The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 6 (of 6)Pliny, the Elder
History
The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 6 (of 6)
Pliny, the Elder
Natural history -- Pre-Linnean works
I shall now proceed to enumerate, as briefly as possible, the
more eminent among the painters; it not being consistent with the
plan of this work to go into any great lengths of detail. It must
suffice therefore, in some cases, to name the artist in a cursory
manner only, and with reference to the account given of others; with
the exception, of course, of the more famous productions of the
pictorial art, whether still in existence or now lost, all of which
it will be only right to take some notice of. In this department,
the ordinary exactness of the Greeks has been somewhat inconsistent,
in placing the painters so many Olympiads after the statuaries and
toreutic[1942] artists, and the very first of them so late as the
ninetieth Olympiad; seeing that Phidias himself is said to have been
originally a painter, and that there was a shield at Athens which had
been painted by him; in addition to which, it is universally agreed
that in the eighty-third Olympiad, his brother Panænus[1943] painted,
at Elis,[1944] the interior of the shield of Minerva, which had been
executed by Colotes,[1945] a disciple of Phidias and his assistant in
the statue of the Olympian Jupiter.[1946] And then besides, is it not
equally admitted that Candaules, the last Lydian king of the race of
the Heraclidæ, very generally known also by the name of Myrsilus, paid
its weight in gold for a picture by the painter Bularchus,[1947] which
represented the battle fought by him with the Magnetes? so great was
the estimation in which the art was already held. This circumstance
must of necessity have happened about the period of our Romulus; for
it was in the eighteenth Olympiad that Candaules perished, or, as some
writers say, in the same year as the death of Romulus: a thing which
clearly demonstrates that even at that early period the art had already
become famous, and had arrived at a state of great perfection.
If, then, we are bound to admit this conclusion, it must be equally
evident that the commencement of the art is of much earlier date, and
that those artists who painted in monochrome,[1948] and whose dates
have not been handed down to us, must have flourished at even an
anterior period; Hygiænon, namely, Dinias, Charmadas,[1949] Eumarus, of
Athens, the first who distinguished the sexes[1950] in painting, and
attempted to imitate every kind of figure; and Cimon[1951] of Cleonæ,
who improved upon the inventions of Eumarus.
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