ESSAYS. (continued 2)

Within a century after the taking of Troy, there was a great movement among the Greek tribes; many new colonies settled in Asia Minor, and the Heraclidæ finally regained their ancient seats in Peloponnesus. It is worthy of remark, that at that period Jerusalem was adorned with her first magnificent temple by Solomon, and that David built his house of cedar. The chief workman sent by Hiram the king of Tyre, to assist Solomon in the building of the Temple, but more especially to superintend the execution of the ornaments, was the son of a Tyrian artist by a Jewess of the tribe of Naphthali. According to one passage of scripture he was like his master called Hiram[75].

A little before the building of the temple we must place the construction of the tomb of Absalom, part hewn in the rock, and part built; which resembles in those particulars, and, in my mind, surpasses in taste, many of those described and figured by late travellers in Asia minor; while I should say, the cavern tombs of the kings of Judah have a resemblance to those of Egypt, or rather, perhaps, to the curious excavations discovered by late travellers, at Petra in Edom[76]. These are surely proofs that the arts were flourishing as freely in Syria, as in Asia Minor at that time.

But, to return to Greece. About seven centuries before the Christian era, the temple of Delphi was enriched by a number of most precious gifts by some of the kings of Asia. Gyges, whose story has served for the foundation of so many charming tales of enchantment and fairyism, sent to the god at Delphi the first foreign offering, or, as the Greeks term it, the first gift from a barbarian[77]. It consisted of vessels of gold, silver, and brass; among which, six golden goblets, particularly valued, were afterwards placed, in a chest or cupboard called the treasury of Corinth, which was presented by Cypselus[78] to the shrine, some years afterwards. Midas had by a short time anticipated the gifts of Gyges, consecrating to the Delphian Apollo the throne whence he dispensed justice, said to be of exquisite workmanship[79].

Halyatus, the great-grandson of Gyges, sent a vase to Delphi, precious for its material, but still more precious on account of the workmanship of the under cup which supported it. The vase was of chased silver, the under cup of iron curiously inlaid with silver, the work of Glaucus of Phocis, said to be the inventor of that kind of work in metal. This was the only one of the gifts of the Lydian kings that remained when Pausanias visited the temple.

Indeed, the magnificent presents sent by Crœsus, the son of Halyatus, would have been sufficient to tempt the cupidity of a conqueror, and perhaps to overcome the honesty of the priests of Delphi themselves. Of pure gold there were a hundred and seventeen bricks or tiles, forming the floor for a lion of great size, of the same metal, and the statue of a woman said to have baked the bread for the king’s household. These were taken by the Phocians to defray the expenses of the sacred war. There were also many beautiful chiselled vases of gold and silver, basins, ewers, fountains, and cisterns. One goblet of silver was particularly precious; it was said to be the work of Theodorus of Samos[80], one of the earliest founders in bronze.

Crœsus also enriched other temples with precious gifts. The great temple at Ephesus possessed three golden heifers and some fine columns given by him. The shrines of Thebes in Bœotia, were enriched by him; and to the temples in Miletus, he had sent gifts of equal value with those he consecrated at Delphi.

In return for a quantity of gold given by Crœsus to the Lacedemonians, they sent him a large vessel of bronze, round the mouth of which the figures of all sorts of animals were chased or engraved. The vase, indeed, never reached Crœsus, who was dethroned by Cyrus while it was on its way, and it fell into the hands of some merchants who sold it for a large price. Cyrus had the fortune not only to obtain the treasure in the precious metals and in the workmanship, of the gorgeous possessions of Crœsus, more precious than those metals themselves, but also to restore to Jerusalem the splendid ornaments and rich vessels, the work of the Tyrian artists, which belonged to the temple, and which were no doubt saved, by having been consecrated in[81] the temple of Belus, during the taking of Babylon.

It will perhaps never be known in what degree the taking of the Capital of the Chaldeans by Cyrus, altered the state of literature and art in ancient Persia. I have already referred to the passage in the prophet Ezekiel, which mentions the portraying the figures of men with vermilion, according to the use of the Chaldeans of Babylon; and, it should be observed, that their many-coloured head-dresses are also mentioned; so that the Babylonian pictures, such as they were, were not monochromes. But this belongs to another place[82].

The Greeks had early adopted or borrowed deities from every nation. The Syrian Astaroth or Astarte, and Thammuz or Adonis, were not neglected, but were received as kindly in the temples, as the Tyrian purple and the fine linen of Egypt, in the ports of Greece; and they were too intelligent and tasteful, not to adopt whatever of beautiful or elegant might be found among the artificers and artists of the nations with which they traded. Perhaps the Greeks were less inventors, than quick and happy discerners, of what was beautiful. They seem to have wrought the rough materials of many other nations into the happiest forms; and, if they borrowed largely from others, they amply repaid them by the beauty of the works they produced, and the excellent artists they formed, and these, by seeking employment in foreign countries, refined no doubt the taste of the great barbaric courts.

The art of inlaying and colouring metals is still possessed in perfection by many of the descendants of the nations of Asia Minor and Syria. The Circassians especially pride themselves on colouring silver, an art in which in ancient times the Egyptians excelled, though it was practised by the artists of Tyre and Sidon[83].

Figures and sometimes portraits were introduced in the patterns of the stained metals; and though the damasking or colouring steel[84] is now confined to swords and fire-arms, the example of the curious under-cup, seen by Pausanias at Delphi, shows that it was applied to different purposes by the inventors.

I have dwelt more upon the ornamental and religious vases, whether in clay or wrought in metal, than upon statues in bronze or marble, because their subjects, the manner of treating them, and the tools employed in executing them, seem properly to belong to painting. On the fictile vases, the subjects being chiefly applicable to funereal rites, represent the mysteries of Ceres, Bacchus, and Hercules. Any part of the fables concerning those divinities sufficed to indicate the mystery. I have seen a beautiful design of Triptolemus with a winged car, a type surely of the burial of the body in earth, while the living spirit shall revive, even as the corn sown in the field springeth up to beauty and use when the winter is gone. The struggles of Bacchus and Hercules, the death of Linus, the descent of Hercules to Hades, all these are compositions belonging strictly to picture, and form the first steps towards it; departing more from the nature of designs for sculptured friezes or tablets in bas-relief, than those other Bacchic subjects, where the Menadæ and their companions dance at fixed distances and independent of each other, or the graver Pyrrhic dancers that are supposed to be equally emblematical, and are frequently drawn on the vases or on the sides of altars, consecrated to the service of the temples.

One of the most interesting works of the kind, of which the knowledge has come down to us, was the chest of Cypselus already mentioned, in the temple of Juno at Olympia in Elis[85], it was of cedar, inlaid with gold, silver, and ivory; it was covered with designs indicative of the mysteries, or representing funeral games. Whatever relates to Ceres or Proserpine, to Bacchus or to Hercules, as connected with Dis, is represented. Pausanias describes many figures, which my very imperfect knowledge of their mystic meaning would lead me to call miscellaneous; but they are doubtless connected with the main design. Among these are some representing the virtues and the arts. It is clear that the woman called Night, with a black child in one arm and a white one in the other, called Death and Sleep, has a reference to the usual mysteries of death.

But the fancy of the artificer has brought together, according to the description, all the greater gods and older heroes, without any very perceptible connexion as to their position[86].

In the same temple where that chest was placed, there were statues, altars, treasures, and vases innumerable. However, there is but one more that I shall notice on account of the fitness of the figures that adorned it. It was the table of gold and ivory upon which the crowns of the victors in the Olympic games were placed, and was the work of Colotes, who, like his master Phidias, was a painter as well as a sculptor. That is, they both of them designed, and sometimes carried on their drawings, so far as to make them real monochrome pictures[87]. This appears to have been sometimes done as a preparation for working in relief, as on the famous shield of Minerva, designed by Pantænus the brother of Phidias. On the front of the table or altar were the six greater gods more particularly patrons of the games; namely, Cybele, Juno, Jupiter, Mercury, Apollo, and Diana. On the back the Olympic games were carved or inlaid—it is not very clear which, as the word used is only representation—and we know there were both carving and inlaying in the chest. One side contained a battle under the direction of Mars; and close by, were Esculapius and Hygeia; the other side was filled by Pluto, Proserpine, Bacchus and two nymphs, one of whom held a globe, the other a key: both symbolical of the mastery of Pluto or death over the world.

The earliest names of Greek painters, discovered by the indefatigable Pliny, are those of Dynas, Hygiænon, and Charmas. What their works might be we can scarcely conjecture; for it is accounted a great improvement that after them Eumanus the Athenian distinguished man from woman in his figures[88], and undertook to draw any object he could see; and Cimon the Cleonian proceeded so far as to place his figures in different positions, and to give the proper direction to the eyes.

These all preceded Bularchus, whose picture of the battle of the Magnetes must have very far surpassed the works of those artists. It was esteemed so highly, that Candaules, the last King of Lydia, of the race of the Heraclidæ, bought it at a very high price—it is reported, at its weight in gold—and regarded it as a treasure. This was about the eighteenth Olympiad, or nearly 730 years before our era.

If the description given by Lucian of the picture in the temple of Diana in Taurica, and which he ascribes to some very ancient unknown painter, be anything but imaginary, it must have been painted about this time[89].

In the half century after Bularchus, the arts of design, and especially painting, had made large and rapid progress. Somewhere about the eightieth Olympiad, or between four and five hundred years before Christ, prizes for painting were instituted at Delphi and at Corinth; and we find Pantænus, the brother of Phidias, contending at Delphi with Timagros, among the first of the exhibitors for the prize.

Besides the drawings or pictures, which Pantænus had made in conjunction with Phidias[90], he had already painted at Athens the battle of Marathon, in which the portraits of the leaders of both armies were conspicuous. The two Mycons, and Timarete, the daughter of the second, were his cotemporaries; his elders, Aglaiophon, Cephysodorus, and Phylus, were still living. These all employed their genius upon subjects relating to the religion or the history of their country. From devotion or patriotism they drew their inspiration. Hence the grandeur and severity that, according to all authors, distinguished their works.

Between seven and eight centuries before Christ, about the time when the Olympic games became fixed, many of the temples and public buildings of Athens appear to have been improved or rebuilt. At that period all the states, enjoying any advantages of situation as to maritime commerce, appear to have been actively employed in domestic improvements, or in sending out foreign colonies. Syracuse, Corcyra, Tarentum, Rome, and many other cities were founded. Byzantium, half a century later; and in the interval Necho’s ships had sailed round Africa.

By the year 550 before Christ, the Athenians, under the government of Pisistratus and his sons, had not only improved in all that renders civilised life delightful, but had extended their commerce, and acquired a degree of wealth and splendour, that drew upon them, first the admiration, and not long after the hostile attacks of the Persians, aided, it must be confessed, by the revenge of the Pisistratidæ, who had been expelled when the popular government was established.

It was then when the great contest began between Athens and the Monarchs of the East, who would have oppressed all Greece by the conquest of her first free people, that the arts were called into existence. They lent their aid to deepen religion, to animate patriotism, to reward virtue.

Themistocles rebuilt in purer taste, and with greater magnificence, some of the temples, and most of the other public buildings injured by the Persians. But it is said that his works were chiefly those necessary, or at least most useful to the people.

Cimon, the son of that Miltiades who won the battle of Marathon, resolved to beautify the city with temples, and statues, and pictures, part of the expense of which he defrayed out of his private fortune, and part was provided for by a portion of the Persian spoils.

Struck with the heedlessness of the Athenians, who, among their many shrines, had never erected one in honour of Theseus, their greatest benefactor, he planned and accomplished the Temple of Theseus[91], about thirty years before Pericles’ more magnificent structure, the Parthenon, rose to fix for ever a canon for perfection in architecture and sculpture[92].

The expedition of Cimon to the Isle of Scyros, to recover the bones of Theseus, and to punish the islanders for the death of that hero, was immediately followed by the erection of the venerable temple, still standing in honour of his remains. Its decorations were more beautiful than any that had hitherto been seen.

Mycon, who was both a sculptor and a painter, had the direction of the structure. The sculptured metopes are said to be even finer than those of the Parthenon[93] in execution, though inferior in taste; and the same is said of the two friezes that adorn the front and back vestibules of the temple. As these pieces of sculpture bear marks even now of having been coloured, I must consider them as works fitted, in the opinion of one of the greatest painters of that age, to be considered as pictures.

The friendship that subsisted between Theseus and his cousin Hercules, and the gratitude so strongly expressed by Theseus for the services and favours of his friend, rendered it natural that a temple to one of these heroes should be decorated with the acts of both; and as in life Theseus had always generously given the first place to Hercules, so in his monument the Athenians placed the pictures of his actions in the front of the temple, while those of Theseus occupied the back and sides.

The flat pictures were what we should call frescoes; they were all painted upon the interior walls of the Theseum, and related solely to the actions of Theseus.

It is impossible now to know how far Mycon had departed from the Egyptian style of painting which had prevailed in Athens and elsewhere before this period.

Where paintings of mythological, or even historical subjects were required in public places, plain unbroken colours, without much regard to nature, were applied, so as to produce a dazzling effect at a distance, much like that of an Eastern bazaar, where separate pieces of various coloured brocades produce a gorgeous but not unpleasant show.

By the age of Mycon some discrimination was used in the application of colour. The coloured foliage and meanders which decorated the Theseum, the Parthenon, and the Panhellenic Temple of Egina[94], were only internal decorations; and I think the descriptions left of the pictures contemporary with those of Mycon, justify us in concluding that the Egyptian practice was already falling into disuse.

The subjects chosen to do honour to Hercules were, of course, his own actions, not exactly those called the twelve labours of Hercules; though some of them are mixed with other events in the hero’s life. The subject of the frieze, over the front entrance, is the war with the giants, in which the superior gods are only spectators, while Hercules, Mars, Bacchus, Apollo, and Mercury, are actively engaged in combat with the giants. The subjects on the metopes, relating to Hercules, are some of them too much injured to be recognised with certainty; but others are from his common adventures, such as the Nemean Lion, the Hydra, and so on.

The frieze, in honour of Theseus, represents the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithæ. Among the groups there are some of great beauty; but I cannot help thinking that, like those of the battle of the giants, there is an affectation of a display of strength. There are too many figures with legs outstretched and strained, and arms employed without a visible necessity; very unlike the work of Phidias, where the action of every figure is directed to its proper purpose.

But it is not as sculpture I speak of them; all these figures were painted by Mycon and his daughter Timarete, reported by Pliny to have been a paintress of great reputation. Even yet, Colonel Leake[95] says, there are traces of bronze or gold coloured armour, garments of various hues, azure skies, and golden stars. If these artists gave natural colours to the objects they treated, it was already a great improvement on the Egyptian notion of pictures; but yet their works must have resembled those ancient altar-pieces, some by the hand of Albert Durer himself, which we still meet with occasionally in the German churches[96].

The description of, and apology for, coloured sculpture in Flaxman’s seventh lecture, leaves nothing to be said on that side of the question. On the other I believe there is an universal feeling of distaste to anything so like waxwork.

The pictures on the inner walls of the Theseum were painted on stucco, which here and there still retains vestiges of colour.

The subjects were most probably effaced when the temple was converted into a Christian church.

They were the battle of the Amazons, that of the Centaurs and Lapithæ, and one of an action performed by Theseus, in Crete, to convince Minos that he was indeed the son of Neptune. It appears that the king, offended with Theseus, had taunted him with pretending falsely to a divine origin, and threw a ring into the sea, desiring him, if he really had the influence of a son with Neptune, to restore it. Theseus immediately dived to the bottom, and soon emerging from the tide he presented the king with his signet, and displayed the golden crown with which Amphitrite had honoured him while below the waves.

The best work of Mycon, however, according to Pausanias, was Acastus and his horses, which he painted in the temple of the Dioscuri. His was also the picture of the Argonauts, in the same temple, where Polygnotus also painted some excellent pictures.

But leaving these things, I must hasten on to a work of still greater importance in the history of painting, and which the Athenians likewise owed to Cimon. I mean the Stoa or Portico, called Pæcile, on account of its many colours[97]. The painters who adorned it were Polygnotus, Mycon, and Pantænus. Here, both the patriotism and filial piety of Cimon were gratified. The memorable acts of the Athenians, from the time of Theseus, the war of Troy, and other historic subjects were represented in the Stoa; but the picture that was of most importance, nay, that almost forced the spectators to forget all the others, was the battle of Marathon, by Polygnotus.

I must refer to Fuseli for a most beautiful and spirited sketch of the character of the works of Polygnotus, and confine myself to relate the little that history tells of them.

Alas! for the ancient painters that no Vasari among them condescended to collect gossipping anecdotes, and tell us about their houses, their dress, their labours, and their amusements. We might, indeed, have been induced to believe a few pleasing fables, but who would not delight in being brought a little nearer to those master minds, which gave a character to their age, and to grow into acquaintance with them at the expense of a little incorrectness.

But I am obliged to take leave of Mycon, well paid as we are told, for his works, and of his daughter, without knowing more of their lives or deaths; and in turning to Polygnotus, what can I tell of, before he painted in the Stoa, but that he was the son and pupil of Aglaiophon, and was born at Thasos? After he had finished his great pictures in the Stoa, and the votive pictures of the Gnidians at Delphi, I can indeed show that his patriotism induced him to refuse all payment for the public works executed in honour of his country. And that the Greeks, in return, were so alive to his worth, that the Amphictyonic council decreed, that wherever he might travel in Greece he should be received with public honours and provided for at the public expense!

Notwithstanding the coldness of Pausanias’ description, we cannot but perceive that a true poetical feeling governed the composition of the battle of Marathon. Presiding over the whole, the hero Marathon, after whom the plain was named, received Minerva, the patroness of Athens, accompanied by Hercules, and soon to be joined by Theseus, whose shade, arising out of the earth, thus claimed Attica as his native soil. The armies are engaged in combat: some of the Persian chiefs are distinguished, particularly Mardonius, the insertion of whose portrait scarcely gratified the Athenians less than that of their own commander, Miltiades, along with whom were Callimachus, Echetlus, and the poet Æschylus, who was in the battle that day[98]. In another part of the field the Persians were routed; and farther on, some were seen hurrying to their ships to escape, and others flying towards the marshes, where the Greeks following were slaying them in their flight[99].

I am aware that critics require painters to observe what they call the unities, not less than dramatic poets; and that to represent different actions of the same story, or different parts of the same action, on one and the same canvas, is to sin grievously against their rules. But Shakspeare gloriously breaks the laws of the drama, and Polygnotus had a right to break those, if they then existed, of the picture. In a future Essay I hope to show the great advantages that may be derived from a disregard of the unities in painting, and to bring forward examples of its success by more modern artists. Meantime, in some of the other works of Polygnotus, which I am about to mention, it will be seen that he used considerable freedom in this respect. But, to go on with those in Athens. In the temple of the Dioscorides, assisted by Mycon, he painted the actions of these heroes[100], and their marriage with the daughters of Leucippus. Two other pictures adorned one of the buildings of the Acropolis, the subjects being Achilles among the young women of Scyros, and the meeting of Ulysses and Nausicaa[101].

But the great works of Polygnotus were the story of Troy and the descent of Ulysses into the infernal regions, painted in the Lesche, or public hall, at Delphi.

From the very unartistlike description by Pausanias, I think I can make out, that the back ground of the picture was filled by the town, the citadel, the surrounding country, and the sea. The hero Epeus, naked, was visible destroying the walls of the citadel, over the top of which the head of the famous wooden horse was seen[102]. Scattered about singly, or in groups, were the dead or the dying. On the margin of the sea were the Greek ships, on board of which parties of the conquerors were embarking; while their servants were bearing tents, furniture, and spoil, to put on board.

Approaching the foreground, and distributed in groups, were the principal captives, and some of the heroes. Helen was sitting attended by her maids, one of whom was tying her sandal, and gazed upon by Briseis, Diomed, and Iphis. Near her, were some of both the nations whose miseries she had caused. The chief of these were the captive Trojan princesses: Andromache, with her infant, and one of her sisters, Priam’s daughter, Medisecasta, veiled; but the poor virgin Polyxena was bareheaded, with her hair gathered into a knot, as became her years.

In front of the city, the groups were composed of more wretched captives still, in various attitudes; some thrown upon couches, others kneeling, some clinging to their native altars, and, chief in misery, the sad Cassandra, with her arms round the Palladium, crouched upon the earth as Ajax was drawing nigh the altar, where the Atridæ appeared ready to receive his oath. Some of the circles of the lower town were laid open where this was taking place. There, boys were seen clinging to the altars, or infants to their mothers, while Neoptolemus was continuing the work of slaughter.

Such were the grand features of the picture. Some touches of common nature we find there, were, as if to give truth to the scene. For instance, the horse rolling on the sandy shore, and servants loading a beast of burden[103].

The other picture was the Descent of Ulysses, described by Pausanias with even less feeling than the first. It is, however, evident that the reedy Acheron, with Charon’s boat, occupied the foreground; and that one of the figures in the boat was a person initiated into the Eleusinian rites, by the covered basket she held, thus signifying the mysterious passage between life and death. Beyond the river, the demon Eurynomus, of an unearthly hue, was fitly placed, sitting on the skin of a vulture, and gnawing the bones of the dead[104]. Ulysses, performing the incantation, was properly conspicuous; and the rest of the picture was filled with the women and heroes whom he saw or spoke to while in the kingdom of Pluto.

The clumsy way in which these pictures, and those in the Temple of Minerva, in Bœotia, are described by Pausanias, who saw them six hundred years after they were painted, has led even Fuseli to fancy that all the figures were of equal size and at equal distance from the spectator. But the inference is surely not just; for an ignorant man would probably (especially if the horizon were placed high in the picture) thus speak of one group as above another instead of beyond it.

Any one who has had the good fortune to examine, at leisure, Hemelink’s epic picture of the three kings, formerly in the Boiserée collection, and now at Munich, will at once comprehend the possibility of arranging the most complicated subject, without confusion of parts or division of interest; and I cannot comprehend why we are to suppose Polygnotus incapable of such arrangement[105]. There are two pictures in the Pitti palace, by Andrea del Sarto, of the history of Joseph, arranged as I suppose the great works of the Pæcile and at Delphi to have been; which, to such as admire only Italian art of the best time, will afford proof, if it were wanting, of the excellent effect that a departure from vulgar rules may sometimes produce.

I must not omit to say that Polygnotus, like the painters of the vases, wrote the names of the principal figures near them.

I have now repeated the account Pausanius has left us of the pictures of Polygnotus. It remains to consider what has been said, particularly by Pliny, of the change he effected in the art.

Before his time the faces had all one grave set expression; something, as we may presume, like that of the marbles and bronzes of the Eginetic and Etruscan schools.

Polygnotus first parted the lips, varied the appearance and expression of the eyes, dimpled the cheeks with smiles, or deformed the brow and nostrils with the expression of passion, however imperfectly rendered. He also it was who introduced the use of veils and other light and becoming ornaments in his female figures, and adorned their heads with fillets and coronals, thus adding delicacy and grace to his high poetical conceptions. In the brides of Castor and Pollux, in the captive Trojan princesses, and in the shades of celebrated and unhappy women in the descent of Ulysses, these qualities were particularly admired. Polygnotus, then, must be looked upon as the painter, who, leaving the practice of making mere coloured bas-reliefs, rendered painting a separate art, and established the difference between statues and groups in marble or bronze, and true pictures.

The name of Polygnotus is the greatest that adorns what we may consider as the first great epocha of Greek art. When, having nearly attained perfection, sculpture in the hands of Phidias produced the perfectly sublime in his Jupiter Olympias and his Minerva of the Parthenon, and formed a model which has never been safely departed from, for the composition of basso-relievo in the Panathenaic procession. But in painting, Polygnotus, though he had attained to great grandeur and majesty, had still left much to his successors to add in correctness, in expression, and in grace.

Contemporary with Polygnotus was Evenor, the master as well as father of Parrhasius[106]. But before Parrhasius began to distinguish himself, Apollodorus of Athens had made a great and rapid stride in art, and had painted at least two pictures that for six centuries commanded the admiration of all men of taste and understanding. He therefore may be considered as the first of the second epocha of Greek painting.

It was Apollodorus who first gave the niceties of character and expression to his figures; strength and force without exaggeration, and tenderness without insipidity. He added also to the mechanical powers of the painter, by breaking the colours, and showing the value of light and shade, of harmony and contrast. Pliny says, “I may well and truly say, that none before him brought the pencil into a glorious name and especial credit[107].” The only two pictures of which we know the subjects, were preserved at Pergamos, at least until the end of the first century of the Christian era. In one the chief figure was a kneeling priest in fervent adoration. The other represented Ajax Oileus on a rock, stricken by the thunderbolt after escaping from his perishing fleet.

It is evident that the effects of such subjects must have depended in great measure on light, and shadow, and colour. Accordingly, the school of Apollodorus produced the painter of most note among the ancients for those qualities. I mean the Heracleot Zeuxis; but Zeuxis had also the advantage of being a contemporary of the Ephesian Parrhasius, and was thus able to avail himself of the improvements introduced by that extraordinary man.

Parrhasius no doubt made use of the studies of the Macedonian Pamphilus who painted at Sicyon, and greatly improved that famous school, whence, half a century after the time of Apollodorus, proceeded Apelles and other painters of note. This Pamphilus taught his pupils arithmetic and geometry, without which he maintained that it was impossible to paint. Linear perspective was thus improved, and some general rules, acted upon intuitively before, were now fixed; but the delicacy of eye, which demanded a finer perspective, belonged to Parrhasius. He introduced the magic of aërial perspective; and the description by Pliny, of the manner in which the objects in his pictures seemed to shadow somewhat behind, and yet showed what they seemed to hide, may lead us to imagine that he was not ignorant of the effect of reflected lights.

He is praised for the beauty of his features, and peculiarly the sweetness and “lovely grace about the mouth and lips;”[108] the softness and fulness of the hair; the blended tints that melted away the outline, in some instances perhaps too much, as we gather from the painter Euphranor’s observation, that the Theseus of Parrhasius looked as if he fed on roses, while his own had evidently fed on flesh.

Two ancient writers on painting, Antigonus and Xenocrates, now lost, praised Parrhasius especially for the delicacy with which he finished the extremities of his figures. They quoted many pictures on pannel, and drawings on parchment, which served as examples for other painters, and as proofs of his wonderful skill in this part of his art.

It is to these authors that Pliny ascribes the criticism that the interior drawings were not quite equal to the outlines of his figures: not that they were inferior to those of other men, but only as one part of Parrhasius’ work might be inferior to another: Parrhasius, compared with Parrhasius[109], who, as Horace says,

We have a pretty considerable list of the works of this great painter which were in existence when Pliny wrote; one of these indeed, which was at Rhodes, was held in great reverence, because, although the pannel on which it was painted had been thrice struck with lightning, yet the painting remained uninjured; the subject was a story of Meleager, Perseus, and Hercules. There is scarcely any class of subjects which Parrhasius does not appear to have chosen occasionally. One of the most celebrated of his pictures was a personification of the Demos, or people of Athens, in which he is said to have embodied the virtues, talents, humours, and inconstancy of that witty, capricious democracy.

He is praised for the majesty of his demi-gods and heroes, the beauty and expression of his women and young men, and the grace and simplicity of his children. In short, to use the words of Quintilian, “Parrhasius was so exact in every particular, that he is looked upon even to this day as the lawgiver of painters; because the paintings of gods and heroes, such as he has left behind him, are held as so many models, which they make it a rule to follow invariably[111].”

Of the life of Parrhasius we know nothing, but of his manners we have a curious picture preserved by Pliny. His vanity appears to have been almost insufferable. He clothed himself in a purple robe, and wore a chaplet of golden flowers; his staff was entwined with tendrils of gold, and his sandals were clasped at the instep and ankle with golden latchets. He affected the name of Abrodrœtus, or the delicate[112], assumed the title of Prince of Painters, and pretended to have had Apollo himself for his forefather. There was something like insanity in the assertion that Hercules appeared to him in the visions of the night, that he might delineate his form with exactness[113]; and, perhaps, his insolent demeanour to other painters might spring from an unsound mind.

Two anecdotes concerning him are well known. His contest with Zeuxis, in which, though the grapes on the head of the boy of Zeuxis had deceived the birds, the curtain painted by Parrhasius deceived Zeuxis himself[114]. The second story is, that having lost the prize in a contest with Timanthes of Samos, for a picture of the contest between Ajax and Ulysses for the armour of Achilles, he affected to pity Ajax for being thus a second time foiled by a worthless rival.

The most celebrated of the contemporaries of Parrhasius was Zeuxis of Heraclea, who began to attract public notice soon after Parrhasius himself had established his reputation. He was the pupil either of Demophiles the Nemerian, or Niceas the Thracian, perhaps of both. Quintilian says[115], that “he painted bodies with greater than real proportions, thinking such a form to be more august; and in this it is thought he followed Homer’s manner, who took pleasure in representing all his characters, even his women, of large and strong size.”

Apollodorus, of whose extraordinary powers I have already spoken, paid the same generous tribute to the rising merit of Zeuxis, as Michael Angelo did to that of Raffaelle; and even wrote some verses, which have been lost, in praise of his works.

Zeuxis’ works were so eagerly sought after, that he very soon made a fortune equal to his wishes, after which he refused to work for money, but gave away his pictures; for instance, to the people of Agrigentum he presented his great picture of Alcmena; and to Archelaus, King of Macedon, a large painting of Pan. We are obliged to Pliny for preserving the subjects of several of his best works. Jupiter, surrounded by the other gods, is praised for its majesty; and the picture of the infant Hercules strangling the serpents in his cradle, for the expression of the bystanders, especially of Amphitryon and Alcmena. Of his Penelope it is said that he had not only painted the outward charms and features of her person, but the inward qualities and affections of her mind.

Of his famous Helen, and of the story of his choosing her several perfections from several beautiful women sent to him by the Agrigentines for the purpose, when they entreated him to paint their votive picture for the temple of Juno, it is unnecessary to remind the reader, as the story, true or false, is in every collection of anecdotes. We know not Zeuxis’ own estimation of that picture, but with another of his works he was so satisfied, that he is said to have written under it, “It will be easier to envy than to imitate me.” The subject was a wrestler. Some writers, however, say that the inscription, which was a Greek Iambic verse, was written by Apollodorus, his master and friend. And this is most natural; for what man of genius was ever entirely satisfied with his own work?

I have already mentioned the contest of Zeuxis with Parrhasius, for the nicest power of imitation in painting. The picture of the Muses, which was carried to Rome, demanded qualities of a different kind; so did the Marsyas, which Pliny likewise saw in Italy. His drawings in a single colour, relieved with white, appear to have been numerous and greatly valued[116]. Like Raffaelle, Zeuxis is said to have painted sometimes on earthen ware, and that vases and cups adorned by him were much prized. Possibly he only furnished the designs for these.

Zeuxis was not quite free from the same love of show which distinguished his great rival, Parrhasius. He is reported to have shown himself, magnificently attired, at the Olympic games, and to have caused his name to be embroidered in gold upon his upper garments, of which he displayed an unusual number of changes during the games.

Another of the great men who flourished in this second period, was Timanthes. His celebrated picture of Iphigenia, in Aulis, has been the subject of much criticism. The ancient writers, with one accord, praise the feeling which led the painter to conceal the father’s face; and though it is probable that most of them either mistook, or were ignorant of, the principle on which Timanthes, as an artist, proceeded, they were still right as to human nature. Reynolds and some other modern critics, especially Falconet, have reprobated the idea of Timanthes; but Fuseli has, in my opinion, set the matter at rest in a very beautiful piece of criticism[117], which I shall give below.

The picture itself was painted in competition with Colotes of Teos, whom I have already mentioned as the sculptor of the table of the Coronets at Delphi. The work of Timanthes gained the prize, as his Ajax had done, when exhibited in competition with that of Parrhasius.

There was a celebrated portrait of a prince by him, of which Pliny says, “It was thought to be most absolute: the majesty is such that all the art of painting a man seemeth comprised in that one portrait.” Timanthes did not always confine himself, however, to the grand and the pathetic. There is an account of a little picture where he represented a Cyclops asleep, and a number of little satyrs peeping out of the woods; some of whom, astonished at his size, are measuring the thumb of the unconscious giant with wands.

At the same time with the four great painters, Apollodorus, Parrhasius, Zeuxis, and Timanthes, lived Euxenidas, Eupompus, Echion, Therimachus, and some others not unworthy of their fellowship. They were remarkable also as having formed the men who flourished in the third and most brilliant epoch of painting in Greece.

As this essay is already longer than I intended, I will close it here; and endeavour, in another, to sketch the history of the highest prosperity and gradual decline of art in Greece. The consideration of the causes of that decline belongs to the philosophy of general history. I will only remark, that painting in Greece rose to its highest excellence by individual exertions, exciting the sympathy, and therefore the patronage, of the public generally; that it flourished under the encouragement of Alexander; but that the unnatural fostering of power appears to have weakened the spirit of art, which faded after his time, as those delicate plants which are cherished into extraordinary beauty by the heat of the stove, after a season languish and die, even of the effort that seemed to contribute to their luxuriance.

FOOTNOTES:

ESSAY IV. OF THE THIRD PERIOD OF PAINTING IN GREECE.

The Poets bring the Gods upon the stage, and all that is pompous, grave, and delightful. The Painters likewise do design as many things upon a board as the Poets possibly can utter.

Philostratus, Preface to the Picture Gallery.

In the fantasies of Painters nothing is so commendable as that there be both possibility and truth.

Longinus.

Among the nations bordering upon European Greece, Macedonia was most like it in manners, language, and physical circumstances; yet the Macedonians were generally looked upon as barbarians by those proud Republicans, who claimed the exclusive name of Greeks.

Alexander, the eldest son of Amyntas, King of Macedon, desirous of distinction in Greece, proposed himself as a competitor in some of the Olympic games; but the Greeks rejected him at first with scorn as a Barbarian[118]. However, he brought proofs of his descent from an Argive family, and was thereupon admitted by the Hellanodicæ[119] to an equal participation with other Greeks in those sacred games. He obtained a victory in one of the races, and dedicated a golden statue in the temple of Olympia.

The title of the Macedonians to appear as Greeks at the Olympic games, was asserted by the successors of Alexander in person or by proxy, and Philip received the news that his horses had won the prize in the race at Olympus, on the very day when the tidings reached him of the birth of Alexander the Great.

In truth, the kings of Macedon had been for many generations eager to civilise their people, by introducing among them some of the refinements of Greece, when they could snatch an interval of peace from the wars they were continually forced to wage against their rude neighbours to the north. They had employed the sculptors and painters of Athens and Sicyon; and the forced residence of Philip with the Thebans during the civil wars in Macedon, had rendered him at least intimate with the literature and philosophy of Greece.

In choosing Aristotle for one of the tutors of his son, Philip probably had a view to improving his taste, as well as cultivating those higher qualities, which, though they may exist without it, derive from it a grace and a spirit which double their value.

The same feeling which led “the stern Emathian conqueror” to

made him the friend of Apelles and the patron of Lysippus and Pyrgoteles[120].

I am not certain whether it was to Alexander or to his father, though probably to the latter, that Pamphilus the Macedonian, a disciple of Eupompus, owed the protection which enabled him to re-establish the school of Sicyon, with such enlargement as suited the time. In the public course of instruction he procured painting to be ranked in the first degree of liberal sciences[121]; and, consequently, all youths of honourable birth were understood to learn at least the elements of drawing as part of their education[122].

Pamphilus had cultivated the severe sciences as well as the agreeable ones, including music and poetry. I have already mentioned that he required from his pupils a knowledge of arithmetic and geometry. His course of study, besides, appears to have been exact, if not severe. “No day without a line,” was a precept learnt by Apelles in his school, where he studied for ten years, paying a silver talent for each year[123], according to some, while others imagine the talent was paid for the whole ten years[124]. At any rate, Pamphilus set a high value upon his art, and maintained that none but the free could practise it.

His own pictures were much prized: Pliny names one of the battle of Phlius; another, of Ulysses in a small vessel at sea; and a third picture, containing, as I imagine, several family portraits. Quintilian praises the beautiful designs of Pamphilus; and as many of his original works were in Rome when Quintilian wrote, he had an opportunity of judging of them for himself. But it is Apelles whose name spreads lustre over the most refined and polished æra of painting in Greece. Admired, beloved, and consulted in his own time, and praised by every writer among the ancients, we have to lament not only that no picture of his has come down to us, but that those letters to his pupils, and those more connected works in which he is said to have laid down all the rules and principles—nay, the very secrets of art, have perished.

Apelles was born in Cos, though Lucian, in one of his dialogues, talks of him as a native of Ephesus[125]. He seems to have been endowed with the sweetest temper and disposition, as well as the finest genius. He was generously eager to set forth the merits of others, and the urbanity of his manners was such, that while he used perfect freedom, he could not give offence.

As an instance of this, Pliny relates that Alexander, who frequently visited his workshop, allowed himself great licence and liberty of jesting. Apelles gently reproved him, entreating him to forbear, lest his pupils and the boys who ground his colours should repeat his words and make a jest of the king.

The freedom of the painter was so far from displeasing, that Alexander appears to have cultivated an intimacy with him, little usual between a king and conqueror, and an artist.

Besides employing him to paint his own portrait, and forbidding any other painter to attempt it, he took so great an interest in the Venus Anadyomene, which Apelles was at work upon when he arrived at Athens, that he sent him the most beautiful of his Theban captives, named Campaspe, with whom he is reported to have been deeply in love, to serve as a model. Apelles, moved by her misfortunes and her loveliness, conceived a passion for her which could not be concealed, and Alexander perceiving that his captive returned the painter’s affection, instantly resigned her to him[126].

But the favour of Apelles with Alexander seems to have procured him the ill-will of some of the courtiers, particularly of Ptolemy, as was shown some years afterwards, when Apelles, being on a voyage to Rhodes, was shipwrecked at the mouth of the Nile; and on getting ashore repaired to Alexandria, where Ptolemy, who had become King of Egypt on Alexander’s death, then held his court. It appears that several Greek painters had already established themselves there, and that jealous of the motives of Apelles’ visit, they, in conjunction with a painter of Alexandria, named Antiphilus, planned his ruin by the following artifice.

They bribed the court jester to invite Apelles formally to sup with the king. On his presenting himself, Ptolemy, remembering his ancient enmity, was extremely enraged, and threatened him with death, unless he instantly informed him of the name and quality of his inviter. Apelles being entirely ignorant of both, and unacquainted with any person at court, took a piece of charcoal and drew the face of the jester, which was recognised instantly; the life of the painter was spared; but his treatment was such that he hastened to escape from Egypt, and soon after painted, in memorial of his danger, the allegory of Calumny, which has been highly praised by the ancients, and has furnished several modern painters with a theme[127].

Apelles’ first voyage to Rhodes was expressly to visit Protogenes, at that time extremely poor, and living in obscurity. Some of his works having been brought to Athens for sale, and publicly exhibited, Apelles instantly resolved to make acquaintance with the painter, and embarked accordingly. On landing, he ran eagerly to the house of Protogenes, and, finding that he was abroad, took up his pencil, and drew a fine pure line, such as he thought only himself could draw. He left it and returned, when he hoped Protogenes might be found; but he had been obliged to leave home again, not, however, without acknowledging the line of Apelles, for he drew another still finer within it. Apelles now added a third finer than either, which Protogenes seeing, now made it his business to discover the stranger, with whom he contracted a lasting friendship[128].

The proverb that a prophet is not honoured in his own country, was not, it seems, falsified in the case of Protogenes, whose fellow-townsmen, the Rhodians, esteemed his pictures but lightly, and paid him a very inadequate price for them. Apelles, however, on inquiring the cost of some works he was engaged upon, declared he thought the sum much too small, and immediately engaged to give fifty talents for them[129]. The Rhodians, astonished at the price, imagined that Apelles had purchased them for the purpose of selling again as his own. They therefore began to open their eyes to his merit, and the reputation of Protogenes rose nearly to an equality with that of Apelles himself.

In a former Essay I have mentioned the compliment paid to Protogenes by Demetrius, who refused to attack the quarter of the city of Rhodes, where his famous picture of Ialysus then hung. It is of that painting that we are told that accident produced one of its greatest beauties. Protogenes, being anxious to represent the foam from the mouth of one of the overtired dogs, found it so difficult, that, losing patience, he threw his sponge at it. The softness of the sponge just obliterated so much of the form as the foam might naturally have hidden, and the painter, improving the accident, rendered the picture perfect[130].

But Apelles, however he might admire and assist Protogenes, used to find one fault with him, he said he never knew when to have done, and that he sometimes injured his works by over-anxiety. In this matter he preferred himself to his friend, as of better judgment.

Yet Apelles was careful beyond what we know of modern painters, as we learn from the well known story of his publicly exhibiting his pictures, and hiding himself behind them, that he might profit by the unrestrained criticism of the multitude. On one occasion, a shoemaker passing, remarked that something was wanting to the sandal of the principal figure. In the evening, Apelles altered the faulty sandal, and when the shoemaker passed the next morning, he was so charmed with the attention paid to his observations, that he extended them farther, and began to find fault with the limbs; upon which, Apelles broke out of his hiding place, exclaiming, “Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last,” which words have passed into a proverb.

The most noted work of Apelles was his Venus Anadyomene, which was afterwards carried to Rome, and so greatly injured in the carriage, that it could not be restored.

He had undertaken to make a duplicate of this celebrated figure, but died before it was finished, and the imperfect work is said to have been valued as highly as his more perfect paintings, because it was the last thing upon which that skilful hand had rested.

In the Greek Anthology there are the following lines of Leonidas, which inform us how the painter had treated the subject:

After the Venus, the ancient critics seem to have prized the famous portrait of Alexander, in the character of Jupiter the Thunderer, which was hung in the temple of Diana of Ephesus, and cost no less than twenty talents of gold, according to Pliny. This picture is praised as much for grandeur and majesty as the Venus for loveliness. Nor was it the only portrait of Alexander he painted, for we are told that he represented him in every action and character, and that the pictures of King Philip, by Apelles, were almost equally numerous. The portrait of Clytus he painted in armour, and that of Megabyzus, the priest of Diana, in his priestly robes, performing a sacrifice. Of other remarkable portraits by him, we have the names of Antiochus, the king, whom he painted in profile to conceal the want of an eye, which disfigured him; of Menander, king of the Rhodians; of Gorgosthenes, the tragedian; and of one Ancæus, a Samian.

At Rome there was an allegorical picture painted by him, in which Castor and Pollux, Alexander, and a winged victory were introduced; and also that picture of war in chains, which was afterwards so cruelly defaced by Claudius, who, as I have already mentioned, had the head of Alexander scraped out, and that of Augustus substituted for it[131].

Other subjects on which he employed his pencil have been named by various authors: for instance, a Hercules nearly turned from the spectator; a Hero and Leander; Archelaus with his wife and daughter; and a most beautiful picture of Diana, with her attendant virgins preparing a sacrifice. This last was esteemed by the connoisseurs of Greece as one of his very finest works, though a few preferred a picture of Antigonus on horseback. He had painted the same king in armour, on foot, with his horse led by a soldier, but this work was not esteemed nearly so much as the other. He seems to have been fond of painting horses, and carried away the prize from several rivals in subjects where they were treated, either alone, or along with their riders. I am not clear whether it were a solitary horse, or one on which he had mounted Neoptolemus armed, and charging some Persian soldiers, that, according to Pliny, procured him the compliment of a greeting from a real horse that was passing by[132].

It is evident, I think, from what the ancients have related concerning his works, that he never painted in fresco, nor do I find any mention made of drawings on parchment, like those of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. He must then have painted upon pannel with the usual preparation of chalk or carbonate of lime, with size. Of the peculiar glaze or varnish, which he is said to have first used, I shall have occasion to speak in a future Essay.

Protogenes, the friend and rival of Apelles, was born at Caunus, in Cilicia; but Rhodes was his adopted country. His poverty was such, that he was a ship painter during the early part of his life. Now the ships of the ancients, though coloured generally red or black, laid on with pitch, wax, and oil, at the bottoms and the seams, had always a figure painted at the prow, representing the tutelary deity, or hero of the vessel, much after the manner of our figure-heads. On the stern it was customary to paint marine subjects, such as Neptune and Amphitrite, the Tritons, the birth of Venus, and so on[133]. In the course of this practice Protogenes acquired great knowledge and skill in shipping, and became a considerable marine painter.

Perhaps the sight of some of the ships painted by him might have induced the Athenians to invite him to paint some of their favourite ships of war, in the Portico near Minerva’s temple. The great praises bestowed on his pictures by Apelles, was another temptation to a people so eager after every kind of elegance, to engage him in the service of the city. Accordingly, about the fiftieth year of his age, he accepted an invitation to work for the Republic, and having painted the Thesmothetæ of the time[134] in the chamber of the council of five hundred, he painted the two galleys, Paralus and Hemionis, in the portico near Minerva’s Temple. The Greek painters were occasionally in the habit of surrounding their pictures with a border of subjects, executed on a smaller scale than the main action of the picture; this they called Parerga[135]. The parerga to the Paralus and Hemionis consisted of small vessels, of various kinds and dimensions. Pliny says that the painter intended thereby to show from what small beginnings, he, a painter of ships and boats, had arisen to eminence. But I think it more likely that he only made his border to suit his subject, which was dedicated to the service of the state and commerce of Athens[136].

It is said that while Protogenes remained in Athens, Aristotle urged him, without success, to paint the triumphs of Alexander. But he painted some portraits which were highly esteemed, particularly one of Aristotle’s mother. He also painted Antigonus and some other men of note in his time. None of his pictures, however, were so much admired as his Ialysus; though the Anapomenes or Satyrs at rest, the Cydippe, the Tlepolemus, and the Pan, were greatly esteemed. Protogenes acquired as great a reputation for his bronze statues as his pictures.

Aristides of Thebes is the next great name in the third era of Greek painting. He was remarkable for the intense expression he threw into his figures. His battle pieces, his hunting scenes, and his chariot races, painted for foreign kings and public halls, though highly prized, were far below the pathetic groups of his smaller pictures, in general esteem. There was a suppliant sueing so earnestly for grace that his very voice seemed to be heard; there was Byblis expiring for love; also a tragic actor, with his attendant on the scene, and some other pictures, which were carried to Rome, and hung in the most honourable places[137]. His great merit seems to have been a close attention to nature, not only in form but in action and expression; else, whence arose the strong attraction of his Dying Man? But the most touching of all his works was that picture of the storming of a town, in which the foremost group consisted of a dying mother and her infant. The child was creeping towards the breast, she anxiously watching its weak movements, and endeavouring to guide it aright. None could look on this painting without a tender horror; few without shedding tears. It was found in Thebes, when the place was sacked by Alexander. He took it for his own, and sent it to Pella. The following lines, by Emilianus Nicœus, convey the sentiments of the painter.

Nichomachus was a painter, formed in the same school with Aristides. But his mind had a freer and more cheerful turn; and we find in Pliny’s list of his pictures some of even a playful cast. For instance, one of a procession of the priestesses of Bacchus, in their habits, which having attracted the notice of the sylvan deities, they are peeping from the woods, and creeping as near as they dare. The rape of Proserpine was another of his subjects. The sea monster Scylla another. He is also known to have painted Ulysses on his raft; several pictures of the gods, an Apotheosis, and other works, which were carried to Rome.

He had the reputation of painting with greater celerity than any other man of his time, in proof of which, we have the following anecdote. He had undertaken to paint, for a certain sum of money, the tomb which Anstrœtus, tyrant of Sicyon, had built in memory of Telestes the poet. The work was to be finished by a certain day; but four days before the time appointed, the painter had not even arrived at Sicyon to begin. Upon learning this, Anstrœtus threatened him with exemplary punishment. But, to the tyrant’s surprise, when the day came round, instead of punishment, he had to bestow both the promised reward and the highest praise, for the excellency of the work.

I come now to the last great painters of Greece, Pausias and Euphranor, who were a little after the time of Apelles and Aristides.

Timomachus, of Byzantium; Nicias, of Athens; and Theon of Samos, indeed, attained to considerable fame; and there were some painters of familiar life and other subjects, that appear to deserve notice for their reputation, even were it less curious to observe how ancient and modern art have followed the same paths.

Pausias was the son and pupil of Brietes, of Sicyon, and appears to have been dexterous in the use of every kind of material and tool then known. He was particularly celebrated for his pictures in encaustic, of the origin of which method of painting Pliny himself was in doubt. His skill in the more ancient methods of painting was such, that he was chosen to repair the pictures of Polygnotus, at Thespiæ, which had suffered greatly from time and damp. It is true that his work was considered greatly inferior to that of the original picture; not, indeed, as Fuseli says, because he used a different method and different tools, but because he wrought in a manner to which he was unaccustomed. May we not also say, because his gay, cheerful disposition, delighting in painting children and flowers, did not and could not enter into the high and solemn feelings which seem to have constantly guided the pencil of Polygnotus?

The exceeding beauty of colour which is said to have distinguished the pictures of Pausias, he owed to love. There lived in Sicyon an exceedingly beautiful girl, called Glycera, a garland maker, celebrated for the taste and elegance with which she wove the coronals, then worn universally at religious festivals and banquets, public and private. At first, Pausias resorted to her for the sake of painting the fresh flowers, and catching their combinations of colour and form; but he soon began to love Glycera more than her flowers; and the picture that he painted of her, while wreathing a garland, was the finest work that ever came from his hand[139].

Akin to this, was his Hemerosis, a small picture of a child, reported to have been painted in a single day, though executed with the greatest care and nicety, to prove how falsely those accused him of idleness who said his love of painting children arose from the little necessity there was for care and diligence in such subjects.

A very remarkable picture of his is mentioned, representing a sacrifice, in which a number of oxen are introduced. The foreshortening of one of these is said to have been imitated, though without success, by many rivals; the manner of casting the shadows also, upon the more distant groups, was a distinguishing excellence of Pausias.

This sacrifice, and other works of this most eminent man, were carried to Rome, when all the pictures at Sycyon were seized during the Edileship of Scaurus, as I have already mentioned.

Euphranor, the Isthmean, was the most accomplished of all the ancient painters after the time of Pausias. He was equally celebrated as a sculptor in marble and bronze, and the bowls and vases of his embossing always fetched a high price.

The great public work of Euphranor was a portico, in that part of Athens called the Ceramicus. One of the subjects was an allegorical picture of the early political state of Athens.

The Athenian people, Theseus, and the personage of Democracy, were introduced; but Pausanias, who mentions the subject, gives no account of its treatment, though he says it signified that Theseus first established equal rights of citizenship among the Athenians. In the same portico, Euphranor also painted the battle of Mantinea, in which the most remarkable group was an encounter of cavalry. Epaminondas was at the head of the Bœotians, and Gryllus, the son of Xenophon, led the Athenian horse.

One end of the portico Euphranor sanctified by paintings of the twelve superior gods. Perhaps some slight judgment of the tone of these pictures may be formed from the expression of Euphranor himself—that, while the Theseus of Parrhasius looked as if he had fed upon roses, his own showed that he lived upon flesh.

The other principal pictures of Euphranor appear to have belonged to the temple of Diana at Ephesus, the most remarkable of which was the feigned madness of Ulysses, who was harnessing a horse and an ox to the same yoke.

Before I proceed to the painters of less note, I will use the words of Quintillian to sum up the general character of some of the greatest men who distinguished the third period of Greek art.

“Protogenes distinguished himself by his accuracy: Pamphilus and Melanthus by beauty of design: Antiphilus by the easy and natural strokes of his pencil: Theon of Samos by his lively imagination: and Apelles by his ingenuity, and the graces which he boasted he had excelled in: Euphranor made himself admirable by being possessed of these different qualities in as eminent a degree as the best masters.”

The great encouragement of art about the time of Philip, and in the reign of Alexander and his immediate successors, called out abundance of talent of various kinds and degrees; from that of the Egyptian, or rather Alexandrian Antiphilus, whose attention to nature must have been of singular use to him in those scenes for the theatre on which he loved to employ himself, to that pupil of Apelles to whom his master said sarcastically, “As you have not been able to paint your Venus beautiful, you have made her fine;” in allusion to a profusion of gold chain and other ornaments with which he had loaded her. The serious pictures of Antiphilus which were carried to Rome, were the death of Hippolytus; several votive pictures of Greek divinities, and some few heroes. He painted grotesques so perfectly, that from one of his figures, a fool named Gryllus, with a cap and bells, such subjects got the name of Grylli.

Antiphilus is, besides, the first painter, whose name has come down to us, who painted fire-light effects. His most famous work of this kind was a boy blowing a fire with his mouth, in which the natural character of the boy, and the effect of the light throughout the room, were greatly admired. Another favourite picture represented a number of women spinning and gossiping, highly valued for its truth.

Pliny seems doubtful whether it be not beneath the dignity of painting to praise Pyreicus, who loved to paint interiors, especially the shops of tailors, shoemakers, and sempstresses; giving every thing its true nature and character, to a degree that attracted much admiration and many purchasers; and as he delighted in making pictures of the houses of the humble classes of men, he loved also to paint the animals that especially belong to them. The nickname of Rhyparographus, was given him, on account of his skill in painting asses bringing vegetables and fruit to market. These pictures were of small size, and very highly finished, and were sold for large prices. Serapion, the contemporary of Pyreicus, on the contrary, painted nothing but play-house scenes, mock architecture, and other things of enormous size, but was incapable of drawing either men or animals.

Heraclides the Macedonian was celebrated as a marine painter. His friend Metrodorus, I conjecture to have been a scene painter, and as he combined considerable knowledge of the arts, with the science requisite for a tutor to young men, he was employed by Lucius Paulus both to bring up his sons, and to paint his triumphs.

But I will close my account of the painters of Greece with two names of greater eminence, Nicias and Timomachus, who lived in the time of Julius Cæsar. Nicias was an Athenian of considerable private fortune, so that having painted a picture of the descent of Ulysses to the infernal regions, he refused to sell it at a very high price to a foreign prince, and presented it to his native city. He was famous above all for the beauty of his women, and the bold relief of his figures, which are said to have appeared ready to leave the ground they were painted upon, and to walk out of their frames. I have mentioned in the last Essay the subjects of some of his principal pictures which were carried to Rome, and highly prized by Augustus Cæsar. There seems to have been another painter of the same name[140], who was also a sculptor and pupil of Praxiteles, who esteemed him highly on account of the exquisite finish of his works.

Timomachus of Byzantium seems to have delighted most in tragic subjects, though a picture of his, containing excellent portraits of several generations of one and the same family, is mentioned. His most successful work is said to have been a Gorgon’s head. He painted Iphigenia in Aulis, Orestes and Clytæmnestra; and, for Julius Cæsar, an Ajax and a Medea. The treatment of the latter we may gather from the following lines, by Antiphilus, preserved in the Greek anthology.

ON THE MEDEA OF TIMOMACHUS.

I think it best to close my account of ancient Greek painting here, while it was still practised by great masters in their own land, not yet quite enslaved. From the time of Augustus, Italy attracted the best artists of all kinds, but, as I have already shown, it was not under the Cæsars that the liberal arts flourished most.

I have now given a sketch of the history of painting and painters in Greece—very imperfect, I acknowledge, but such as I can collect from the authors who either treat on the subject of pictures and artists, or who have left incidental remarks on them, in such works as have come down to us.

The first efforts of painting in Greece appear to have been as rude as we found them among the savages of Polynesia. The earliest steps of art in Egypt and Etruria elude our observation, but the nature of the improvements attributed to Eumanus of Athens, teach us what they were in Greece.

The art once exercised, however, neither halted nor tarried. It was sublime in its simplicity in the hands of Polygnotus and his cotemporaries. It served their gods and their country. Much improved in beauty, but still grave and dignified, it grew popular in the time of Parrhasius and Zeuxis. Under Apelles and his followers it was devoted to the graces, revelled in beauty, and ministered to the refined pleasures of taste, rather than as at first, to the gratification of higher moral feelings.

Brought down thus to the commoner tone of general society, more various subjects were thought worthy of it. Pyreicus anticipated the subjects of the modern Dutch painters, and it should seem with kindred success. The natural desire for novelty, and the anxiety for individual distinction, produced fire-light scenes, pictures of still life and other varieties. Fashion, rather than taste, became the guide of purchasers, and it may truly be said, that the decline of painting began with the Macedonian conquests, which altered the character of the Greeks, and, consequently, of their arts.

FOOTNOTES:

ESSAY V. OF THE CLASSIFICATION OF PICTURES.

The more general any word is in its signification, it is the more liable to be abused by an improper or unmeaning application. A very general term is applicable alike to a multitude of different individuals, a particular term is applicable but to a few. The latitude of a word, though different from its ambiguity, hath often a similar effect.

Campbell. Philosophy of Rhetoric.

It will be useful to pause a little, between the historic sketch I have already made of antique painting, and that which is to follow, of the entire decay, and first faint revival of the Art; and to consider what branches of painting had been chiefly cultivated by the ancients, and whether the ordinary classification of pictures can be satisfactorily applied to their works, or even correctly to the productions of modern painters. It will not be uninteresting either, to consider the materials and colours used by the ancient artists, as compared with those known to the moderns.

I have already shown the probable origin of painting, its earliest application to the service of religion, and its use as a method of recording events among some nations, before the invention of alphabetical writing. While it was confined chiefly to the latter purpose, it remained fixed, and incapable of improvement; but as soon as alphabetical writing was either invented or adopted in any country, the imitative arts became free, and improved in feeling, spirit, and expression, as well as in execution.

While the Grecian states and cities were struggling for national independence and civil freedom, the arts maintained a severe and almost awful character, devoted exclusively to religion and patriotism. But those great objects once attained, society became more polished; a larger space was allotted to the exercise of the imagination. Various sects of Philosophers sprang up: a new race of Poets arose; and the arts losing part of their grandeur with their austerity, began to partake of the blandishments of those luxurious times, that succeeded to the great political struggles of the country.

Painting was capable of assisting the task of the moral teachers, by her power of expressing passion. She illustrated the dreams of the poets with graceful compositions, formed no less of imaginary beings than of real personages; and, for a long period, the Virtues and the Graces equally presided over the painter’s study.

But it was natural that, in the great diversity of tastes, some should seek after the mere ornament that the arts could furnish. Hence the minor walks of painting began to be cultivated apart from the greater. And something was found to gratify every spectator in the various departments of this enchanting art.

It has been the custom to distribute all the various works of art into three or four classes, each comprehending a most incongruous variety[142].

The first place is always allowed to Historic Painting, which, as now understood, means everything that is not portrait, or domestic scenery, or landscape, or flowers, or caricature, from the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo, down to a sleeping nymph, or a weeping Magdalene[143].

Portrait comes next, and even those who have seen Giulio II. are not ashamed to place in the same class, the Lord Henrys and Lady Janes, Les Barons de T., or Les Comtesses de V., that annually adorn the walls of the London and Paris exhibitions.

With the Familiar Life class, as now understood, I do not quarrel; if the Dutch and Flemings, two centuries ago, far exceeded all we do in execution, we moderns are much above them in sense and feeling; in having a story to tell and telling it well. Besides, the words familiar life admit at once every variety of subject, from genteel comedy to broad farce. It appears to have been cultivated with some success by the ancients.

But the Landscape class! Surely it is strange to put the Enchanted Castle of Claude, and the Deluge of Poussin, together with views on Hounslow Heath, and scenes in the Waterloo tea gardens! Landscape painting, indeed, seems to be a modern art, as considered by itself; though it must have been practised for the sake of backgrounds by the ancients, as I shall have occasion to notice.

It has pleased the writers upon painting to make a class apart of Animal Painting, and to consider the class as an inferior one. It is right to separate it: but the inferiority will scarcely be allowed by those who know the works of Rubens and Snyders. At any rate, the ancients did not consider it mean, by their praise of the animals of Nicias and Pausias generally, of the horses of Apelles, and the dogs of Protogenes, in particular.

In Fruit, and Flowers, and Still Life, we have again the ancients to support us. How lovely were the fresh flowers in the Stephanopolis of Pausias! Then the grapes of Zeuxis, and the curtain of Parrhasius, how exquisitely finished!

As to the delineations of animals, plants, minerals, &c., for the purposes of natural history, they must be considered as combining the original uses of the graphic art; namely, history writing, with the practical improvement of modern times; and I shall not make any further mention of them[144].

It is evident that this classification is as absurd and inconvenient, as it would be in poetry to place under the same head, Homer’s Iliad and the ballad of Colin and Lucy, because both tell a story.

If, however, in conformity with long usage, we must preserve these classes, they ought to be subdivided, so as to dispose works really of the same order apart from the masses in which they are now confounded.

I am aware that, however decided the distinction may be between the great works that must form the example for each subdivision, it will be difficult to keep the limits so clear, that the exact place of any particular work may be known and fixed at once; but that is surely a small evil compared with the present confusion.

The class History, has been felt to be so indefinite, that some of the best writers on art have tacitly divided it into the strictly Historical and the Dramatic[145]. As far as it goes, the division is excellent; but it still leaves such masses to be separated, that I cannot but wish for farther distinctions. For instance, I should wish not to place in the same class, the taking of Troy by Polygnotus, the sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis by Timanthes, and the single figure of Ajax by Apollodorus, but to allow each of those to be the example of a separate division; and quite apart from those, I should wish to place all allegorical and didactic subjects, as well as those in which the machinery of superior or inferior natures is introduced.

Thus, those subjects now clumsily thrown together, under the name of History, would come naturally to form four distinct classes, each of which ought, in strictness, to be again broken into subdivisions.

The four classes I should propose to call,

1st. Ethic or Didactic.

2nd. Epic.

3rd. Historical.

4th. Dramatic.

Each of these will admit of farther subdivision. The Ethical subjects should be distributed into—

The Purely Didactic;

The Emblematic;

And Satire, or the Higher Caricature.

Of the Epic class I should make but two great divisions, each, however, capable of very marked partition.

1st. The Christian Religious Subjects.

2nd. The Antique Mythological Subjects, whether painted by ancients or moderns.

1st. The Christian division depending upon the introduction of Saints, Angels, and even more awful natures, but not comprehending Christ while on earth.

2nd. The Antique upon the introduction of the deified heroes and gods of Paganism.

The really Historical class of pictures may be divided into those in which a whole history is treated in a single picture.

Those in which a history is treated in a series of pictures.

Those in which a single point of history forms the picture.

The Dramatic class might comprehend the familiar life subjects; but I have thought it better to leave those as they have hitherto stood, by themselves; and to reckon only in this class

The single actions of higher tragedy:

Single actions of a mixed character.

In Portrait painting it will be readily allowed that there are strongly marked distinctions between

The Historical Portrait;

The Scenic Portrait subjects;

And Portraits of common characters.

The Familiar Life class naturally divides into,

Grave Comedy;

Light Comedy, or Farce.

Of Landscape, the distinct varieties are,

The Epic Landscape;

The Historic Landscape;

The Imaginary, or Poetic Landscape;

And the mere Portrait Landscape.

Animal painters have naturally made two classes:

The Dramatic;

And the mere Portrait.

Of each of these subdivisions, I will point out specimens, which I hope will support what I have said as to the propriety of a more precise classification than has hitherto been adopted. Not that I mean to make a catalogue for every class, though I believe such a thing would have its use.

The difficulty of making such a catalogue would be very great, because the subjects so often force the painter into a greater degree of relation with neighbouring classes than can be reconciled with any thing like a strict classification.

OF THE ETHIC CLASS.

At the head of the first, or purely didactic division of this class, I shall place the picture, or “Table of Cebes,” as it is commonly called. The picture may have been painted, or it may have existed only in the imagination of that amiable disciple of Socrates. In either case his description shows the importance which was attached to painting by the ancients as an instrument of public instruction[146].

He says there was a picture hung in a certain temple, and that one of the persons attached to the temple was always at hand to exhibit it to visiters, and to explain its meaning; and he gives the dialogue between the exhibitor and a visiter at length, that he may introduce a description of the whole composition, as well as an account of the moral end of the picture. The action represented is Human Life as a whole; and the parts are the vicissitudes to which it is subject.

The ground-work of the table seems to have been a landscape in various parts, of which the different situations occur most proper for the purpose of the painter. The landscape is subdivided into separate enclosures, at the first gate of which is placed the Genius of Human Life, ushering in those who are about to begin their pilgrimage. They first meet upon their road with Deception, who offers them the Cup of Error and of Ignorance; then come Opinions, and Appetites, and Pleasures to delude them.

The next great object in the picture is Fortune, who, with her followers, occupies a considerable space, near which are the Vices, who naturally lead to the den of Punishment, where they meet with Sorrow, Anguish, Lamentation, and Despair.

Some, however, happily reach the dwelling of Repentance, and thence set forth to seek Education.

Here again some go astray and entangle themselves with False Education, by whom they are once more betrayed to the Passions and to wrong Opinions; but the Happy, by the assistance of Self Command and Perseverance, reach the mansion of True Education, whom they find with her daughters, Truth and Persuasion. These introduce them to Knowledge and the Virtues, who conduct them to the palace of their mother, Happiness, by whom they are crowned as victors in the race of life.

The Calumny of Apelles, of which I have copied Lucian’s description in a note to a former essay, is another example of this kind of painting among the ancients.

I shall cite one modern fresco work, now nearly effaced from the walls upon which it was painted by Lorenzetti, one of the earliest restorers of painting in the fourteenth century.

In the palace of government, in the city of Sienna, this remarkable picture is still to be traced. In the time of the freedom of the city, the magistrates could not go daily to their public duties without passing through the hall where it was painted, to remind them of the blessings of peace and good government, and the curse of war and misrule.

The part that is sufficiently preserved for the design to be intelligible, is immediately opposite the window. In the centre, the Almighty Ruler sits, holding a globe; over his head are Faith, Hope, and Charity; on his left hand are Magnanimity and Justice; on his right, Prudence, Fortitude, and Peace, each with her several attributes. Beyond Peace, sits Diligence; above whom is Wisdom. Two scales hang, one on each side of Diligence, from which angels are distributing riches and honour to the followers of Diligence and Wisdom. On the side where Justice and Magnanimity are placed, enough of the design remains to show the punishment of Crime—the absolving of Innocence, and generous forgiveness where lenity is possible. Below these figures a procession of the citizens of Sienna appears to be moving towards the Almighty Ruler and Protector of their state. Upon the wall to the left are traced the effects of good government and public security; on one side cultivated fields, with a busy and cheerful peasantry, and hard by, a flourishing city, with persons engaged in trade and commerce, and other occupations of peace. The rest of the wall is filled up with cheerful landscape, in various parts of which the social amusements of dancing, hawking, riding, &c., are enjoyed. The opposite wall did contain a representation of all the evils of bad government, Vain Glory, War, Famine, Beggary, and Cruelty[147].

The second division of the Ethical class of pictures comprises emblems and allegories.

I have already mentioned two remarkable emblematical pictures of the ancients: the Demos of Athens by Parrhasius, and Euphranor’s popular estate. To these I will add the allegories of the shield of Achilles, and the emblems so beautifully imagined on medals, coins, and gems, besides the innumerable pictures chiefly upon vases referring to the mysteries of the Pagan worship, particularly as connected with the passage of the soul from this life, through death, to another.

The modern painters have also dealt largely in allegory. Not to go farther back among Christian painters than Giotto, his marriage of St. Francis with Poverty at Assisi is a striking example; and so are the figures of the Virtues and Vices, so beautifully designed by him in the chapel of the Nunziata dell’ Arena, at Padua.

But passing over innumerable pictures of the kind, I will go at once to the Sistine Chapel, where Michael Angelo’s Prophets and Sybils demand, at the first view, a class apart from ordinary historical subjects, and, as moderns, to stand at the head of that class. Then follow Prophets and Sybils by Raffaelle; Peruzzi’s all but sublime Sybil at Sienna, and a thousand more, among which the Allegories of Rubens claim a distinguished place[148]; not, indeed, for refinement of thought, but for skill in composition.

The third division into which I desire to break the class of Ethical pictures comprehends the higher caricature.

The ancients certainly practised this species of painting, but I do not know that the description of any has been preserved.

There is, however, in Fortefiocca’s life of Cola di Rienzi a very remarkable account of some which that extraordinary man caused to be painted, in order to stir up the Romans of his time to a sense of their degradation[149]. One was painted upon the wall of the palace of the Capitol, looking towards the Forum; the other near St. Angelo. In both, the nobles and magistrates of Rome were treated with bitter satire, and the city and commonwealth represented as in the lowest state of misery. The effect these caricatures had upon the people may be read in the original life of Rienzi, written in the vernacular idiom of Rome in his own time.

It would be most unjust not to consider, as preeminent in this walk of art, Hogarth, whose satirical pencil was employed in the chastisement of vice, and the promotion of virtue. His works are a school in themselves; and are as far removed, as a “greatest is from least,” from the mean and filthy caricatures that libel private life, and from the evanescent exaggerations of political squibs.

Epic Pictures.

The examples for the first division of this class, containing supernatural agents of a Christian character, must, of course, be taken exclusively from modern works.

First of these, the Last Judgment of Michael Angelo will occur to every imagination. With it I will name a work that he himself looked upon with the highest admiration; the chapel, painted by Luca Signorelli, at Orvieto, many of the figures of which were adopted by Buonarotti himself, who, perhaps scarcely ever surpassed in expression the group of blasphemers struck by the thunderbolt[151].

Nor can I omit Raffaelle’s Heliodorus in the Temple: these are instances of the terrible in this class.

Of that sublime, the key to which is stillness[152], Raffaelle’s dispute of the Sacrament is the most perfect example. Though in the Spanish Chapter-House of St. Maria Novella, in Florence, that elder painter, Taddeo Gaddi, in a subject of the same kind, has in one or two figures reached the grand and the awful.

To the Christian division of the Epic class also belong all those magnificent pictures which represent the Ascension of Christ, the Assumption of the Virgin, the Martyrdoms and the Miracles of Saints, with their supernatural appearances, and also many of the subjects taken from the Old Testament.

Michael Angelo’s Creator, in the several acts of calling light out of darkness, and enduing man with life; and the other great conceptions in the roof of the Sistine chapel, occupy the first rank among these works of genius. Raffaelle’s Vision of Ezekiel is conceived in the same spirit, and his Madonna of San Sisto[153], in my mind, far exceeds all other Madonnas in glory, though the place is a high one, which may justly be claimed for Titian’s Assumption[154]. The same painter’s Peter Martyr[155], Domenichino’s Saint Jerome[156], Francia’s Saint Sebastian[157], may be named as some of the most important works which form this grand and very distinct division of the Epic class of pictures; it also comprehends Raffaelle’s lovely Madonna del Pesce[158], Christ’s Agony in the Garden by Correggio[159], and all those pictures where angelic natures are introduced.

Of examples for the second division, the best and greatest, as far as we may judge from description, were the works of Polygnotus. When he introduced the tutelary deity and protecting heroes of Athens into the battle of Marathon, he was inspired by the same genius that led Raffaelle in the Stanze to send forth Saint Peter and Saint Paul to turn back the host of barbarians from Rome.

The descent of Ulysses to the kingdom of Pluto, is another example of which I have already spoken. The Wars with the Giants of Mycon, and some other artists, and all subjects of apotheosis belong to this class.

I cannot cite the Wars of the Giants by Julio Romano, in Mantua, as a successful example of a modern rendering of the subject. And, in truth, after the Pagan gods ceased to be objects of devotion, the Greek and Roman mythologies were of infinitely too gay a character to inspire a painter with any but the most jocund and graceful compositions.

The Parnassus of Raffaelle, and his Psyche of the Farnesina[160], are charming examples of this. But these should form the chief of a very delightful class of pictures which cannot justly be called Epic, but which have fully as little title to their old name of historical pictures.

Reynolds called his exquisite pictures of children, fancy subjects. But the term FANCY, in this sense is grown, very undeservedly, as I think, into disrepute; or I should say it would designate perfectly the pictures I am now seeking a name for. Among them are Titian’s whole families of Dianas and Venuses, of Loves and Graces; the rival Auroras of Guido and Guercino; Paulo Veronese’s and Luini’s Europas; Annibale Caracci’s Farnese; Poussin’s classical compositions, and some others which seem to deserve a place very near the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles and Zeuxis’ Helen.

I am aware that I am not adhering strictly to my own classification, but I have not the presumption to propose an absolute rule. That must be for some one who, with the authority of a critic and an artist, can command attention and reverence enough to enforce a new arrangement.

I must therefore be content to leave the FANCIES as an appendix to the mythological division of the epic class, and proceed to cite examples of the three great branches of legitimate historical pictures.

Historical Pictures.

Here I know that in the very outset I shall shock all the sticklers for the unities; for my very first section must consist of whole histories represented in the same picture; admitting not only a variety of actions belonging to the history, but even a repetition of the persons engaged in it when it is essential, or even when it is convenient for the narrative.

The second section contains those histories which are related in a series of compositions, each forming a whole in itself, though belonging to a cycle.