Zeuxis

Or would Zeuxis, or Phidias, or Polyclitus have endured this — that they knew nothing, when in them there was such great skill?

But let us survey in our minds not these greatest arts — for lacking which men were by our ancestors called good-for-nothing — but I ask whether you think that — I do not say Homer, Archilochus, Pindar, but Phidias, Polyclitus, Zeuxis directed their arts to pleasure.

such men were Pheidias and Alcamenes and Polycleitus, and besides Aglaophon and Polygnotus and Zeuxis, and earlier than they Daedalus.

Upon which Cicero in a letter to his brother makes a pertinent remark, respecting one Zeuxis, observing, that “had he once been brought into court, he could not have been released, but there was not necessity that a search should be made for him, in order to bring him to trial.

The fact is that, although I have known that some of the sophists traduce my occupation, saying that it has to do with writing speeches for the courts, very much as one might have the effrontery to call Pheidias, who wrought our statue of Athena, a doll-maker, or say that Zeuxis and Parrhasius practiced the same art as the sign-painters, nevertheless I have never deigned to defend myself against t …

for if Zeuxis showed me a fair woman’s portrait painted by his own hand, it would not give me half the pleasure I derive from the contemplation of a living woman’s virtues.

in painting, Zeuxis.