture, and was set down by the reply of Nicomachus, Take my eyes, and the godhead will be manifested to you. Brunn suggests that the Athenian picture was a copy, or else a replica by Zeuxis of the original at Croton; at any rate we have no means of deciding whether it was different in any particular.
In Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.162, an Alcmene is mentioned which the artist gave to the people of Agrigentum; and an Infant Heracles strangling the Snakes. Most critics had been led to make two distinct pictures out of this sentence, especially on the strength of a Pompeian painting of the latter subject (Arch. Zeit. 1868, Taf. 4). The question seems to be finally settled, however, by a vase-painting recently acquired by the British Museum (see Murray in the Classical Review, 1888, p. 327), which represents the infants and snakes, the Zeus (magnificus Juppiter), the assembly of gods (adstantibus dis), and the Alcmene who throws one arm around the neck of Zeus and with the other points vigorously down to the scene below, an action which may well correspond with the matre pavente of Pliny. The magnificus Juppiter in throno at, first sounds out of keeping with the homely natural touch of Zeuxis; but in the vase-painting the Olympus is treated with just this absence of stiffness which we may well imagine is inspired by the painting of Zeuxis.
From other pictures mentioned as of Zeuxis, the Pan, Marsyas, and Eros crowned with roses, Brunn seeks to show that his easel pictures seem to have been confined to a few figures and isolated situations. But there is nothing to prove that these figures are not merely extracts from larger subjects; and this would suit better the method of the artist as we know it from the few pictures already identified, and also the vase-paintings of the time, in which as a rule preference is shown for elaborate compositions. When Zeuxis first reached Athens, the traditions of Polygnotus were giving place to the more purely pictorial technique of Apollodorus; to an imaginative genius such as his, a new world of art was disclosing itself; it was natural that he should open up new paths, new ways of looking at the real and at the unreal. Lucian says that he did not paint τὰ δημώδη καὶ τὰ κοινὰ πᾶντα, such as his predecessors had done, heroes, or gods, or wars, but was always trying some new creation, ἀεὶ δὲ καινοποιεῖν ἐπειρᾶτο. Aristotle sets him up as an instance of the πιθανὸν ἀδυνάτον: the old fantastic creations of mythology, which had existed as little more than abstract ideas either in poetry or in art, have henceforward imparted to them a new life of their own; the same idyllic treatment will soon be applied to the world of gods as of men; and in Zeuxis we see already the germ of the ideas which are later; to blossom out into the art of the Alexandrine age.
Beside the other painted works of Zeuxis, Pliny mentions specimens of his work in two other classes of art: his monochromata ex albo, which probably simply means pictures from which the colours had perished, leaving only the outlines sketched in; the same mistake had been made in modern times. At Herculaneum were found a series of drawings in red upon stone, the finest of which is signed by Alexander, an Athenian. It was always supposed that these represented a special technique, but in 1872 a similar slab was found at Pompeii, which showed within red outlines the perfectly distinct remains of a complete painting in colours: these colours have since almost entirely vanished. Besides these monochromata, Pliny also mentions certain plastic works of Zeuxis (figlina opera), which were alone left behind in Ambracia when Fulvius transferred the other art treasures thence to Rome (cf. Liv. 38.9, and 39.5). Klein: thinks, that these were probably paintings on terra-cotta slabs, let into the wall, and therefore difficult to remove. They may have been, like the picture of Pan, painted for the decoration of the palace of Archelaus at Pella, and taken by Pyrrhus to Ambracia when he became master of Macedonia.
The greatest rival of Zeuxis was PARRHASIUS of Ephesus. It is true that some late authors represent him as an Athenian, but there seems no ground for supposing that, like Polygnotus, he obtained the freedom of Athens. He began life at Ephesus under his father's (Euenor's) tuition, and went early to Athens, which was the principal sphere of his activity. It was doubtless here that he came into contact with Zeuxis; their rivalry, which is by some authors declared to have been in favour of Parrhasius, appears to have been based principally on the difference in their methods of art. After the Peloponnesian wars, he seems to have left Athens, for we hear of him at Rhodes and Samos. About twenty pictures in all are attributed to him, among which some appear to have been of the character of genre, others mythological; in the latter class he seems to have come under the influence of Euripidean tragedy (Robert, Bild und Lied, 35); as, for instance, in the pictures representing the Healing of Telephus, the Madness of Odysseus, and Philoctetes on Lemnos.
In the personal traits recorded of Parrhasius, his Ionian character is strongly marked. His genial self-consciousness comes out in his love of luxury, in his purple mantle and gold crown; his wit, and his gift of poetry In his own verse he calls himself ἁβροδίαιτος ἀνήρ; which is turned by a contemporary into ῥαβδοδίαιτος, living by his pencil : and he says that he is Apollinis radice ortum, that is, through Ion, founder of the Ionian race, sprung from the god. As to his artistic style, Brunn thinks that he can trace a radical contrast to that of Zeuxis: in Zeuxis the pictorial element had predominated; Parrhasius displayed a treatment of form highly finished in the drawing and modelling, Milchhöfer draws attention to his partiality for subjects depicting the emotion of pain, and points out the peculiar power which such a picture as his Demos of Athens must have demanded, of representing in one and the same figure the most contrary psychological effects.
In Pliny, xxxv § 68, it is stated that Parrhasius left behind et alia multa graphidis vestigia in tabulis ac membranis eius ex quibus proficere dicuntur artifices. [ERROR: no link :]
Brunn thinks that this was the reason why Pliny includes Parrhasius in the list of authors which he gives in the 35th Book, since no writing by him is otherwise alluded to. Klein supposes that Pliny must have had in mind the verses which Parrhasius wrote about himself and his works, and for this reason considered him as an author.
The passage has given rise to much discussion; that traces of the graphis should remain in the easel pictures does not surprise us, but what are the membrana? Klein proposes to refer them to the sketches which Parrhasius is known to have made for works of toreutic art; from Pausanias and Athenaeus we learn that more than one metal-worker were occupied in reproducing in his craft the designs of this artist. Athenaeus further gives (xi, p. 782 the epigram on a skyphos of Heraclea, which represented the Iliupersis;
*gra/mma *par)r(asi/oio, te/xna *muo/s, e)mmi de\ ei)kw\n
*)ili/ou ai)peina=s a(\n e(/lon *ai)aki/dai
Moreover Pausanias ZYZ(Paus. 1.28, 2-Z1), in describing the work on the shield of Athene Promachos, says that it was executed by Mys (τορεῦσαι Μῦν): the designs of Mys for this and all other of his works were drawn by Parrhasius son of Euenor. It is clear, then, that there was a close connexion between the great painter and the toreutic art, and it is probable that the emphatic stress laid on the excellence of Parrhasius' drawing is mainly due to the existence of these graphidis vestigia. Pliny especially praises his skill in terms which would suit drawings of this nature, and quotes as his authority two writers who are known to have published books on the toreutic art. It is therefore highly probable that the eulogia bestowed upon Parrhasius for his drawing refer specially to this branch, and are not to be taken as detracting from his merit in the other branches of his profession. The evidence indeed is rather to the contrary. Of his colouring we learn from Diodorus (xxvl. 1) that Apelles and Parrhasius in the skilful mixing of colours brought Painting to its highest point; Parrhasius is in fact the immediate predecessor of the perfected colouring of Apelles; not yet indeed absolutely perfect himself, so that he is not included among those in quibus iam perfecta sunt omnia; but, on the other hand, not to be classed in this respect with Zeuxis, Polygnotus, and Timanthes, who did not use more than four colours (Cicero, Brutus, 18, 70).
Quintilian, in a comparison between Zeuxis and Parrhasius, says of the latter that he so circumscribed everything that they call him the Lawgiver, because the types which he has handed down of gods and heroes are followed, as of necessity, by all other artists. Klein seeks to show that gods and heroes were in fact his principal theme; his heroes, in the mentions of them that have come down to us, appear to have been mainly single portrait figures; of his gods, only two are named, a Dionysus with Arete (the artist's favourite patroness) and a Hermes. Whether or no this Hermes was painted by the artist from his own portrait, it shows us at any rate the close relation which obtains now between the portrait and the ideal type.
The main difficulties of technique are now overcome, and the period of struggling with material is well-nigh past; with the new facilities opening out, it is natural that we should now hear of a number of new claimants to fame: principal among these stand the representatives of the Sicyonian school. We saw already that Sicyon had been one of the earliest afoot in the field of Painting; and there seems no doubt that the tradition had been carried on there uninterruptedly: but it is in the age following Zeuxis and Parrhasius that its sphere of activity is most strongly marked. The great sculptor Polycleitus had been a Sicyonian, and doubtless had left his mark on the character of the training which was imparted, for high prices, at the Sicyonian school.
In this school we may include the name of TIMANTHES, who is indeed expressly called the Sicyonian painter by Eustathius (ad Il. p. 1343, 60).[ERROR: no link :]
Quintilian (Inst. Orat. 2.13, 12) speaks of him as Cythnius, which Brunn and others have taken to mean that he originally hailed from Cythnos; Klein suggests that this writer misread his authority, taking ΣΕΚΥΟΝΙΟΣ for ΚϜΘΝΙΟΣ. It is possible that the painter Timanthes of Sikyon recorded in Plut. Arat. 32, 3-Z1, and who must have lived towards the end of the third century B.C., was a descendant of this artist.
Pliny tells us that he successfully competed at Samos (doubtless at one of the annual art exhibitions already mentioned) with Parrhasius. Parrhasius' picture on this occasion represented the contest between Ajax and Odysseus for the arms of Achilles; and when beaten, he complained that Ajax had again been defeated by an unworthy opponent (i. e. in Homer, by Odysseus, and at Samos, by Timanthes). We are not told what was the subject of Timanthes' picture on this occasion; but it is clear that it could not have been, as Brunn supposes, the same as that of Parrhasius. Of the four other pictures ascribed to him, the Palamedes is uncertain, the hero in the temple of Pax at Rome tells us nothing, and the Sleeping Cyclops is probably not by him: Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.74) describes it as a Cyclops sleeping, a tiny picture; to bring out the colossal size of the monster, the artist inserted figures of Satyrs, measuring his thumb with a thyrsos. The whole idea of this picture seems out of keeping with the age of our artist, and to belong rather to that idyllic time which treats the Cyclops from the idyllic point of view as the lover of Galatea. The Timanthes therefore who painted this may have been some much later artist of the same name.
We are thus left, for our estimate of Timanthes, to the most famous of his pictures, the Sacrifice of Iphigeneia, and the one with which he overcame in competition Colotes of Teos. The maiden was represented standing before the altar on which she was about to be offered up, and grief is exhibited in the faces of the by-standers. The intensity of emotion is graduated in the different faces, culminating in the climax with the father Agamemnon, whose head is veiled from view. More than one monument has come down to us which seems to have been inspired by this picture (see Wiener Vorlegebl. 5.8-10; the mosaic in Arch. Zeit. 1869, pl. 14; and Overbeck, Her. Bildw. p. 314 fol.): the most important of these is the Pompeian wall-painting (Overbeck, ib. pl. 14.10), which agrees in most of the important details with the description. The detail which appears constant throughout, the veiled grief of Agamemnon, is what seems most to have caught the fancy of the ancients; and it is possibly this fact which has inspired Pliny's estimate of his ingenium, so that he says of Timanthes that in his works the spectator sees more than is actually there (intelligitur plus semper quam pingitur). Apart, however, from oratorical gush, we may obtain a real idea of the grandeur of Timanthes' conception, which would seem to place him on a level higher than that of his contemporaries.
EUPOMPUS of Sicyon is named by Pliny as belonging to this period (hac aetate), but that he was later than Timanthes we see from the fact that his pupils belong to a considerably later date. Of his pictures we know scarcely anything; but his importance is emphasised by the statement of Pliny, who says that on his account the schools of painting were now reckoned as three--viz. Ionic, Sicyonic, and Attic. It is evident from what has gone before that this cannot mean that Eupompus founded the Sicyonic school; it had existed from time immemorial; it merely means that from this time the Sicyonic painters begin to raise themselves as a separate class above the level of the rest of the Helladic school. The fame of the Sicyonic training spread so much that under PAMPHILUS the fee was raised to a talent for twelve years' instruction, and even the great Apelles was among his pupils. It is difficult to say wherein this great local superiority consisted, which tempted, moreover, wealthy amateurs like Ptolemy II. and Attalus to purchase at enormous prices galleries of specially Sicyonian old masters. Plutarch uses a special term for it, χρηστογραφία, which is usually explained as indicating the reaction in art against the methods of Zeuxis and his contemporaries. Klein thinks that the special revolution effected by the Sicyonic masters was their development of the encaustic method. It is certain, at any rate, that it was only from the time of Pamphilus that encaustic took its place on equal terms beside the ordinary methods. We have seen that under the Ptolemies the method found favour in Egypt; and that it took a lasting hold there we saw on p. 392 in the large series of such pictures which have been found in the Fayoum. It is thus that we shall understand the tirade of Petronius against the audacia of the Egyptians, which invented a shortened method (compendiariam) of obtaining the effects belonging to the great art of painting. This shortened method Klein understands as the abandonment of the use of the cestrum, and therewith of the tarda picturae ratio which encaustic had hitherto involved. If this is so, it is natural that the fame of these first reformers should rest more upon their method and their teaching powers than on their actual paintings. Of Pamphilus we only know four works, and these only by the barest mention of their subjects.
The same estimate is true also of his pupil MELANTHIUS, whose superiority in composition is said to have been conceded by his fellowpupil Apelles: of him, again, we only know one picture, which represented Aristratus, the Tyrant of Sicyon in Philip's time, standing beside the chariot of Nike: when under Aratus all effigies of Tyrants were subsequently destroyed, the figure of Aristratus was scraped out, and a palm-tree inserted in its place.
Another of the pupils of Pamphilus, PAUSIAS, may be considered to have done most to develop the capabilities of the new method (Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.123, primum in hoc genere nobilem ). Striking effects of transparency, such as the face of his Methe visible through the glass out of which she drank; of gradations of single colours, so that in his famous Sacrifice picture the entire body of a bull seen in foreshortening was coloured black: such were the features of his work; which, moreover, seems to have been limited in other directions by the tediousness of the encaustic method; so that his pictures were almost all on a small scale, and occupied with subjects appropriate to the size, such as scenes of child life (pueri) and even (for the first time) flower subjects. Pliny tells a story of his restoring the mural paintings of Polygnotus at Thespiae, and adds that he was not very successful, quoniam non suo genere certasset. We have, however, seen that Pliny neither knew nor cared anything about the great mural paintings; the Thespiae here is a mistake for Delphi, so that we can place no reliance on this evidence of Pausias' practice with the brush.
From this point the history of Painting seems to branch off. Brunn, and most critics following him, have thought to be able to trace a new school existing side by side with the Sicyonian, of which the name of Aristeides stands at the head, and which includes Nicomachus, Euphranor, and Nicias. This school was termed the Theban Attic, for this reason; Aristeides is frequently termed Thebanus, and we hear of a picture by him in Thebes; after the decline of Theban power the, school is supposed to have taken root at Athens; and a contrast is drawn between the severe academic exactness and thoroughness χρηστογραφία) of the Sicyonian school, and the greater ease and versatility, and invention more intent upon the expression of human emotion of the Theban-Attic. This conclusion, which, has been generally accepted, certainly, appears to rest on very insufficient grounds, and it leaves us with, an impression of the narrowness and one-sidedness of the Sicyonic school which is hardly warrantable in fact. Klein, who has subjected each of the artists of the period now succeeding to a searching examination, advances a theory which seems to do away with the difficulty. He, traces the whole of these artists, back in two pedigrees to the tutelage of the two artists, Aristeides and Pausias; he finds that Aristeides the Theban belongs no less to the Sicyonic school than Pausias or than Pamphilus of Amphipolis; that most of these artists can be more or less directly associated with Sicyon. The powerful reaction which tradition, intelligibly enough, connects with Sicyon, . . . is only comprehensible by the knowledge that it was preceded by a freshening and permeation of the ancestral parent stock with Northern Greek blood. From North Greece it acquired the technique of encaustic, which it developed, to the highest perfection; and thence arose the idea that Aristides and Pamphilus were the first artists in encaustic. From what we know of these artists it would appear that all spheres of art, from the highest to the lowest, were handled by them; but there is no reason to suppose that the traditions of technique and style which marked the Sicyonic school were not preserved in painting as they were in sculpture.
The most important figure is now ARISTEIDES, Thebanus. The facts which Pliny gives point to two masters of this name, of whom the one is the father (formerly read as Aristiaeus), the other the son, of Nicomachus. The statements in Pliny concerning these two Aristeidae are so hopelessly confused that it is impossible to distinguish between them with any certainty. If the grandfather can be identified with the pupil of Polycleitus, we may take about B.C. 330 as a convenient date for him, and about B.C. 280 for that of his grandson. It is possible that the epithet Thebanus is intended to distinguish the older Aristeides; but, even here Pliny is confused, for he sometimes calls one and the same person Thebanus and contemporary with Apelles. The same confusion is probably traceable in his estimate of style: is omnium primus animum pinxit et sensus hominis expressit, quae vocant Graeci ethe, item perturbationis (πάθη). Perhaps we should assign to the elder the quality of ethos, to the younger that of πάθος and of being durior paulo in coloribus; and according to these qualities we may assign some of the pictures. The Dionysus was probably painted by the older and more famous of the two; its great estimation is shown by the fact that Attalus is said to have paid 100 talents for it, and Mummius afterwards sent it to Rome: also the picture of a sacked town, which Alexander acquired at the looting of Thebes, and of which one episode represented a dying mother, with her infant still suckling her breast. To the younger may be assigned the Battle with Persians, the Leontion Epicuri and the anapauomene (see Arch. Zeit. 1883, p. 41).
Of NICOMACHUS, the son of the elder Aristeides, we know very little. He painted, like Melanthius and his pupils, for the Tyrant Aristratus of Sicyon, who was a contemporary of Philip of Macedon; also a portrait of Antipatros, probably about Ol. 115. Among his other works we read of a Rape of Persephone; a Sleeping Maenad surprised by Satyrs (Arch. Zeit. 1880, p. 149); a Victory driving a quadriga heavenwards; and other pictures of gods and mythological scenes.
EUPHRANOR, the Isthmian, is mentioned as a pupil of Aristeides (probably about B.C. 360), and, like others of his predecessors, worked both in sculpture and painting; according to Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.128), he was docilis ac laboriosus ante omnis, and in both branches of art excelled all his contemporaries. Of his pictures we hear specially of three great compositions for a stoa in the Ceramicus, representing the charge of the Athenians against the Thebans before the battle of Mantineia, pictures of the twelve gods, and a Theseus. Of this last, Pliny says in quo dixit that the Theseus of Parrhasius looked as though fed on roses, while that of Euphranor seemed fed on beef. The dixit is usually taken as alluding to Euphranor Klein suggests that it was a remark more appropriate to Parrhasius; the same confusion of Pliny comes out in his attribution of a madness of Odysseus to Euphranor in the same passage. After describing the three works in the Stoa, he adds, nobilis eius tabula Ephesi est, Ulixes . . . Now we know from Plutarch that Parrhasius painted a picture of this subject, and it seems absurd to suppose that Euphranor would have painted the same idea for the home of Parrhasius, Ephesus. The eius should properly refer to Parrhasius, who alone painted this subject, and the whole passage has been inserted here by Pliny in error. Of Euphranor's style we cannot judge; we only know that he devoted his attention to the canon of proportions, and is said to have written on this subject; but it remains uncertain whether or no he is to be considered as the predecessor of Lysippus in this study.
With NICIAS of Athens we are brought fully into the Alexandrine age. Plutarch narrates a story of his having refused to sell one of his pictures (the Nekyia) at sixty talents to king Ptolemy; on the other hand, we hear of him as a contemporary of Praxiteles: so that his sphere of activity must have lain between about B.C. 340-300. From a statement in Demetr. Phaler. (de Elocut. 76) we gather that he tried to bring about a reaction in style against the follies of contemporary artists, who frittered away their art in painting birds and flower pieces; and laid down the principle of the importance of choosing a fine subject, such as a battle-piece. Following this principle himself, we find him occupied with more than one subject of the Polygnotan school: the Nemea, probably a personification of the Nemean games, whom he represented bearing a palm and seated on a lion; and a Vision of Hades (Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.132, necyomantea Homeri), the picture which he refused to Ptolemy and presented to Athens. It is interesting in connexion with this last to note that an ancient treatment of this subject has come down to us in the famous Odyssey landscapes excavated on the Esquiline in 1848-50 (Woermann, Antiken Odysseelandschaften): these six pictures are almost exact illustrations of the Homeric text (Od. 10.80 to 11.600), and though decorative in idea are examples of complete landscape painting, showing due observance of aërial perspective. Their execution dates, as the masonry of the walls on which they were found shows, from the last years of the Republic; but from their style the designs may probably be referred to the Hellenistic period. Among the grandis tabulas of Nicias, Pliny mentions an Io, a subject of which several replicas exist at Pompeii; it is probable that the largest and finest of these, found on the Palatine, reproduces the general form of the composition of Nicias (see Woltmann, p. 56). Besides his large pictures, principally of heroines ( diligentissime mulieres pinxit ), he seems to have worked in encaustic the Nemea was a specimen of this technique, on which the artist inscribed the statement that he had burned it in (inussisse); and to this style we may perhaps refer his pictures of animals and dogs, as well as the chiaroscuro and quality of relief for which he is praised. Connected also with his encaustic work was doubtless the circumlitio of the statues of Praxiteles which has already been dealt with on p. 395; and the painted scene on the sepulchral monument at Triteia which Pausanias describes (7.22, 6).
We now enter definitely upon the new phase of Hellenistic life in Greece, and among the many painters of this epoch one stands unquestionably at the head, APELLES, son of Pytheas of Colophon. His father was apparently not a painter, for he was sent to receive his first instruction from Ephorus of Ephesus; at a later age, when he was already beginning to be famous, he went to Sicyon, attracted there by the fame of the teaching of Pamphilus. Under Philip of Macedon he took up his residence at Pella, and continued as court painter under Alexander; when Alexander started on his Asiatic campaigns, he returned again to Ephesus. After this we hear of him at various times in Rhodes, where he is brought into contact with Protogenes; at Alexandria, at the court of Ptolemy Soter; and possibly at Cos. The numerous anecdotes and sayings attributed to him, such as manum de tabula, nulla dies sine linea, ne sutor ultra crepidam, must be considered merely as indications of his extensive popularity rather than as detailed evidence of his style. We cannot with certainty connect any picture by him with the material that has come down to us, so that we are left to the scraps of art criticism in ancient authors for an estimate of his style. As might be expected, by far the majority of his works seem to have been in the sphere of portraiture. Pliny says that it is useless to try and enumerate the many portraits by him of Alexander and Philip: besides these we hear of a Cleitos putting on his helmet; an Archelaus in a family group; an Antigonus arranged in profile, so that his defective eye was not seen; besides many others, principally of people connected with the Macedonian court. Perhaps most characteristic of him were the series of personifications of abstract ideas of the mind, represented generally as female figures in action. Such a picture was the Calumnia, which he painted at the court of Ptolemy in Alexandria, in punishment of his detractors there, and of which we have a detailed description in Lucian. To the same category may be referred the pictures of Charis and of Tyche; and the allegorical personifications of the phenomena of nature, as Bronte (thunder), Astrape (lightning), and the thunderbolt, Keraunobolia. His mythological pieces are comparatively few; by far the most important was doubtless the Aphrodite Anadyomene painted for the people of Cos: she was seen rising from the water, a type which may be compared with numerous marbles which have come down to us. Augustus carried the picture to Rome, remitting to the Coans a hundred talents of the tribute due, as compensation; by the time of Nero it had suffered so much that it had to be restored, a work which was carried out by a certain Dorotheus. As we should expect from an artist whose bent lay in portraiture, his talent lay less in large or elaborate compositions than in refinement and the complete study of nature. The stories that we are told of him seem to point to a great dexterity and lightness of touch, with the charm and grace of manner which was the natural outcome of his period.
His greatest contemporary was PROTOGENES of Caunus, an insignificant town on the Carian coast, subject to Rhodes, where the artist took up his abode (see supra, p. 395). Mr. Torr (Classical Review, 1890, p. 231) suggests that the artist had been accustomed to paint pictures of ships, as thank-offerings for escapes at sea. At any rate, it was probably mainly due to Apelles that his work came to be known and appreciated: on the other hand, this seems inconsistent with the fact that Pliny places him among those who practised sculpture as well as painting. Besides a few portraits, of Philiscus, Antigonus, and the mother of Aristotle, and one work in Athens, his chief themes seem to have been drawn from the local traditions of Rhodes; an often repeated anecdote records his presence at the sacking of Rhodes by Demetrius in B.C. 304, which we may take as a central point of his chronology. Demetrius spared the town from burning in order to save the picture by Protogenes of the Rhodian hero Ialysus. In this picture occurred the dog, the effect of whose foaming mouth was said to have been attained by Protogenes throwing his sponge in desperation at the picture; and the partridge, which though a mere detail attracted so much attention that the artist, in annoyance, erased it. To attain this high degree of realism, he is said to have worked very slowly, and it was against this impression of laboriousness that the criticisms of Apelles were directed.
ANTIPHILUS was by birth an Hellenistic Egyptian, who was already established at Alexandria when Apelles went there. Quintilian calls him facilitate praestantissimus, and his versatility is shown in the subjects of his works: these included large pictures in tempera, genre pictures, such as a boy blowing the fire (probably encaustic), and even caricature. The type of one of his works, a Satyr probably dancing, with a panther-skin, and snapping his fingers (quem aposcopeuonta appellant), is probably reflected in statuary, for example in the bronze Dancing Faun found in the Casa del Fauno at Pompeii (Overbeck, Pompeii,4 p. 550).
The principle of illusion was now becoming an end in itself, and the higher aims of art were neglected in the reproduction of ignoble and unworthy themes: a representative of the age was THEON of Samos, of whose phantasies the most famous is described by Aelian; it represented a warrior fully armed, charging out of the panel; when exhibiting this picture, the artist would have a flourish of trumpets sounded, and then draw the curtain. Other painters of this time are: AËTION, who painted a marriage of Alexander and Roxane,[ERROR: no link :]
It is natural to think of the so-called Aldobrandini marriage, one of the most famous of the ancient paintings which have come down to us; but the conception and style of this picture seem to reflect an original type belonging to a time far earlier than the period of Aëtion,
which has been fully described by Lucian; in this picture little Erotes are introduced, playing with the king's armour, a motive thoroughly characteristic of the Hellenistic age;--HELENA, daughter of Timon the Egyptian, said to have painted the Battle of Issos which has inspired the famous Pompeian mosaic; and the school of painters in little, which, like the Dutch school of the same kind, occupied itself with genre and still life. Chief of these was PEIRAÏCUS, whose speciality was barbers' shops, cobblers' booths, asses, eatables, and the like, from which he received the nickname rhyparographos (i.e. rag and tatter painter, a parody on rhopographos, a painter of small and trivial objects): in spite of the contempt felt for such art, it seems to have commanded high prices, probably on the score of technical finish.
In the centuries following B.C. 300 few artists stand out with any individuality: to study the ideas of this time, we must look at the Hellenistic reliefs, and at the wall-paintings, as they are reflected in Roman imitations. The only artist of the period who won considerable fame is TIMOMACHUS of Byzantium, of whom Pliny says that Julius Caesar paid a large sum for two of his pictures; but we cannot follow Pliny in making Timomachus contemporary with Caesar: he probably belongs to an earlier century. The most famous of his pictures were: the Madness of Ajax, a Medea about to kill her children, and his Orestes and Iphigeneia in Tauris. Of the Medea picture, celebrated in antiquity no less than the Aphrodite of Apelles, we have several suggestions in wall-paintings, sarcophagi, and elsewhere; perhaps the finest is the picture of Medea herself in Mus. Borb. 10.21, in which the conflict of emotions in the mother's mind is admirably represented. It is this power of expressing the emotions and character with delicacy and depth that seems to characterise the works of Timomachus, and probably earned him his fame.
With Timomachus the history of Greek painting proper may be said to have come to an end. Under the successors of Alexander, the art had become cosmopolitan, and under the Romans the chief interest was finally transferred to Italian soil. During the last years of the Republic, and under the Emperors, the art treasures of ransacked Greece poured with a steady flow into Italy, and it is here that we must study its latest developments. But throughout antiquity, painting continued to be an essentially Hellenic art. It is true that we hear occasionally the names of Roman artists:--FABIUS PICTOR (B.C. 304), a member of the illustrious Fabia gens whose wall-paintings in the temple of Salus are praised, but whose profession was considered to have degraded his caste; PACUVIUS, the tragedian (B.C. 219-129); JAIA or LALA, whose work in encaustic has been already mentioned (about B.C. 100); TURPILIUS, who painted with his left hand; TITIDIUS LABEO, a former praetor and proconsul, who made himself ridiculous with his parvis tabellis; Q. PEDIUS, a boy of good family, who, being born dumb, was put to learn painting--he became proficient, but died young; and, lastly, FABULLUS (Amulius), who lived in the time of Nero, and whom Pliny describes as gravis ac severus idemque floridus pictor. But even in Roman times the majority of the names are Greek in form, and it is quite certain that the majority of the subjects painted are referable to pictorial originals of Greek and Hellenistic art. It is true that in only a very few instances we are able to trace these Italian paintings back to an original described in literature; but Helbig's researches have proved beyond a doubt that such an origin is to be sought for them. The Greek creations were everywhere circulated and reproduced, in the form of cheap frescoes, and occasionally as the leading motive in works of sculpture.
The large number of scenes from daily life which occur in Italian paintings are divided by Helbig into two main classes, the Hellenistic genre pictures and the Romano-Campanian realistic scenes. The Hellenistic group, the most charming of all these pictures, are probably the nearest reflections we have of the genre spirit of the painters of the Alexandrine period. The subjects are ideal treatments of daily life, principally of women, youths, and children; girls with Erotes, or with Pan; toilet scenes and love scenes; much the same range of subjects in fact as those which we have in the idyllic poetry of the time, and in the terra-cotta statuettes; and filled with the same fresh and simple beauty.
The other class, which represent more directly the art of the time to which they belong, were subjects apparently inspired by the fancy of the handicraftsman; mechanics at their occupations, incidents of the market, bakers, fishmongers, gladiatorial scenes, usually appropriate to the locality in which they stand, and painted with a certain rough realistic dexterity. In these two classes we see reflected the two main styles of the Alexandrine painters, the ideal sensual style of Aëtion and the rhyparography of Peiraëus.
Of mythological scenes in Italian painting we have not many examples. The most important of these have been already noted in connexion with the Greek artists whom they illustrate; we may specially mention here the series of four paintings on marble slabs from Herculaneum (Helbig, Wandgem. Nos. 170 b, 1241, 1405, 1464), of which the colours have faded, but the fine drawing in red outlines still survives (see ante, p. 411). On the finest of these, which represents five maidens inscribed with mythical names, of whom two are kneeling at the game of astragali, the artist has inscribed his name, Ἀλέξανδρος Ἀθηναῖος ἔγραφεν.[ERROR: no link :]
Helbig points out that this signature may possibly refer to the original painter who designed the composition; it is clear, at any rate, that all four of these paintings are copies of earlier pictures, possibly by the same hand.
Marble paintings such as these (and possibly also paintings on wood) were at one period of Italian art used in the decoration of walls, being let into the surface of the wall amidst the other purely decorative designs; sometimes, as in the Roman house on the Palatine, with the object of imitating real views seen through open windows in the wall.
The majority of the mythological scenes now in use are chosen principally from the point of view of their affording scope for the insertion of landscape: such as Mount Ida, with the Judgment of Paris; the Caucasos, with the Freeing of Prometheus; Ariadne on Naxos; the Icarian Sea, with Daedalus and Icarus; and the Odyssey landscapes already quoted. The gradual growth of a feeling for landscape has been traceable through the history of the Greek painters. The tectonic, semi-sculptural painting of Polygnotus, with its anthropomorphic ideas and formulae of suggesting locality, had given way to the introduction of a definitive background, until finally, in the Hellenistic time of the Diadochi, landscape had become an end in itself. We see how strong this growing influence was, in the effect it had upon sculpture: from the pictorial scenes on the Gjölbaschi frieze to the Hellenistic reliefs, and such wall-decorations in sculpture as the Destruction of the Niobides, or the Apotheosis of Homer, both in the British Museum: in both these cases the side of a mountain is represented, with the figures, of diminutive size, placed at various levels. The art of landscape painting, first made possible by Apollodorus, was brought into repute by Antiphilus. Commencing with such mythological subjects which easily lent themselves to it, it soon came to the idyllic scenes of mere decoration; shrines in the open air, from the simple tree hung with dedications, to great temples and elaborate buildings, vistas of city architecture thronged with people, village landscapes with goatherds and sheep, and coast scenes; among which, as a reminiscence doubtless of the originals by the Greek painters of Alexandria, Egyptian landscapes also occur. As an instance of this last, we may quote the celebrated Palestrina mosaic; here, in a bird's-eye view, is a town flooded by the Nile, with a background of desert; negroes hunting fabulous monsters, islands with palms and cypresses, and covered with buildings of all kinds, hippopotami and crocodiles. In this connexion we have the name of a Roman painter, contemporary of Augustus, in an interesting passage of Pliny ZYZ(Plin. Nat. 35.116); he says that LUDIUS (or kextus Tadius?) was the first[ERROR: no link :]
Pliny's zeal for the honour of his countrymen has led him into an exaggeration here: Ludius was certainly not the first; he may have revived the art in Rome, and perhaps have invented some of the motives which Pliny mentions and which Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.5) does not allude to as belonging to the ancient style of decoration. The translation of the Pliny passage is taken from Woltmann and Woermann.
to bring in a singularly delightful fashion of wall-painting; villas, colonnades, examples of landscape gardening, woods and sacred groves, reservoirs, straits, rivers, coasts, all according to the heart's desire; and amidst them passengers of all kinds on foot, in boats, driving in carriages or riding on asses to visit their country properties; furthermore, fishermen, bird-catchers, hunters, vintagers; or again, he exhibits stately villas, to which the approach is through a swamp, with men staggering under the weight of the frightened women whom they have bargained to carry on their shoulders; and many another excellent and entertaining device of the same kind. The same artist also set the fashion of painting views, and that wonderfully cheap, of seaside towns in broad daylight. The name of Ludius has a special interest in the fact that he is the only artist mentioned in antiquity of whose painting a specimen has probably come down to us. In the Villa of Livia at Rome were found in 1863 the four walls of a room on which taken together the entire plan of a garden is painted (one of the walls is given in colours in Antike Denkmäler, i. Taf. 11; another in outline, ib. Taf. 24). As this kind of garden piece is emphatically attributed to Ludius by Pliny, and as the villa belonged to the Imperial family in his time, and would doubtless therefore have been put into the hands of the decorator most in repute; and lastly, as the technical finish of the work surpasses that of all other existing antique wall-paintings, the opinion advanced by Brunn, that it is from the hand of Ludius himself, must not be hastily set aside (Woltmann).
If we examine ancient landscapes in the light of our modern knowledge, the great difference that strikes us is the ancient lack of feeling for the charm of atmosphere. As a rule the horizon was placed abnormally high, and the various parts of the subject were distributed over the space in clear and equable light: this is generally toned off towards the sky-line, but special effects of light are rare. In an Endymion subject we have rays of moonlight; in the Odyssey underworld a special ray of light is introduced through an aperture in the rock; and in one case we have a sunset effect: but these are isolated instances. Moreover, the perspective, both aërial and linear, is seldom perfect. But in all these cases we must remember that the specimens before us are merely the work of decorators and handicraftsmen, usually executed in fresco, and that possibly in the works of the great Greek masters these criticisms would not apply.
It will be seen that almost all the paintings by which we can test the Hellenic art were executed in Italy. Very few have as yet been found there of the Republican period. In Rome the pictures found mostly belong to one style. In Pompeii the majority belong to the last ten years before the destruction of the city in A.D. 79, but within this limit of date there is great variety of style. Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.5), writing at about the time of Augustus, gives a sketch of the history of mural decoration from the Alexandrian age. Formerly, he says, the ancients used to imitate marble incrustations[ERROR: no link :]Crustas parietum; the marble slabs with paintings, which were let into walls. in combination sometimes with architectural members. Later, it had been customary to paint upon the walls imitation buildings, columns and pediments, landscapes and mythological subjects: such as harbours, promontories, shores, rivers, fountains, aqueducts, temples, groves, mountains, herds and herdsmen; or in some places specimens of Megalographia, such as mythological scenes, Trojan battles, or wanderings of Odysseus arranged in panels (see the Odyssey landscapes above quoted). All these subjects were suitable, because Painting is the representation of what exists or might exist. But now subjects taken from reality are despised. We see upon our walls nowadays not so much copies of actual things, as fantastic monstrosities: thus reeds take the place of columns in a design; ribboned and streamered ornaments, with curling leaves and spiral tendrils, take the place of pediments; diminutive temples are supported upon candelabra; vegetable shapes spring from the top of pediments and send forth multitudes of delicate stems, with twining tendrils and figures seated meaninglessly among them; nay, from the very flowers which the stalks sustain are made to issue demi-figures having the heads sometimes of human beings and sometimes of brutes.
Assisted by this criticism of Vitruvius, we are able to trace differences of style in the development of wall decoration, corresponding to the different epochs. (1) The regular and stable painted semi-columns and pilasters, the topia of Vitruvius, like the Odyssey scenes. (2) Reed-like supports, which are gradually developed until (3) a network of these constructions covers the whole intermediate space, the structural idea being lost sight of.
Taken all in all, our direct monumental evidence of Greek painting is very small; for our literary evidence, we have mainly to rely on Pliny, who, as we have seen, is as a recorder of bare facts often untrustworthy, and as an independent art critic deplorable. The true art critic of antiquity, Lucian, who in matters of taste and understanding shows excellent judgment, has left a few precious descriptions which give a real insight as far as they go. If Pliny had been gifted with the critical faculty and insight of Lucian, we should now be better able to decide the question as to how far the standard of painting of the ancients was worthy to compare with that of their sculptures. If in technical correctness they were imperfect, we may be sure that their artistic instinct would have served in a great measure to cover this defect, and that in drawing and composition, at least, they did not fall short of the greatest masterpieces of modern times.
17. Authorities,
The principal literary sources of information upon the history, methods, and achievements of ancient painting are Pliny the elder, in his Naturalis Historia, Pausanias, and Quintilian; the writings also of Lucian, Plutarch, Athenaeus, Aristotle, Aelian, Cicero, the elder and younger Philostratus, and Vitruvius, contain many incidental remarks which are of great value in the history of a subject like Painting, in which so little has survived to us from antiquity.
The whole of the ANCIENT PASSAGES relating to Painting are catalogued under the names of the artists or of the period to which they refer, in Overbeck's Die antiken Schriftquellen, Leipzig, 1868.
Of the numerous tracts which have been devoted to the elucidation and emendation of these texts, we may select the following:--Urlichs, Chrestomathia Pliniana, 1857, and the same author in Rhein. Mus. 25. p. 507, &c.; Oehmichen, Plinianische Studien, Erlangen, 1880; Furtwängler in Fleckeisen's Jcahrbücher für cl. Ph. Spbd. 9; Kroker, Gleichnamige Künstler, Leipzig, 1883; Robert, Archäologische Märchen, Berlin, 1887; Holwerda in Mnemosyne, De Pictorum historia apud Plinium, 1888; and especially Klein‘s two articles in Arch.-Epig. Mittheilungen aus Oesterreich-Ungarn, xi. pp. 193-233, Die Sikyonische Schule, and xii. pp. 85-127, Die Helladische und Asiatische Schule.
In the following works a more or less GENERAL TREATMENT of the subject has been attempted:--Raoul-Rochette, Peintures antiques Inédites, Paris, 1836 (somewhat out of date); Brunn, Geschichte der Griechischen Künstler, 2nd edit., vol. ii., 1889; Wolttmann and Woermann, History of Painting (English edition, edited by Sidney Colvin), 1880; and the article Malerei in Baumeister's Denakmäler.
For the study of individual details, see the following:--
TECHNIQUE.--Blümner, Technologie und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Künste bei Griechen und Römern, 1874-87, esp. 4. p. 414 fol.; the article in Baumeister, already quoted; and Helbig und Donner, Untersuchungen über die Campanische Wandmalerei, 1873.
ENCAUSTIC.--Helbig und Donner, loc. cit.; Blümner, loc. cit. 3. p. 200 fol.; Cros et Henry, L'Encaustique, 1884; Donner in Beilage zur Allgemeine Zeitung (Munich), 1888, pp. 2641-3; Petrie, Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinoe, 1889, pp. 17-21, 37-46.
POLYCHROMY OF SCULPTURE AND ARCHITECTURE.--Baumeister's Denkmäler, s. v. Polychromie; Boeckler, Die Polychromie in der antiken Sculptur, 1882; Treu, Sollen wir unsere Statuen bemalen? Berlin, 1884, and in Arch. Jahrbuch, 1889, p. 18.
MOSAIC.--Raoul-Rochette, loc. cit. pp. 345-6; Engelmann in Rhein. Mus. xxix. pp. 561-89; Blümner, loc. cit. 3. p. 323; and Baumeister's Denlkmäler, s. v. Mosaik.
HISTORY.--Studniczka in Arch. Jahrb. 1887, pp. 135-168; Dümmler in the same, 1887, pp. 168-178 (on Polygnotus); Wiener Vorlegeblätter for 1888, pll. x.-xii. (for restorations of the Iliupersis of Polygnotus); Schreiber, Die Hellenistischen Reliefbilder, 1890; Wustmann, Apelles' Leben und Werke, Leipzig, 1870; Woermann, Die Landschaft in der Kunst der antiken Völker, 1876; Helbig und Donner, Wandgemälde der vom Vesuv verschütteten Städte, 1868; Urlichs, Die Malerei in Rom vor Cäsar's Dictatur, Würzburg, 1876; Woermann, Die antiken Odysselandschaften (six plates in colour), Munich, 1875; Mau, Geschichte der decorativen Wandmalerei in Pompeii, 1882; Niccolini, Le Case ed i Monumenti di Pomepii, 1854, fol.; Overbeck, Pompei, 4th edition. For the Galleries of the Philostrati, see Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher, Spbd. 4, pp. 179-306, and Spbd. 5, pp. 135-181; Philologus, 31. p. 585; Bougot, Philostrate l'ancien; and Magazine of Art, 5. p. 371. For reproductions of Mural Paintings, see Monumenti dell' Inst. Arch. throughout; Bartoli and Bellori, Le Pitture antiche della Grotta di Roma, 1706; Bartoli, Gli antichi Sepolcri, 1727; Barré et Roux, Pompei et Herculaneum, 1840, &c. (7 vols.).
For a fuller bibliography of the subject, see Brunet's Manuel du Libraire, tom. vi. pp. 1688-9, and especially E. Hubner's Bibliographie der klassischen Alterthumswissenschaft, Berlin, 1889.
Различие видов поэзии в зависимости от предметов подражания
Так как поэты изображают лиц действующих, которые непременно бывают или хорошими,
[1066]
или дурными, — нужно заметить, что характеры почти всегда соединяются только с этими чертами, потому что все люди по своему характеру различаются порочностью или добродетелью, — то они представляют людей или лучшими, или худшими, или такими же, как мы. То же делают живописцы. Полигнот изображал людей лучшими, Павсон худшими, а Дионисий похожими на нас. Ясно, что все указанные виды подражания будут иметь эти отличительные черты, а различаться они, таким образом, будут воспроизведением различных явлений. Эти различия могут быть в танцах, в игре на флейте и на кифаре, и в прозе, и в чистых стихах. Например, .Гомер изображал своих героев лучшими, Клеофонт похожими на нас, а Гегемон Тазосский, составивший первые пародии, и Никохар, творец “Делиады”, — худшими. То же можно сказать и относительно дифирамбов и номов, как, например... (Арганта), и “Циклопов” Тимофея и Филоксена). В этом состоит различие трагедии и комедии: одна предпочитает изображать худших, другая лучших, чем наши современники.
Кроме того, без действия трагедия невозможна, а без характеров возможна. Ведь трагедии большинства новых поэтов не изображают (индивидуальных) характеров, и вообще таких поэтов много. То же замечается и среди художников, например, если сравнить Зевксида с Полигнотом: Полигнот хороший характерный живописец, а письмо Зевксида не имеет ничего характерного. Далее, если кто стройно соединит характерные изречения и прекрасные слова и мысли, тот не выполнит задачи трагедии, а гораздо более достигнет ее трагедия, хотя использовавшая все это в меньшей степени, но имеющая фабулу и надлежащий состав событий.
Подобное бывает и в живописи. Если кто размажет самые лучшие краски в беспорядке, тот не может доставить даже такого удовольствия, как набросавший рисунок мелом. Кроме того, самое важное, чем трагедия увлекает душу, это части фабулы — перипетии и узнавания. Доказательством выше сказанного служит еще то, что начинающие создавать поэтические произведения могут раньше достигать успеха в диалогах и изображении нравов, чем в развитии действия, как, например, почти все древние поэты.
3. Полигнот с Фасоса и колофонец Дионисий были живописцами. Полигнот рисовал блистательно и прославился изображением людей и предметов в натуральную величину. Дионисий следовал ему во всем, за исключением размера картин; — у него была та же страсть, тот же дух, такие же фигуры, та же легкость одежд.
A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology
William Smith, Ed.
Micon
（Μίκων), artists.
1. Of Athens, the son of Phanochus, was a very distinguished painter and statuary, contemporary with Polygnotus, about B. C. 460. He is mentioned, with Polygnotus, as the first who used for a colour the light Attic ochre (sil), and the black made from burnt vine twigs. (Plin. Nat. 33.13. s. 56, 35.6. s. 25.) Varro mentions him as one of those ancient painters, by departing from whose conventional forms, the later artists, such as Apelles and Protogenes, attained to their great excellence. (L. L. 8.12, ed. Müller.) The following pictures by him are mentioned:--(1.) In the Poecile, at Athens,--where, Pliny informs us (35.9. s. 35), Polygnotus painted gratuitously, but Micon for pay,--he painted the battle of Theseus and the Athenians with the Amazons. (Schol. ad Aristoph. Lysist. 879; Paus. 1.15.2.) (2.) According to some writers, Micon had a hand in the great picture of the battle of Marathon, in the Poecile [comp. PANAENUS and POLYGNOTUS], and was fined thirty minae for having made the barbarians larger than the Greeks. (Sopater, in Ald. Rhet. Graec. p. 340; Harpocr. s. v.) The celebrated figure, in that picture, of a dog which had followed its master to the battle, was attributed by some to Micon, by others to Polygnotus. (Aelian, Ael. NA 7.38.) (3.) He painted three of the walls of the temple of Theseus. On the one wall was the battle of the Athenians and the Amazons: on another the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapithae, where Theseus had already killed a centaur (no doubt in the centre of the composition), while between the other combatants the conflict was still equal: the story represented on the third side, Pausanias was unable to make out. (Paus. 1.17.2.) Micon seems to have been assisted by Polygnotus in these works. (See Siebelis, ad loc.) (4.) The temple of the Dioscuri was adorned with paintings by Polygnotus and Micon: the former painted the rape of the daughters of Leucippus; the latter, the departure (or, as Bittiger supposes, the return) of Jason and the Argonauts. (Paus. 1.18.1.)
Micon was particularly skilful in painting horses (Aelian, Ael. NA 4.50); for instance, in his picture of the Argonauts, the part on which he bestowed the greatest care was Acastus and his horses. (Paus. l.c.) The accurate knowledge, however, of Simon, who was both an artist and a writer on horsemanship, detected an error in Micon's horses; he had painted lashes on the lower eye-lids (Pollux, 2.71): another version of the story attributes the error to Apelles. (Aelian, l.c.）
There is a tale that in one of his pictures Micon painted a certain Butes crushed beneath a rock, so that only his head was visible, and hence arose the proverb, applied to things quickly accomplished, Βούτην Μίκων ἔδραφεν, or Θᾶττον ἢ Βούτης. (Zenob. Proverb. 1.11, p. 87, Append. e Vatie. 1.12, p. 260.)
He was a statuary as well as a painter, and lie made the statue of the Olympic victor Callias, who conquered in the pancratium in the 77th Olympiad. (Paus. 6.6.1; comp. 5.9.3.) The date exactly agrees with the time of Micon, and Pausanias expressly says, Μίκων ἐποίηοεν ὁ ζωδράφνς. Böttiger, in the course of a valuable section on Micon, ascribes this statue to Micon of Syracuse (No. 3), to whom consequently he assigns the wrong date. (Böttiger, Arch. d. Malerei, vol. i. pp. 254-260.)
А вот любопытный заход на ту же тему с другой стороны:
В Эрмитаже есть целый зал, стены которого украшены такого рода воссозданиями станковых работ античных живописцев. Это «Галерея истории древней живописи», состоящая из 86 картин, исполненных на медных досках в древней технике энкаустики. Они были написаны в 1843 г. мюнхенским художником Гильтенспергером. Использовав описания определенных картпн, имеющиеся у Плиния, Лукиана и Филострата, он дал в этом цикле связную историю античной станковой живописи, воссоздав работы важнейших ее представителей. Но если у мастеров Возрождения античные герои, их одежды и обстановка наполнялись итальянскими аксессуарами и подробностями быта ренессансной Италии, у мастера-классициста, при всем его желании быть археологически верным, налицо другое искажение. Вся эволюция древней живописи под его кистью исчезает, все ее представители оказываются добросовестными, но анемичными и бесстрастыми классицистами, писавшими в одной-единственной манере. (О.Я. Неверов «Геммы античного мира» М., 1983 г., сс. 90-1)
«Можно счесть за правило: когда одна и та же тема несколько раз повторена в геммах, так что основное в композиции оставлено без изменений, в основе лежит живописный оригинал, утраченная станковая картина.» (Неверов, там же, с. 102)
Почему это было так?
«Древний мир, лишенный средств репродуцирования, подобных нашим, использовал их (камеи -R.F.) как своего рода вечные, неразрушимые воспроизведения шедевров живописи в камне.
Доказательством этому служат почти абсолютно точные реплики одной и той же композиции, сохранившиеся порой в нескольких экземплярах. Есть случаи, когда мы обладаем воспроизведением одной и той же картины одновременно на геммах, рельефах, светильниках, монетах и декоративных фресках.» (с. 91)
А вот некоторые примеры сюжетных повторов станковых картин в геммах:
«Необычайной популярностью у резчиков гемм императорского Рима пользовалась другая картина этого живописца: «Связанный Марсий», находившаяся во времена Плиния в римском храме Согласия. В пяти репликах дошла до нас эта картина афинского мастера, из них самая лучшая приписывается руке Диоскурида. Последняя гемма, хранящаяся в Неаполе, некогда входила в собрание Лоренцо Медичи, где она считалась «печатью Нерона». Композиция включает три фигуры: Аполлона с кифарой, привязанного к дереву Марсия и коленопреклоненного раба-фригийца, который должен был, исполняя жестокое наказание, содрать с сатира кожу. Реплики в Ленинграде, Париже, Берлине и «К этому же кругу мастеров «александрийского рококо» следует отнести эрмитажный фрагмент крупной камеи с изображением похищения Ганимеда. Штуковый (так у автора -R.F.) рельеф из помпейских терм, римская мозаика и реплика-камея из стекла, хранящаяся в Париже, определенно свидетельствуют о том, что за эрмитажной камеей стоит утраченный живописный оригинал.» (с. 104)
Олег Яковлевич Неверов, как всегда, прав. Но на геммах были также воспроизведения знаменитых барельефов и скульптурных групп, не дошедших до наших дней..
О том, что законы оптики (и оптического обмана) были известны и греческим архитекторам (что вполне очевидно при анализе архитектурных ансамблей античности), и Архимеду (в его Оптике) давно известный факт. Но законы эти, в виде теории перспективы, были известны и живописцам. Витрувий, Об архитектуре 7.вступление.11:
Впервые в Афинах, в то время когда Эсхил ставил трагедию, Агафарх
устроил сцену и оставил ее описание. Побуждаемые этим, Демокрит и
Анаксагор написали по тому же вопросу, каким образом по установлении
в определенном месте центра сведенные к нему линии должны
естественно соответствовать взору глаз и распространению лучей, чтобы
определенные образы от определенной вещи создавали на театральной
декорации вид зданий, и чтобы то, что изображено на прямых и плоских
фасадах, казалось бы одно уходящим, другое выдающимся.
Псоледнее сообщение дословно продублировано на ветке "Античная живопись", пост 31. Причём интересно, что время сервера и тут, и там 04.04. Энциклопедист-многостаночник
Сообщение отредактировал RedFox: 17.07.2014 - 09:59 AM
Псоледнее сообщение дословно продублировано на ветке "Античная живопись", пост 31. Причём интересно, что время сервера и тут, и там 04.04. Энциклопедист-многостаночник
Потому что этот пост важен для истории античной живописи, но ещё более важен для того, чтобы показать наличие теории перспективы уже в глубочайшей древности в живописи. Поэтому этот пост с цитатой продублирован как в теме посвящённой Античной живописи, так и в теме, призванной обсудить наличие (или отсутствие) перспективы в античной живописи. В частности в теме об Античной живописи мой пост призван был дать новую информацию пользователю Суми. Напоминаю начало нашей дискуссии:
Теории перспективы в античные времена не было, она появилась, действительно, в Кватроченто, над ней работало много художников, в том числе Паоло Учелло. Но в позднеантичные времена пользовались интуитивной перспективой, о чём свидетельствуют фрески августианского стиля Рима. Была, даже, обратная перспектива, она сохранилась в византийской иконописи. Смысл её, скорее всего был в том, что изображение на иконе не отражает реальный мир, в ней всё символично и далеко от земных законов.
Jeto protivorechit ne tolko avtoram, no dazhe primeram vazovoj zhivopisi nachinaja po krajnej mere s 4 veka do n. je. ...
Как видим, уже в 5 веке до н. э. существовала именно ТЕОРИЯ ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ. Ни о какой интуитивноcти, таким образом, и речи быть не может. Если верить Витрувию, конечно:
Впервые в Афинах, в то время когда Эсхил ставил трагедию, Агафарх устроил сцену и оставил ее описание. Побуждаемые этим, Демокрит и Анаксагор написали по тому же вопросу, каким образом по установлении в определенном месте центра сведенные к нему линии должны естественно соответствовать взору глаз и распространению лучей, чтобы определенные образы от определенной вещи создавали на театральной декорации вид зданий, и чтобы то, что изображено на прямых и плоских фасадах, казалось бы одно уходящим, другое выдающимся.
Cовременная фомулировка того, что такое перспектива: 1. Изобразительное искажение пропорций и формы реальных тел при их визуальном восприятии. Например, два параллельных рельса кажутся сходящимися в точку на горизонте.
2. Способ изображения объемных тел, передающий их собственную пространственную структуру и расположение в пространстве. В изобразительном искусстве возможно различное применение перспективы, которая используется как одно из художественных средств, усиливающих выразительность образов.
Дело в том, что теоретики Ренессанса часто апеллировали к "античности" для придания авторитета своим открытиям.
То, что описано в Вашей другой, аналогичной теме, когда на первом плане видна вся фигура, дальше фигура по-пояс, а вдали только голова, не есть линейная перспектива, это уход за горизонт. Признаком интуитивности линейной перспективы, применяемой в античности, может служить несколько произвольных точек схода на сохранившихся изображениях, то есть сход линий видили, но закономерность не знали, или она тогда никого не интересовала. Воздушной же перспективой пользовались.
Прикрепленные изображения
Сообщение отредактировал Sumi: 28.07.2014 - 19:18 PM
Это примеры ИНТУИТИВНОЙ перспективы, т.е. очевидное сокращение удаляющихся объектов было замечено давно, но точную линейную перспективу со всей её теорией разработали художники и теоретики раннего Ренессанса.
Иконопись очень постепенно вышла из традиций поздней античности, схематизировалась и позже обросла канонами.
Архимед, "Число песчинок":
Поместив длинную линейку на отвесную подставку, расположенную в месте, откуда я предполагал наблюдать восходящее Солнце, обточив на токарном станке небольшой цилиндр и поставив его отвесно на линейку, я сейчас же после восхода направлял линейку на Солнце, когда оно находится близ горизонта и на него еще можно прямо смотреть, и помещал глаз у конца линейки; при этом помещенный между Солнцем и глазом цилиндр затенял Солнце. Отодвигая цилиндр от глаза, я устанавливал его в положение, когда Солнце начинало чуть-чуть появляться с обеих сторон цилиндра, Теперь если смотрящий глаз был как бы точкой и из места на конце линейки, где помещался глаз, были проведены касательные к цилиндру, то угол, заключенный между касательными прямыми, был бы меньше имеющего вершину в глазу угла, в который может вместиться Солнце, так как кое-что от Солнца усматривалось по обе стороны цилиндра; поскольку же глаз нельзя считать смотрящим как бы из одной точки, но из некоторой площадки, то я взял круглую площадку, по величине не меньшую зрачка, и поместил ее на конец линейки...
Иными словами, греки отлично разбирались в проблемах оптики, и оптическая иллюзия (как живописная и скульптурная, так и архитектурная) вовсе не была интуитивной (в том числе в искусстве древних греков). Архимед выше принимает во внимание оптический обман (то есть в данном случае тот факт, что человеческий глаз не является точкой, а занимает всё-таки определённую площадь). Она (иллюзия) была вычисляема с математической точностью. Например вот так (скульптура) - Цец, Хилиады 8.193:
Известен рассказ о состязании Фидия со скульптором Алкаменом при создании статуи для высокого постамента. Пока исполненные произведения находились внизу, все одобрили Алкамена и даже рассердились на Фидия за допущенные им искажения, но когда изваяния были поставлены на предназначенные им места, все оценили мастерство Фидия и осудили недальновидность его соперника.
Фидий владел знаниями о достижениях оптики. Сохранился рассказ о его соперничестве с Алкаменом: обоим были заказаны статуи Афины, которые предполагалось водрузить на высокие колонны. Фидий сделал свою статую в соответствии с высотой колонны -- на земле она казалась безобразной и непропорциональной. Шея богини была очень длинна. Когда же обе статуи воздвигли на высокие постаменты, правота Фидия стала очевидна.
Афина Лемния. На афинском Акрополе стояла статуя Афины Лемнии22, исполненная Фидием около 450 г. до н. э. (илл. 33). Уезжающие на остров Лемнос колонисты пожелали оставить на Акрополе это изваяние. Снятый с головы шлем, спущенная с плеча эгида - козья шкура с головой Горгоны Медузы убеждают в том, что Афина представлена не воительницей, но скорее защитницей мира. В ней Фидий выразил красоту мудрой богини. Этим произведением восхищались, посвящали ему восторженные строки, отмечая нежность ланит Афины и прекрасные контуры ее лица23. Она стояла на высоком постаменте, иФидий, несомненно, учел оптические искажения, которые возникали при ее созерцании.
Иными словами - далеко не все мастера даже первой линии (каким был Алкамен, к примеру - один из лучших представителей т. н. "школы Фидия", наряду с Агоракритом) знали правила оптики. Но всё-же самые лучшие мастера (каким был и сам Фидий) и знали, и пользовались правилами оптики.
Но и это не всё. В 447 - 438 г. г. до н. э. был возведён на афинском Акрополе Парфенон. И вот что достоверно известно об оптической иллюзии, применённой его архитекторами (Иктин и Калликрат) и мастерами. Напоминаю - во главе всего проекта украшения афинского Акрополя при Перикле стоял Фидий...:
Знакомые с этой иллюзией архитекторы Древней Греции пошли на хитрость — они делали колонны своих построек разной толщины. Примером тому служит знаменитый Парфенон — главный храм афинского Акрополя, построеный в 447—438 годах до н.э. Его создатели, архитекторы Иктин и Калликрат, учли, что для угловых колонн фоном будет яркое небо Эллады, а для остальных — тёмный фон, создаваемый святилищем храма. Поэтому они сделали угловые колонны более широкими и уменьшили расстояние между ними и соседними колоннами. Благодаря этим «поправкам» издали все колонны выглядели совершенно одинаково, а разница между ними обнаруживалась только при непосредственном измерении.
Снимок Парфенона зафиксировал и другую оптическую иллюзию: когда глаз «скользит» по колоннаде, заполненное ею пространство зрительно удлиняется, отчего здание кажется больше. По той же причине мы склонны преувеличивать размеры построек, украшенных орнаментами и скульптурными композициями.
ПРЯМЫЕ ИЛИ КРИВЫЕ?
Древнегреческие зодчие знали и о том, что вертикальные и горизонтальные прямые при значительной длине кажутся не параллельными. Чтобы колонны здания визуально не расходились, их при установке на основание (стилобат) слегка наклоняли внутрь, тогда, как отмечал Витрувий, сооружение выглядело цельным и прочным как монолит. Чтобы колонны не казались вогнутыми, их немного утолщали на уровне трети высоты. Приём этот получил название «энтазис» от греческого слова entasis — напряжение, усиление. Кроме того, колонны сужали кверху (как говорят архитекторы, утоняли), зрительно удлиняя их и делая менее массивными.
С эффектом «провисания» горизонтальных линий боролись с помощью другого приёма — искривления прямых, или курватуры, от латинского curvatura — изгиб, кривизна. Так, ступени Парфенона были слегка изогнуты, а само здание стояло на выпуклой каменной платформе — тем самым сглаживалась иллюзия «проседания» пола. Горизонтальная балка (архитрав), лежащая на капителях колонн, в центральной части была уже, чем по краям, а издали выглядела абсолютно ровной.
ПО ЗАКОНАМ ПЕРСПЕКТИВЫ
Древние греки использовали такой приём: отклоняли элементы верхней части постройки от вертикального положения. Например, фронтон устанавливали под углом, наклоняя немного вперёд, подобно тому, как вешают картины в музеях. А скульпторы делали фигуры, украшавшие здания, более рельефными, и это сглаживало визуальный эффект их уменьшения при взгляде с земли. Принимались во внимание и точки наблюдения: каждая статуя создавалась с учётом места, которое ей отводилось во всей композиции.
Иногда архитекторы использовали иллюзию перспективы не для сглаживания, а, наоборот, для усиления того или иного визуального эффекта. Например, в портике (крытой галерее перед входом в здание) с двойным рядом колонн внутренние колонны делали более тонкими по сравнению со стоящими впереди, зрительно удаляя их. Тем самым создавалось впечатление большей глубины пространства. Другое оригинальное изобретение греков состояло в том, что внутреннюю колоннаду в храмах они возводили иногда двухэтажной. В Парфеноне, например, это было сделано не столько для красоты, сколько для достижения иллюзии большей высоты статуи богини Афины, установленной в святилище. На фоне двухэтажного сооружения она смотрелась крупнее, чем есть, и оттого выглядела более торжественно и величественно. Одним словом, система оптических поправок, придуманная зодчими, лишний раз демонстрирует их высочайшее мастерство в сложном искусстве архитектуры.
В Парфеноне, судя по тщательным обмерам, нет ни одной строго горизонтальной или строго вертикальной линии. Линии карнизов, ступеней, колонн - все чуть-чуть незаметно для глаза изогнуты с учетом особенностей человеческого зрения. Но именно благодаря этому зрителю все линии представляются идеально правильными. Зрителю, например, кажется, что все колонны Парфенона одинаковы и отстоят друг от друга на равном расстоянии. В действительности же пролеты между ними незаметно для глаза увеличиваются к центру. Разнится толщина колонн - угловые колонны, которые вырисовываются на фоне неба, массивнее тех, которые видны на фоне стены. Стоят колонны тоже не прямо - они немного наклонены внутрь к стенам здания, чтобы казаться выше и стройней. Все ступени храма чуть выпуклые, карнизы чуть вогнутые, стены чуть наклонные.
Из истории искусств известно, что Парфенон похож на живое творение природы благодаря легким, почти незаметным отклонениям от его геометрической правильности. Колонны по углам поставлены ближе друг к другу, чем в середине, да и вообще промежутки между ними неодинаковы. Как будто живые люди идут друг за другом, и расстояние между идущими колеблется. Горизонтальные линии Парфенона, если их измерять с помощью инструментов и приборов, оказываются вовсе не горизонтальными, а волнообразно приподнятыми к центру и понижающимися по краям.
Золотое сечение в пропорциях Парфенона Не менее интересен и другой подход . основным соотношением частей Парфенона являются пропорции 1 и л / 5 ( рисунок 19 . (рис.);
Как указывает Г.И. Соколов, протяженность холма перед Парфеноном, длины храма Афины и участка Акрополя за Парфеноном соотносятся как отрезки золотой пропорции. Таким образом золотая пропорция была использована уже при создании композиции храмов на священном холме.
Витрувий утверждает: «Если природа сложила человеческое тело так, что его члены по своим пропорциям соответствуют внешнему его очертанию, то древние были, очевидно, вполне правы, установив, что при постройках зданий отдельные их члены должны находиться в точной соразмерности с общим видом всей фигуры. Поэтому, передав нам во всех своих произведениях надлежащие правила их построения, они сделали это в особенности для храмов Богов, так как и достоинства и недостатки этих зданий обычно остаются навеки»[6].
Все верно, только под соразмерностью здесь понимаются целочисленные отношения. И потому по рецепту Витрувия Парфенон можно лишь построить (но не спроектировать!). То, что нам предлагает римский писатель, – азы профессионального знания прораба, а не архитектора. Подмена искусства архитектуры инженерной схемой (Витрувий называет в качестве автора этой схемы некоего Гермогена) и сведéние гармонии к целочисленной схеме и выдает сугубо утилитарный подход автора, задача которого перевести в камень то, что сочинил зодчий.
Если б возводивший Парфенон прораб Калликрат работал в одиночку и решился бы «подправить» архитектуру зодчего Иктина, наверное, первое, что бы он сделал, это расставил колонны Парфенона «правильно», то есть на равном расстоянии друг от друга. Но «правильное» ядро фасада Парфенона составляют шесть центральных колонн, а две крайние не только чуть толще (на множитель живого ростового квадрата 1,03 к 1), но и расстояние от них до соседних меньше шага рядовой колонны.
Высота колонн к двум шагам трех крайних – пропорция 4 к 3, то есть пропорция катетов священного треугольника 3–4–5. Исправь это, и Парфенон перестанет дышать, перестанет искривлять окружающее его пространство и превратится в аккуратную горку мраморных кубиков.
Римляне утратили эту живую связь с миром человеческого осязания и миропонимания. Римское искусство, многое позаимствовав у греков, стало отклоняться от точности оптической в сторону точности математической. То есть не обязательно встречая изображения и предметы искусства римской эры мы можем проэцировать их на греческое прошлое, добродушно добавляя, что греки мол и до этого уровня не должны были достигнуть. А если могли? А если могли превосходить уровень римских мастеров? Что тогда? В Помпеях найдено множество изображений, и считается что многие из них могли бы быть копиями греческих произведений искусства. В частности уже упоминавшаяся копия эллинистической мозаики "Битва при Иссе" - работа Филоксена и Аристида. Но далеко не все произведения из Помпей находятся на одинаковом уровне миропонимания, знания законов пропорции. А значит, и в римскую эру художники оставались на разном уровне познаний (например в области оптики).
По моему, я со своей стороны данную тему (т. е.. вопрос перспективы у греко-римлян) целиком исчерпал, и более мне добавить по данному вопросу, кажется, нечего...
Любопытное изображение колесницы из подземного небольшого ящикообразного погребения, т. н. "гробницы Персефоны" - самого маленького по величине захоронения Мегали Тумбы (Большой Тумбы, Большого Кургана) Вергины. Изображается, по всей видимости, уведение Персефоны в Подземный мир Аидом. Изображение колёс колесницы (да и всей композиции, начиная от коней и завершая находящейся позади колесницы подруги Персефоны) отдаёт великолепным знанием правил перспективы (пространство, глубина, правильные с т. з. перспективы пропорции изображения, в т. ч. колёс колесницы).
Жертвоприношение Ифигении, помпейская копия (по всей вероятности) примерно 1 в. до н. э. - 1 в. н. э. (по всей вероятности) одноимённой работы Тиманфа (4 в. до н. э.). Следы перспективы очевидны:
В "Жертвоприношении Ифигении" тем более видны совершенно разные точки схода геометрических фигур, совсем, как на фреске с вазой из Музея Метрополитен, что выложил выше. Плоскость вершины колонны наклонена вперёд, тогда, как стороны алтаря даже не сокращается в перспективе. Ну, да, это римская копия, но писали её греческие живописцы, по найму, или рабы-мастера.
В "Гробнице Филиппа" фронтально изображена сцена охоты, там малочисленные фигуры на заднем плане несколько уменьшены, но линейной перспективы, как её развили мастера Ренессанса, ещё нет.
Оптическим обманом в архитектуре пользовались и римляне, но грекам надо отдать пальму первенства, в строительстве Парфенона они это блестяще сделали. Но подобными приёмами пользовались ещё и до строительства Парфенона, в общем, это древние каноны преимущественно Дорийского стиля.
Это вы о сюжете картины "Аид крадёт Персефону"? Там передняя часть колесницы с конями изображена чуть крупнее задней и находящейся позади колесницы девушки. Что создаёт иллюзию передачи пространства (перспективу).
В "Жертвоприношении Ифигении" тем более видны совершенно разные точки схода геометрических фигур, совсем, как на фреске с вазой из Музея Метрополитен, что выложил выше. Плоскость вершины колонны наклонена вперёд, тогда, как стороны алтаря даже не сокращается в перспективе.
1. Там наверху изображены божества (в частности Артемида, явившаяся спасти Ифигению). Как правило богов изображали более обьёмными, чем смертных. Но тут мы видим, что лицо Артемиды более чем вдвое меньше лица Ифигении. Следовательно, налицо передача расстояния (Артемида находится пока ещё на некотором расстоянии от происходящего). Именно на этом моменте я и хотел поставить акцент.
2. Возможно. Хотя быть может художник что-то хотел сказать таким видимым искажением.
3. Кстати говоря - ещё одна очевидная вещь с этой картины. Контуры (очертания) светлой колонны переданы затемнением, создающим контраст - вместо линии применяется светотень. Это тоже одно из "изобретений" Возрождения.
Ну, да, это римская копия, но писали её греческие живописцы, по найму, или рабы-мастера.
Кто рисовал нам неизвестно. Они могли быть и местными мастерами. Известны имена их вероятных прототипов: Аристолая (Медея планирует убийство своих детей), Апеллеса (Александр Молниеносец, из дома Веттиев), Афениона (нахождение Ахилла Диомедом и Одиссеем на Скиросе, из дома Диоскуров), Артемона (Геракл, Несс и Деянира, из дома центавра), Тимомаха из Византии (Ифигения в Тавриде; Медея планирует убийство своих детей, из дома Диоскуров), мозаиста Диоскурида Самосского (Сцена комедии: посещение прорицательницы, из дома Цицерона; блуждающие музыканты, из дома Цицерона), мозаиста Филоксена из Эретрии (Битва при Иссе).
Ещё один пример передачи перспективы и глубины пространства. Сос из Пергама, мозаика, "Голуби очищающие свои клювы", вероятно оригинал II в. до н. э., Тиволи, дворец Адриана:
В "Гробнице Филиппа" фронтально изображена сцена охоты, там малочисленные фигуры на заднем плане несколько уменьшены, но линейной перспективы, как её развили мастера Ренессанса, ещё нет.
Там ещё вдалеке видны контуры гор (изображённых как и полагается в свете перспективы уменьшенными), а деревья находящиеся поодаль также уменьшены в размерах.
Оптическим обманом в архитектуре пользовались и римляне, но грекам надо отдать пальму первенства, в строительстве Парфенона они это блестяще сделали. Но подобными приёмами пользовались ещё и до строительства Парфенона, в общем, это древние каноны преимущественно Дорийского стиля.
Я и не говорил обратного. И тем не менее "папа" римской (храмовой) архитектуры, Витрувий, отражает тенденцию отказа от передачи оптической точности и перехода к геометрической точности.
Кроме дорийского стиля эти каноны встречаются и в Ионическом. Это не просто оптический обман - это основы теоретического понимания перспективы. Имея в виду местонахождения обозревателя (его глаз), авторы (будь то архитекторы, скульпторы или живописцы) слегка деформировали предмет своей работы надлежащим образом.
Вот в "голубях" пример обратной, вывернутой перспективы выражен очень ярко. Подставка и ободок вазы не уходят к точке схода, но расходятся. И это характерно для большинства живописных работ античности.
В фреске "Аид крадёт Персефону" всё правильно, передок колесниц намного выше кормы, там борта сходят на нет, чтобы возница мог свободно всходить и соскакивать.
Тут я позволил себе вольность прорисовать линии перспективы в "голубях" и заслоненную крупом лошади часть колесницы, также фигура причитающей девушки оказывается не меньше, если не больше, самой Персефоны.
Сообщение отредактировал Sumi: 29.08.2014 - 05:51 AM
Ещё пример, фрески из виллы в Боскореале, 50-40 гг В.С. позднеримская Республика.
Художник выстроил всю геометрию кресла, грубо говоря, горизонтально, причём наломал дров с перспективой, задняя ножка кресла кажется ближе передней. И между тем фреска удивительно хороша. Просто тогда были иные требования к передаче образа и перспективой, в нашем понимании, мало кто заморачивался.
remarks that the first duties of the Roman Censors were to provide for the feeding of the sacred geese and the γάνωσις of the statue in the temple of Capitoline Jupiter: for the vermilion with which statues were anciently coloured quickly fades. Blümner thinks that the process of waxing is therefore separate from that of colouring, and intended to preserve it; or in cases where no colour is used, to soften the tone of the marble: the word nuda implying that only the flesh of statues, and not the drapery, was so treated. He thinks that the colouring of the flesh was a habit only found on the older statues, or, if on the later statues at all, only in isolated cases: while Von Rohden (in Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 1345) denies altogether the colouring of the flesh. With regard to the mere toning of the marble by means of wax, it is pointed out that the Punic wax ordinarily used, as Vitruvius ZYZ(Vitr. 7.9, 3-Z1) says, for the γάνωσις of statues, had undergone a special bleaching process; such wax would therefore not perceptibly affect the gleaming whiteness of marble. Treu, who has made a special study of the subject, considers that the toning of the marble by wax alone is out of the question; that the alternative lies between a dazzling whiteness, or, as is more probable, a transparent or opaque tone of colour for the flesh: these tones may be sometimes found side by side, or even one over the other, on the same statue. We shall have to consider this question further under the head of
