The work most nearly related to this, also in marble, and perfectly similar in conception, is a figure of the Marsyas group, the celebrated Knife-sharpener in the Uffizi at Florence. This is also a representative of barbarism, probably a Scythian, the others having been Gauls; but, artistically, this makes no difference. No originals remain of the other figures in the group, of which the barbarian, cowering upon the ground and sharpening the knife for the flaying of Marsyas, probably formed no very important part. Another aim, the careful anatomical treatment of the body, is ostentatiously displayed in the copies of this work now in Berlin and Florence. The group suggests another locality, and forms a connecting medium between those two most important centres of art in that period, Pergamon and Rhodes.
Among the few republics of the time, the island of Rhodes was able to rival the brilliant courts of kings, in regard to artistic treasures, by its wealth of commerce and its political neutrality--the latter being rendered possible, as nowhere else, by its situation and importance.
That the influence of Lysippos prevailed there is clear from the fact that, after this master had sent thither his Phoibos upon the quadriga, the Rhodian Chares went to learn of him, and afterwards executed for his native city the above-mentioned colossus. This was followed in the same place by a hundred other colossal figures, which were probably related, in point of style, to the works of Lysippos. The statement of Pliny that each, singly, would have sufficed to make the place of its exposition famous is hardly intelligible. Numerous names of artists, mostly of Rhodes, found partly in inscriptions upon the bases, and partly mentioned by Pliny, might here be mentioned.
The multiplied productions of colossal works, however, would not suffice to give a very favorable idea of the state of art in Rhodes, were it not for the preservation of two examples, prominent among many, which were famous even in antiquity. These were the group of the Laoc.o.o.n, in the Vatican, and the so-called Farnese Bull, in Naples. The first (_Fig._ 237), which Pliny, with extravagant praise, calls the work of three Rhodians, Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros, was found in 1506--not in one piece, as he describes it, but in six--among the ruins of the house of t.i.tus, in whose palace Pliny says it was placed. It represents the priest Laoc.o.o.n, who sinned at the altar through love, and whom Apollo chastised by means of two serpents. This expiation became tragic, from its having taken place at the moment when Laoc.o.o.n had resolved to save his native city, Troy; and also from the suffering of the children, innocent, though born in sin. The serpents have encircled the three figures; the youngest is falling from the deadly sting; the father, sinking upon the altar after a desperate defence, is no longer able to protect himself; while the elder son, not yet threatened with instant death, but hopelessly entangled in the coils of the serpent, turns upon his father a look of despairing horror.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 237.--Group of Laoc.o.o.n and his Sons, by Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros. (Vatican.)]
This grand work, though from Pliny down to later times esteemed beyond its real merit, still makes evident to us peculiarities in the art of Rhodes which, in many respects, render it of independent value. We find in it a choice of subject new in sculpture, the technical and artistic difficulties of which appear almost insurmountable, so that it could only be treated by ability well trained and long experienced. It gave opportunity to surpa.s.s all existing productions in its display of artistic technical superiority. When the body of the Laoc.o.o.n is compared with the type of Heracles, it cannot be doubted that the canon of Lysippos was followed; but the forms, which with him were developed from the living model, in this, as in the Marsyas of Pergamon, are taken from anatomical studies, and are wanting in fulness of life: the overdetailed muscles are too studied, distinct, and separated; they are marble, and not flesh. The composition would, in real life, be impracticable; the action is visibly so ordered that it never could be possible, and is throughout developed with an aim towards the greatest effect. But this effect is by no means merely formal, limited to the restless and disquieting play of the lines of the limbs and trunks, and of the coils of the serpents. It is in the highest degree pathetic. Thus this element of the school of Praxiteles existed in this work, both the leading characteristics of that master being here displayed with an excessive ostentation. The pathos confronts us too exclusively, not modified by any ethic principle. The work does not, therefore, have the tragic power which lies in the descriptions of Sophocles, because, in the group, only the effect is to be seen; we have no hint as to the cause. The pathetic blends far more with the pathological event than with the ethical. The mastery of rendering, the composition, the effect--everything is wonderful; but it all lies in the realm of display: our admiration is given to the artist rather than to the work. It cannot be denied that this effective treatment was the dominant feature in the art of Rhodes; but it set technical mastery in the foreground, to the neglect of absolute and intrinsic merit.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 238.--The Farnese Bull of Apollonios and Tauriscos.
(In Naples.)]
This applies equally to the second great work, the so-called Farnese Bull (_Fig._ 238), the creation of two artists from Tralles, Apollonios and Tauriscos, who may have worked in Rhodes, as, according to Pliny, the group was to be seen there before it was brought to Rome under Augustus. This large group was found in the Baths of Caracalla soon after the discovery of the Laoc.o.o.n, and was transported to Naples, where it now stands in the Museo n.a.z.ionale. The scene is probably taken from the _Antiope_, a tragedy of Euripides, and an understanding of the story is necessary to its comprehension. Antiope was the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes; he being angry with her because of the love of Zeus, and incredulous as to the cause of her pregnancy, she fled to Mount Kithairon, where she bore the twins Zethos and Amphion. Having given these to the care of a shepherd, she was received by King Epopeus of Sikyon; but Lycos, the brother and successor of Nycteus, carried on the hateful persecution, even to the extent of making war against her protector. Sikyon was destroyed, and Antiope returned as a slave to Thebes, where the ill-treatment of Dirke, wife of Lycos, obliged her to fly once more to the mountains. There, at a festival of Bacchus, she was found again by her persecutor, and, for her flight, was given the terrible punishment of being dragged to death by a bull. Zethos and Amphion were ready to execute the command when a recognition took place, and a just vengeance brought the fate intended for Antiope upon the head of Dirke. This moment forms the imposing scene of the group. The raging bull is only with difficulty held by the avenging sons; Dirke, a most beautiful woman, praying in vain for grace, clasps the knee of one while the other is ready to throw around her the noose by which she is to be dragged over the rough ground of Kithairon. The pa.s.sion of the avenging sons, and the fear of Dirke, make the work highly pathetic and impressive; but it is not so really tragic as the Laoc.o.o.n, because the motive of the evidently brutal deed, though not entirely neglected, as in the former, is still not entirely comprehensible. Antiope, the heroine of the tragedy, is indeed present. But she is not brought into the action, and stands, in fact, behind the princ.i.p.al characters. She is therefore hardly more than a lay figure, expressing nothing. It might perhaps have been better to omit Antiope altogether, and to leave the action without any motive at all. The figure has, however, an interest of its own, being in an excellent state of preservation, while the others have suffered by restoration and by retouching. The composition, with its numerous figures, admirably executed, has a picturesque effect which is somewhat new in the history of Greek sculpture. This is enhanced by the accessories of the story, the rocky ground, and many local details symbolical of the occasion. Besides a fine large dog, really belonging to the group, there are a chaplet and a basket, a disproportionately small boy ornamented with a wreath, and, still more inferior in size, two lions seizing a bull and a horse. There are also two boars coming out from a grotto, a lioness, a stag, a hind, a ram, an eagle with a snake, and a falcon over a dead bird; even turtles, snakes, and snails are represented. The mastery over the technical and artistic difficulties in this work is scarcely less admirable than in the Laoc.o.o.n, and it gives the same impression of a successful piece of bravura, astonishing and quite fascinating for its novelty, boldness, and versatile power. The age, indeed, satiated with the best products of various schools, demanded the stimulus of an excessive appeal to superficial sources of interest. The group of the Marsyas is attributed to artists of Pergamon, and the Wrestlers in the Uffizi at Florence (_Fig._ 239) may, with greater certainty, be ascribed to those of Rhodes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 239.--The Wrestlers. (In the Uffizi, Florence.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 240.--Apollo Belvedere. (In the Vatican.)]
Before we pa.s.s to the last active period of h.e.l.lenic art, one other work, preserved from this age, the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican (_Fig._ 240), still claims our consideration. Though without the name of the artist, or of the place of its origin, and not, perhaps, to be cla.s.sed directly with the greatest productions of Pergamon and Rhodes, it is yet not unworthy to rank by their side. It is, like the Laoc.o.o.n, one of the best-known statues among the existing treasures of antiquity, and scarcely needs a minute description. The splendid triumphant head looking into the distance, the slender figure, as fine in modelling as it is n.o.ble, the pleasing grace of the light step, a.s.sure for it an admiration, the more universal as these beauties--the combined result of the schools of Lysippos and of Praxiteles--are just those which are the most generally recognized. It is not an original work, in the full sense of the word, but an early Roman copy from the bronze, and seems to bear a closer relation to it than does the lately discovered head which is now in the museum at Basle. This latter has lost the characteristic features of the bronze style, and from the greater freedom of its treatment may be called a _translation_ into marble, in distinction from the _copy_ in the Vatican. Another reproduction of this work recently made known by Stephani, a bronze statuette in the Strogonoff collection, at St. Petersburg, has given an additional explanation of the action in which the G.o.d was represented.
In the marble the left hand was wanting, and in the restoration this was supplied with a bow; but in the Strogonoff Apollo remains are still to be seen of the aegis, held in the hand, with which the deity drove back the Greeks, as described by Homer, Il. xv. 306. If the far-shooter be thus changed into the aegis-bearer, the shaking of the aegis symbolizing the storm, a plain reference may be found to the original motive of the work. When the Gauls threatened Delphi in 279 B.C., the defence of the Greeks was effectively a.s.sisted by a terrible storm, which threw the barbarians into a fearful panic, and which was regarded by the Greeks as caused by the personal intervention of Apollo, Athene, and Artemis. This might well have had an effect upon art similar to that of the victory of Attalos over the Gauls in Asia Minor. The aetolians, indeed, proposed to erect at Delphi a votive offering, with figures of field-officers and of the three G.o.ds, while a statue of Apollo was erected in Patrae from a similar reason. In view of this, Overbeck has ventured to combine the Apollo Belvedere, the Artemis of Versailles (_Fig._ 241), and the striding Athene of the Capitoline Museum into one group, to which ideal union the unsimilarity of the workmanship, and even of the scale of the three statues, is not so much opposed--since these are all copies that have come down to us from different times--as is the movement of the Apollo, the middle figure, towards the right. This difficulty might be met by changing the positions, so that Athene should stand at the right and Artemis at the left, whereby the action of the figures might be from, rather than towards, each other, Artemis being turned decidedly more towards the front. If, however, this work originated in consequence of the victory in 279 B.C., it shows that a generation before the time of Attalos, at least in Greece proper, although attention had already been devoted to momentary action, art nevertheless still stood upon an ideal height, and could still delineate G.o.ds worthy of admiration.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 241.--Artemis of Versailles.]
These artistic efforts do not, on the whole, refute the opinion of Pliny that art ceased from the 121st to the 156th Olympiad--that is, from 300 to 150 B.C. The chief localities of its activity, Pergamon and Rhodes, may be considered only as asylums found by the higher sculpture after it had lost all foothold in its native home. But when he says it took a new flight at the close of that period, we must acknowledge that the result was not of that kind which could charm us as it did the Roman narrator.
As Brunn remarks, the date of Pliny agrees with that period when h.e.l.lenic art attained a decided mastery in Rome. Scarcely any evidences of the monumental art of Greece were to be recognized in Rome before the conquest of Syracuse in 212 B.C. After this time the Roman triumphs brought forth, one after another, an almost oppressive number of productions, so that the art of the Greek colonies, and of Greece itself, overflowed Rome in a broad stream. Not to mention the plundering of Capua, Tarention, and numerous Grecian cities in Lower Italy, we have an example in the triumphs of Quintius Flaminius, the conqueror of Kynoskephalae, 197 B.C., when the transportation of the statues lasted an entire day. The booty taken from Western Greece by M. Fulvius n.o.bilior, in 189 B.C., also contained not less than five hundred and fifteen statues. These extensive plunderings were at least equalled by the triumphs of L. Cornelius Scipio, the victor over Antiochos; of aemilius Paulus, conqueror of Perseus; of Metellus Macedonicus, and of the destroyer of Corinth, Mummius, who has become proverbial for his barbarous robberies. It was not strange that at last a living art followed the triumphal chariot of Roman victories. Metellus employed many Grecian artists in the erection and ornamentation of his new buildings in Rome.
The scene of artistic industry thus became changed, and Rome, a foreign city, became the central point--first of possession, and afterwards of artistic activity. It might therefore be questioned whether what follows were not better suited to the chapter upon Rome; but it must be considered that the Romans were, from our present point of view, only wealthy collectors and patrons of art, and that the artists employed were still Grecian, and of the h.e.l.lenic school. This was not altered by their working in Rome, or even by their learning from the numberless productions acc.u.mulated there.
Roman grandeur was long contented with artistic booty for the ornamenting of its forums, temples, and public buildings; the immense wealth of the empire and proconsulate giving opportunity for procuring celebrated works by force, by purchase, or as honorary gifts. This brought forth dilettanteism, which led to the study of art, and to a zeal for collecting which made every new acquisition an additional incentive to covetousness. Study choked that impulse which, in a degenerate way, had endeavored to outdo what had been done by masters of the best period, and, accounting their method to be exclusively good, turned art back by a sort of reaction upon those earlier paths. The pa.s.sion for collecting was not limited to the works ready at hand, but would have restorations and imitations by contemporary artists, made in the spirit of the originals. It could not have been otherwise than that art, after having exhausted the originals, and attained its aims in all directions, should react upon itself; but doubtless the circ.u.mstances of Rome had an essential influence upon the manner in which this took place, and greatly furthered this renaissance--to use a somewhat unsuitable term which, in its restricted sense, has been adopted for the far more original awakening of art at the close of the Middle Ages.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 242.--Borghese Gladiator of Agasias. (In the Louvre.)]
In the desire to enliven the different phases of artistic development, it was natural not to return to first principles, but rather to take those creations which lay near at hand, and try to find in them the way to improvement. The period under consideration, up to the commencement of the empire, offers examples of every stage of development, the dates of which can only here and there be given; but it seems that the way for an h.e.l.lenic renaissance was, during this period, partially opened.
Agasias of Ephesos appears as successor to the master of the Laoc.o.o.n and of the Farnese Bull. The celebrated Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre, which represents a warrior in fict.i.tious battle with a horseman, may be referred to the school of Rhodes. (_Fig._ 242.) As the statue did not belong to a group, but was independent, we see in it nothing but a show figure, in which the artist only sought for a position where he might outdo all that had gone before, and give opportunity to parade his technical mastery and his anatomical knowledge. That the work should be placed in this time, and not in the best period of the Rhodian school, is plain from the later character of the writing in the artist"s inscription, from the inferior understanding of the mutual relations of the muscles, and particularly from the insignificance of the idea, and the entire lack of the pathetic, all which elements lent to the works of Rhodes an especial value.
As examples from Rhodes and Pergamon not only lay near at hand for the artists of Asia Minor, but were germane to their civilization, so the numerous Attic masters of this period looked to the time of perfection in Attica and Sikyon. The tenets of the school of Lysippos still held sway there, and what splendid fruit it bore, even at this time, notwithstanding the retrogression from its earlier overvalued merit, is shown by the much admired torso, now in the Vatican Belvedere, by Apollonios, son of Nestor of Athens. (_Fig._ 243.) This must certainly have been a sitting Heracles, a motive repeatedly treated by Lysippos, though no restoration of it has yet been decidedly successful. The most probable is the latest by Petersen, which represents him as playing the kithara. The somewhat later statue by Glycon of Athens, the Heracles, who stands leaning upon his club (_Fig._ 231), though approaching somewhat in conception to a work of Lysippos, is far inferior. With this may be mentioned a still poorer repet.i.tion, the Heracles of the Pitti Palace in Florence, through a false inscription ascribed to Lysippos.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 243.--Belvedere Torso, by Apollonios. (In the Vatican.)]
Besides Apollonios, who was distinguished also by his youthful satyr and an Apollo, which are too little known for a more minute description, the school of Scopas and Praxiteles was followed by the son of Apollodoros of Athens, Cleomenes, the sculptor of the Venus de" Medici. When compared with the divine figure of the Venus of Melos, though pleasing, it appears degenerate. The G.o.dlike beauty which we impute to the Cnidian Aphrodite, and find in the Venus of Melos, is lost by the continual emphasis of sensuous effects, notwithstanding all the mastery and delicate feeling for beauty. With the exception of the Braschi Venus at Munich and the Venus of the Capitol, which are more nearly related to that of Cnidos, nearly all the nude figures of Venus in the various museums belong to the same circle and stage of development, even when they betray later work. The masters by no means appear to have been mere copyists; but the works of Praxiteles were altered, to suit the taste of the times, by artists in whom individuality was not quite extinct.
The school of Pheidias, with its high ideal, of which the age in question had little understanding, could never have become popular in the same degree. Rome possessed but few works of this master which could have served as examples, and those not the most important. Still, reminiscences of the best Attic style were not wanting, especially in those figures of the G.o.ds the type of which had been established by Pheidias, as in the statues of Zeus and Athene. The chryselephantine Zeus, by Polycles and Dionysios, in Metellus"s Temple of Jupiter, as also the Capitoline of the same material by Apollonios, may justly be referred to the Olympian original; the former at least with the more certainty, when it is considered that the sons of Polycles--Timocles and Timarchides--copied the sculptures upon a shield of the Parthenos for an Athene, designed for Elateia in Phokis. It is possible--and this may, perhaps, be still further established by Brunn, who has pointed out this connection--that the Pallas in the Villa Ludovisi, by Antiochos of Athens, which has been estimated below its worth, may be a reproduction of the Parthenos, modified and perhaps formed from memory. The treatment of the garments, and the whole position of this otherwise ill-executed figure, remind us of the chryselephantine works, and possess something of the dignity and n.o.bility of the better period.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 244.--Group by Menelaos. (In the Villa Ludovisi.)]
At a time when Cicero could say that in his opinion "the works of Polycleitos were perfectly beautiful" the master from Argos must have come into fashion. The artistic representative of this stage of appreciative development was Pasiteles, who worked in the time of Pompey, and whose important school has left traces of this influence in examples that have been preserved. The pathetic tendency was not entirely to be avoided, and, though not so evident in the academic male figure of the Villa Albani, which bears the name of Stephanos, the scholar of Pasiteles, is yet undeniable in the groups of Orestes and Electra in Naples, and of Orestes and Pylades in the Louvre. This trait is still more marked in a work of Menelaos, the scholar of Stephanos, the beautiful and celebrated group in the Villa Ludovisi (_Fig._ 244), designated by Winckelmann and Welcker as Electra and Orestes; by Jahn, as Merope and Cresphontes; by Kekule, as Deianeira and Hyllos; and by Schulze and Burckhardt, as Penelope and Telemachos. Though the artist has here made concessions to more recent influences, they did not give the work an eclectic character, as a.s.serted by Kekule, but rather displayed a somewhat archaistic conception, and the short proportions of Polycleitos, long since abandoned for the canon of Lysippos. On the other hand, the remark of Kekule appears just, that the characters do not seem conceived and modelled after nature, but rather as seen through the medium of the tragedy of Euripides.
When the reproductions had run through the entire circle of styles from the best period of art, the archaic was at last brought forward. It is known that Augustus ornamented his buildings, particularly the gable of the Palatine Temple of Apollo, with sculptures of the masters from Chios, Boupalos and Athenis, and that he also carried away from Tegea the Athene of the old Attic Endoios. Archaic art, always possessing a charm for devotional images which was doubled in a time of such satiety, came thus into fashion. A large number of archaistic works appeared, imitated after the antique, as has already been mentioned. They not seldom betray the influence of single figures from larger compositions in relief, as in the instance of the Amphora of the Athenian Sosibios in the Louvre.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 245.--Capitoline Centaur of Aristeas and Papias.
(Capitoline Museum.)]
The more or less free reproductiveness of this period, which we have to thank for a large proportion of the contents of our museums, naturally came to a conclusion in that unbridled mixture of style which combined in the same relief not only the various aims of different schools, but their well-known motives, as is the case with the relief of the Salpion upon the font of Gaeta. There was very little originality, and that was limited to genre, particularly to the idyllic, as in the play of Cupids, the best of which might be referred to old models. It is not known whether this was the case with the lioness of Arkesilaos, in the possession of Varro, which, according to Pliny"s description, bound by Cupids, was drinking from a horn, with mittens upon the paws to render them harmless. Models for this may be sought in the paintings of Alexandria. It is certain that the centaurs, bound and worried by Cupids, the best examples of which are preserved in the Louvre, the Vatican, the Doria Palace, and the Capitoline Museum, with that of Aristeas and Papias from Aphrodisias, are imitations of bronze originals. (_Fig._ 245.)
h.e.l.lenic architecture and sculpture, from their unsurpa.s.sed perfection, require a more comprehensive treatment than that accorded to those arts in any other ancient nation. This is especially the case with sculpture, because, in Greece, the demands of its nature were more completely fulfilled by the Greeks than has ever happened, at any time, with any other people; while Grecian architecture, notwithstanding its wonderful monumental perfection, did not deal with all the possibilities of the art. Both, however, demand our attention in a greater degree than does h.e.l.lenic painting. Architecture has left great ma.s.ses of ruins, and sculpture numerous collections of antique treasures; but of Grecian painting there are no remains; its history is accordingly a history rather of artists than of art. If this necessitates for painting a more limited treatment, we must not therefore conclude that its development was, in reality, inferior to that of its sister arts, since, in fact, it fully equalled that of architecture and sculpture. This has often been unjustly doubted, but it would be fully evident were nothing more known than the almost measureless fame of the first masters.
The course of development of Grecian painting is by no means so obvious as that of sculpture: we have no sure date of its beginning, but it is at least equally remote. Conze shows painting to have been even the most primitive, it having existed among the aborigines in the decoration of pottery and terra-cotta. The notes of Pliny upon the matter (x.x.xv. 15) appear to be hardly more than a supplementary reconstruction of a conjectured state of development, garnished vaguely with the names of ancient artists. The first stages, the employment of a simple tone in the filling of outline figures with a color of brick-dust, called monochromatic painting, had long since been mastered by the neighboring peoples--the Mesopotamians, Phnicians, and Egyptians, who were acquainted also with the use of bright colors. This work must early have been known to the Greeks through imported articles--Homer mentioning vessels and fabrics--even though they could not apply it to the productions of their own land. Monochromatic painting upon pottery, familiar to the primitive Ionians, seems to have originated upon the Syro-Phnician coasts. A faint reminiscence of the ancient, widely extended employment of color may be found in Pliny, who designates an Egyptian, bearing the Greek name of Philocles, as the discoverer of linear painting. Works of this kind, however, were purely decorative, like the older Greek vase-paintings (_Figs._ 187 and 191), and of great similarity; it seems unnecessary to offer conjectures as to the source whence this impulse came. Of still less significance are the names of artists which have been fabulously attached to the various inventions, such as Cleanthes, Aridikes, and Ecphantos, of Corinth; Telephanes and Craton, of Sikyon; and Saurias, of Samos. Unless, from the fact that several are mentioned as dwelling in Corinth and Sikyon, it may be concluded that decorative painting probably flourished in those cities before the sixtieth Olympiad (530 B.C.). What Pliny says of Eumaros of Athens does not justify the supposition of any considerable progress, although, in figures, he distinguished between male and female, expressed in some slight degree age and characteristic peculiarities, and, at least, made an end to that crudeness which found satisfaction in writing names over forms otherwise precisely alike. Greater progress was made by his successor, Kimon of Cleonae--500 to 480 B.C.--who improved the former sack-like garments (_Fig._ 191) by folds, and gave a more detailed drawing to the nude, placing the eye in a profile head also in profile, instead of making it look towards the front, as in the figure mentioned above. With him began truthfulness to nature, and correctness of drawing, at a time when sculpture in aegina, Athens, Sikyon, and Argos was preparing for that highest perfection attained afterwards by Pheidias.
After the Persian war, through two generations, the progress of painting was proportionate to its former backwardness, until it attained a height little short of that reached by sculpture. The first master worthy of mention--and likewise one of the greatest artists we know--demands particular attention, from having been the founder of painting as an art. Polygnotos of Thasos (475 to 455 B.C.), the son of Aglaophon, who also is mentioned as a painter, executed the greater number of his works in Athens, where he was much respected by Kimon. Of the pictures in the Stoa Poikile, painted under his direction, at least the Conquest of Troy, and the Council of Princes sitting in judgment upon the sacrilege committed by Ajax against Ca.s.sandra, were by his hand. The Battle of the Amazons was by Micon, the Battle of Marathon by Panainos and Micon; the fourth, perhaps the latest, was the Battle between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians near Oinoe: the artist is not known. Polygnotos worked, together with Micon, upon other Athenian frescos, scenes from the lives of heroes in the Temple of Theseus. In the Temple of the Dioscuri he painted the Rape of the Daughters of Leukippos, next to which was the Return of the Argonauts, by Micon. In the Pinacotheca of the Propylaea was a series of representations, among which Brunn has recognized as companion pieces Diomedes Robbing Philoctetes of his Bow, and Odysseus Seizing the Palladion; the Murder of aegisthos by Orestes, and the Sacrifice of Polyxena; Odysseus Appearing before Nausicaa and her Companions, and Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes. Of the other works by this master may be mentioned those at Thespeia and Plataia; that in the Temple of Athene at the latter place represented Odysseus attacking the suitors. The best of all the creations of Polygnotos, the paintings in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi, ill.u.s.trating the conquest of Ilion and the nether world, are so minutely described by Pausanias (x. 25-31) that they furnish the most important material for an understanding of his art.
We should hardly be able justly to estimate this master were it not for the descriptions of Pausanias; for the other cla.s.sic authors, with some exceptions in Aristotle, deal only with secondary matters. In regard to his coloring, Cicero, in his "Four Colors," says nothing, speaking only of his drawing, while Quintilian merely wonders how, in his time, there could still be admirers of such primitive painting. It was merely a coloring without light and shade, a simple treatment by local tones of surfaces within outlines. That these tones were not unbroken, as upon the Nile and Tigris, but finely graded and everywhere characteristic, we learn from the special mention of the doves, of the shaded coloring of the fish in the Acheron, of the blackish-blue color of the corpse-devouring Eurynomos, and of the gray of the shipwrecked Ajax. The red cheeks of Ca.s.sandra, admired by Lucian, give evidence of several colors within the same outline. But though Cicero praises the drawing, the little which is intelligible in Pliny"s account of the master tends the other way. Still, it must be acknowledged that more is implied by the motive of the Olympian Jupiter, by the encomium upon Ca.s.sandra"s eyebrows by Lucian, and by the exaggerated expression of an epigram--"in the lids of Polyxena lay the whole Trojan war"--than the petty peculiarities with which Pliny invests the painter would lead us to expect. aelian praises the strict carefulness and fineness of the outline drawing, the expression, and the garments. But the most remarkable testimony concerning this master is that of Aristotle, who describes his figures as surpa.s.sing nature; while artists like Dionysios contented themselves with equalling it, and others, like Pauson, were content to remain below it. Elsewhere he calls him the painter of _ethics_--that is, of character--in a grand style which the works of Zeuxis failed to attain. Combining this judgment with that of aelian, who ascribes grandeur to Polygnotos, we may conclude that this artist drew in a broad and ideal style. That to this were united an epic clearness and liveliness of treatment, not only in the single figures and groups, but in the entire composition, is fully evident from the description which Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Lesche. In short, correctness, richness, and grandeur of composition must be accounted the chief merits of Polygnotos--merits to which none of his successors attained, though they may have far surpa.s.sed him in execution, as painters in a more restricted sense. Less painter than artist, he pursued, in his wall decorations, a thoroughly monumental direction, which after his time, through change of aim, was neglected.
The most celebrated companions of Polygnotos, but, as aelian remarks, not equalling him in greatness, were Micon of Athens, whose name has already been mentioned, and Panainos, a cousin of Pheidias, who, besides the battle of Marathon in the Poikile, executed the paintings upon the throne of the Pheidian Zeus in Olympia. Dionysios of Colophon and Pauson have already been spoken of. The first seems to have carried out the strict carefulness of his model, Polygnotos, to a degree which was naturally unfavorable alike to grace and to greatness of style. Pauson, though accounted an artist by Aristotle, may be compared to Buffalmacco, scorned and derided, among the companions of Giotto; not fitted for productions of a grand style, he did not attempt them, and his nude paintings, without ethical significance, were harmful to young observers.
Among the other distinguished masters of this time, Calliphon appears most nearly to have followed in the footsteps of Polygnotos; but his brother Aristophon, who brought painting upon panels into general use, pursued technical methods opposed to this school. The style of Polygnotos was also abandoned by the Samian Agatharchos, a self-instructed decorator and scene-painter who, in an essay upon scenographic painting, established principles upon which, after his time, this art was further developed. In scene-painting the indispensable aim after illusory appearances must have led to the observation and imitation of the effect of more or less light--that is to say, of paler or deeper shades in the local color--and thus have brought painting to a point of development not hitherto attained by any nation of antiquity.
The important advance indicated by Agatharchos in scenography was made in the painting of figures by Apollodoros of Athens. The accounts of him are few, and in part incomprehensible; but Plutarch says plainly that he discovered the mixing of colors and the variation of shade upon them, and Pliny calls him the first master of illusion. Strictly speaking, he was not the sole author of the innovation, since Agatharchos went before him; and if he received the cognomen of _skiagraphos_--painter in light and shade--it must be understood that the word skiagraphia was used to signify scenography. But he was, at all events, the first to apply these principles to figure-painting, developing a treatment quite different from that employed in the architectural painting so extensively in use for the stage. The important result of this innovation may well be imagined, and it is not strange that the ground thus gained should have been promptly occupied by other masters of the art, who rapidly brought painting to a perfection almost equal to that of sculpture.
These were Zeuxis of Heraclea, in Lower Italy, and Parrhasios of Ephesos. The teachers of the former are not of importance; the impulse through which Zeuxis became one of the most brilliant geniuses of Greece not having been given by these, but rather by Apollodoros, who is not mentioned among them. His fame was at its height during the Peloponnesian war, and in the following ten years; so that we can easily understand why Zeuxis did not establish himself in Athens, where Polygnotos and Apollodoros had raised painting to an art, but, after many wanderings, found an asylum in Ephesos. His works, in contrast to the wall-paintings of Polygnotos, were chiefly upon panels, as, according to Pliny, we may suppose those of Apollodoros to have been.
Among those of Zeuxis, the Olympos was exceptional in regard to subject; of the deities, Zeus is particularly celebrated. The only other representations of the deities we find are the Rose-crowned Eros, and Apollo Chastising Marsyas. Neither Pan, nor Heracles Strangling the Serpents in his Infancy, can be reckoned in this category. The Trojan legends appear in three of his more celebrated pictures--Helen in Crotona, the Weeping Menelaos Bringing his Brother the Offering for the Dead, and Penelope, "in whom propriety itself is embodied." If we may connect with the Odyssey, the Storm at Sea, in which Boreas and Triton are mentioned, it will form a fourth. In his athletes he seems to have intended to establish a canon for painting, as Polycleitos had done for sculpture. Two others, the Family of Centaurs, and the Boy bearing Grapes, are genre pictures.
It is not by chance that we have the fullest accounts of Zeuxis; his aim not being so high as that of Polygnotos, he took his motives from other fields more favorable to the new methods. Historic painting, the foundation of that higher kind of monumental art which gives grand representations of character, was forsaken; as Aristotle expresses it, the works of Zeuxis were wanting in ethic significance. Excessive striving after illusion, after the semblance of reality, brings forward outward and momentary appearances, supplanting the inwardly essential and lasting. Penelope seems to speak, and yet we know not in what situation she is delineated; the weeping of Menelaos certainly does not give his character; and as little does the merry play of the Centaurs with their young, go charmingly described by Lucian, represent the mythological nature of these monsters. Still less can we rank the Helen of Zeuxis, in conception, upon a level with the female figures in the Conquest of Troy by Polygnotos, since we know that Zeuxis chose as models the loveliest virgins of Crotona; that is to say, sought after perfect outward female beauty in truthfulness to nature, but not after that breadth and grandeur expressed in the brow of Ca.s.sandra, or which spoke in the glance of Polyxena.
If, at times, Zeuxis took a higher flight, he still differed from the epic character of Polygnotos in his tendency to dramatic effect, which, according to its nature, is transient. This is shown, for example, by the celebrated play of countenance in the Family of Centaurs, the weeping of Menelaos, the horror of Alcmene and Amphitryon at sight of the serpents encircling the young Heracles, and by the actors as well as spectators in the chastis.e.m.e.nt of Marsyas: these are all scenes which, with slight modification, might be shown in dramatic action upon the stage. With Zeuxis, contrary to Polygnotos, the subject was of less importance than the manner of presenting it, the _what_ less than the _how_; in short, the composition, in which the picturesque sufficed, was subordinate to the painting. The master himself was displeased when the novelty of the subject, in his family of Centaurs, caused the technical finish to be overlooked. The expression of Pliny was therefore a just one, that Zeuxis had given great glory to the brush. The judgment of Quintilian that Zeuxis originated the correct application of light and shade is not to be disputed, in so far as this refers to the consequent achievement of expression. The degree of perfection he attained in illusive effects, by chiaroscuro, reflections, and the like, is ill.u.s.trated by the anecdote of the boy with grapes, so deceptive that the birds flew towards them; at the same time, the limitation is shown, as the artist himself acknowledged, in that the illusion had not succeeded in making the boy capable of frightening the birds. It was because of the painter"s power in this realism that his contemporaries regarded him with almost boundless admiration. His fame was exceeded only by his vanity. In later years he presented his pictures as gifts, because it was impossible to recompense them with money; he appeared at Olympia clothed with a garment upon which his name was embroidered in golden letters. The history of Greek sculpture has no parallel to such conceits.
Zeuxis himself, notwithstanding his pride, was forced to acknowledge that he was excelled by his contemporary Parrhasios of Ephesos, who, in regard to style, was akin to him in many respects. In subject the works of Parrhasios may be divided like those of Zeuxis. The deities were seldom chosen; his Dionysios with Arete was not one of his most celebrated productions, and his Hermes was really a portrait of the artist himself. Among the heroes represented were Prometheus, Heracles, Meleager, Perseus, and Theseus. The greater part of his productions refer to the Trojan epics, as the a.s.sumed Madness of Odysseus, the Healing of Telephos, the Strife of Ajax with Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and aeneas. The others are the Demos of Athens, and portraits like the comedian Philiscos, the Archigallos, a ship-captain, a Thracian nurse with a child; and, finally, pictures like the priest with a temple-boy, two boys, two heavily armed warriors, and lewd genre paintings, closing with the celebrated "curtain" of the master. In many respects these betray a relationship to Zeuxis, and yet much that is independent. There are numerous characteristic heads ill.u.s.trative of temperament, and other psychological subjects, among the fore-most of which should be named the Demos, who, according to Pliny, was shown as changeable, angry, unjust, inconstant; also as exorable, kind, compa.s.sionate, boastful, sublime, low, undisciplined, and fickle.
This would be so impossible in a single head, without making it a chaotic, incomprehensible caricature, that the author has no hesitation in describing the painting as a group, in each figure of which one of the characteristics named was expressed. That representing the a.s.sumed madness of Odysseus must have had great psychological meaning, as also the Prometheus, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and the Telephos. Parrhasios had by these works placed himself above Zeuxis through more correct and careful drawing, and a marked technical progress in the art. Pliny says that, according to the judgment of artists, Parrhasios had reached the highest perfection in the representation of figures; that previously painters had succeeded in giving only to the outlines of the figure a truthful appearance and action, but that the edges of color should be so rounded that one might be led to imagine the continuation of the body upon the other side, suggesting what could not be seen. This may be conceived to mean that, by attention to chiaroscuro and reflections, the illusive effect was increased from that of a relief to that of a figure in the round, whereby figures first appeared to free themselves from the background; that, for instance, he made clear to the observer the distinction between a globe, only one side of which is seen, and a hemisphere affixed to a plane. The illusion consequently became more perfect, the capacity for motion being thus brought into the "outstepping" figures. The grapes of Zeuxis did not need this power of action to tempt the birds as did the boy in order to frighten them. The curtain of Parrhasios possessed this capacity for movement, with the freeing of the objects from the background, and could therefore deceive even Zeuxis himself, who thought it possible really to withdraw it from the panel.
If his proud rival Zeuxis bowed before this skill, it cannot be thought strange that such a result should have moved Parrhasios to outdo his compet.i.tor in arrogance also. Among other follies, he proclaimed himself a descendant of Apollo; as King of Art he was crowned with a diadem and golden wreath, and donned the purple mantle of royalty. By adopting the cognomen of Habrodiaitos, or high-liver, he brought upon himself the nickname of Rhabdodiaitos, or brush-man. Parrhasios also was surpa.s.sed by a younger contemporary, though, as it appears, only in a single instance. Timanthes of Kythnos won the victory in a compet.i.tion--the Strife of Ajax and Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles. Pliny gives preference to the latter, because his compositions were so arranged that more might be perceived in them than at first sight appeared. There was withal a deeper motive than Zeuxis and Parrhasios had shown; this was evident in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, in which every degree of suffering was presented: Calchas being sad, Odysseus painfully moved, Ajax crying aloud, Menelaos in an ecstasy of grief; but, as the expression of anguish could not be carried beyond that of the latter, the father, Agamemnon, was shown hiding his face. The murder of Palamedes, perhaps, gave scope for the same depth of motive. A small genre picture was conceived in a more jesting tone, representing a sleeping Cyclops, and a satyr measuring the length of the giant"s thumb with a thyrsos, thus adding a living scale of comparative dimensions.
The hero of Timanthes and the athlete of Zeuxis were equally celebrated among Grecian paintings as ideals of manly form.
It would seem that Timanthes pa.s.sed the latter part of his life in Sikyon. The art of painting found a home in Ephesos during the Peloponnesian war, but did not connect itself with any school, and returned to Greece after the close of that disastrous conflict. Athens could not at once recover the commanding position it had held under Polygnotos and Apollodoros; but artistic activity, with its increasing requirements, was concentrated in Sikyon and Thebes, where flourishing academies were established with different aims.
Eupompos appeared about this time in the former city, as the founder of an important school, but, with the exception of a few superficial notices, we know nothing of him. His pupil, Pamphilos of Amphipolis or Nicopolis, flourishing from 390 to 360 B.C., was at the head of this school. His works are little known, having been described only by Pliny, so scantily and unintelligibly that one may be taken for a family picture, another as the appearance of Leucothea to Odysseus after the shipwreck near the island of the Phaeacians, and a third possibly as the victory of the Athenians at Phlious. Pliny is more to the point when he relates that Pamphilos considered education in science, particularly in mathematics and geometry, indispensable to artistic work. As he thought drawing an essential part of cultivation, he exerted himself, with good result, to have it taught in the higher schools. He believed that from this alone could proceed a rational conception of art grounded upon science, in which the mutual relations of teacher and scholar should be considered; and that Sikyon was the place best adapted to this purpose.
At a somewhat earlier period Polycleitos had established a canon for sculpture by his system of proportions. Pamphilos, following in the footsteps of Eupompos, now took the same position in respect to Greek painting, with, perhaps, even greater success. He was pre-eminently a teacher, and, as such, appears to have striven after correctness in composition, drawing, and painting, to the disadvantage, it may be, of freedom in artistic development. But this aim, which won for the school of Sikyon the name of Chrestographia (correct drawing), operating upon the pupil from the beginning to the close of his scholarship, must have been serviceable both in laying a foundation and in purifying and restraining. It certainly was for the advantage of Apelles to have finished his studies in this school, which must indeed have had a salutary influence upon the general development of Grecian painting. The element of degeneracy in the tone of Zeuxis and Parrhasios was long held in restraint among their followers by the academic authority of Sikyon.
Pamphilos turned his attention chiefly towards correctness of execution in details, and, following Polycleitos, towards the human figure. His pupil Melanthios was a master of composition; this, however, in accordance with the whole character of the school, seems to have consisted less in the choice of scenic situation and action than in a formal distribution and balance of the grouping.
Pausias, a fellow-pupil of Melanthios, distinguished himself from this somewhat doctrinal art by greater freedom of creation. The subjects of his works show this by their individuality, as, for instance, the Boy, painted in a day, the Girl Binding a Wreath, Methe Drinking from a Gla.s.s, and a flower piece, which, from the descriptions, appears to have resembled our still-life pictures. His Sacrifice of a Bull displayed a new mastery; the animal, foreshortened from the front, as Pliny remarks, showed his entire length. Pausias was the first to win fame in encaustic painting, although its technical processes had for some time been known.
Of this it is only certain that the colors, mixed with wax, were melted by a rod of metal, and thus affixed to the ground. This process, because of the more brilliant, transparent, and deeper hue given by the wax, was as far superior to the former distemper as our own more convenient oil-painting is to every other method. That such peculiarities of subject and treatment did not lead the master to renounce the artistic earnestness of the school of Sikyon is shown in the direction imparted to his pupils. The works of the most celebrated among these, Nicophanes, were extremely labored; but, from the predominant brown, hard in color.
Aristolaos, the son of Pausias, was rigid and academical.
During this period a second school of painting, not less prominent, flourished in Thebes, and, after the hastily acquired importance of this city had as rapidly declined, was transferred to Athens. At its head was Nicomachos--360 B.C.--son and pupil of the otherwise unknown artist, Aristiaeos. Eight of his pictures are mentioned; but, though he was accounted one of the greatest masters, we have little information in regard to the painter himself. As contrasted with the quiet, stately works of the Sikyonians, we may conclude, from the subjects, that there was greater excitement and action in those of Nicomachos, among which are mentioned the Rape of Proserpine, Victory Ascending with a Quadriga, and Bacchantins Surprised by Satyrs. His unsurpa.s.sed rapidity in painting was praiseworthy only because united to great talents, with an unusual and masterly sureness of hand. The character of his pupil Aristides is more intelligible, and more important. If ever there was a painter whose subjects alone sufficed to give an idea of his chief aim, it was Aristides. One of his most celebrated works was the Conquest of a City: a wounded mother, lying upon the ground, sees her infant creeping towards her breast, and visibly betrays the fear that, when the milk fails, the child will take the blood. Another, a woman who, "for love of her brother, gives herself up to death." A third, according to Pliny most highly prized, represented a sick man. In these, and in one more, perhaps also to be ascribed to Aristides, the Heracles Suffering from the Poisoned Garment of Deianeira, a fundamental tone of great pathos is unmistakable. In the praying man, whose voice one almost seemed to hear, and in the old man teaching a boy to play upon the harp, the predominant expression of feeling was unmistakable. The latter reminds us of that beautiful Pompeian wall-painting of the Centaur Cheiron instructing the boy Achilles. Pliny distinctly says that Aristides aimed at the pathetic, by which is meant the expression of tender as well as painful and pa.s.sionate emotions. In this master, therefore, may be recognized one whose aims were similar to those of Scopas and Praxiteles.
Euphranor, a pupil of Aristides--360 to 330 B.C.--was a remarkable phenomenon in the domain of art. Few, either in sculpture or in painting, have been so many-sided, and yet, though standing in the first rank, the insufficient accounts of his pictures that have come down to us prevent our forming any positive judgment about them. A certain indication, however, lies in the remark of the artist himself, that the Theseus of Parrhasios looked as if fed upon roses; his own, on the contrary, as though nourished by the flesh of oxen. This comparison must have included two points, color and drawing; the likeness to roses would have been inapt if Parrhasios had not failed in depth of flesh-tint; on the other hand, besides the healthy color, the strong nourishment suggested by the Theseus of Euphranor proved an energetic development of muscles. It was probably a somewhat ma.s.sive figure, characteristic of Euphranor, and, with certain limitations, reminding us of the Heracles of Lysippos. It may be understood, from the n.o.ble expression of the Theseus, how Euphranor brought his heroes to a typical perfection. In a similar sense he had raised his Poseidon to such power that there remained no further means at his command for surpa.s.sing it in his conception of Zeus. The remark of Euphranor expressed not only the difference, and his own superiority to Parrhasios, but suggested a certain relationship in subject and aim, both masters having painted the Theseus, and the a.s.sumed Madness of Odysseus.