A brief history of the painters of all schools

Preface

THE more important parts of this Work — such as the Introductions to the Foreign Schools, and the criticisms upon the pictures of the great masters — are from the pen of M. Louis Viardot, by whom they were originally written for Les Merveilles de la Peinture, published by Messrs. Hachette & Co., in their BibliotJieque des Merveilles. But this author included in his volumes only those painters whom he styles the ' Divinities of Art,' and of their personal history he gives but brief details. In order, therefore, to make a comprehensive book — which may lay claim to be of value to students of art, not only as a brief History of the Painters of all Schools, but also as a work of reference — it has been considered desirable to supplement M. Viardot's writings by short memoirs of many additional artists, whom he has not mentioned. Even then, a list of those whose names appear in the dictionaries, but who are here omitted as but of little importance in the history of art, would fill many pages.

M. Viardot has had the advantage of visiting all the great picturegalleries of Europe, and writing his criticisms with the paintings before his eyes. That he may have sometimes erred in judgment is probable ; that he has taken great pains to examine the best pictures is certain, and that he has given us his honest convictions is quite evident. If his enthusiasm has now and then led him to speak of a painting in exaggerated terms of praise, it is hoped that his raptures may be forgiven.

The rest of the volume, which consists chiefly of biographical details, has been gleaned with much care from well-known sources ; Le Monnier's annotated edition of ' Vasari ; ' Charles Blanc's ' Histoire des Peintres de toutes les ecoles,' whence many of the illustrations have been obtained ; Mr. Wornum's trustworthy catalogue of the Pictures in the National Gallery ; Lady Eastlake's new edition of Kugler's ' Handbook of the Italian Schools,' by far the most valuable work on this subject that has ever appeared ; the

b iv

PREFACE.

' German, Flemish, and Dutch schools ' of the same series, lately revised and in part re-written by Mr. J. A. Crowe ; the ' History of Painting in North Italy ' and the ' Early Flemish Painters,' both by Messrs. Crowe and Cavalcaselle; the 'English Encyclopaedia ;' Bryan's ' Dictionary of Painters,' and many other standard works.

For the English section the editor is largely indebted to Allan Cunningham's 'Lives of the most eminent British Painters ;' and Mr. Redgrave's 'Century of Painters' — a charming series of art-biographies ; for notices of recently deceased artists, to writers in the ' Art Journal,' the ' Athenaeum,' and the 'Academy ;' and for the information concerning American painters, to Tuckerman's ' Book of the Artists.'

J. C.

SUKBITON, November, 1876.

Contents

PAGE

PREFACE iii

LIST OF THE PRINCIPAL ILLUSTRATIONS vii

Book I. Chap

I. Introduction— Classic Greek School— Greco-Roman School . . . i

II. Painting in the Middle Ages— Painting in Mosaic— Illumination of

Manuscripts — Painting in Fresco and in Distemper — Painting in Oil . 14

III. Italian Renaissance— Romanesque School— Early Tuscan School— Early

SiENESE School 34

IV. Early Florentine School 48

V. Schools of Northern Italy— Bolognese — Paduan—Ferrarese— Veronese- Milanese— Cremonese ........... 61

VI. Umbrian School of the Fifteenth Century 73

VII. Venetian School of the Fifteenth Century 80

VIII. Leonardo da Vinci and his School ' , 88

■IX, Florentine and Sienese School of the Sixteenth Century • • • 97

X. Michelangelo and his Followers 105

XI. Raphael and his Followers . . . . . . . ■• • 113

XII. Titian and the Venetian School of the Sixteenth Century . . . 134

XIII. Correggio and the School of Parma i53

XIV. The Mannerists i59

XV. Eclectic Schools of Bologna, Cremona, Milan, Florence and Rome . 164

XVI. The Naturalisti of Rome, Naples and Venice 182

BOOK 11.

I. Spanish Schools — Introduction 192

II. School of Valencia i95

III. School of Andalusia . . . ^99

IV. School of Castile 214

VI

I. Early Painters in England 397

II. English School of the Eighteenth Century . ... . . 402

III. Modern English School 417

IV. Painters in Water-colours 444

American School

Book VIII. Principal Illustrations

ooja&ioo

PACK

The Angelic Choir By Benozzo Gozzoli . . . to face 55

Madonna Enthroned . . . . „ signorelli . . . . „ 59

Coronation of the Virgin . . . „ Sandro Botticelli ... „ 60

Virgin Enthroned „ p^^^^i^ .... ,,62

Marriage of the Virgin . . . . „ Perugino .... ,,76

Enthronement of the Virgin . . „ pra Bartolommeo . . „ 98

Descent FROM the Cross . . .. . Daniele da Volterra . . „ no

The Sistine Chapel „ Michelangelo ... „ 112

Madonna della Sedia . . . . „ Raphael .... „ 116

Entombment . . . . . . pitian .... ,,140

St. Jerome (// Giorgio) . . . . ,, Correggio . . . . „ 154

St. Petronilla „ Guerciiio . . . . „ 175

Deposition from the Cross . . . Ribera .... ,,196

The Beggar Boy „ Murillo . . . . 211

Water-Carrier of Seville . . . Velasquez .... ,,220

Archbishop Warham . . . . „ Hans Holbein . . . ,,238

Nativity of Christ , Albrecht Diirer ... 246

Itinerant Musicians . . , . Dietrich . . . . ,, 261

The "Pala" Madonna jan van Eyck ... 272

St. Luke painting the Virgin . . ,, Rogier van der Weyden . ,,274

The Money-changers . . . . „ Quintin Matsys ... ,,280

Duck-shooting Paul Bril .... ,,291

Bear Hunt „ Snyders .... ,,303

King Charles the First Vandyck .... ,,306

Musical Party „ jordaens .... ,,308

Temptation of St. Anthony . . . ,, p)avid Teniers ... „ 314

Rembrandt's Mother , Rembra7idt .... ,,334

Paternal Instruction . . . . ,, Gerard Terlmrg ... ,,340

The Hunchback Fiddler . . . ,, yan Ostadr .... --40 viii

PRINCIPAL ILL USTRA TIONS.

The Encampment

The Young Bull

Landscape .

Flower-piece

Une Fete Galante .

Sleeping Girl .

Marriage a la Mode

Cottage Door .

" The Golden Bough "

The Valley Farm .

Village Politicians

By Cuyp .

Paul Potter .

J > Hobbeina

Van Huysum ,, Watteau Grejize Hogarth Gainsborough Turner , , Constable „ Wilkie

BY MICHELANGELO.

ILLUSTRATED HISTORY

OF THE

PAINTERS OF ALL SCHOOLS.

Chapter I. Classic Greek School

1\ /r ANY writers," says Vasari, "have asserted that Painting and Sculpture IV I originated with the Egyptians ; others attribute to the Chaldeans the discovery of the bas-relief, and give to the Greeks the invention of painting : for my own part, I hold that a knowledge of Drawing, the creative principle of all art, has existed since the beginning of the world."'

There can be no doubt that, to a certain extent, Vasari was right. Among the remains of pre -historic times, the dates of which no man can tell, we find, on the blade-bones of animals, drawings of the reindeer and the elephant scratched with some pointed implement by men who must have been artists : sometimes we discover bronze vessels decorated with well-designed tracery ; or ornaments for personal adornment, betraying, though in fantastic shapes, a primitive knowledge of beauty of form.

From remains that are left to the present day, we know that the people of Egypt, Phoenicia, and Assyria, of Persia, India, and China, were all acquainted with the art of painting, but it was always symbolical and as an accessory to Architecture, We find fresco paintings as decorations of walls and pillars, manuscripts on papyrus ornamented with coloured figures, and mummy cases covered with hieroglyphics ; but no movable Pictures, in our present acceptation of that term, have come down to us, nor have any been mentioned by the early historians of those Eastern nations.

It is not till the fifth century before Christ that we have any record of Painting as a fine-art by itself, and then it must have quickly reached to the highest eminence. It is to Athens that we must give the glory of its birthplace, though, by a fatality ever to be deplored, no work of the famous Greek painters remains to the present day.

In spite of the ravages made by time and many generations of barbarians. Architecture and Sculpture have left monuments numerous and magnificent enough to enable us to judge of the state of both these arts in Greece. The master-pieces of two thousand years ago continue to excite at once the delight and despair of the student. We can still see the ruins of the Parthenon and the temple of Theseus at Athens, and of the temple of Neptune at Pcestum. The museums of Italy are full of beautiful relics of Greek statuary. At Paris are the Venus of Melos, Diana the Huntress, the Gladiator, the Achilles. Munich possesses the marbles of ^gina, and London the fragments of Pheidias from the Parthenon. But Painting, using more fragile

B materials, has not been able to survive the tempests which entirely engulfed ancient civilization, and threw back the human mind, like another Sisyphus, from the heights it had attained, to the humble commencement of a new road, which it has had to re-mount by a long and painful way. The style of painting adopted by the ancients is, strictly speaking, almost unknown to us, but we can arrive at some estimate of its merits by evident analogies and indications.

And firstly. Painting occupied, in the esteem of the people of antiquity, the same place that it now holds, relatively to other arts, in public opinion ; and the names of Apelles, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Polygnotus, Aristides, Pamphilus, Timanthes, Nicomachus, are no less great, no less illustrious as painters than those of Pheidias, Alcamenes, Polycletus, Praxiteles, Myron, Lysippus, as sculptors, or than those of Hippodamus, Ictinus, and Callicrates, as architects.

This high esteem in which the ancient painters were held by their contemporaries is shown again clearly in the value which their works commanded. If it be true that a marble statue, made by an inferior artist, was worth currently 480/. of our money in that Rome where statues, as Pliny says, were more numerous than the inhabitants, where Nero brought five hundred, in bronze^ from the temple of Delphi alone, and from the soil of which had been dug — in the time of the Abb^ Barthelemy — more than seventy thousand ; if it be true that for the Diadumenos, Polycletus was paid a hundred talents (21,600/.), and that Attalus in vain offered the inhabitants of Cnidus to pay all their debts in exchange for the Venus of Praxiteles, — the other productions of high art, of which Athens acquired a monopoly, must have risen to a value which in our days can scarcely be believed. According to the uniform testimony of Plutarch and Pliny, who would have been contradicted if they had asserted falsehoods or exaggerations, Nicias refused for one of his pictures sixty talents (12,960/.), and made a present of it to the town of Athens; Caesar paid eighty talents (17,280/) for the two pictures by Timomachus, which he placed at the entrance to the temple of Venus Genetrix ; a picture by Aristides, which was called the Beautiful Bacchus, was sold for one hundred talents (21,600/); and when the town of Sicyon was laden with debts which its revenues were not sufficient to pay, the pictures which belonged to the public were sold, and the produce of these works sufficed to discharge the amount.

Enough has been said to show that the painting of the ancients was held by them in equal esteem with their sculpture and their architecture ; it follows that the excellence of the remains of the two latter arts proves, at the same time, the excellence of the former. Certainly, if in future ages our civilization were to perish under fresh invasions of barbarians, and that, to make it known to a new generation born in after ages, there only remained parts of St. Peter's at Rome and of the Venetian palaces, with some of the statues which adorn them— would not the men of those future times — seeing in what esteem we hold Leonardo, Raphael and Titian, Rubens, Velazquez and Rembrandt — think that the lost works of these painters must have been equal to the works still preserved of Bramante and Michael Angelo, Palladio and Sansovino ?

But there also remain to us some descriptions of pictures in default of the pictures themselves ; and, yet more than this, some fragments of ancient paintings have been found, which confirm this reasoning, and leave no doubt as to the excellence of the art which these precious remains represent. Passing over the detailed eulogies of Cicero and Quintilian, we have the descriptions which Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Poecile at Athens, and of the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi ; those which Pliny gives of the pictures of Venus and of Calumny, by Apelles, and of Penelope, by Zeuxis,

CLASSIC GREEK SCHOOL.

and that which Lucian gives of Helen the Courtesan, also by Zeuxis. The painted vases, both of Etruscan and of Greek manufacture, must be included among the actual remains of ancient pictorial art. Such again are the arabesques in the baths of Titus, discovered under the church of San Pietro in Vincula, at the time of the excavations ordered by Leo X. ; the frescoes found in the sepulchre of the Nasos ; those in the pagan catacombs ; and more recently the frescoes of Herculaneum and Pompeii, which, although merely decorations of ordinary citizens' houses in little towns, fifty leagues from Rome, are of great importance. There are also monochrome designs on marble and stone, for example, Theseus killing the Centaur and the Ladies playing at the game of talus (huckle-bones), wonderful compositions, traced on marble with a red pigment, which Pliny calls cinnaharis indica, both in the museum at Naples.

Examples of Greek and Greco-Roman mosaics also remain ; amongst others the

THE BATTLE OF ISSUS.

A Mosaic discovered at Pompeii in the " House of the Faun."

beautiful mosaic found at Pompeii in the " House of the Faun;' so called because it had already yielded the charming little Dancing Faun, the pride of the cabinet of bronzes : both are in the same museum at Naples. This mosaic, the most important vestige of the painting of the ancients which has come down to us, cannot be otherwise than the copy of a picture ; probably of one of the Greek pictures brought to Rome after the conquest of Greece, not impossibly of one by Philoxenus of Eretria, a pupil of Nicomachus, who is, indeed, known to have painted, for King Cassander, one of the battles of Alexander against the Persians. The mosaic formed the pavement of the triclinium (dining-room). Surrounded by a sort of frame, it contains twenty-five persons and twelve horses, of nearly the size of life, and thus forms a real historical picture. It certainly represents one of the battles of Alexander against the Persians, and probably the victory of Issus, for the recital of Quintus Curtius (lib. iii.) agrees perfectly with the work of the painter.

If the original picture, of which this mosaic was a copy, were of Greek origin, the painter and historian must have drawn from the same traditions ; if of Roman origin, the artist must have described on his panel the details given by the historian of Alexander.

A study of the various remains to which reference has been made, shows first, that the painters of antiquity knew how to treat all subjects, mythology, history, landscape, sea-pieces, animals, fruit, flowers, costume, ornament, and even caricature ; and also that, while treating great subjects and embracing vast compositions, they knew how to attain a perfect order, a happy arrangement of groups, various planes, foreshortenings, chiaroscuro, movement, action, expression by gesture and by countenance, all the quahties in short of high painting, which the people of modern times have usually denied to the ancients.

The works of the best known of the Greek painters have been described by Herodotus, Aristotle, Pausanias, Lucian, Plutarch and Pliny ; and mentioned by many other classic writers.

Dionysius of Colophon, one of the earliest of the Greek painters whose names have been handed down to us, was probably born about b.c. 490 ; it is known that he hved in the time of Pericles. Aristotle and Plutarch both speak of his works as being forcible and full of spirit. He was probably a good portrait painter (AvOpw-n-oypa^Jo?), as Aristotle says " Polygnotus painted men better than they are; Dionysius, as they are." ^lian (a Roman author of the third century), says that Dionysius and Polygnotus painted similar subjects— Polygnotus in large, and Dionysius in small. Whether the writer referred to the style of the painters or the size of their pictures, it is difficult to determine.

Polygnotus, a native of the island of Thaos, was known as a painter in Athens in B.C. 460. His principal pictures were : In the Lesche, an open hall at Delphi, T/ie Taking of Troy ; The Returti of the Greeks; and the Ulysses visiting the Shades; — fully described in seven chapters by Pausanias. In the porch at Athens, called the Poecile, in which he painted the Destruction of Troy.- — For this work it is said he would not receive payment, and consequently the Public Council gave him a house in Athens, and made him a guest of the state at the public expense. — In the temple of the Dioscuri at Athens, The Marriage of the daughter of Leucippus ; and in the temple of Minerva at Platsea, Ulysses after the slaughter of the suitors of Penelope. It is said that Polygnotus first used the yellow earth found in the silver mines, and a purple colour prepared from the husks of grapes. Aristode speaks of him as " the painter of noble characters," and Pliny says he was the first who gave expression to the features.

It seems probable that the style of painting of the celebrated artists of these days was extremely simple — and very like the best class of decorative art upon the Greek vases in the Louvre and the British Museum.

Panaenus of Athens was the brother of the great sculptor Pheidias ; so Pliny tells us. Strabo seems to think he was the nephew.

He was one of the earliest of the Greek painters, though younger than Polygnotus and Micon by some few years. Panasnus's most celebrated picture was the Battle of Marathon, in the Pcecile at Athens. This picture contains the Iconics, or portraits of celebrated generals (both of the Athenians and the barbarians) ; these could not have been portraits from life, for the i^icture was not painted till at least thirty years after

CLASSIC GREEK SCHOOL.

the battle. Pangenus painted several pictures on the throne and on the wall round the throne of the Olympian Jupiter. The subjects of some of these were : Atlas supporting Heaven and Earth; Theseus and Pirithous ; allegorical figures of Greece and Salamis ; The Combat of Hercules with the Nemean Lion; and several other historical subjects. The Peecile was built by Cinion B.C. 470, therefore supposing Panasnus to have painted his great picture ten years after its erection, we may take B.C. 460 to have been about the most important period of his life. Nothing certain is known either of his birth or death.

Parrhasius, born about B.C. 470, was instructed in the art of painting by his father. He was a native of Ephesus, but removed early in life to Athens, where he became by far the greatest artist of his time. He compared the works of Polygnotus, Apollodorus, and Zeuxis, and adopted from each that quality which he most admired. Parrhasius was by no means ignorant of the excellence of his own works. He took for himself the title of the Elegant ('A^poStairos), and called himself the Prince of Painters. Pliny, says, and not without reason, that he was '' the most insolent and most arrogant of artists." Parrhasius excelled especially in outline, form, and expression. Among the principal works of this artist may be mentioned his Allegorical figure of the Athenian People; a Theseus (it was probably this picture that gained for him his citizenship at Athens) ; a Naval conwiander in his armour ; Meleager ; Hercules and Perseus ; Castor and Pollux ; Archigallus (bought by the Emperor Tiberius for 60,000 sesterces, about 5 10/.) J and many portraits of warriors. Phny says that in a competition with Timanthes of Cythnos he painted The Contest of Ajax and Ulysses ; and that when the award was given to his rival, he said to his friends, " It is not I who should complain, but the son of Telamon, who has a second time become a victim to the folly of his judges." Parrhasius became so rich that at last he would not sell his pictures, saying that no price was sufficient for their value.

Pliny also tells us that Zeuxis acknowledged his painting of Grapes to be beaten by the Curtain of Parrhasius. It is related by Seneca that he selected a very old man from among the captives that Philip of Macedon had brought home from Olynthus, and crucified him, in order to see the true expression of pain, as a model for his Prometheus Chained. This story, even if true, could not refer to this Parrhasius, as he would have been about 120 years of age, if living, when Philip took Olynthus. The last record we have of Parrhasius is about B.C. 400.

Zeuxis, one of the most celebrated painters of ancient times, was probably born between B.C. 460 and B.C. 450, in one of the cities named Heraclea ; Pliny fixes the time at B.C. 400, but this is apparently too late a date, for he was at the height of his renov/n in the reign of Archelaus, which was from B.C. 413 until B.C. 399 (Diodorus Siculus). Lucian terms Zeuxis the greatest painter of his time, but he was unquestionably surpassed by Parrhasius, who was his contemporary. The excellence of Zeuxis's painting is noticed by several ancient writers, among whom may be mentioned Aristotle, Quintilian, and Cicero. One of the most celebrated of Zeuxis's pictures is The Family of Centaurs, the original of which was lost at sea. Lucian graphically describes a copy of it which he saw at Athens ; but even this picture was surpassed by his celebrated Helen the Courtesan, which he painted for the city of Croton, and which, according to ^lian, he exhibited at a fixed charge. Other famous works by him are : The Infant Hercules strangling the serpent ; Jupiter in the assembly of the Gods ; Penelope bewailing the absence of her husband ; Menclaus mourning the fate of Agamemnon ; an Athlete; under which he wrote^ " It is easier to find fault than to imitate and a Cupid crowned with roses. It is related of Zeuxis that he wore a mantle with his name woven in gold on the border. ^lian records that on one occasion he reproved Megabyzus, a high priest of Diana, who while on a visit to the artist's studio, showed such palpable ignorance of any knowledge of art, that the boys whom the artist employed to mix his colours, laughed at him : whereupon Zeuxis quietly remarked, " While you were silent, these boys admired you for the richness of your dress and the number of your servants; but now that you disclose your ignorance they cannot refrain from laughter." Plutarch relates this same story of Apelles and Megabyzus, and Pliny of Apelles and Alexander. The story told by Pliny of Zeuxis deceiving the birds with a picture of ripe grapes, at which they came to peck, and of being himself deceived by a painting of a curtain so ably imitated by Parrhasius that Zeuxis asked him to draw it aside, is often quoted. Zeuxis also painted a picture of a Boy with Grapes, which likewise deceived the birds, but the artist was not entirely satisfied with it, for he justly remarked, " Had the boy been painted as well as the grapes the birds would have been afraid to come near them." It is said that Zeuxis amassed such a large fortune by the sale of his pictures that he would not sell any more. He gave his picture of Pan to Archelaus, and bis Alcmena to the town of Agrigentum. The place and date of Zeuxis's death are unknown. Sillig remarks — with justice — that he must have died before the io6th Olympiad (B.C. 355), for in that year Isocrates, in his oration, praised Zeuxis, which he would not have done had the painter been then living.

Micon, a contemporary and fellow-worker with Polygnotus, was born about B.C. 450. He excelled in painting horses, which are generally introduced into his pictures. In the celebrated Colonnades of the Poecile, Micon painted The Battle of the Amazons, and assisted Pansenus in The Battle of Marathon, in which he painted the Persians larger than the Greeks; for this, it is said, he was fined half-a-talent (about 108/.). He also painted battle-pictures in the temple of Theseus ; and assisted Polygnotus with his work in the temple of the Dioscuri, Micon painted horses with such truth to nature, that the only fault an Athenian art critic named Simon could find with them was that he had given lashes to their under eyelids !

Apollodorus, a native of Athens, lived about b.c. 430. It is said that he was the first to introduce light and shade into his pictures ; for this reason he was called the " shadow painter." He must have been surpassed in this branch of painting by Zeuxis, for he complains that the latter had robbed him of his art. The line, "It is easier to find fault than to imitate," which Zeuxis wrote under a picture of an athlete, is attributed by Plutarch to Apollodorus.

Eupompus, a native of Sicyon, w^as more famous as the founder of the school of Sicyon, which Pamphilus, his pupil, afterwards more fully established, than as a painter. One of his principles was, that man should be represented as he ought to appear, not as he really is (Pliny). The period of Eupompus is sufficiently certain from the fact that he taught Pamphilus, who flourished from about B.C. 388 to B.C. 348.

Timanthes of Cythnos lived about b.c. 400. His paintings were especially admired for their expression and reality of representation. Though Timanthes was undoubtedly one of the greatest painters of his time, only five of his works are mentioned by writers of antiquity. Pliny mentions him with great praise ; he says of his painting, " Though

CLASSIC GREEK SCHOOL.

in execution he was always excellent, the execution is invariably surpassed by the conception." The pictures by this painter , of which we read were : a Sleeping Cyclops ; The Stoni?ig of Falajnedes ; The Contest of Ajax and Ulysses (for which picture he was declared victor against Parrhasius in a competition at Samos) ; The Sacrifice of Iphigenia (with which he defeated in competition Colotes of Teos— an otherwise unknown artist).

There is no other painting of ancient times which has been the subject of so much criticism as this, on account of the concealment of the face of Agamemnon. Ancient writers have given it unlimited praise, but modern critics have questioned its excellence and called it a trick. The fifth and last work known to us was the picture of a Hero in the Temple of Peace at Rome.

Nicias, a native of Athens, was probably born about B.C. 370, for we hear that Praxiteles employed him to colour his statues about B.C. 350. He refused sixty talents (12,960/.) offered him by Ptolemy I. of Egypt, for his famous picture NeKj/m, or The Region of the Shades, and gave it to his native town, Athens. Ptolemy assumed the title of king in B.C. 306, when Nicias would be about sixty-four years of age, and consequently likely to be rich and have a reputation, and able to refuse the enormous sum offered by the king. PHny doubts very much whether the painter of the Nexvia and the assistant of Praxiteles' can be the same. Pausanias tells us that Nicias was the most excellent animal painter of his time. It is true that he was very studious, even to absent-mindedness, for ^lian tells us that he frequently forgot to take his meals. His picture of Nemea sitting on a lion is one of the most famous of his works. Nicias wrote on this picture that he had painted it in encaustic. Nicias also painted the interiors of tombs, notably that of the high priest Megabyzus.

Pamphilus, a native of Amphipolis, lived from about B.C. 388 to b.c. 348. He studied under Eupompus of Sicyon, and helped to establish the style of painting which Eupompus had begun, and which was eventually perfected by Euphranor, Apelles, and Protogenes. Pamphilus, Pliny tells us, was himself a man skilled in all sciences : omnibus Uteris eruditus. He occupied himself more with the theory of art and with teaching others, than with actual painting. He founded a school at Sicyon, the admission to which was one talent (216/.). Pliny says that Apelles and Melanthius both paid the fee, and studied at this school, and that Pausias received instruction in encaustic painting fr6m Pamphilus. The sons of the Greek nobles attended the school, and Painting at this time occupied the first place among the liberal arts. Slaves were not allowed to use the cestrum or graphis. Four pictures only by this artist are recorded : The Heraclidce (mentioned by Aristophanes) ; The Battle of Phlius ; Ulysses on the raft; and a Family Portrait (Pliny).