Page:Anecdotes of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects, and curiosities of art (IA anecdotesofpaint01spoo).pdf/42

 the lightning. Apelles received for this picture, termed the Alexander Ceraunophorus, twenty talents of gold (about $20,000). The criticism of Lysippus, upon this picture, which has been approved by ancients and moderns, that a lance, as he had himself given the king, would have been a more appropriate weapon in the hands of Alexander, than the lightnings of Jupiter; is the criticism of a sculptor who overlooked the pictorial value of the color, and of light and shade. The lightning would certainly have had little effect in a work of sculpture, but had a lance been substituted in its place in the picture of Apelles, a totally different production would have been the result. This picture gave rise to a saying, that there were two Alexanders, the one of Philip, the invincible, the other of Apelles, the inimitable.

Competent judges, says Pliny, decided the portrait of Antigonus (king of Asia Minor) on horseback, the master-piece of Apelles. He excelled greatly in painting horses, which he frequently introduced into his pictures. The most celebrated of all his works was the Venus Anadyomene, which was painted for the people of Coös, and was placed in the temple of Æsculapius on that island, where it remained until it was removed by Augustus, who took it in lieu of 100 talents tribute, and dedicated it in the temple of Julius Cæsar. It was unfortunately damaged on the voyage, and was in such a decayed state in the time of Nero, that the Empe