Page:Cyclopedia of painters and paintings - Volume I.djvu/101

 Alexander Apelles went to Egypt, where he was favourably received by King Ptolemy, notwithstanding the jealousy of the court painter Antiphilus, who accused him of taking part in a conspiracy. The charge being disproved, Antiphilus was sold into slavery and Apelles took a painter's revenge in an allegorical picture of Calumny, from Lucian's minute description of which Botticelli painted a well-known picture now in the Uffizi. It was perhaps when on his way to Alexandria that Apelles visited Rhodes to see Protogenes. Finding him absent from his studio the visitor, says Pliny (xxxv. 36) drew with a brush upon a panel a line so fine that Protogenes, when he saw it, knew that only Apelles could have done it. Drawing a still finer line, he went away again, and Apelles on his return divided the two with one even more subtile. Seeing this, Protogenes owned himself conquered and went to seek his guest. Apelles shamed the Rhodians into recognizing the merits of his great rival by offering an immense sum for his pictures, and said that he himself excelled him in one thing, viz., that he knew when to stay his hand. Among other anecdotes of him told by Pliny (1. c.) is that of the cobbler who detected a fault in a shoe of one of his figures. Apelles corrected it, and the next day the cobbler proceeded to criticise the leg, whereupon the artist bade him stick to his last. From this arose the saying "Ne sutor ultra crepidam" (Let not the shoemaker go beyond his last). Once, too, when Alexander the Great attempted to criticise one of his pictures, Apelles advised him to be silent, as the colour-boys were laughing at him. Apelles was unsurpassed in diligence, and never allowed a day to pass without its accomplished task. He carried his art to the highest degree of excellence, surpassing all who had preceded him. Ionic elegance and charm were blended in his style with Doric severity and correctness, and it is the universal testimony of ancient writers that his best work exhibited an indefinable grace of conception and refinement of taste and feeling such as that of no other painter ever had.

Apollo and Daphne, Fr. Albani, Louvre.

APOLLO AND DAPHNE, Fr. Albani, Louvre; copper, H. 6-1/2 in. × 1 ft. 2 in. Daphne closely pursued by Apollo, flies toward her father, the river Peneus; above, Cupid, in a cloud. Daphne was changed into a laurel as Apollo was about to seize her.—Villot, Louvre; Filhol, v. Pl. 338; Landon, Musée, x. Pl. 66.

By Ant. Pollajuolo, National Gallery, London; wood, H. 11 in. × 7-1/2 in. Daphne in the embrace of the god, who has just caught