Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/385

Rh FOURTH PERIOD.] A R C PI JE L G Y 363 known, but of all the existing gems which bear his name it may be questioned whether one reflects adequately his style. It may be taken as certain that some of them are from his hand. He was the court engraver of Alexander the Great, whose portrait he made on an emerald. The marble head here given (fig. 11) shows a distinctly realistic tendency, compared with the head on the coins. Pos sibly the portrait of Alexander which appears on the coins &amp;lt;&amp;gt;f his successor Lysimachus was in some way drawn from the gem (Brunn, Gesch. d. Griech. Kiinstler, ii. p. G29). Among the few examples of gems that can be unhesitat ingly assigned to this period is the chalcedony with the figure of a crane found in Kertch, and now in the Hermit age, St Petersburg, bearing the signature of Dexamenus of Chius, AEHAMENO2 EHOIE XIO2 (Compte Rendu de la Comm. Arch, pour Vann. 1861, p. 147, pi. vL 10). In painting, the transition from the style of Polygnotus to that of the new school was again, as has been said, a transition from ethos to pathos, from character and noble bearing to beauty and effect. The change, as elsewhere, was in harmony with the spirit of the times ; but of the steps by which it was brought about two deserve attention ; the first is the exigencies of scene-painting, on which Sophocles, and, after his example, his older contemporary yEschylus, laid great value. In this direction the artist of the day was Agatharchus of Samus, who also wrote an account of the decorations executed by him, and by this led to the investigation of the principles of perspective in paint ing by Democritus and Anaxagoras. The second step was the gradation of light and shade and of colours introduced by Apollodorus, who for this service is regarded as the founder of the new school. At the door opened by Apollo- dorus entered Zeuxis, as he himself is reported to have said, into the sanctuary of art. Not that Zeuxis was directly a pupil of the older master. All that is known of their relations to each other consists of mutual compli ments. That the charm of Zeuxis s popularity was in great part due to novelty of situation and effect might be inferred from the statement regarding his picture of a centauress suckling her young, the spectators of which forgot the painter in the subject. On the other hand, the story of his having constantly before his eyes five of the most beautiful maidens of the town of Croton while he was painting his figure of Helena, suggests that he must have been a close student of form and perhaps also of colour. His figures were of a large mould, as in the earlier school, and for this reason his heads and limbs appeared a little coarse to Roman connoisseurs accustomed to the elegance of a later time. In this direction a great step in advance . was made by his contemporary Parrhasius of Ephesus, who like Zeuxis also lived some time in Athens, enjoying the society of Socrates, and vaunting his personal appearance as well as his artistic powers. The dominant faculty of drawing in Parrhasius led him to choose his subjects from male heroic figures, and led him also, it will be charitable and not without analogy to conjecture, to produce the im moral scenes with which his name is connected. From excellence in drawing and colouring the next step was towards a just conception of the subject on hand, and this . step was taken by Timanthes, of the island of Cythnus. One of his great pictures was the tragic scene of the sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which the expression of sorrow was rendered with a masterly gradation, from the bystanders (Calchas, Ulysses, Ajax, and Menelaus) up to Agamemnon, in whom the deep grief of a father was expressed by his covering his face and turning it away from the spectator. This subject, with various modifications, and particularly with the absence of the gradation of grief among the by standers, but still obviously preserving the profound pathos of a great original, occurs in Pompeian paintings, and on a Greek relief in the gallery of Florence (0. Jahn, Archaol. Beitraye, p. 378). Whether or not a resident at Ephesus, the centre of Asiatic painting, it is clear that Timanthes stood in close relation to the school there. Con temporary with the Asiatic school existed in Greece proper two schools of painting, of which the one, with its seat in Sicyon, seems to have studied most drawing and a system of form and proportions ; while the other, centred at Athens, but including some Theban painters, looked rather to the expression of pathos and the emotions of the mind. The founder of the Sicyonian school was Eupompus (401- School cf 381 B.C.) It was, however, to his pupil Pamphilus that Sicyon. it owed most of its reputation, and became a school for practical instruction which attracted students from remote quarters. From his distinction in mathematics and geo metry, and from the fact of his having introduced drawing as a general element of instruction for youth, it is inferred that his teaching was mainly directed to the reproduction of form. On the other hand, it is also known that his researches .led to an improvement in the colours em ployed in encaustic painting, and further that this art was carried to its highest perfection by his pupil Pausias. In a middle position between the Sicyonian and Attic schools stood Euphranor the Corinthian, of whom as a sculptor mention has already been made. His subjects were of the higher grade of historical painting, being mostly large compositions of mythological scenes or histori cal events, of which an example was to be seen on the portico of Zeus Eleutherius in the Agora of Athens. lu Thebes, where since the recovery of freedom from the Lacedaemonians a new impulse for art as well as politics had been felt, a school of painting was formed, apparently at first under the influence of that of Sicyon. At its head was Nicomachus, a son and pupil of Aristireus. A greater fame was achieved by his son Aristides, as an example of whose work, Pliny (N. //., xxxv. 36, 98) quotes a picture from the capture of a town in Avhich a mother appeared mortally wounded, and with a harrowing expression of dread on. her face lest the child clinging to her breast should suck blood instead of milk. His activity extended to portraiture and to genre subjects ; but he worked by preference in the encaustic process, the credit of inventing which has been wrongly ascribed to him Among the other painters of note who followed the mannei of the second Attic school of sculpture there remains only Nicias, a son of Kicomedes of Athens, and a pupil of Antidotus, from whom he learned the extreme care of execution originally taught by Euphranor. In the person of Apelles, the son of Pytheas, a native of Apelles. Colophon, were combined, if we may judge from his reputation, all the best qualities of the hitherto existing schools of painting. It should, however, be remembered that what we know of him comes entirely from Roman and late Greek sources, and represents rather the taste of these times than a critical judgment on his works. He was a pupil of the otherwise unknown painter Ephorus of Ephesus, which town, already celebrated as a centre of painting, he adopted as his home. But so high was then the reputation of the Sicyonian school, headed by Pam philus and Melanthius, that on completing his studies at Ephesus he repaired to Sicyon, either to see for himself or to profit by the fame of these masters. From Sicyon ho proceeded, perhaps through the influence of Melanthius, to the court of Macedonia, where he was employed, first by Philip, and afterwards, under circumstances of the greatest intimacy, by Alexander, whom he accompanied as far as Ephesus on his expedition into Asia. Of the figures of deities painted by him the most renowned was that of Aphrodite Anadyomene, originally in the temple of ^Escu- lapius in Cos, represented rising out of the sea, and wring-