Polygnotus of Thasos was the first to paint the figures of women in transparent drapery, and to represent the head covered with a parti-colored head-dress. He, too, was the first to contribute many other improvements to the art of painting, opening the mouth, for example, showing the teeth, and throwing expression into the countenance, in place of the ancient rigidity of the features.
CHAPTER XV. ARTISTS WHO PAINTED WITH THE PENCIL.
In the ninetieth Olympiad lived Aglaophon, Cephisodorus, Erillus, and Evenor, the father of Parrhasius, one of the greatest of painters, and of whom we shall have to speak when we come to the period at which he flourished. All these were artists of note, but not sufficiently so to detain us by any further details, in our haste to arrive at the luminaries of the art; first among whom shone Apollodorus of Athens, in the ninety-third Olympiad. He was the first to paint objects as they really appeared; the first too, we may justly say, to confer glory by the aid of the pencil.[230] Of this artist there is a Priest in Adoration, and an Ajax struck by Lightning, a work to be seen at Pergamus at the present day: before him, there is no painting of any artist now to be seen which has the power of riveting the eye.
The gates of art being now thrown open by Apollodorus, Zeuxis of Heraclea entered upon the scene, in the fourth year of the ninety-fifth Olympiad, destined to lead the pencil, for which there was nothing too arduous, to a very high pitch of glory. Of him Apollodorus wrote a verse to the effect, that Zeuxis had stolen the art from others and had taken it all to himself. Zeuxis also acquired such a vast amount of wealth, that, in a spirit of ostentation, he went so far as to parade himself at Olympia with his name embroidered on the checked pattern of his garments in letters of gold. At a later period, he came to the determination to give away his works, there being no price high enough to pay for them, he said. He gave an Alcmena to the people of Agrigentum, and a Pan to Archelaüs, King of Macedonia. He also painted a Penelope, in which the peculiar character of that matron appears to be delineated to the very life; and a figure of an athlete, with which he was so highly pleased, that he wrote beneath it the line which has since become so famous, to the effect that it would be easier to find fault with him than to imitate him.[231] His Jupiter seated on the throne, with the other Deities standing around him, is a magnificent production: as, also, is his Infant Hercules strangling the Dragons, in presence of Amphitryon and his mother Alcmena, who is struck with horror. Still, however, Zeuxis is generally censured for making the heads and articulations of his figures out of proportion. And yet, so scrupulously careful was he, that on one occasion, when he was about to execute a painting for the people of Agrigentum, to be consecrated in the Temple of the Lacinian Juno there, he had the young maidens of the place stripped for examination, and selected five of them as models, in order to adopt in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each. He also painted some monochromes in white.