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Updated: May 16, 2025
By the time of Nero it had become so much injured that it had to be replaced by a copy. Protogenes was another painter whom even the slightest sketch cannot afford to pass over in silence. He was born at Caunus in southwestern Asia Minor and flourished about the same time as Apelles. He was an extremely painstaking artist, inclined to excessive elaboration in his work.
General or congregated beauties always arise from genius and talent: particular or detached beauties belong to study, to labour, that is, to the nulla die sine linea and sometimes solely to chance, as is exemplified in the old story of Protogenes, the celebrated Rhodian painter.
They are as dear to us as to those who believe or believed in the Protogenes Haeckelii. A little progress, however, we have made. Who is there that still classifies the human race by their skulls, hair, anatomy, etc., and not by their speech?
Greek productions were not merely matters of property, they were copied and reproduced in all the cities of the Mediterranean; and though no artist of original genius arose from Augustus to Constantine, galleries of art existed everywhere in which the masterpieces of Polygnotus, Pausias, Aristides, Timanthes, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Pamphilus, Euphranor, Protogenes, Apelles, Timomachus, and of other illustrious men, were objects of as much praise as the galleries of Dresden and Florence.
We are told of Protogenes that he spent seven years on a single figure, and I think he would have spent seven more if he had thought that he could thereby have improved his painting. Nothing strikes one more strongly in such works as the charioteer of Delphi and the Hermes of Praxiteles than the pains taken with every detail.
It happened as he anticipated Apelles returned; and vexed at finding himself thus surpassed, he took up another color and split both of the outlines, leaving no possibility of anything finer being executed. Upon seeing this, Protogenes admitted that he was defeated, and at once flew to the harbor to look for his guest.
And when Protogenes returned, and had looked upon the line, he knew who had been there, and said withal, "Surely Apelles has come to town, for it is impossible that any but he should make in colour so fine workmanship." Thus genius is betrayed by its own perfection, and he who refused to soil the carpet could not but be recognised by his skill.
What must have been their exquisite state when the simple line drawn by Protogenes, in the consciousness of his acknowledged perfection, and which was intended to announce the man who drew it, as much as if he had told his name, was so far excelled by another simple line over it by Apelles, that the former at once confessed himself outdone?
Many were the eminent painters that adorned the fifth century before Christ, not only in Athens, but the Ionian cities of Asia. Timanthes of Sicyon was distinguished for invention, and Eupompus of the same city founded a school. His advice to Lysippus is memorable "Let Nature, not an artist, be your model." Protogenes was celebrated for his high finish.
The later discoveries at Pompeii show the same correctness of design in painting as in sculpture, and also considerable perfection in coloring. The great artists of Greece were both sculptors and painters, like Michael Angelo. Phidias and Euphranor, Zeuxis and Protogenes, Polygnotus and Lysippus, were both.
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