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Updated: June 8, 2025
Yet, in so far as they are rightly arts, they do not make imitation an object in itself. The grapes of Zeuxis at which birds pecked, the painted dog at which a cat's hair bristles if such grapes or such a dog were ever put on canvas are but evidences of the artist's skill, not of his faculty as artist.
Zeuxis, Parrhasius, and Timanthes belonged to the Ionian school of painting, which flourished during the Peloponnesian war. This school was excelled by that of Sikyon, which reached its highest prosperity between the end of the Peloponnesian war and the death of Alexander the Great.
He saw the plays of Sophocles and Aristophanes; he walked amidst the friezes of Phidias and the paintings of Zeuxis: he knew by heart the choruses of Aeschylus: he heard the rhapsodist at the corner of the streets reciting the Shield of Achilles or the Death of Argus: he was a legislator, conversant with high questions of alliance, revenue, and war: he was a soldier, trained under a liberal and generous discipline: he was a judge compelled every day to weigh the effect of opposite arguments.
Oh, that I were a Zeuxis to unite them instead of having to paint them in two separate pictures, and split perfection in half, as everything is split in this piecemeal world! 'You will have the honour of a sitting this afternoon, I suppose, from both beauties? 'I hope so, for my own sake. There is no path left to immortality, or bread either, now for us poor artists but portrait-painting.
Zeuxis was a pupil of Apollodorus, and a great artist also. He was born at Heraclea, probably in Lower Italy. When young he led a wandering life; he studied at Athens under Apollodorus, and settled in Ephesus.
It is said that he actually laughed himself to death from amusement at one of his own pictures, which represented an old woman. Zeuxis had a rival in the painter Parrhasius, and their names are often associated. On one occasion they made trial of their artistic skill. Zeuxis painted a bunch of grapes so naturally that the birds came to peck at them.
Zeuxis yielded the palm to him, since Parrhasius painted a curtain which deceived his rival, whereas the grapes of Zeuxis had deceived only birds. Parrhasius was exceedingly arrogant and luxurious, and boasted of having reached the utmost limits of his art. He combined the magic tone of Apollodorus with the exquisite design of Zeuxis and the classic expression of Polygnotus.
As we turned and moved again through the temple, I wished that the illustrious men who had sat in it in the remote ages could visit it again and reveal themselves to our curious eyes Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Socrates, Phocion, Pythagoras, Euclid, Pindar, Xenophon, Herodotus, Praxiteles and Phidias, Zeuxis the painter. What a constellation of celebrated names!
The result of this sort of private demand was what we have seen taking place a hundred years later in the case of sculpture, viz.: that artists became free to employ their talents on any subjects which would gratify the taste of patrons. For example, a painting by Zeuxis of which Lucian has left us a description illustrates what may be called mythological genre.
"by bursts of music, peals of bells, explosions of artillery, deafening shouts, of discharges of fireworks, and such a universal display of extravagant joy that, as my worthy author, Gonçalves dos Santos says: 'It would require the pencil of Zeuxis and the odes of Pindar to describe; and if anything on earth could be compared to the joys of heaven, it was that moment."
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