Apelles
（
Ἀπελλῆς). The most celebrated of Grecian painters, born,
most probably, at Colophon in Ionia, though some ancient writers call him a Coan and others an
Ephesian. He was the contemporary of Alexander the Great (B.C. 336-323), who entertained
so high an opinion of him that he was the only person whom Alexander would permit to paint his
portrait. We are not told when or where he died. Throughout his life Apelles laboured to
improve himself, especially in drawing, which he never spent a day without practising. Hence
the proverb,
Nulla dies sine linea (
τήμερον οὐδεμίαν
γραμμὴν ἤγαγον). Of his portraits, the most celebrated was that of Alexander
wielding a thunderbolt; but the most admired of all his pictures was the
“Aphrodité Anadyomené,” or Aphrodité
rising out of the sea. The goddess was wringing her hair, and the falling drops of water
formed a transparent silver veil around her form. The original was Campaspé, a
mistress of Alexander. For the painting of Alexander a sum of twenty talents (about $21,600)
was paid, and the painting itself was hung in the temple of Diana of Ephesus. He painted also
a horse; and, finding that his rivals in the art, who contested the palm with him on this
occasion, were about to prevail through unfair means, he caused his own piece and those of the
rest to be shown to some horses, and these animals, fairer critics in this case than men had
proved to be, neighed at his painting alone. Apelles used to say of his contemporaries that
they possessed, as artists, all the requisite qualities except one—namely, grace,
and that this was his alone. On one occasion, when contemplating a picture by Protogenes, a
work of immense labour, and in which exactness of detail had been carried to excess, he
remarked, “Protogenes equals or surpasses me in all things but one—the
knowing when to remove his hand from a painting.” Apelles was also, as is supposed,
the inventor of what artists call glazing. Such, at least, was the opinion of Sir Joshua
Reynolds and others. The ingredients probably employed by him for this purpose are given by
Jahn, in his
Malerei der Alten, p. 150. Apelles was accustomed, when he had
completed any one of his pieces, to expose it to the view of passengers, and to hide himself
behind it in order to hear the remarks of the spectators. On one of these occasions a
shoemaker censured the painter for having given one of the slippers of a figure a less number
of ties by one than it ought to have had. The next day the shoemaker, emboldened by the
success of his previous criticism, began to find fault with a leg, when Apelles indignantly
put forth his head, and desired him to confine his decisions to the slipper, “ne
supra crepidam iudicaret.” Hence arose another common saying,
Ne sutor ultra
crepidam (Pliny ,
Pliny H. N. xxxv.
10).
