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Updated: May 17, 2025
Zeuxis acquired a great fortune, and lived ostentatiously. Contemporaneous with Zeuxis, and equal in fame, was Parrhasius, a native of Ephesus, whose skill lay in accuracy of drawing and power of expression. He gave to painting true proportion, and attended to minute details of the countenance and the hair. In his gods and heroes, he did for painting what Phidias did in sculpture.
"Prisoners, victims of justice, have, it seems, no privileges; else my one request, my earnest prayer to be shielded from your presence, might have protected me from this intrusion. Are you akin to Parrhasius that you come to gloat over the agonies of a moral and mental vivisection?
Now some painters there are that paint uncomely actions; as Timotheus drew Medea killing her children; Theon, Orestes murdering his mother; and Parrhasius, Ulysses counterfeiting madness; yea, Chaerephanes expressed in picture the unchaste converse of women with men.
But why should I attempt to depict and describe in detail, and feature by feature, the beauty of the peerless Dulcinea, the burden being one worthy of other shoulders than mine, an enterprise wherein the pencils of Parrhasius, Timantes, and Apelles, and the graver of Lysippus ought to be employed, to paint it in pictures and carve it in marble and bronze, and Ciceronian and Demosthenian eloquence to sound its praises?"
Zeuxis then requested that the curtain which was supposed to screen the picture of Parrhasius be withdrawn, when it was found that the painting of Parrhasius was merely the representation of a curtain thrown over a picture-frame. The award of merit was therefore given to Parrhasius, on the ground that while Zeuxis had deceived the birds, Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis himself.
It is not merely that he was depraved, for all of that lot were; it was that he made depravity a pursuit; and, the purple favoring, carried it not only beyond the limits of the imaginable, but beyond the limits of the real. At the feet of that painted boy, Elephantis and Parrhasius could have sat and learned a lesson.
The strength of Parrhasius is said to have lain in subtlety of line, which would suggest that with him, as with Polygnotus, painting was essentially outline drawing. Yet he too can hardly have remained unaffected by the new chiaroscuro. Easel pictures now assumed a relative importance which they had not had a generation earlier.
In the Fourth Reader there were seventeen selections from the Bible; William Wirt's "Description of the Blind Preacher;" Phillip's "Character of Napoleon Bonaparte;" Bacon's "Essay on Studies;" Nott's "Speech on the Death of Alexander Hamilton;" Addison's "Westminster Abbey;" Irving's "Alhambra;" Rogers's "Genevra;" Willis's "Parrhasius;" Montgomery's "Make Way for Liberty;" two extracts from Milton and two from Shakespeare, and no less than fourteen selections from the writings of the men and women who lectured before the College of Teachers in Cincinnati.
At times I have almost felt like Parrhasius of old, who exulted in his captive's dying throes, since upon them his hand of genius would confer immortality. But I beg your pardon you are but a woman a mere girl," added Vanbrugh, seeing Olive shudder. Yet he had not been unmindful of the ardent enthusiasm which had dilated her whole frame while listening.
In painting, the Asiatic school of Zeuxis and Parrhasius was also followed by a "Si-cy-o'ni-an school" the third and last phase of Greek painting, founded by Eupom'pus, of Si'cy-on. The characteristics of this school were great ease, accuracy, and refinement. Among its chief masters were Pam'philus, Apel'les, Protog'enes, Ni'cias, and Aristides.
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