Zeuxis
Bornc. 464 BCE
Heraclea Lucania
Diedc. 4th century BCE[1]
Place of death unknown
Cause of deathDeath from laughter
OccupationPainter

Zeuxis (/ˈzjuːksɪs/; Greek: Ζεῦξις)[2] (of Heraclea) was a Greek painter who flourished during the 5th century BCE and became famous for his ability to imitate nature and especially still life with his art.[3]

He had notable fame and was cited, among others, by Xenophon[4] and Aristotle.[5] The sources of the Hellenistic era also handed down his fame through anecdotes such as that of the grapes, painted in competition with the painter Parrhasius, depicted in such a detailed manner and so faithful to reality that it misled sparrows.

Life and work

Victor Mottez, Zeuxis choosing his models (1858)

Zeuxis was born in Heraclea in 464 BC, probably Heraclea Lucania, in the present-day region of Basilicata in the southeastern "boot" of Italy.[6] He may have studied with Demophilus of Himera (Sicily), or with Neseus of Thasos (an island in the northern Aegean Sea), and/or with the Greek painter Appollodorus.

He was active across the ancient Greek world from Magna Graecia to Ephesus, to Macedonia, Samos and to Athens where his greatest number of works were made.[7] The “Eros” of the temple of Aphrodite and the “Penelope” were some of his first works. Records cite his notable works as Helen, Zeus Enthroned and The Infant Hercules Strangling the Serpents. He also painted an assembly of gods, Eros crowned with roses, Alcmene, Menelaus, an athlete, Pan, Marsyas chained, and an old woman. King Archelaus I of Macedon employed Zeuxis to decorate the palace of his new capital Pella with a picture of Pan.[8] Most of his works went to Rome and to Byzantium, but disappeared during the time of Pausanias.

Zeuxis Choosing his Models for the Image of Helen from among the Girls of Croton, detail

Zeuxis was an innovative Greek painter. Although his paintings have not survived, historical records state they were known for their realism, small scale, novel subject matter, and independent format. His technique created volumetric illusion through manipulating light and shadow, a change from the usual method of filling in shapes with flat color. Preferring small scale panels to murals, Zeuxis also introduced genre subjects (such as still life) into painting. He contributed to the composite method of composition, and may have originated an approach to, and thus influenced the concept of the ideal form of the nude, as described by art historian Kenneth Clark. As the story goes, according to Cicero,[9] Zeuxis could not find a woman beautiful enough to pose as Helen of Troy, the most beautiful woman in the world, so he selected the finest features of five different models of the city of Croton to create a composite image of ideal beauty.[10]

Painting contest

According to the Naturalis Historia by Pliny the Elder, Zeuxis and his contemporary Parrhasius (of Ephesus and later Athens) staged a contest to determine the greater artist. When Zeuxis unveiled his painting of grapes, they appeared so real that birds flew down to peck at them. But when Parrhasius, whose painting was concealed behind a curtain, asked Zeuxis to pull aside that curtain, the curtain itself turned out to be a painted illusion. Parrhasius won, and Zeuxis said, "I have deceived the birds, but Parrhasius has deceived Zeuxis." This story was commonly referred to in 18th and 19th century art theory to promote spatial illusion in painting. A similar anecdote says that Zeuxis once drew a boy holding grapes, and when birds, once again, tried to peck them, he was extremely displeased, stating that he must have painted the boy with less skill, since the birds would have feared to approach otherwise.

Death

Arent de Gelder, Self-Portrait as Zeuxis Portraying an Ugly Old Woman (1685)

According to the Roman grammarian Festus, Zeuxis died laughing at a picture of an old woman he had just painted.[11][12]

The legend is mentioned in Karel van Mander's Schilder-boeck (1604)[13] and is known by later artists who alluded to the story in their self portraits, such as Rembrandt's Self-Portrait as Zeuxis Laughing (c. 1662), Aert de Gelder's Self-Portrait as Zeuxis (1685),[14] and possibly Jean-Étienne Liotard's Self-Portrait Laughing (c. 1770).[13]

Literary References

Zeuxis is briefly mentioned in the preface of Don Quixote by Cervantes:

Of all this there will be nothing in my book, for I have nothing to quote in the margin or to note at the end, and still less do I know what authors I follow in it, to place them at the beginning, as all do, under the letters A, B, C, beginning with Aristotle and ending with Xenophon, or Zoilus, or Zeuxis, though one was a slanderer and the other a painter.[15]

and is mentioned by Mark Twain in The Innocents Abroad:

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.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ Chilvers, Ian (2003). "Zeuxis". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Retrieved 7 November 2010.
  2. ^ William Smith (1880). A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology: Oarses-Zygia. J. Murray. p. 1325.
  3. ^ "Zeuxis: The Ancient Greek Painter & Master of Still Life". TheCollector. 2020-06-09. Retrieved 2021-08-12.
  4. ^ Xenophon Oec. 10
  5. ^ Aristotle, Poetics 6.5
  6. ^ Chilvers, Ian (2003). "Zeuxis". The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists. Retrieved 7 November 2010.
  7. ^ Giuseppe Celsi, Zeusi e le modelle di Kroton, Gruppo Archeologico Krotoniate (GAK) https://www.gruppoarcheologicokr.it/zeusi-e-le-modelle-di-kroton/
  8. ^ The Greek world, 479-323 BCE, By Simon Hornblower, Page 95 ISBN 0-415-15344-1
  9. ^ Cicero, Marcus Tullius (2006). De Inventione. Vol. II. ReadHowYouWant.com. ISBN 9781425031824.
  10. ^ Mansfield, Elizabeth (2007). Too beautiful to picture: Zeuxis, myth, and mimesis. University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0-8166-4749-1. (see also: mimesis)
  11. ^ Smith, William (ed.). "Zeuxis". A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology. The story told of the manner of his death, namely, that he choked with laughing at a picture of an old woman which he had just painted (Festus, s.v. Pictor), furnishes another instance of those fictions which the ancient grammarians were so fond of inventing, in order to make the deaths of great men correspond with the character of their lives.
  12. ^ Festus, Sextus Pompeius. De verborum significatione. Pictor Zeuxis risui mortuus, dum ridet effuse pictam a se anum γραῦν.
  13. ^ a b Bark, Julianna (2007–2008). "The Spectacular Self: Jean-Etienne Liotard’s Self-Portrait Laughing".
  14. ^ "Zeuxis". Oxford Reference. Retrieved 20 December 2023.
  15. ^ "Don Quixote - The Author's Preface". The Literature Network. Retrieved 2022-12-17.
  16. ^ "The Innocents Abroad - Chapter 33". Project Gutenberg. Retrieved 2023-08-23.

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