is
the first who is mentioned as having advanced the art of painting in
Greece, and as having emancipated it from its archaic rigidity, by
exchanging the conventional manner of rendering the human form for an
approach to truthfulness to nature. He also first made muscular
articulations, indicated the veins, and gave natural folds to
draperies. He is also supposed to have been the first who used a
variety of colors, and to have introduced foreshortening. The first
painter of great renown was Polygnotus. Accurate drawing, and a noble
and distinct manner of characterizing the most different mythological
forms was his great merit; his female figures also possessed charms
and grace. His large tabular pictures were conceived with great
knowledge of legends, and in an earnest religious spirit. At Athens he
painted, according to Pausanias, a series of paintings of mythological
subjects in the Pinakotheke in the Propylaea on the Acropolis, and
pictorial decorations for the temple of Theseus, and the Poecile. He
executed a series of paintings at Delphi on the long walls of the
Lesche. The wall to the right on entering the Lesche bore scenes
illustrative of the epic myth of the taking of Troy; the left, the
visit of Ulysses to the lower world, as described in the Odyssey.
Pliny remarks that in place of the old severity and rigidity of the
features he introduced a great variety of expression, and was the
first to paint figures with the lips open. Lucian attributes to him
great improvements in the rendering of drapery so as to show the forms
underneath. Apollodorus, of Athens, was the first great master of
light and shade. According to Pliny he was the first to paint men and
things as they really appear. A more advanced stage of improved
painting began with Zeuxis, in which art aimed at illusion of the
senses and the rendering of external charms. He appears to have been
equally distinguished in the representation of female charms, and of
the sublime majesty of Zeus on his throne. His masterpiece was his
picture of Helen, in painting which he had as his models the five most
beautiful virgins of Croton.

Neither the place nor date of the birth of Zeuxis can be accurately
ascertained, though he was probably born about 455 B.C., since thirty
years after that date we find him practicing his art with great
success at Athens. He was patronized by Archelaus, King of Macedonia,
and spent some time at his court. He must also have visited Ma