Smith, William: A smaller dictionary of Greek and Roman antiquities (London, 1871)

PICTU11A.

294

PICTURA.

sos that painting reached its full development
(about B.C. 4G3). Previous to this time the
only cities that had paid any considerable
attention to painting were Aegina, Sicyon,
Corinth, and Athens. Sicyon and Corinth
had long been famous for their paintings
upon vases and upon articles of furniture;
the school of Athens had attained no celebrity
whatever until the arrival of Polygnotus from
Thasos raised it to that pre-eminence which
it continued to maintain for more than two
centuries, although very few of the great
painters of Greece were natives of Athens.
The principal contemporaries of Polygnotus
were Dionysius of Colophon, Plistaenetus
and Panaenus of Athens, brothers (or the
latter perhaps a nephew) of Phidias, and
Micon, also of Athens. The works of Poly-
gnotus and his contemporaries were conspi-
cuous for expression, character, and design ;
the more minute discriminations of tone and
local colour, united with dramatic composition
and effect, were accomplished in the succeed-
ing generation, about 420 B.C., through the
efforts of Apollodorus of Athens and Zeuxis
of Heraclea. The contemporaries of Apollo-
dorus and Zeuxis, and those who carried out
their principles, were Parrhasius of Ephesus,
Eupompus of Sicyon, and Timanthes of Cyth-
nu.s, all painters of the greatest fame. Athens
and Sicyon were the principal seats of the art
at this period. Eupompus of Sicyon was the
founder of the celebrated Sicyonian school of
painting which was afterwards established
by Pamphilus. The Alexandrian period was
the last of progression or acquisition ; but it
only added variety of effect to the tones it
could not improve, and was principally cha-
racterised by the diversity of the styles of so
many contemporary artists. The most emi-
nent painters of this period were Protogenes,
Pamphilus, Melanthius, Antiphilus, Theon of
Samoa, Apelles, Euphranor, Pausias, Xicias,
Nicomachus, and his brother Aristides. Of
all these Apelles was the greatest. The qua-
lity in which he surpassed all other painters
will scarcely bear a definition; it has been
termed grace, elegance, beauty, X"Pls> venus-
tas. His greatest work was perhaps his
Venus Anadyomene, Venus rising out of the
waters. He excelled in portrait, and indeed
all his works appear to have been portraits
in an extended sense; for his pictures, both
historical and allegorical, consisted nearly all
of single figures. He enjoyed the exclusive
privilege of painting the portraits of Alex-
ander.—The works of Greek art brought
from Sicily by Marcellus were the first to
inspire the Romans with the desire of adorn-
ing their public edifices with statues and
paintings, which taste was converted into a

passion when they became acquainted with
the great treasures and almost inexhaustible
resources of Greece, and their rapacity knew
no bounds. Mummius, after the destruction
of Corinth, B.C. 140, carried off or destroyed
more works of art than all his predecessors
put together. Scaurus, in his aedileship,
B.C. 58, had all the public pictures still re-
maining in Sicyon transported to Rome, on
account of the debts of the former city, and
he adorned the great temporary theatre which
he erected upon that occasion with 3000
bronze statues. Verres ransacked Asia and
Achaia, and plundered almost every temple
and public edifice in Sicily of whatever was
valuable in it. Amongst the numerous rob-
beries of Verres, Cicero mentions particularly
twenty-seven beautiful pictures taken from
the temple of Minerva at Syracuse, consisting
of portraits of the kings and tyrants of Sicily.
Yet Rome was, about the end of the republic,
full of painters, who appear, however, to have
been chiefly occupied in portrait, or deco-
rative and arabesque painting. Among the
Romans the earliest painter mentioned is a
member of the noble house of the Fabii, who
received the surname of Pictoi through some
paintings which he executed in the temple of
Salus at Rome, B.C. 304, which lasted till the
time of the emperor Claudius, when they
were destroyed by the fire that consumed
that temple. Pacuvius also, the tragic poet,
and nephew of Ennius, distinguished himself
by some paintings in the temple of Hercules
in the Forum Boarium, about ISO B.C. But
generally speaking the artists at Rome were
Greeks. Julius Caesar, Agrippa, and Au-
gustus were among the earliest great patrons
of artists. Caesar expended great sums in
the purchase of pictures by the old masters.
He gave as much as 80 talents for two pic-
tures by his contemporary Timomachus of
Byzantium, one an Ajax, and the other a
Medea meditating the murder of her children.
These pictures, which were painted in en-
caustic, were very celebrated works ; they are
alluded to by Ovid [Trist. ii. 525), and are
mentioned by many other ancient writers.—
There are three distinct periods observable in
the history of painting in Rome. The first
or great period of Graeco-Roman art may be
dated from the conquest of Greece until the
time of Augustus, when the artists were
chiefly Greeks. The second, from the time
of Augustus to the so-called Thirty Tyrants
and Diocletian, or from the beginning of the
Christian era until about the latter end of the
third century, during which time the great
majority of Roman works of art were pro-
duced. The third comprehends the state of
the arts during the exarchate, when Rome,