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Updated: May 28, 2025
Euphronius belonged to a generation which was making great progress in the knowledge of anatomy and in the ability to pose figures naturally and expressively. It is interesting to note how close is the similarity in the method of treating drapery between the vases of this period and contemporary sculpture.
"These are abstruse matters," said Euphronius, "and I lament that your stay in Berytus will not be long enough to instruct me adequately therein." "Accompany us to India," said they, "and thou shalt receive instruction at the fountain head." "I am old and feeble," apologised Euphronius, "and adjusted by long habit to my present environment.
But if one would like to dream what his art was like, one may imagine it as combining with the dramatic power of Euphronius and the exquisite loveliness of the Aphrodite cup, Giotto's elevation of feeling and Michael Angelo's profundity of thought. Another branch of painting which began to attain importance in the time of Polygnotus was scene-painting for theatrical performances.
The development of the new style was achieved by men of talent, several of whom fairly deserve to be called artists. Such an one was Euphronius, whose long career as a potter covered some fifty years, beginning at the beginning of the fifth century or a little earlier. On one side we have one of the old stock subjects of the vase-painters, treated with unapproached vivacity and humor.
The technique is here different from that just described, inasmuch as the design is painted in reddish brown upon a white ground. The subject is the goddess Aphrodite, riding upon a goose. The painter, some unnamed younger contemporary of Euphronius, has learned a freer manner of drawing. He gives to the eye in profile its proper form, and to the drapery a simple and natural fall.
For I could not remember that he had ever admitted that he could have anything to learn from other philosophers, or that he had ever exhibited the least interest in philosophic dogmas, excepting his own. The system of the Indians, I thought, must be either inferior to that of Euphronius, or superior. If the former, he will not want it: if the latter, he will want it much less.
"When I further proceeded to explain that a temple had been erected to Euphronius himself on the banks of the Ganges, and that a festival, called Durga Popja, or the Feast of Reason, had been instituted in his honour, his good humour knew no bounds, and he granted me his daughter's hand without difficulty.
"'The wisdom of the Indians, I replied, 'is entirely borrowed from Pythagoras. "'Did I not tell you so? 'Euphronius appealed to his disciples. "'Invariably, they replied. "'As if a barbarian could teach a Greek! said he. "'It is much if he is able to learn from one, said they. "'Pythagoras, then, said Euphronius addressing me, did not resort to India to be instructed by the Gymnosophists?
He was one of the foremost enemies of Arianism at Nicæa, and had since waged an active literary war with the Arianizing clique in Syria. In one respect they found him a specially dangerous enemy, for he saw clearly the important consequences of the Arian denial of the Lord's true human soul. The vacant see was offered to Eusebius of Cæsarea, and finally accepted by the Cappadocian Euphronius.
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