This mural from Pompeii is based on Anadyomene Venus, a lost painting by Apelles.
Apelles - the greatest painter of antiquity
by John J. Popovic, from Pliny the Elder and other fonts
There comelier forms embroidered rose to view
Than e'er Apelles'
wondrous pencil drew.
Aristo: Orlando Furioso, book XXIV
Abstract
Apelles from Coos (c 352 - 308 BC) was famous Hellenistic Greek painter whose artwork was held in such elevated admiration by Pliny the Elder and other ancient authors, that he continues to be regarded, even though none of his work survives, as the greatest painter of antiquity. He was appointed as court painter of Philip II and his son Alexander III of Macedon. His works have inspired Italian Renaissance artists to emulate them; and Boticelli believed that he was reincarnation of Apelles, in the same measure as the Renaissance was revival of ancient world values.
He was Ionian Greek, from island Cos. He became a scholar at the celebrated
Dorian school of Sicyon in southern Greece , where he worked under the painter
Pamphilus. His works are said to have combined Dorian precision with Ionic
elegance.
This mural from
Pompeii is based on Anadyomene Venus, a lost painting by
Apelles.
Apelles: flglio di Pytheas, di Efeso (Suid. Strab. Luk. Herond.); La denominazione “Cous” (P1. Ovid.) derivò, con ogni probabilità, da questi modi di dire: ‘Apelles quel di Coo'; “Apelles, quello che ha fatto il quadro di Anadyomene a Coo”. Ebbe come maestro in patria Ephoros di Efeso; da Sicione giunse in Macedonia, nella patria cioè del suo maestro sicionio Pamphilos, non più tardi del 340; Alessandro lo condusse poi seco in Asia, dove si fermò in Efeso; mori, pare, a Coo (PFUHL, p. 736). Non può dirsi fondatore o anche soltanto rappresentante di una scuola pittorica ionica, ma neanche esser considerato come puro sicionio. L'essenza storica di A. è già ben còlta e condensata in due osservazioni antiche, le quali potranno ben risalire agli scrittori tecnici del III secolo, ma che a ogni modo riassumevano il sentimento e il giudizio dei Greci su Apelles; quella di Plutarco (Arat. 13), secondo Ia quale egli cercö a Sicione piuttosto la fama che la techne (…); e quella di Quintiliano (12, 10, 6; cfr. PLUT. Dem. 22): [ingenio et gratia... praestantissimus]. I1 suo ingegno naturale - di individuo e di razza - era assai diverso e, in ogni modo, di gran lunga più ampio e ampiveggente delle regole della scuola egli, con quello spirito di adattamento e di assimilazione che contraddistingue spesso il genio, accostô e adattô la sua esuberanza e graziosa leggiadria ioniche entro la cornice razionalistica, intellettuale, scientifica dei Sicionii, senza rinunziare a nessuna delle caratteristiche naturali, e senza respinger nessuna delle leggi della Sofistica applicata alle arti. Può dirsi pertanto che A. cercö di rivivere artisticamente ed assommare tutte le tendenze e tutti gli elementi dell'arte greca (PFUHL, p. 735). Apelles scrisse al suo scolaro Perseus intorno at. la pittura; probabilmente la pittura sua, i suoi canoni artistici contrapposti a quelli degli altri pittori (35, 111); da quest'opera possiamo pensar derivati i giudizi su Protogenes Melanthios Asklepiodoros di 80. Meno attendibile e l'ipotesi che anche gli aneddoti ne derivino; questi, ripetuti a sazietà per Apelles e per tanti altri, in vane epoche e in ambienti varii, o furon raccolti e coordinati da Duride Samio e di li poi passarono nelle opere di Antigonos Caristio, o facevan parte della tradizione artigiana e si trasmettevano oralmente di bottega in bottega (KALKMANN, Quellen, p. 738, 744). — Illam suam Venerem : anche in greco (..) LuK. Scyth. 11; queste frasi possono considerarsi frammenti della sua opera; Plutarco (Demelr. 22) adopera. quasi le stesse parole della fonte di Plinio: (Ov. 1921).
It was Apelles of Cos who surpassed all the painters that preceded and all who were to come after him; he dates in the 112th Olympiad. He singly contributed almost more to painting than allthe other artists put together, also publishing volumes containing the principles of painting. His art was unrivalled for graceful charm, although other very great painters were his contemporaries. Although he admired their works and gave high praise to all of them, he used to say that they lacked the glamour that his work possessed, the quality denoted by the Greek word charis, and that although they had every other merit, in that alone no one was his rival. He also asserted another claim to distinctiontion when he expressed his admiration for the immensely laborious and infinitely meticulous work of Protogenes; for he said that in all respects hi achievements and those of Protogenes were on level, or those of Protogenes were superior, but tha in one respect he stood higher, that he knew when to take his hand away from a picture a noteworthy warning of the frequently evil effects of excessive diligence. The candour of Apelles was however equal to his artistic skill he used to acknowledge his inferiority to Melanthius in grouping, and to Asclepiodorus in nicety of measurement, that is in the proper space to be left between one object and another.
A
clever incident took place between Protogenes and Apelles. Protogenes
lived at Rhodes and Apelles made the voyage there from a desire to make himself
acquainted with Protogenes’s works as that artist was hitherto only known to him
by reputation. He went at once to his studio. The artist was not there but there
was a panel of considerable size on the easel prepared for painting, which was in the charge of a single old woman. In answer to his enquiry, she told
him that Protogenes was no at home, and asked who it was she should report a
having wished to see him. “Say it was this person”, said Apelles, and taking up
a brush he painted incolour across the panel an extremely fine line and when
Protogenes returned the old woman showed him what had taken place. The story
goes that the artist, after looking closely at the finish of this, said that the
new arrival was Apelles, as s perfect a piece of work tallied with nobody else
and he himself, using another colour, drew a still finer line exactly on the top
of the first one, am leaving the room told the attendant to show it to the
visitor if he returned and add that this was the person he was in search of; and
so it happened; for Apelles came back, and, ashamed to be beaten, cut, i.e. drew
a yet finer line on the top of the other two lines with another in a third
color, leaving no room for any further display of minute work. Hereupon
Protogenes admitted he was defeated, and flew down to the harbor to look for the
visitor; and he decided that the panel should be handed on to posterity as it
was, to be admired as a marvel by everybody, but particularly by artists. I am
informed that it was burnt in the first fire which occurred in Caesar’s palace
on the Palatine; it had A.D. 4. been previously much admired by us, on
its vast surface containing nothing else than the almost invisible lines, so
that among the outstanding works of many artists it looked like a blank space,
and by that very fact attracted attention and was more esteemed than any
masterpiece.
For 20 years he enjoyed a reputation second only to that of Apelles.
The picture painted during the siege of Rhodes consisted of a satyr leaning idly against a pillar on which was a figure of a partridge, so life-like that ordinary spectators saw nothing but it. Enraged on this account, the painter wiped out the partridge. The Satyr must have been one of his last works. He would then be about seventy years of age, and had enjoyed for about twenty years a reputatio-n next only to that of Apelles, his friend and benefactor.
His best-known work was the Ialysus, which was removed by Vespasian to Rome, where it perished in the burning of the Temple of Peace.
And yet Alexander
conferred honor on him in a most conspicuous instance; he had such an admiration
for the beauty of his favorite mistress, named Pancaspe, that he gave
orders that she should be painted in the nude by Apelles, and then discovering
that the artist while executing the commission had fallen in love with the
woman, he presented her to him, greatminded as he was and still greater
owing to his control of himself, and of a greatness proved by this action as
much as by any other victory: because he conquered himself, and presented not
only his bedmate but his affection also to the artist, and was not even
influenced by regard for the feelings of his favorite in having been recently
the mistress of a monarch and now belonged to a painter. Some persons believe
that she was the model from which the Aphrodite Anadyomene (Rising from
the Sea) was painted. It was Apelles also who, kindly among his rivals,
first established the reputation of Protogenes at Rhodes. Protogenes was held in
low esteem by his fellow-countrymen, as is usual with home products, and, when
Apelles asked him what price he set on some works he had finished, he had
mentioned some small sum, but Apellcs made him an offer of fifty talents for
them, and spread it about that he was buying them with the intention of selling
them as works of his own. This device aroused the people of Rhodes to appreciate
the artist, and Apelles only parted with the pictures to them at an enhanced
price.
He also painted portraits so absolutely lifelike that, incredible as
it sounds, the grammarian Apio has left it on record that one of those persons
called ‘physiognomists,’ (metoposkopoz) who prophesy people’s future by their
countenance, pronounced from their portraits either the year of the subjects’
deaths hereafter or the number of years they had already lived.
Apelles had been on bad terms with Ptolemy in Alexander’s retinue.
When this Ptolemy was King of Egypt, Apelles on a voyage had been driven by a
violent storm into Alexandria. His rivals maliciously suborned the King’s jester
to convey to him an invitation to dinner, to which he came. Ptolemy was very
indignant, and paraded his hospitality-stewards for Apelles to say which of them
had given him the invitation. Apelles picked up a piece of extinguished charcoal
from the hearth and drew a likeness on the wall, the King recognizing the
features of the jester as soon as he began the sketch. He also painted a
portrait of King Antigonus (382 –301BC) who was blind in one eye, and devised an
original method of concealing the defect, for he did the likeness in
‘threequarter,’ so that the feature that was lacking in the subject might
be thought instead to be absent in the picture, and he only showed the part of
the face which lie was able to display as unmutilated.
Famous paintings
Among his works there are also pictures
of persons at the point of death. But it is not easy to say which of his
productions are of the highest rank. His Aphrodite emerging from the Sea
was dedicated by his late lamented Majesty Augustus in the Shrine of his father
Caesar; it is known as the Anadyomene; this like other works is eclipsed
a yet made famous by the Greek verses which sing its praises; the lower part of
the picture having become damaged nobody could be found to restore it, but the
actual injury contributed to the glory of the artist. This picture however
suffered from age and rot, and Nero when emperor substituted another for
it, a work by Dorotheus. Apelles had also begun on another
Aphrodite at Cos, which was to surpass even his famous earlier one; but
death grudged him the work when only partly finished, nor could anybody be found
to carry on the task, in conformity with the outlines of the sketches prepared.
He also painted Alexander the Great holding a Thunderbolt, in the temple
of Artemis at Ephesus, for a fee of twenty talents in gold. The fingers
have the appearance of projecting from the surface and the thunderbolt seems to
stand out from the picture - readers must remember - that all these
effects were produced by four colours; the artist received the price of this
picture in gold coin measured by weight of the panel not counted. He also
painted a ‘Procession of the Magabyzus’, the priest of Artemis of
Ephesus, a ‘Clitus with Horse’ hastening into battle; and an
armour-bearer handing someone a helmet at his command. How many times he painted
Alexander and Philip it would be superfluous to recount. His
‘Habron at Samos’ is much admired, as is his Menander, King of
Caria, at Rhodes, likewise his Antaeus, and at Alexandria his
Gorgosthenes the Tragic Actor, and at Rome his Castor and Pollux with
Victory and Alexander the Great, and also his figure of War with the
Hands Tied behind, with Alexander riding in Triumph in his Chariot. 130th of
these pictures his late lamented Majesty Augustus with restrained good taste had
dedicated in the most frequented parts of his forum; the emperor Claudius
however thought it more advisable to cut out the face of Alexander from both
works and substitute portraits of Augustus. The Heracles with Face Averted in
the temple of Diana is also believed to be by his hand—so drawn that the picture
more truly displays Heracles’ face than merely suggests it to the imagination -
a very difficult achievement. He also painted a ‘Nude Hero’, a picture
with which he challenged Nature herself. There is, or was, a picture of a Horse
by him, painted in a competition, by which he carried his appeal for judgement
from mankind to the dumb quadrupeds; for perceiving that his rivals were getting
the better of him by intrigue, he had some horses brought and showed them their
pictures one by one; and the horses only began to neigh when they saw the horse
painted by Apelles; and this always happened subsequently, showing it to be a
sound test of artistic skill. He also did a ‘Neoptolemus on Horseback
fighting against the Persians’, an ‘Archelaus with his Wife and
Daughter’, and an ‘Antigonus with a Breastplate marching with his
horse at his side’. Connoisseurs put at the head of all his works the
portrait of the same king seated on horseback, and his ‘Artemis in the midst
of a band of Maidens offering a Sacrifice’, a work by which he may be
thought to have surpassed Homer’s verses (Odyssey, VI, 102)
describing the same subject. He even painted things that cannot be
represented in pictures - thunder, lightning and thunderbolts, the pictures
known respectively under the Greek titles of Bronte, Astrape and Ceraunobolia.
Inventions in the art
Aphrodite Anadyomene emerging from the Sea was dedicatd by his late lamented Majesty Augustus in the Shrine of his father Caesar
Pliny, Naturalis Historia (XXXV.91)
The "Ludovisi Throne" is comprised of three panels sculpted in relief. It is thought to be an altar, with Aphrodite rising from the sea, the diaphanous folds of her wet garment clinging to her body.
The
left panel depicts a hetarai playing a double flute and is one of the
very first representations of the monumental female nude. She represents the
profane aspect of the goddess. Greek hetarai were the courtesans, doctae
puellae. Habitually these mistresses would live with their mothers and sisters,
under a lena, or in an apartment provided by their lovers. Unlike prostitutes,
courtesans were usually of respectable origin, although some were freedwomen.
They did not live with their lovers, but, unlike prostitutes, usually had only
one lover at a time.
While the right-hand panel portrays a matron putting incense on
a burner, personifying the sacred ritual.