reforming their meaning into supposedly universal terms. And yet in
recognizing the allegory, he has briefly crossed the very boundary he
declared absolute, only to declare such moments incommensurable with
art history. But when such disciplinary limits bound our interpretive
practices, can they engage with culture as it speaks to us? The imposition
of such veils of secularity not only occludes the Islamic past, but the
Christian investments of meaning in materiality in Europe’s own tradi-
tions. As with Elkins’recognition that the story reveals Divine creativity–
or mine, as I share the same intellectual tradition–a secular modern art
historian can fruitfully interpret both texts and images. Just as with the
Christianate interpretive schema dominating normative art history, we can
understand the worldview of an Islamic discursivefield without necessarily
partaking in its belief system.
6.4 The Competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius
Through its circulation from the Renaissance to contemporary art-histor-
ical discourses, the story of Zeuxis and Parrhasius has come to define the
relationship presumed between the image and the world in disciplinary art
history. The distinctive implications of Islamic stories of competition
suggests divergent premises informing this relationship.
Elements of the anecdotefirst appear in theControversiaeof Seneca the
Elder (54 BCE–39 CE):
Zeuxis painted a boy holding a bunch of grapes, and because the bunch was so
realistic that it even made birdsfly up to the picture, one of the spectators said the
birds thought ill of the picture: they would not haveflown up if the boy had been a
good likeness. They say Zeuxis erased the grapes and kept what was best in the
picture not what was most like.^30
For Seneca, quality and verisimilitude are not interchangeable. In contrast,
a similar story inThe Natural Historyof Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE) hinges
on deceptive realism as the measure of artistic aptitude.
Parrhasius...it is recorded, entered into a competition with Zeuxis. Zeuxis
produced a picture of grapes so dexterously represented that birds began tofly
down to eat from the painted vine. Whereupon Parrhasius designed so lifelike a
picture of a curtain that Zeuxis, proud of the verdict of the birds, requested that the
curtain should now be drawn back and the picture displayed. When he realized his
(^30) Brecoulaki, 2015 : 221.
The Competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius 171