be exceeded. Protogenes acknowledged the superiority of Apelles, and resolved to leave the canvass as it was, with the lines upon it, for the astonishment of future artists. It was afterward taken to Rome, where Pliny saw it. He speaks of it as presenting a black surface, with the lines scarcely visible. They were drawn with different colours, the one upon, or rather within the

other.

Before this friendly contest, Protogenes was poor and obscure; but the notice of Apelles caused him to rise to the possession of a name and fortune among the Rhodians. His works were highly esteemed, not only by his own townsmen, but wherever they were known abroad. The highest token of regard ever paid to the productions of an artist, were at one time extended to his. It is related that when Demetrius Philiorcetes was besieging the city of Rhodes, and might easily have taken it by directing the assault on the side where Protogenes lived, yet he forbore lest he should do injury to the great painter's works. When he finally gained the city, and the besieged requested him to spare the pictures of their great favourite, he replied: "I would sooner destroy the images of my forefathers, than the productions of Protogenes."

Although Apelles acknowledged the superiority of Protogenes in some respects, yet the former was undoubtedly the greatest painter of antiquity, and attained to the utmost of the boasted perfection of Grecian art. He is the only one mentioned by early writers as having painted portraits separate from any other subject. We have seen that Panonus painted the portraits of Miltiades and other generals, but they were in a

battle piece, with numerous other figures around them; but Apelles painted many single portraits of distinguished men. Among these are men tioned Alexander the Great; Antiochus king of Syria; Antigonus; Archelaus with his wife and daughter; Abron, an effeminate debauchee; Clatus on horseback, armed, with an attendant delivering his helmet to him; and Megabysus, a priest of the temple of the Ephesian Diana, robed in his pontifical vestments, and engaged in sacrificing. Among his best, Pliny mentions his Diana attending a sacrifice, surrounded by her. nymphs; Neoptolemus, son of Achilles, on horseback, contending with Persians; Hercules, with his back toward the observer, but his head turned so as to show his face, and á Venus, representing the birth of Love.

This last mentioned picture was considered the greatest of all his splendid achievements in the art. It represented Venus rising from the sea, with her arms upreared above her head, holding in her hands her long tresses, dripping with the salt spray. This picture was taken to Rome when Greece became her subject, and was dedicated by Augustus in the temple of Julius Cæsar. It is now as many other glories of ancient Greece and Rome are, among the things that were; but copies of it are still preserved.* In the Greek Anthologia may be found many epigrams upon this celebrated picture.

*

Many readers have no doubt seen upon bank notes of our state, a vignette consisting of a figure of this kind, partly enveloped in clouds. This is no other than the creation of the genius of Apelles, who lived more than two thousand years ago. Modern modesty has properly added the circumambient clouds to the original.

CHAPTER II.

Aristides of Thebes-Fuseli's Criticism-Etruscan PaintingsPliny's Notice of them-Etruscan Vases-The Art among the Romans-Fabius Pæcuvius-Temple of Hercules-Neglect of the Art during the Republic-Revival under the Emperors Nero's Attempt at Painting-His Colossal Portrait, and its Destruction-Relics of the Art in Pompeii and Her culaneum-The Art among the Hebrews-Brief Notice of the Ancient Styles of Painting-Revival of the Art in Italy-Ci. mabue and Giotto-Lionardi da Vinci-First Use of Oil in Painting-Fatal Result of the Invention-Old Oil Painting at Florence-Last Supper of da Vinci.

THE last artists of eminence connected with the history of Grecian painting, were Aristides of Thebes, and Euphranor the Isthmian. In praise of the former both ancient and modern writershave said much; and by some the meed of excellence between him and Apelles has been disputed. There can be little doubt that he extended the scope of the art, by improving upon the experience of his predecessors. Of him, Fuseli remarks:

"The refinements of the art were by Aristides of Thebes applied to the mind. The passions which history had organized for Timanthus, Aristides caught as they arose from the breast or escaped from the lips of Nature herself; his volume was man, his scene society: he drew the subtle discriminations of mind in every stage of life, the whispers, the simple cry of passion, and its most complex accents. Such, as history informs us, was the suppliant whose voice you seemed to hear; such his sick man's half extinguished eye and labouring breast; such the sister dying for her brother, and, above all, the half slain mother shuddering lest the eager babe

should suck the blood from her palsied nippie. This picture was probably at Thebes when Alexander sacked that town. What his feelings were when he saw it, we may guess from his sending it to Pella. Its expression, poised between the anguish of maternal affection and the pangs of death, gives to commiseration an image which neither the infant piteously caressing his slain mother in the group of Ephigonus, nor the absorbed features of the Niobe, nor the struggle of the Laocoon, excite."

Fuseli then draws a comparison between this composition of Aristides, and similar ones by modern artists-Raffaelle and Poussin: "In the group of Aristides, our sympathy is immediately interested by the mother, still alive, though mortally wounded, helpless, beautiful, and forgetting herself in the anguish for her child, whose situ ation still suffers hope to mingle with our fears; he is only approaching the nipple of his mother. In the group of Raffaelle, the mother, dead of the plague, herself an object of apathy, becomes one of disgust by the action of the man, who, bending over her at the utmost reach of his arms, with one hand removes the child from the breast, while the other, applied to his nostrils, bars the effluvia of death. Our feelings, alienated from the mother, come too late even for the child, who, by his languor, betrays the mortal symptoms of the poison he imbibed of the parent corpse. It is curious to observe the permutation of ideas which takes place, as imitation is re moved from the sources of nature." Thus, crit ically, has Fuseli awarded the praise of excellence to the Theban artist.

We have remarked that Aristides and Euphra

nor were the last of the renowned painters of ancient Greece. They lived at a time when their country had reached the acme of its glory, and the arts were encouraged and patronised with an unbounded liberality. But they lived, too, at that period when the sun of Grecian art and political greatness had passed the meridian and had just commenced its journey toward its setting. Political changes, wrought mainly by the innovations which luxury and vice had made in the once simple arrangements of social life among the rulers and the people of Athens, sapped the foundations of the fabric of state. In a few short years her fame was tarnished, and she who stood up as a resplendent model for the world in all that was excellent and noble in the human character, was prostrated in the dust.

The ambition of a few had corrupted the purity of her republican principles; and those who had been strongest in their avowed attachment to democracy, began to sigh for a monarchyany change, that might avert the anarchy which they saw approaching. The various republics of Greece were constantly embroiled in civil wars, engendered by the jealousies of respective rulers; and, at this juncture, Philip of Macedon resolved to take advantage of the public effervescence and bring all others under the subjection of his own sceptre. Influenced by his power and bribes, chiefs arose in different places, united a few towns, and in this manner gradually consolidated the state, though not without opposition and bloodshed. About this time infidelity rapidly spread among the people, the Holy War broke out, and the iconoclasts (breakers of images) commenced their work of destruction, which tended greatly