DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5538#0094
74 PHARAOHS, FELLAHS, AND EXPLORERS.
at all periods, are curiously alike. The archaic tyro tries his
" 'prentice hand" on the same subjects; he encounters the
same difficulties; he meets those difficulties in the same way ;
he commits the same blunders. Egyptian, Assyrian, Etrus-
can, Greek, repeat one another. They all draw the face in
profile, and the eye as if seen from the front. The}7 all rep-
resent the feet planted on precisely the same line. They all
color in fiat tints, and are alike ignorant of light and shade,
of foreshortening and perspective.
Greek painting—the whole body of Greek painting, from
its earliest to its latest phase, with the one exception of the
art of painted vases—is irrecoverably lost. Of the master-
pieces of Greek sculpture, some few priceless relics have sur-
vived the general wreck; but of the famous creations of the
great Greek painters there remains but an echo in the pages
of Pausanias and Pliny. The walls enriched with their im-
mortal frescos, the panels on which they painted their in-
comparable easel pictures, have long since become dust. But,
like the glow that streams up from the west after the sun has
gone down, the splendor of their fame yet lights the horizon
and is reflected on the hills of Athens.
Strange to say, despite the ruin which has overtaken their
works, we know almost as much about those dead and gone
painters of between two and three thousand years ago as we
know about the artists of our own day. We have elaborate
descriptions of their pictures, notes on their methods, criti-
cisms on their styles, and abundance of anecdotes of their
sayings and doings. "We know that Polygnotus, who excelled
in battle-pieces, was called the "most ethical of painters;"
that Xeuxis carried realism to the point of actual illusion ;
that Protogenes (an earlier Albert Diirer) finished his pict-
ures with microscopic minuteness ; and that Apelles excelled
all the rest in ideal beauty and grace.
The prices which these artists received for their pictures
were by no means contemptible. Nikias, it is said, refused to
sell one of his works to Ptolemy Lagusfor sixty talents, a sum
equivalent to sixty thousand dollars, or twelve thousand
at all periods, are curiously alike. The archaic tyro tries his
" 'prentice hand" on the same subjects; he encounters the
same difficulties; he meets those difficulties in the same way ;
he commits the same blunders. Egyptian, Assyrian, Etrus-
can, Greek, repeat one another. They all draw the face in
profile, and the eye as if seen from the front. The}7 all rep-
resent the feet planted on precisely the same line. They all
color in fiat tints, and are alike ignorant of light and shade,
of foreshortening and perspective.
Greek painting—the whole body of Greek painting, from
its earliest to its latest phase, with the one exception of the
art of painted vases—is irrecoverably lost. Of the master-
pieces of Greek sculpture, some few priceless relics have sur-
vived the general wreck; but of the famous creations of the
great Greek painters there remains but an echo in the pages
of Pausanias and Pliny. The walls enriched with their im-
mortal frescos, the panels on which they painted their in-
comparable easel pictures, have long since become dust. But,
like the glow that streams up from the west after the sun has
gone down, the splendor of their fame yet lights the horizon
and is reflected on the hills of Athens.
Strange to say, despite the ruin which has overtaken their
works, we know almost as much about those dead and gone
painters of between two and three thousand years ago as we
know about the artists of our own day. We have elaborate
descriptions of their pictures, notes on their methods, criti-
cisms on their styles, and abundance of anecdotes of their
sayings and doings. "We know that Polygnotus, who excelled
in battle-pieces, was called the "most ethical of painters;"
that Xeuxis carried realism to the point of actual illusion ;
that Protogenes (an earlier Albert Diirer) finished his pict-
ures with microscopic minuteness ; and that Apelles excelled
all the rest in ideal beauty and grace.
The prices which these artists received for their pictures
were by no means contemptible. Nikias, it is said, refused to
sell one of his works to Ptolemy Lagusfor sixty talents, a sum
equivalent to sixty thousand dollars, or twelve thousand