Apelles

Apelles of Kos (fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom much of modern scholars' knowledge of this artist is owed (Naturalis Historia 35.36.79–97 and passim), rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332–329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great.
Biography
Probably born at Colophon in Ionia, he first studied under Ephorus of Ephesus, but after he had attained some celebrity he became a student to Pamphilus at Sicyon He thus combined the Dorian thoroughness with the Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip II, he painted him and the young Alexander with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon, and his picture of Alexander holding a thunderbolt ranked in the minds of many with the Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Hundreds of years later, Plutarch was among the unimpressed, deciding that it had failed to accurately reproduce Alexander's colouring: "He made Alexander's complexion appear too dark-skinned and swarthy, whereas we are told that he was fair-skinned, with a ruddy tinge that showed itself especially upon his face and chest."
Much of what is known of Apelles is derived from Pliny the Elder (Natural History, XXXV). His skill at drawing the human face is the focus of a story connecting him with Ptolemy I Soter. This onetime general of Alexander disliked Apelles while they both were in Alexander's retinue. Many years later, while travelling by sea, a storm forced Apelles to land in Ptolemy's Egyptian kingdom. Ptolemy's jester was suborned by Apelles' rivals to convey to the artist a spurious invitation to dine with Ptolemy. Apelles' unexpected arrival enraged the king. Ptolemy demanded to know who had given Apelles the invitation, and with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace Apelles drew a likeness on the wall, which Ptolemy recognized as his jester in the first strokes of the sketch.
Apelles was a contemporary of Protogenes, whose reputation he advocated. Pliny also recorded an anecdote that was making the rounds among Hellenistic connoisseurs of the first century CE: Apelles travelled to Protogenes' home in Rhodes to make the acquaintance of this painter he had heard so much about. Arriving at Protogenes' studio, he encountered an old woman who told him that Protogenes was out and asked for his name so she could report who had enquired after him. Observing in the studio a panel Protogenes had prepared for a painting, Apelles walked over to the easel, and taking up a brush told the servant to tell Protogenes "this came from me," and drew in colour an extremely fine line across the panel. When Protogenes returned, and the old woman explained what had taken place, he examined the line and pronounced that only Apelles could have done so perfect a piece of work; Protogenes then dipped a brush into another colour and drew a still finer line above the first one, and asked his servant to show this to the visitor should he return. When Apelles returned, and was shown Protogenes' response, ashamed that he might be bettered, he drew in a third colour an even finer line between the first two, leaving no room for another display of craftsmanship. On seeing this, Protogenes admitted defeat, and went out to seek Apelles and meet him face-to-face.
Pliny claims that this very painting had been part of the collection of Julius Caesar, but was destroyed when Caesar's mansion on the Palatine Hill burned down. While sketching one of Alexander the Great's concubines, Campaspe, Apelles fell in love with her. As a mark of appreciation for the great painter's work, Alexander presented her to him. Apelles is said to have been working on a painting of Aphrodite of Kos when he died, and the painting was left unfinished for no one could be found with skill enough to complete it.
The renowned work of Apelles provided several exemplars for the narrative realism admired by Greco-Roman connoisseurs, succinctly expressed in Horace's words ut pictura poesis, "as is painting so is poetry." Apelles seemed to have had a taste for elaborate allegory and personification, which he carried far in his rendering of Calumny, described by Lucian, in which an innocent youth is falsely accused by Ignorance, Envy, Treachery and Deceit. The story occasioning the painting was alleged to have been false accusations by a rival artist that Apelles took part in a conspiracy against Ptolemy IV Philopator. This almost led to the artist's execution. "In the Renaissance the exemplar of the poetic painting which was invariably cited whenever the art-poetry question was discussed was the Calumny of Apelles, known through Lucian's description." Sandro Botticelli's panel of Calumny of Apelles was painted in conscious striving to equal the painting in Lucian's ekphrasis.
The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus used Apelles in an analogy for how ataraxia (i.e., freedom from mental perturbance) is achieved. The acquisition of ataraxia was likened to the process where Apelles was trying to paint a horse. He wished to represent its foam (in Greek mythology, Poseidon created horses out of sea foam). He was so unsuccessful that, in a rage, he gave up and threw the sponge he was using to clean his brushes with at the medium, and its mark produced the effect of the horse's foam.
Works
Apelles' paintings (none of which survive) included:
Alexander wielding a thunderbolt, one of the many he did of both Alexander and his father Philip;
Aphrodite Anadyomene ("Aphrodite Rising from the Sea"), showing the goddess rising from the sea (not the painting he was working on when he died, but an earlier painting), for which Pliny the Elder relates the tradition he used a former mistress of Alexander, Campaspe, as his model for Aphrodite. According to Athenaeus, the idea of Aphrodite Rising from the Sea was inspired by Phryne who during the time of the festivals of the Eleusinia and Poseidonia had no problem swimming nude in the sea.
A portrait of Antigonus I Monophthalmus on horseback, in a three-quarters view which artfully concealed the subject's blind eye;
A portrait of Artemis surrounded by a group of maidens offering a sacrifice, based on Odyssey 6.102ff;
Sacrifice in Cos, described in the Mimes (4.59) of Herodas.
The portraits of Clitus the Black and Archelaus I of Macedon.
The procession of the high priest of Artemis at Ephesus.
The great allegory of Calumny.
A number of his paintings were taken to Rome (including Aphrodite Anadyomene) and placed there on public display; in two compositions featuring portraits of Alexander (Castor and Pollux with Victory and Alexander the Great, and The Figure of War with his Hands Tied Behind Him Following the Triumphal Chariot of Alexander) the Emperor Claudius later had Alexander's face replaced with that of his grandfather Augustus.
Legacy
An assessment by the classical scholar Percy Gardner in the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition reads:
Pliny connects a number of sayings to Apelles, which may come from Apelles' lost treatise on the art of painting. One comes from Apelles' judgement on Protogenes, that Protogenes knew when his painting was finished: quod manum de tabula scirat—"[He knew] when to take the hand from the picture." Another refers to his practice of exhibiting his works in the front of his shop, then hiding nearby to hear the comments of passers-by. When a cobbler commented on his mistakes in painting a shoe, Apelles made the corrections that very night; the next morning the cobbler noticed the changes, and proud of his effect on the artist's work began to criticize how Apelles portrayed the leg—whereupon Apelles emerged from his hiding-place to state: Ne sutor ultra crepidam—"Let the shoemaker venture no further than the shoe." The last saying Pliny attributes to Apelles refers to the painter's diligence at practising his art every day: Nulla dies sine linea—"Not a day without a line drawn." Apelles was also reportedly asked why he touched and retouched his paintings so continually, trying to achieve perfection (at least in his own mind); to which he replied, "I paint for eternity."
Pliny states that Apelles made a number of useful innovations to the art of painting, but his recipe for a black varnish, called by Pliny atramentum—which served both to preserve his paintings and to soften their colour, and created an effect that Pliny praises to no end—Apelles kept secret and was lost with his death.
There can be little doubt that Apelles was one of the most bold and progressive of artists. Such was his fame that several Italian Renaissance painters repeated his subjects, in a vain hope of giving some notion of the composition of them. Raphael may have portrayed himself as Apelles in The School of Athens and Sandro Botticelli based two paintings—The Birth of Venus and Calumny of Apelles—on his works. The 15th-century mathematician Luca Pacioli, when praising Leonardo da Vinci's work in Milan, including his Last Supper, stated that even Apelles must now give way to Leonardo as history's greatest artist.
In 1819, the painting Générosité d'Alexandre, by Jérôme-Martin Langlois depicted the story of Alexander the Great gifting his concubine, Campaspe to Apelles.
References and sources
References
Sources
Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis xxxv, 91 ff.
Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, volume i (English translation, New York, 1886)
Houssaye, Histoire d'Apelles (Paris, 1867)
Wustmann, Apelles' Leben und Werke (Leipzig, 1870)
Ernst H. Gombrich, 'The Heritage of Apelles', The Heritage of Apelles: Studies in the Art of Renaissance, (Cornell University Press: Ithaca, New York, 1976), pp 3–18.
John J. Popovic, "Apelles, the greatest painter of Antiquity" Source quotes from Pliny's Natural History.
(rodcorp) "Giotto's circle, Apelles' lines, Chuang-tzu's crab": Tracing a literary topos.
External links
Ancient Greek painters
Painters of Alexander the Great
Ancient Koans
4th-century BC Greek people
4th-century BC painters