The sacrifice of Iphigenia in Aulis, by Timanthes, acquired the greatest celebrity of all the ancient pictures. Quintilian says that it was painted in contest with Colotes of Teos--an artist from the school of Phidias, and crowned with victory at its rival exhibition. This picture, which has been the subject of unlimited praise by the ancient critics, has been in modern times objected to, from the circumstance of Timanthes hiding the face of Agamemnon, the father of the victim, to be immolated in his mantle, unable, as it was supposed by his art, to express the entire agony of his grief. Sir Joshua Reynolds observes thus: "If difficulties overcome make a great part of the merit of art, difficulties evaded can deserve but little commendation." The French critic Falconet, has also condemned the artifice. But Fuseli answers these objections very reasonably by saying,--"The subject of Timanthes was the immolation of Sphigenia. Sphigenia was the principal figure, and her form, her resignation, or her anguish, was the painter's principal task; the figure of Agamemnon, however important, is merely accessary, and no more necessary to make the subject completely tragic, than that of Dytemnestra, the mother--no more than that of Priam, to impress us with sympathy at the death of Polyxenia." Again, "they ascribe to impotence what was the forbearance of judgment." Timanthes felt like a father; he did not hide the face of Agamemnon, because it was beyond the power of his art--not because it was beyond the possibility, but because it was beyond the dignity of expression--because the inspiring feature of paternal affection at that moment, and the action which of necessity must have accompanied it, would either have destroyed the grandeur of the character, and the solemnity of the scene, or subject the painter, with the majority of his judges, to the imputation of insensibility. The same expedient was resorted to by M. Angelo, in the figure of Abijam, and by Raphael in the expulsion from paradise.