Chapter XIV: Part 14

Among the other distinguished masters of this time, Calliphon appears most nearly to have followed in the footsteps of Polygnotos; but his brother Aristophon, who brought painting upon panels into general use, pursued technical methods opposed to this school. The style of Polygnotos was also abandoned by the Samian Agatharchos, a self-instructed decorator and scene-painter who, in an essay upon scenographic painting, established principles upon which, after his time, this art was further developed. In scene-painting the indispensable aim after illusory appearances must have led to the observation and imitation of the effect of more or less light--that is to say, of paler or deeper shades in the local color--and thus have brought painting to a point of development not hitherto attained by any nation of antiquity.

The important advance indicated by Agatharchos in scenography was made in the painting of figures by Apollodoros of Athens. The accounts of him are few, and in part incomprehensible; but Plutarch says plainly that he discovered the mixing of colors and the variation of shade upon them, and Pliny calls him the first master of illusion. Strictly speaking, he was not the sole author of the innovation, since Agatharchos went before him; and if he received the cognomen of _skiagraphos_--painter in light and shade--it must be understood that the word skiagraphia was used to signify scenography. But he was, at all events, the first to apply these principles to figure-painting, developing a treatment quite different from that employed in the architectural painting so extensively in use for the stage. The important result of this innovation may well be imagined, and it is not strange that the ground thus gained should have been promptly occupied by other masters of the art, who rapidly brought painting to a perfection almost equal to that of sculpture.

These were Zeuxis of Heraclea, in Lower Italy, and Parrhasios of Ephesos. The teachers of the former are not of importance; the impulse through which Zeuxis became one of the most brilliant geniuses of Greece not having been given by these, but rather by Apollodoros, who is not mentioned among them. His fame was at its height during the Peloponnesian war, and in the following ten years; so that we can easily understand why Zeuxis did not establish himself in Athens, where Polygnotos and Apollodoros had raised painting to an art, but, after many wanderings, found an asylum in Ephesos. His works, in contrast to the wall-paintings of Polygnotos, were chiefly upon panels, as, according to Pliny, we may suppose those of Apollodoros to have been. Among those of Zeuxis, the Olympos was exceptional in regard to subject; of the deities, Zeus is particularly celebrated. The only other representations of the deities we find are the Rose-crowned Eros, and Apollo Chastising Marsyas. Neither Pan, nor Heracles Strangling the Serpents in his Infancy, can be reckoned in this category. The Trojan legends appear in three of his more celebrated pictures--Helen in Crotona, the Weeping Menelaos Bringing his Brother the Offering for the Dead, and Penelope, “in whom propriety itself is embodied.” If we may connect with the Odyssey, the Storm at Sea, in which Boreas and Triton are mentioned, it will form a fourth. In his athletes he seems to have intended to establish a canon for painting, as Polycleitos had done for sculpture. Two others, the Family of Centaurs, and the Boy bearing Grapes, are genre pictures.

It is not by chance that we have the fullest accounts of Zeuxis; his aim not being so high as that of Polygnotos, he took his motives from other fields more favorable to the new methods. Historic painting, the foundation of that higher kind of monumental art which gives grand representations of character, was forsaken; as Aristotle expresses it, the works of Zeuxis were wanting in ethic significance. Excessive striving after illusion, after the semblance of reality, brings forward outward and momentary appearances, supplanting the inwardly essential and lasting. Penelope seems to speak, and yet we know not in what situation she is delineated; the weeping of Menelaos certainly does not give his character; and as little does the merry play of the Centaurs with their young, go charmingly described by Lucian, represent the mythological nature of these monsters. Still less can we rank the Helen of Zeuxis, in conception, upon a level with the female figures in the Conquest of Troy by Polygnotos, since we know that Zeuxis chose as models the loveliest virgins of Crotona; that is to say, sought after perfect outward female beauty in truthfulness to nature, but not after that breadth and grandeur expressed in the brow of Cassandra, or which spoke in the glance of Polyxena.

If, at times, Zeuxis took a higher flight, he still differed from the epic character of Polygnotos in his tendency to dramatic effect, which, according to its nature, is transient. This is shown, for example, by the celebrated play of countenance in the Family of Centaurs, the weeping of Menelaos, the horror of Alcmene and Amphitryon at sight of the serpents encircling the young Heracles, and by the actors as well as spectators in the chastisement of Marsyas: these are all scenes which, with slight modification, might be shown in dramatic action upon the stage. With Zeuxis, contrary to Polygnotos, the subject was of less importance than the manner of presenting it, the _what_ less than the _how_; in short, the composition, in which the picturesque sufficed, was subordinate to the painting. The master himself was displeased when the novelty of the subject, in his family of Centaurs, caused the technical finish to be overlooked. The expression of Pliny was therefore a just one, that Zeuxis had given great glory to the brush. The judgment of Quintilian that Zeuxis originated the correct application of light and shade is not to be disputed, in so far as this refers to the consequent achievement of expression. The degree of perfection he attained in illusive effects, by chiaroscuro, reflections, and the like, is illustrated by the anecdote of the boy with grapes, so deceptive that the birds flew towards them; at the same time, the limitation is shown, as the artist himself acknowledged, in that the illusion had not succeeded in making the boy capable of frightening the birds. It was because of the painter’s power in this realism that his contemporaries regarded him with almost boundless admiration. His fame was exceeded only by his vanity. In later years he presented his pictures as gifts, because it was impossible to recompense them with money; he appeared at Olympia clothed with a garment upon which his name was embroidered in golden letters. The history of Greek sculpture has no parallel to such conceits.

Zeuxis himself, notwithstanding his pride, was forced to acknowledge that he was excelled by his contemporary Parrhasios of Ephesos, who, in regard to style, was akin to him in many respects. In subject the works of Parrhasios may be divided like those of Zeuxis. The deities were seldom chosen; his Dionysios with Arete was not one of his most celebrated productions, and his Hermes was really a portrait of the artist himself. Among the heroes represented were Prometheus, Heracles, Meleager, Perseus, and Theseus. The greater part of his productions refer to the Trojan epics, as the Assumed Madness of Odysseus, the Healing of Telephos, the Strife of Ajax with Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and Æneas. The others are the Demos of Athens, and portraits like the comedian Philiscos, the Archigallos, a ship-captain, a Thracian nurse with a child; and, finally, pictures like the priest with a temple-boy, two boys, two heavily armed warriors, and lewd genre paintings, closing with the celebrated “curtain” of the master. In many respects these betray a relationship to Zeuxis, and yet much that is independent. There are numerous characteristic heads illustrative of temperament, and other psychological subjects, among the fore-most of which should be named the Demos, who, according to Pliny, was shown as changeable, angry, unjust, inconstant; also as exorable, kind, compassionate, boastful, sublime, low, undisciplined, and fickle. This would be so impossible in a single head, without making it a chaotic, incomprehensible caricature, that the author has no hesitation in describing the painting as a group, in each figure of which one of the characteristics named was expressed. That representing the assumed madness of Odysseus must have had great psychological meaning, as also the Prometheus, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and the Telephos. Parrhasios had by these works placed himself above Zeuxis through more correct and careful drawing, and a marked technical progress in the art. Pliny says that, according to the judgment of artists, Parrhasios had reached the highest perfection in the representation of figures; that previously painters had succeeded in giving only to the outlines of the figure a truthful appearance and action, but that the edges of color should be so rounded that one might be led to imagine the continuation of the body upon the other side, suggesting what could not be seen. This may be conceived to mean that, by attention to chiaroscuro and reflections, the illusive effect was increased from that of a relief to that of a figure in the round, whereby figures first appeared to free themselves from the background; that, for instance, he made clear to the observer the distinction between a globe, only one side of which is seen, and a hemisphere affixed to a plane. The illusion consequently became more perfect, the capacity for motion being thus brought into the “outstepping” figures. The grapes of Zeuxis did not need this power of action to tempt the birds as did the boy in order to frighten them. The curtain of Parrhasios possessed this capacity for movement, with the freeing of the objects from the background, and could therefore deceive even Zeuxis himself, who thought it possible really to withdraw it from the panel.

If his proud rival Zeuxis bowed before this skill, it cannot be thought strange that such a result should have moved Parrhasios to outdo his competitor in arrogance also. Among other follies, he proclaimed himself a descendant of Apollo; as King of Art he was crowned with a diadem and golden wreath, and donned the purple mantle of royalty. By adopting the cognomen of Habrodiaitos, or high-liver, he brought upon himself the nickname of Rhabdodiaitos, or brush-man. Parrhasios also was surpassed by a younger contemporary, though, as it appears, only in a single instance. Timanthes of Kythnos won the victory in a competition--the Strife of Ajax and Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles. Pliny gives preference to the latter, because his compositions were so arranged that more might be perceived in them than at first sight appeared. There was withal a deeper motive than Zeuxis and Parrhasios had shown; this was evident in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, in which every degree of suffering was presented: Calchas being sad, Odysseus painfully moved, Ajax crying aloud, Menelaos in an ecstasy of grief; but, as the expression of anguish could not be carried beyond that of the latter, the father, Agamemnon, was shown hiding his face. The murder of Palamedes, perhaps, gave scope for the same depth of motive. A small genre picture was conceived in a more jesting tone, representing a sleeping Cyclops, and a satyr measuring the length of the giant’s thumb with a thyrsos, thus adding a living scale of comparative dimensions. The hero of Timanthes and the athlete of Zeuxis were equally celebrated among Grecian paintings as ideals of manly form.

It would seem that Timanthes passed the latter part of his life in Sikyon. The art of painting found a home in Ephesos during the Peloponnesian war, but did not connect itself with any school, and returned to Greece after the close of that disastrous conflict. Athens could not at once recover the commanding position it had held under Polygnotos and Apollodoros; but artistic activity, with its increasing requirements, was concentrated in Sikyon and Thebes, where flourishing academies were established with different aims.

Eupompos appeared about this time in the former city, as the founder of an important school, but, with the exception of a few superficial notices, we know nothing of him. His pupil, Pamphilos of Amphipolis or Nicopolis, flourishing from 390 to 360 B.C., was at the head of this school. His works are little known, having been described only by Pliny, so scantily and unintelligibly that one may be taken for a family picture, another as the appearance of Leucothea to Odysseus after the shipwreck near the island of the Phæacians, and a third possibly as the victory of the Athenians at Phlious. Pliny is more to the point when he relates that Pamphilos considered education in science, particularly in mathematics and geometry, indispensable to artistic work. As he thought drawing an essential part of cultivation, he exerted himself, with good result, to have it taught in the higher schools. He believed that from this alone could proceed a rational conception of art grounded upon science, in which the mutual relations of teacher and scholar should be considered; and that Sikyon was the place best adapted to this purpose. At a somewhat earlier period Polycleitos had established a canon for sculpture by his system of proportions. Pamphilos, following in the footsteps of Eupompos, now took the same position in respect to Greek painting, with, perhaps, even greater success. He was pre-eminently a teacher, and, as such, appears to have striven after correctness in composition, drawing, and painting, to the disadvantage, it may be, of freedom in artistic development. But this aim, which won for the school of Sikyon the name of Chrestographia (correct drawing), operating upon the pupil from the beginning to the close of his scholarship, must have been serviceable both in laying a foundation and in purifying and restraining. It certainly was for the advantage of Apelles to have finished his studies in this school, which must indeed have had a salutary influence upon the general development of Grecian painting. The element of degeneracy in the tone of Zeuxis and Parrhasios was long held in restraint among their followers by the academic authority of Sikyon. Pamphilos turned his attention chiefly towards correctness of execution in details, and, following Polycleitos, towards the human figure. His pupil Melanthios was a master of composition; this, however, in accordance with the whole character of the school, seems to have consisted less in the choice of scenic situation and action than in a formal distribution and balance of the grouping.

Pausias, a fellow-pupil of Melanthios, distinguished himself from this somewhat doctrinal art by greater freedom of creation. The subjects of his works show this by their individuality, as, for instance, the Boy, painted in a day, the Girl Binding a Wreath, Methe Drinking from a Glass, and a flower piece, which, from the descriptions, appears to have resembled our still-life pictures. His Sacrifice of a Bull displayed a new mastery; the animal, foreshortened from the front, as Pliny remarks, showed his entire length. Pausias was the first to win fame in encaustic painting, although its technical processes had for some time been known. Of this it is only certain that the colors, mixed with wax, were melted by a rod of metal, and thus affixed to the ground. This process, because of the more brilliant, transparent, and deeper hue given by the wax, was as far superior to the former distemper as our own more convenient oil-painting is to every other method. That such peculiarities of subject and treatment did not lead the master to renounce the artistic earnestness of the school of Sikyon is shown in the direction imparted to his pupils. The works of the most celebrated among these, Nicophanes, were extremely labored; but, from the predominant brown, hard in color. Aristolaos, the son of Pausias, was rigid and academical.

During this period a second school of painting, not less prominent, flourished in Thebes, and, after the hastily acquired importance of this city had as rapidly declined, was transferred to Athens. At its head was Nicomachos--360 B.C.--son and pupil of the otherwise unknown artist, Aristiæos. Eight of his pictures are mentioned; but, though he was accounted one of the greatest masters, we have little information in regard to the painter himself. As contrasted with the quiet, stately works of the Sikyonians, we may conclude, from the subjects, that there was greater excitement and action in those of Nicomachos, among which are mentioned the Rape of Proserpine, Victory Ascending with a Quadriga, and Bacchantins Surprised by Satyrs. His unsurpassed rapidity in painting was praiseworthy only because united to great talents, with an unusual and masterly sureness of hand. The character of his pupil Aristides is more intelligible, and more important. If ever there was a painter whose subjects alone sufficed to give an idea of his chief aim, it was Aristides. One of his most celebrated works was the Conquest of a City: a wounded mother, lying upon the ground, sees her infant creeping towards her breast, and visibly betrays the fear that, when the milk fails, the child will take the blood. Another, a woman who, “for love of her brother, gives herself up to death.” A third, according to Pliny most highly prized, represented a sick man. In these, and in one more, perhaps also to be ascribed to Aristides, the Heracles Suffering from the Poisoned Garment of Deianeira, a fundamental tone of great pathos is unmistakable. In the praying man, whose voice one almost seemed to hear, and in the old man teaching a boy to play upon the harp, the predominant expression of feeling was unmistakable. The latter reminds us of that beautiful Pompeian wall-painting of the Centaur Cheiron instructing the boy Achilles. Pliny distinctly says that Aristides aimed at the pathetic, by which is meant the expression of tender as well as painful and passionate emotions. In this master, therefore, may be recognized one whose aims were similar to those of Scopas and Praxiteles.

Euphranor, a pupil of Aristides--360 to 330 B.C.--was a remarkable phenomenon in the domain of art. Few, either in sculpture or in painting, have been so many-sided, and yet, though standing in the first rank, the insufficient accounts of his pictures that have come down to us prevent our forming any positive judgment about them. A certain indication, however, lies in the remark of the artist himself, that the Theseus of Parrhasios looked as if fed upon roses; his own, on the contrary, as though nourished by the flesh of oxen. This comparison must have included two points, color and drawing; the likeness to roses would have been inapt if Parrhasios had not failed in depth of flesh-tint; on the other hand, besides the healthy color, the strong nourishment suggested by the Theseus of Euphranor proved an energetic development of muscles. It was probably a somewhat massive figure, characteristic of Euphranor, and, with certain limitations, reminding us of the Heracles of Lysippos. It may be understood, from the noble expression of the Theseus, how Euphranor brought his heroes to a typical perfection. In a similar sense he had raised his Poseidon to such power that there remained no further means at his command for surpassing it in his conception of Zeus. The remark of Euphranor expressed not only the difference, and his own superiority to Parrhasios, but suggested a certain relationship in subject and aim, both masters having painted the Theseus, and the Assumed Madness of Odysseus.

The Isthmian Euphranor had changed the scene of his labors, and, at the same time, the centre of the entire school, to Athens, which continued to be the artistic metropolis for his scholars and successors. Among the latter, Nikias is especially celebrated--340 to 300 B.C. He devoted his attention chiefly to feminine beauty, somewhat influenced, perhaps, by his older contemporary Praxiteles, in connection with whom he is mentioned. His taste was for extensive compositions, surprising for their novelty of conception, and, like Parrhasios, he endeavored to give roundness to his figures. The lack in the Theban-Attic school of that individuality which existed in the Sikyonian was completely overcome by Euphranor, and gave place to a more universal aim. He and Nikias were artists whose tone came less from their school than from their own personal convictions. They early learned to understand technical and artistic acquisitions of all kinds, and to carry them forward independently. We may conceive them as holding the same loose relations towards their teachers which existed between the Sikyonian master Pamphilos and their contemporary Apelles.

Apelles was destined to bear away the palm from all his predecessors and successors. Although three cities--Colophon, Ephesos, and Cos--claimed the honor of calling him their own, it is reasonably certain that the first was the place of his birth, the second that where his labors commenced, and the third may not improbably have been that of his death. The Ephesian Euphoros is named as his first teacher, but his fame dates from the time when he left the academy of Pamphilos for that of Sikyon. Perhaps the fact that Pamphilos was a Macedonian by birth may have paved the way for Apelles to the royal court at Pella, whence he appears to have returned to Ephesos among the followers of Alexander the Great. He seems never to have founded a permanent school; at least, we gather from classical notices that he worked transiently at Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, and even in Alexandria. We learn also that he outlived, by a considerable time, his great patron Alexander. His works are to be divided into three groups--paintings of gods and heroes, allegories, and portraits; these were also sometimes combined. At the head of the first group stands the Aphrodite Anadyomene, one of the most celebrated pictures of antiquity. It was transferred to Augustus for the remission of one hundred talents of taxes; by him carried to Rome and placed in Cæsar’s Temple of Venus, where it became so much injured--thus obtaining the sobriquet Monocmenon, one-legged--that Nero had it taken away and replaced by a copy. She was represented as the “sea-born,” nude, and pressing with her hands her dripping hair. Far from being an ideal figure, it was rather patterned after the celebrated courtesans of the time, two of whom are named--Pancaste, or Pancaspe, the paramour of Alexander, who afterwards presented her to the artist himself; and Cratine, or Phryne, mistress of Apelles, who may have been the more direct model for the Venus, as, at the festival of Poseidon at Eleusis, she bathed, naked, in the sea before the eyes of the assemblage. A second Aphrodite, in which Apelles hoped to surpass the first, remained unfinished at his death. Of these representations the first was certainly without any devotional or even ethic character; but the Artemis, in the Sacrifice of the Virgins, was something more than a genre piece with a mythological motive; and his heroes, who, according to Pliny, challenged nature itself, were more than mere stately portraits.

The Heracles may be regarded as a study. Charis and Tyche were allegories, the latter having been represented sitting “because happiness does not stand fast.” The most celebrated of them all, Calumny, is minutely described by Lucian. It portrayed a man, whose inclination to credit evil reports was characterized by large ears, sitting between two women, Ignorance and Mistrust, and receiving Calumny, a magnificent woman excited with passion, preceded by Envy; she drags in a youth by the hair, who vainly, with hands uplifted, calls the gods to witness. Behind the train advances Repentance, a mourning female figure in black, looking back with pain and shame upon the tardy appearance of Truth. Similar in character is the picture of the chained war demon, belonging partly to the group of portraits. A third allegory, of little intrinsic worth, is set forth with great artistic ability--Bronte, Astrape, and Keraunobolia--thunder, with the flash and stroke of lightning.

Among the portraits, allegorical in nature, was the famous picture in which Alexander, with lightning in his right hand, was represented as Jupiter. The monarch himself was so well pleased with this that he said there were two Alexanders--one the unconquered son of Philip, the other the inimitable creation of Apelles. But little is known of the king’s portraits, whether equestrian, in triumphal chariots, or surrounded by deities and allegorical figures; nor of those of Philip and his generals, of the tragic actor Gorgosthenes of Habron, nor of that of the artist himself.

If Apelles be scrutinized more closely in order to make clear the chief characteristics by which he won such brilliant renown, it will be found that it was not in composition. In this, as in treatment of perspective, he gave precedence to his fellow-pupils Melanthios and Asclepiodoros. That he was aware of this weakness, and avoided occasion for manifesting it, is shown by the fact that most of his paintings contained few figures. When more appeared, instead of being picturesquely grouped and treated, they were ranged in rows, almost like reliefs, better suited to the allegorical subjects so prevalent with Apelles, and so common in his time, than to mythological and historical representations. Though allegory may, in great measure, be unfavorable to true art, because, as Winckelmann says, it forces the painter “to tint his brush with reason,” still that of Apelles has lately been too much depreciated. The Calumny has been pronounced an error of fancy, rough symbolism, and an inharmonious assemblage of persons and personifications. But these were the legitimate materials of the artist, and he succeeded, at least, in the representation of character and in truthfulness of drawing. The lightning group was something more than a piece of technical bravura. Who would prize the picture less because thunder and lightning were represented instead of Zeus, a deity who would have been attempted by no painter of antiquity, or, indeed, of later times? Though his motive may have been purely intellectual, the painter remained the same, whether he portrayed a Cassandra or a Diabole--whether he more or less displayed his astounding mastery. Apelles will be more rightly judged if he be treated as a painter rather than an artist; as such we recognize in him a technical and many-sided perfection. Different accounts speak of him as rapid and sure in drawing, his lines being not only correct, but in the highest degree characteristic. The maxim of Apelles “No day without a line”--that is, without exercise in drawing--has become a proverb, if not quite in its original sense. Through this incessant practice his hand acquired such sureness that it followed the will implicitly, and made possible even the hair-splitting execution related in an anecdote which has been unjustly discredited by critics. Apelles entered one day the workshop of Protogenes, in the absence of the latter, and made known his visit by drawing a line upon a tablet at hand with such swing and surety, such purity and smoothness, that the Rhodian master, upon his return, recognized the hand of Apelles. In order to show himself equal, Protogenes split the line by a second one in a different color, but acknowledged himself defeated when Apelles divided this through its entire length by a third. An evidence of the sharpness and certainty of his characterization with simple lines is given in the story of a servant who had injured him, and whom Apelles, though he had seen him only once, so sketched with charcoal upon the wall that the likeness was recognized by King Ptolemy after the first strokes. It will readily be understood that such capacity must have fitted the artist especially for portraiture; and his portraits attained such striking likeness and truthfulness that a physiognomist assumed to be able, by them, to discern not only the exact age of the subject, but even the time of his future death. No further testimony is needed than the Anadyomene to prove that his works were perfect in correctness and expression as well as in beauty.

The employment of color had fully kept pace with this matchless drawing, though Apelles seems to have been limited to painting in distemper, without the use of encaustic. The softened glazings are particularly mentioned, which made the unbroken light all the more brilliant. In the portrait of Alexander, the hand, outstretched with the lightning, appeared to stand quite out from the panel, a result perhaps equally owing to masterly foreshortening in the drawing. The beauty of his color was noted, and especially its vigor; the fame of the Aphrodite cannot be understood without the former, nor that of the Alexander and the Lightning without the latter. This many-sided, technical perfectness, unattained before Apelles, and in which Pliny says that he excelled all other painters together, may have had its germ in the school of Pamphilos, as the Sikyonians devoted especial attention to artistic execution. To these eminent qualities, however, were added the intrinsic merits of the master himself, upon which he laid the greatest stress, and which he ascribed to that charm understood by the Greeks in the word _charis_. That this was chiefly to be found in the just measure of completeness was explained by Apelles when he declared himself to have been surpassed by Protogenes in all but the knowledge of the right moment to lay aside the brush, without which this charm, through overmuch care, is lost.

By this technical mastery, clearness of characterization and grace, Apelles so delighted all who saw his works that, according to the numerous anecdotes that illustrate his position, he was the most popular artist of all antiquity. In face of such authority, it would be unjust to see in him, as some have done, the beginnings of the decline of art. Though his artistic efforts may not have equalled those of Polygnotos, because he could more easily satisfy the ethical demands of his time, still it must be acknowledged that, as a painter, he surpassed him as far as, in sculpture, Praxiteles surpassed Calamis and the other predecessors of Pheidias. But in Pheidias a high ideal was united to an absolute perfection of execution which, in painting, Polygnotos was far from having attained. “In the history of painting,” says Brunn, “each of these two fields has its separate point of greatest elevation; the fame, therefore, which, in sculpture, undoubtedly raised Pheidias above all others, appeared, in painting, divided between Polygnotos and Apelles.”

Protogenes of Caunos, or rather, with reference to his work, of Rhodes, was a rival of Apelles. He seems to have been self-taught, or, at least, to have been the pupil of an entirely obscure master. The admiration of Apelles for Protogenes was so great that he expressed a desire to buy up his works and publish them as his own; but numerous anecdotes show that Apelles was in the way of bestowing his flattery upon every great and celebrated man. Protogenes is said to have painted over his Ialysos four times, the better to secure it from destruction, so that, on the peeling of the outer layer of pigment, the surface below might present the same color. But this can only be a foolish legend, invented to illustrate his extreme care. Similar tales of a later time reported him to have worked upon the Ialysos seven or eleven years, and to have fed upon nothing but lupines, for fear that luxury might blunt the acuteness of his senses. Perhaps this means that the painter’s genius was not recognized until late in life, up to which time he had lived in great poverty. Of his picture in the Propylæa at Athens, representing Paralos and Hammonias--personifications of Athenian ships--there is an equally idle story that he did not paint the ships themselves because, until his fifteenth year, he had earned his bread as a ship-painter.

In Protogenes we may conceive a perfection such as only the most unwearied care could attain. This perfection was neither in the ideas nor in the composition; for the subjects of his pictures, known to us as heroic or historical portraits, or, at most, as groups of few persons without action, were in themselves far less important than those of Apelles. But the illusive effect must have been complete if, as Petronius says, one could not look even at the sketches without a feeling of awe on account of their truthfulness to nature. This carefulness extended even to the smallest accessories, like the wonder of the partridge at the reclining satyr, and the foam on the mouth of the dog in the Ialysos; an effect which, it is said, was at last accomplished by the pressure--not the throwing--of a sponge. Yet the wearisomeness of this perfection was not to be denied, and here, in the eyes of Apelles, lay the weakness of this master.

The relations of Apelles with another rival, the Egyptian Antiphilos, were not so friendly. The great celebrity of this painter rested upon a peculiarity directly contrary to that of Protogenes, designated by Quintilian as facility; that is, a freshness and genial security of conception and treatment in everything which his brush touched. His range of subjects exceeded that of Protogenes, or even of Apelles; for he painted with equal excellence pictures of the deities, mythological scenes, portraits, genre pieces, such as the Wool-comber and the Boy Blowing the Fire; and even caricatures, such as that of Gryllos, with a face reminding one of the significance of his own name--the Porker; whence it comes that all caricatures were, in antiquity, called Grylli. That he was fond of startling effects of light is evident from the Boy Blowing the Fire, the glow of which was reflected upon his face; also from his renowned satyr Aposcopeuon--the Gazer--whose glance the shielding hand seemed at once to intensify and to conceal.

Aetion, according to Brunn, also belongs to the group of artists contemporary with Apelles. His importance can be measured only by the esteem of antiquity, and by the minute descriptions of one of his pictures. This represented the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; the latter, sitting modestly upon a couch, is served by Cupids, who take the veil from her head and loosen her sandals. The king, accompanied by Hephaistion as attendant, with torches, is led towards the bride by an Eros; two more, panting under the weight of the shaft, bear the lance of the conqueror, while others carry by the handles a shield; and one Cupid, who has crept into a coat of mail, seems, from his hiding-place, to lie in wait for those about to pass. It is not strange that this composition, so charming in the description of Lucian, should have led modern painters to attempt to reproduce it; as in the frescos of Raphael in the Borghese Gallery, and those of Razzi in the Farnesina.

Among other masters of the time of Alexander were the Athenian Asclepiodoros, of whom we know little more than that Apelles gave him the preference in composition; and Theon of Samos, whose works degenerated into an attempt to secure a theatrical rather than a natural effect. Besides tragic scenes, like the murder of his mother by Orestes, and the blinding of the singer Thamyris, this is shown in the heavily armed warrior called by Quintilian his masterpiece--a man in the violence of attack with a drawn sword. To increase the theatrical effect, this picture was exhibited by the artist accompanied with the flourish of trumpets. If we here bear in mind the so-called Borghese warrior of Agasias--that sculptural cousin of the Hoplite--we cannot mistake the spirit of a time which, after the inner significance had perished, clung entirely to the external, and, renouncing truthfulness in composition, which here would have demanded a group, was satisfied with a theatrical sham. The farthest remove from the conceptions of Polygnotos had now been reached.

Hellenism, by which is meant the civilization of the period after Alexander, when the Grecian kingdom had become cosmopolitan, satisfied its artistic requirements by a repetition of what the previous centuries had produced. The attempt was made, in sculpture and in painting, to combine results already won, generally in a shallow eclecticism. Of the numerous painters in that decorative period few names have been handed down. The most was accomplished by the masters of Sikyon where the tradition of the energetic school of Pamphilos was not yet lost. Protogenes in Rhodes, and Antiphilos in Egypt, also had some followers who were not quite without fame. Timomachos of Byzantion, at least, was equal to his great predecessors of the time of Alexander. His Medea was purchased by Cæsar for eighty talents, and his other works are not less praised; among them one, perhaps historical, showing two men in conversation, and the Gorgo, may be connected with an event related by Herodotos (v. 51). If, as we are told, there was a Medea represented before the murder of her children, in a struggle between hatred of her husband and motherly love--a subject treated in a Pompeian wall-painting in the museum at Naples; an Ajax, after his fury, meditating suicide; and an Iphigeneia in Tauris, perhaps recognizing her brother, we may conclude that Timomachos had returned to the pathetic element, and that he united with it, so far as possible, the technical perfection of the Alexandrian period. It is possible that the painter stood in the same artistic relation to the sculptors Pasiteles, Stephanos, and Menelaos as did Theon to Agasias.

After Parrhasios, side by side with the grander style had developed a species of cabinet-painting which seems to have been devoted especially to obscene subjects (Pornographia). Already in the time of Alexander, pictures of a small size were much in favor; besides the Egyptian Antiphilos already mentioned as celebrated in this direction, Callicles and Calates worked in it exclusively, and Peiræicos had great fame as a painter of this kind. His subjects were not of a lewd nature, but were taken from the lower ranks of life, such as booths of barbers and cobblers, donkeys, eatables, etc.; by which one is reminded of the genre pieces and still-life paintings of the Netherlands. Pornographia was thus changed to Rhopographia, painting of small wares. In later times the term employed for obscene painting seems to have been Rhyparographia.

This trivial painting naturally continued to be prevalent in the periods of the Diadochi and the Romans, since art, when reduced to mere decoration, cultivated by preference graceful and lively subjects. It was extended even to the floors, for which mosaic had been used as early as the time of the royal court of Pergamon. If the decoration of walls is based upon tapestry, as Semper has made evident, this is especially the case with colored floors. The effect of mosaic, in which form painting now took possession of the pavement, differed little from that of weaving and embroidery. Sosos was considered as the oldest and most celebrated master of this process, perhaps because he first carried it beyond simple patterns. He represented, in the so-called “unswept hall” at Pergamon, remnants of food, fruit-rinds, etc., as if scattered upon the floor; also a dove drinking from a shell. The celebrity of these works makes it natural that several repetitions of the dove should have been found. It seems, however, that the practice of this art was not in extensive use before the time of the Roman empire, when it spread over all the floors, as painting did over all the walls. The mosaics in the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which are composed of rough pebbles, may, however, be even more ancient than the works of Sosos in Pergamon.

ETRURIA.

At the time when Hellenic influence had developed to its fullest extent in Magna Græcia, the Etruscans had long passed their highest point of perfection. Roman tradition gives no little significance to their civilization, in its artistic as well as in its political aspects, though it was far less grand and brilliant than that of their neighbors in the south of the Italian peninsula. But as Rome rose, Etruria fell; and in the time of the Peloponnesian war it had but a shadow of its former dominant position in Italy.

Whether this people were related to the ancient Greeks, or merely mixed with the Pelasgic and Hellenic element through emigration from the western coasts of Greece, it is certain that the older culture of the nation shows a great resemblance to that of the countries beyond the Adriatic. This may have been owing partly to common Oriental prototypes, and to native imitation of these, and partly to the fact that certain primitive results of civilization, under like material premises, naturally assume a more or less similar form without any real historical connection.

The method of building the Etruscan walls is particularly a case in point. The resemblance of these to the most ancient fortifications of Greece makes possible, though it does not establish, an intimate communication between the two races, to which also the use of Greek letters for the strange Etruscan language certainly points. The so-called Cyclopean jointing, however, presents itself in every civilized land where rock is found which naturally breaks in polygonal forms. So also square-stone masonry early appears wherever the material, quarried without difficulty in rectangular forms, favors this more satisfactory method. Besides both these varieties, the Etruscans made use of bricks, as shown by the foundations of the walls of Veii, which above-ground are mainly built of cut stone. These are at least as ancient as the time of the later kings.

Some of the remaining ruins of Etruria, and of Central Italy--for the peculiar civilization of that region is not strictly confined to the limits of the Etruscan language--show in the building of gates a new technical element. It has been seen how the Greeks in vain sought a substitute for the arch, to them an inadmissible, if not an unattainable, feature; and exhausted every conceivable method of horizontal stone-laying in order to cover their gateways. Similar evasive attempts are not wanting in Etruria; the Cyclopean walls, especially, present portal constructions similar to those of Mykenæ. But through the perfection of stone-cutting, and building with rectangular blocks, the ceiling of the passage by means of the arch was early attained. That this step was taken before the invasion of the Gauls is shown by the still remaining Gate of Falerii (_Fig._ 247), which city, as is well known, lost its importance under Camillus. It is not certain whence the people of Central Italy attained their knowledge of the arch. Though it had been familiar to the Assyrians as early as the ninth century B.C., it is possible that they made this important discovery independently, perhaps somewhat later than the Mesopotamians. The vault of the Cloaca Maxima in Rome dates from the sixth century B.C., but it shows, even at this early period, a perfection which gives evidence of long previous use. Canal-building was one of the first conditions of existence on the western coast of Central Italy, where the drainage of the swamps--the neglect of which, since the Middle Ages, has reduced the once populous Maremma to a pestilential desert--the discharge of the mountain lakes, which otherwise overflow from time to time, desolating the lower country, and the regulation of the river-courses, alone made possible the settlement of a people and the founding of flourishing cities west of the Apennines. It is therefore not improbable that the great canal discovered by Dennis, which once drained the swampy Valley of the Marta, preceded the Cloaca Maxima, and, indeed, antedated the Roman period altogether. (_Fig._ 248.) The enormous stones employed in its construction, and its great extent, display, even in this primitive age, that marked inclination for works of general usefulness which distinguished the people of Italy above all others of antiquity.

Of the long-forgotten cities, discovered in the present century by their walls, little else remains than extensive cemeteries, which, as repeatedly happens among the ruined places of the earth, have outlasted by more than two thousand years the dwellings of the living. The streets and buildings of these settlements, already in ruins under the Romans, have disappeared almost without a trace; while the monuments of the dead are so well preserved as frequently to give information concerning even the domestic architecture of their builders. By far the greater number of the tombs were tumuli, conical hills of earth, which generally, as in Lydia, were elevated upon a low cylinder and reveted by an outer course of stone. These have now almost all been reduced to the appearance of natural mounds. Their dimensions in some instances are almost as great as those of the smaller Egyptian pyramids. The base of the monument at Poggio Gajella, near Chiusi, formerly falsely held to be the tomb of Porsena, measures 256 m. in its circumference, while that at Monteroni, between Rome and Civita Vecchia, is 195 m. These gigantic foundations at times bore several cones. This appears to have been the case with the so-called tomb of Cucumella at Vulci, where two tall tower-like elevations still remain, which doubtless served as substructures for the terminating piers. The cippus may be imagined to have been analogous to the upper members of the tombs in Lydia, or, perhaps, to have resembled a pear-shaped capital, like the fragment found near the ruins of the so-called tomb of Pythagoras, or the imitations upon terra-cotta reliefs--similar to the cone which so generally terminated Roman tholos roofs. When several cones were placed upon one base, the angle of elevation was made steeper, as may probably have been the case with the tomb of Porsena at Clusium, the description of which is given by Pliny (xxxvi. 3) after Varro. If the tombs called those of the Horatii and Curiatii at Albano, which display many Etruscan reminiscences, be compared with this account, it is possible to present a restoration of the structure, correct in at least its principal aspects. Upon the corners of the triply stepped, diminishing substructure stood twelve cones, the thirteenth being in the centre of the upper terrace. (_Fig._ 249.)

The fundamental idea of the Etruscan tombs was not alone the creation of a monument which, covering the remains and protecting them from desecration, should plainly mark the place of interment, but the survivors sought, at the same time, to provide a room in which the dead might dwell in a manner corresponding to their circumstances during life. This conception was foreign to the Greeks, who seldom employed burial chambers of great size; but it was prevalent among the Egyptians, Persians, Lycians, and other nations of antiquity, though not by them carried out so logically as by the Etruscans, who usually placed the bodies upon stone benches, shaped like a bed, as if sleeping. Sarcophagi, when existing at all, appear to have been added upon further use of the sepulchre. It is thus, for instance, with the tomb of Veii--of which _Fig._ 246, at the head of this section, gives an inner view--with the tomb called that of Regulini-Galassi at Cære, and with numerous other sepulchres discovered in various cemeteries, notably of Southern Etruria. There, however, the chambers have mostly proved to have been plundered in former centuries.

The dwelling-rooms represented are as diverse as those of the living must naturally have been. No great width of these spaces was possible, because of the imposed weight of the tumulus; and the apartments consequently became narrow passages, ceiled by stone lintels, by blocks leaning against each other as a gable, or by the gradual approach of the horizontal courses by the projection of each over that beneath it. Examples of all these methods are provided by the tombs of Alsium, the present Monteroni; and the before-mentioned Regulini-Galassi tomb of Cære, the present Cervetri. The latter, so called after its discoverers, has furnished numerous treasures to the Etruscan Museum of the Vatican; it consisted of a corridor separated by a wall into compartments, with rock-cut lateral chambers of oval plan.

When the burial-chamber was a grotto--that is to say, was wholly excavated from the native rock--a greater width could be obtained. The ceiling was then carved, either to the outline of a low vault, as in the Campana tomb at Veii, or, more commonly, in imitation of the beams of a wooden ceiling. In the latter case various forms appear; for small inner chambers a simple horizontal ceiling sufficed, and a simple cross-timbering, overlaid with boards, was chosen as a pattern. The spacious vestibules frequently have an inclined roof, when ridge-beams, rafters, and the slats laid upon them are carefully and truthfully imitated. (_Fig._ 250.) A noteworthy example at Corneto (_Fig._ 255) shows in its outer room a plain imitation of the Italian atrium, or court, of the kind termed by Vitruvius _cavædia displuviata_. It is roofed by four main beams, laid diagonally and inclined outward, which support the framework of a middle orifice for light and air, and shed the water without instead of within. From this instance it appears that the fundamental idea of the chief sepulchral chamber was the atrium, which was the common gathering-place of the Italian house, as was the peristyle of the Greek; while the inner chambers represented the various rooms.

This imitation of an Etruscan dwelling--a remarkable counterpart, in architectural respects, to the copies of the exterior of wooden houses in the Lycian rock-cut tombs--was further carried out by a corresponding ornamentation of the rooms. The couches hewn from the rock, upon which the bodies rested, were at times a close imitation of cushions and pillows; the supports beneath were sculptured like bedsteads, while stone easy-chairs and footstools stood near to increase the apparent comfort. The apertures in the wall which separates the two spaces are reproductions of the framework of doors and windows. (_Fig._ 251.) The sides of the chambers are stuccoed with plaster of Paris, and covered with cheerful paintings, illustrating feasts, dances, sacred festivals, and games. Every conceivable variety of household utensils hang upon the walls or stand leaning against them, with great numbers of the well-known painted vases and other works of pottery. These objects, when not provided in reality, are imitated in stucco-relief and brilliantly painted, as in a tomb at Cervetri (_Fig._ 252), where walls and piers are covered with the representations of familiar household articles and weapons.

Although the tumuli were the more common funeral monuments, there were parts of Etruria, among the Apennines, where the limited extent of the level ground offered no spacious cemetery for the mounds, and where rocky mountains and abrupt cliffs led to a different form of sepulchre. A façade was cut upon the background provided by nature, where the appearance of a dwelling could be imitated with little expenditure of labor. The most numerous examples of these fronts are in the cemeteries of Castel d’Asso, near Viterbo. The forms are plain, and not particularly characteristic; a blind niche, the only architectural feature of the lower surface, was substituted for a door, the real entrance being through an insignificant shaft beneath the earth; and the façade was terminated by a complicated cornice--a confused mass of roundlets, cyma-mouldings, and rectangular bands, almost without projection. A stairway was often cut upon one or both sides of the tomb, leading to a platform or to other sepulchres situated upon a higher level.

More remarkable than these monuments at Castel d’Asso are the rock-cut façades of Norchia, to the west of Viterbo, upon which are imitated the fronts of temples. The four columns or pilasters, now destroyed, were placed wide apart, according to the proportions of the Tuscan order. The entablature consists of a narrow epistyle and a frieze decorated with clumsy triglyphs, or rather diglyphs, with pointed trunnels under the regula, above which follows a weak cornice with dentils. The gable is still more peculiar. Its outer ends curl into a volute, with a Gorgoneion in its centre, which originally served as a base for the acroteria; the triangle is filled with reliefs. The whole front gives the impression of a barbarous mixture of indigenous elements with Grecian forms, ill understood and roughly rendered. (_Fig._ 253.)

These remains are interesting, but elements seem to have crept in which could not originally have belonged to the Etruscan style, and the façades of Norchia can hence be deemed of but secondary importance in the study of the temple structures. The plan of these was quite different from that of the Doric temple. Instead of the length being at least double the width of the front, as in Greece, the breadth was here to the length as five to six. The cella did not form a centre around which stood the columns, but it entirely occupied the rear half of the area, while the front remained open as a columned porch. Three cellas, with the images of nearly related deities, were usually grouped together, the middle one being the largest, and also of the greatest hieratic importance. In some instances rows of columns were ranged upon the two long sides of a cella; but the rear wall was always bare. All artistic effect was here abandoned, and the building was, on this account, often so placed as to abut immediately against an enclosing rampart, or against a natural cliff.