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Updated: May 21, 2025
This beautiful group seemed actually to live and move in the clear light and deep shadows derived from a silver lamp suspended above. The walls were enriched with some of the choicest paintings of Apollodorus, Zeuxis, and Polygnotus. Near a fine likeness of Pericles, by Aristolaus, was Aspasia, represented as Chloris scattering flowers over the earth, and attended by winged Hours.
To Hipparete she gave a bracelet of pearls; to Philothea, a lyre of ivory and gold; and to Eudora, a broad clasp for her mantle, on which the car of Aphrodite, drawn by swans, was painted in enamel, by Polygnotus, the inventor of the art.
And we, who have still before us the remnants of her temples and statues, and learn from them what man can accomplish under the inspiration of great ideals, need not scan too closely her claim to appropriate the funds which she employed for so noble a purpose. For this was the great age of Grecian art, the age of Phidias, Polycletus, Myron, and Polygnotus.
"From Homer and Polygnotus," says Goethe, "I daily learn more and more that in our life here above the ground we have, properly speaking, to enact Hell." A truth, so far as it goes: this Earth is hell; there is no hell, says H.P. Blavatsky, but a man- bearing planet. But we demand of the greatest, that they shall see beyond hell into Heaven.
Here, also, was the horse painted by Apelles which living horses neighed at; his first portrait of Alexander the Great, and his last unfinished picture of Venus asleep. Each of these works of art, together with others by Parrhasius, Timanthes, Polygnotus, Apollodorus, Pausias, and Pamplulus, required more time and study than I could bestow for the adequate perception of their merits.
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 Aldobrandini Marriage, found on the Esquiline Mount during the pontificate of Clement VIII., and placed in the Vatican by Pius VII., is admired both for drawing and color. Polygnotus was praised by Aristotle for his designs, and by Lucian for his color. Dionysius and Mikon were the great contemporaries of Polygnotus, the former being celebrated for his portraits.
Aylwin, it renders in Art the inevitable attitude of its own time and country towards the unseen world, and renders it as completely as did the masterpiece of Polygnotus in the Lesche of the 'Not in the flesh; in the spirit, who knows him so well?
Polygnotus depicted men as nobler than they are, Pauson as less noble, Dionysius drew them true to life. Now it is evident that each of the modes of imitation above mentioned will exhibit these differences, and become a distinct kind in imitating objects that are thus distinct. Such diversities may be found even in dancing, flute-playing, and lyre-playing.
I have no time to trace for you any more harpy legends, though they are full of the most curious interest; but I may confirm for you my interpretation of this one, and prove its importance in the Greek mind, by noting that Polygnotus painted these maidens, in his great religious series of paintings at Delphi, crowned with flowers, and playing at dice; and that Penelope remembers them in her last fit of despair, just before the return of Ulysses, and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at once into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' daughters, rather than be tormented longer by her deferred hope, and anguish of disappointed love.
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