Dionysius and Mikon were the great contemporaries of Polygnotus, the former being celebrated for his portraits. His pictures were deficient in the ideal, but were remarkable for expression and elegant drawing. Mikon was particularly skilled in painting horses, and was the first who used for a color the light Attic ochre, and the black made from burnt vine-twigs. He painted three of the walls of the Temple of Theseus, and also the walls of the Temple of the Dioscuri.
A greater painter still was Apollodorus of Athens. Through his labors, about 408 B.C., dramatic effect was added to the style of Polygnotus, without departing from his pictures as models. "The acuteness of his taste," says Fuseli, "led him to discover that as all men were connected by one general form, so they were separated each by some predominant power, which fixed character and bound them to a class. Thence he drew his line of imitation, and personified the central form of the class to which his object belonged, and to which the rest of its qualities administered without being absorbed. Agility was not suffered to destroy firmness, solidity, or weight; nor strength and weight, agility. Elegance did not degenerate into effeminacy, nor grandeur swell to hugeness." His aim was to deceive the eye of the spectator by the semblance of reality: he painted men and things as they really appeared. He also made a great advance in coloring: he invented chiaro-oscuro. Other painters had given attention to the proper gradation of light and shade; he heightened this effect by the gradation of tints, and thus obtained what the moderns call _tone_. He was the first who conferred due honor on the pencil,--_primusque gloriam penicillo jure contulit_.
This great painter was succeeded by Zeuxis, who belonged to his school, but who surpassed him in the power to give ideal form to rich effects. He began his great career four hundred and twenty-four years before Christ, and was most remarkable for his female figures. His Helen, painted from five of the most beautiful women of Croton, was one of the most renowned productions of antiquity, to see which the painter demanded money. He gave away his pictures, because, with an artist's pride, he maintained that their price could not be estimated. There is a tradition that Zeuxis laughed himself to death over an old woman painted by him. He arrived at illusion of the senses, regarded as a high attainment in art,--as in the instance recorded of his grapes, at which the birds pecked. He belonged to the Asiatic school, whose headquarters were at Ephesus,--the peculiarities of which were accuracy of imitation, the exhibition of sensuous charms, and the gratification of sensual tastes. He went to Athens about the time that the sculpture of Phidias was completed, which modified his style. His marvellous powers were displayed in the contrast of light and shade, which he learned from Apollodorus. He gave ideal beauty to his figures, but it was in form rather than in expression. He taught the true method of grouping, by making each figure the perfect representation of the class to which it belonged. His works were deficient in those qualities which elevate the feelings and the character. He was the Euripides rather than the Homer of his art. He exactly imitated natural objects, which are incapable of ideal representation. His works were not so numerous as they were perfect in their way, in some of which, as in the Infant Hercules strangling the Serpent, he displayed great dramatic power. Lucian highly praises his Female Centaur as one of the most remarkable paintings of the world, in which he showed great ingenuity of contrasts. His Jupiter Enthroned is also extolled by Pliny, as one of his finest works. Zeuxis acquired a great fortune, and lived ostentatiously.