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Apelles of Kos (; ; fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of this artist (''Naturalis Historia'' 35.36.79–97 and ''passim''), rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332–329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great. == Biography == Probably born at Colophon in Ionia, he first studied under Ephorus of Ephesus, but after he had attained some celebrity he became a student to Pamphilus at Sicyon〔Pliny, ''N.H.'' 35.36.75.〕 He thus combined the Dorian thoroughness with the Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip II, he painted him and the young Alexander〔Napoleon doubted that Alexander ever literally sat for Apelles: "certes, Alexandre n'a jamais posé devant Apelles". He was probably right, given that the sculptor Lysippus was Alexander's court portraitist〕 with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon, and his picture of Alexander holding a thunderbolt ranked in the minds of many with the Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Hundreds of years later, Plutarch was among the unimpressed, deciding that it had failed to accurately reproduce Alexander's colouring: "He made Alexander's complexion appear too dark-skinned and swarthy, whereas we are told that he was fair-skinned, with a ruddy tinge that showed itself especially upon his face and chest."〔Plutarch ''Alexander'' 4.〕 Much of what we know of Apelles is derived from Pliny the Elder (''Natural History'', XXXV). His skill at drawing the human face is the point of a story connecting him with Ptolemy I Soter. This onetime general of Alexander disliked Apelles while they both were in Alexander's retinue, and many years later, while travelling by sea a storm forced Apelles to land in Ptolemy's Egyptian kingdom. Ptolemy's jester was suborned by Apelles' rivals to convey to the artist a spurious invitation to dine with Ptolemy. Apelles's unexpected arrival enraged the king. Ptolemy demanded to know who had given Apelles the invitation, and with a piece of charcoal from the fireplace Apelles drew a likeness on the wall, which Ptolemy recognized as his jester in the first strokes of the sketch. Apelles was a contemporary of Protogenes, whose reputation he advocated. Pliny also recorded an anecdote that was making the rounds among Hellenistic connoisseurs of the first century CE: Apelles travelled to Protogenes' home in Rhodes to make the acquaintance of this painter he had heard so much about. Arriving at Protogenes' studio, he encountered an old woman who told him that Protogenes was out and asked for his name so she could report who had enquired after him. Observing in the studio a panel Protogenes had prepared for a painting, Apelles walked over to the easel, and taking up a brush told the servant to tell Protogenes "this came from me," and drew in colour an extremely fine line across the panel. When Protogenes returned, and the old woman explained what had taken place, he examined the line and pronounced that only Apelles could have done so perfect a piece of work; Protogenes then dipped a brush into another colour and drew a still finer line above the first one, and asked his servant to show this to the visitor should he return. When Apelles returned, and was shown Protogenes' response, ashamed that he might be bettered, he drew in a third colour an even finer line between the first two, leaving no room for another display of craftsmanship. On seeing this, Protogenes admitted defeat, and went out to seek Apelles and meet him face-to-face.〔Guillaume Apollinaire retold this story in his essay "On the Subject of Modern Painting", originally published in ''Les Soirées de Paris'', February 1912. This tale is a literary trope epitomizing the sublime simplicity of the greatest art in the hands of a consummate artist: comparable examples are Giotto's perfect circle, drawn freehand, and the scholar-painter Chuang-tzu's perfect crab, which, following ten years of preparation, was drawn in a single stroke without lifting his ink brush from the paper.〕 Pliny claims that this very painting had been part of the collection of Julius Caesar, but was destroyed when Caesar's mansion on the Palatine Hill burned down. While sketching one of Alexander the Great's concubines, Campaspe, Apelles fell in love with her. As a mark of appreciation for the great painter's work, Alexander presented her to him. Apelles is said to have been working on a painting of Aphrodite of Kos when he died, and the painting was left unfinished for no one could be found with skill enough to complete it. The renowned work of Apelles provided several exemplars for the narrative realism admired by Greco-Roman connoisseurs, succinctly expressed in Horace's words ''ut pictura poesis'', "as is painting so is poetry." Apelles seemed to have had a taste for elaborate allegory and personification, which he carried far in his rendering of Calumny, described by Lucian,〔Leonard Whibley, ''A Companion to Greek Studies'' 3rd ed. 1916, p. 329.〕 in which an innocent youth is falsely accused by Ignorance, Envy, Treachery and Deceit. The story occasioning the painting was alleged to have been false accusations by a rival artist that Apelles took part in a conspiracy against Ptolemy. This almost led to the artist's execution. "In the Renaissance the exemplar of the poetic painting which was invariably cited whenever the art-poetry question was discussed was the ''Calumny of Apelles'', known through Lucian's description."〔Martin Kemp,''Behind the Picture: art and evidence in the Italian Renaissance'' 1997, p. 26f.〕 Sandro Botticelli's panel of ''Calumny of Apelles'' was painted in conscious striving to equal the painting in Lucian's ''ekphrasis''. The physician and philosopher Sextus Empiricus used Apelles in an analogy for Ataraxia. The skeptical acquisition of ataraxia was likened to the process where Apelles was trying to paint a horse. He wished to represent its foam (in Greek mythology, Poseidon created horses out of sea foam). He was so unsuccessful that, in a rage, he gave up and threw the sponge he was using to clean his brushes with at the medium, and its mark produced the effect of the horse's foam.〔Sextus Empiricus, ''Outlines of Pyrrhonism,'' Trans. R.G. Bury, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1933, p. 19., ISBN 0-674-99301-2〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Apelles」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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