ander with the thunderbolt in his hand, but he
even attempted, as the master in light and shade, to paint
thunderstorms, probably at the same time as natural scenes and
mythological personifications. The Anadyomene, originally painted for
the temple of AEsculapius, at Cos, was transferred by Augustus to the
temple of D. Julius, at Rome, where, however, it was in a decayed
state even at the time of Nero. Contemporaneously with him flourished
Protogenes and Nicias. Protogenes was both a painter and a statuary,
and was celebrated for the high finish of his works. His master-piece
was the picture of Ialysus, the tutelary hero of Rhodes, where he
lived. He is said to have spent seven years on it. Nicias, of Athens,
was celebrated for the delicacy with which he painted females. He was
also famous as an encaustic painter, and was employed by Praxiteles to
apply his art to his statues. The glorious art of these masters, as
far as regards light, tone, and local colors, is lost to us, and we
know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations.
It is not thus necessary to speak at length of the various schools of
painting in Greece, their works being all lost, the knowledge of the
characteristics peculiar to each school would be at the present day
perfectly useless. Painting had to follow the invariable law of all
development; having reached a period of maturity, it followed, as a
necessary consequence, that the period of decline should begin. The
art of this period of refinement, Mr. Wornum writes, which has been
termed the Alexandrian, because the most celebrated artist of this
period lived about the time of Alexander the Great, was the last of
progression, or acquisition, but it only added variety of effect to
the tones it could not improve, and was principally characterized by
the diversity of the styles of so many contemporary artists. The
decadence of the arts immediately succeeded, the necessary
consequence, when, instead of excellence, variety and originality
became the end of the artist. The tendencies which are peculiar to
this period gave birth sometimes to pictures which ministered to a low
sensuality; sometimes to works which attracted by their effects of
light, and also to caricatures and travesties of mythological
subjects. The artists of this period were under the necessity of
attracting attention by novelty and variety; thus rhyparography, and
the lower classes of art, attained the ascendency, and b