inting of Greece and that of ancient Italy are so much the same that
it is almost impossible to speak of them separately; the art of painting
was carried from Greece to Italy by the Etruscans, and the art of ancient
Rome was simply that of Greece transplanted. If Greek artists were
employed by Romans, certainly their works were Greek; and if Romans
painted they aimed to imitate the Greeks exactly, so that Italian painting
before the time of the Christian era must be considered together with that
of Greece.

In architecture and sculpture the ancient Greeks accepted what had been
done by the Egyptians and Assyrians as a foundation, and went on to
perfect the work of the older nations through the aid of poetic and
artistic imaginations. But in painting the Greeks followed nothing that
had preceded them. They were the first to make pictures which were a
life-like reproduction of what they saw about them: they were the first to
separate painting from sculpture, and to give it such importance as would
permit it to have its own place, quite free from the influence of any
other art, and in its own way as grand and as beautiful as its sister
arts.

There are writers who trace the origin and progress of Greek painting from
the very earliest times; but I shall begin with Apollodorus, who is spoken
of as the first Greek painter worthy of fame, because he was the first
one who knew how to make his pictures appear to be real, and to follow the
rules of perspective so as to have a background from which his figures
stood out, and to shade his colors and soften his outlines. He was very
famous, and was called _skiagraphos_, which means shadow painter.

Apollodorus was an Athenian, and lived at about the close of the fifth
century B.C. Although he was a remarkable artist then, we must not fancy
that his pictures would have satisfied our idea of the beautiful--in fact,
Pliny, the historian, who saw his pictures six hundred years later, at
Pergamos, says that Apollodorus was but the gatekeeper who threw open the
gates of painting to the famous artists who lived after him.

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. He was in the
habit of putting his pictures on exhibition, and charging an admittance
fee, just as artists do now: he called himself "the unsurpassable," and
sa