phael. No artists
could complete his unfinished pictures. He courted the severest
criticism, and, like Michael Angelo, had no jealousy of the
fame of other artists; he reposed in the greatness of his own
self-consciousness. He must have made enormous sums of money, since one
of his pictures--a Venus rising out of the sea, painted for a temple in
Cos, and afterwards removed by Augustus to Rome--cost one hundred
talents (equal to about one hundred thousand dollars),--a greater sum,
I apprehend, than was ever paid to a modern artist for a single picture,
certainly in view of the relative value of gold. In this picture female
grace was impersonated.

After Apelles the art declined, although there were distinguished
artists for several centuries. They generally flocked to Rome, where
there was the greatest luxury and extravagance, and they, pandered to
vanity and a vitiated taste. The masterpieces of the old artists brought
enormous sums, as the works of the old masters do now; and they were
brought to Rome by the conquerors, as the masterpieces of Italy and
Spain and Flanders were brought to Paris by Napoleon. So Rome gradually
possessed the best pictures of the world, without stimulating the art or
making new creations; it could appreciate genius, but creative genius
expired with Grecian liberties and glories. Rome multiplied and rewarded
painters, but none of them were famous. Pictures were as common as
statues. Even Varro, a learned writer, had a gallery of seven hundred
portraits. Pictures were placed in all the baths, theatres, temples, and
palaces, as were statues.

We are forced, therefore, to believe that the Greeks carried painting to
the same perfection that they did sculpture, not only from the praises
of critics like Cicero and Pliny, but from the universal enthusiasm
which the painters created and the enormous prices they received.
Whether Polygnotus was equal to Michael Angelo, Zeuxis to Titian, and
Apelles to Raphael, we cannot tell. Their works have perished. What
remains to us, in the mural decorations of Pompeii and the designs on
vases, seem to confirm the criticisms of the ancients. We cannot
conceive how the Greek painters could have equalled the great Italian
masters, since they had fewer colors, and did not make use of oil, but
of gums mixed with the white of eggs, and resin and wax, which mixture
we call "encaustic." Yet it is not the perfection of colors or of
design, or mechanical aids, or exact