panel to the great wall compositions which were the closest Greeks had come to the treatment of eastern or Egyptian walls.
The anecdotes told about the realistic work of a Zeuxis or Apelles - the birds that pecked at the painted grapes, the painted
curtain which could not be pulled - show that this is where the true tradition of western painting begins. It is the style copied
on Roman walls, and the few original examples which we have from the end of our period bear an uncanny likeness to
styles of the Italian renaissance.
Artemis And Apollo Shoot Down The Children Of Niobe, on an Athenian vase by the Niobid Painter of about 460 B.C. The
way in which the figures are set up and down the field, and not on a single ground-line, must be inspired by the new wall-
painting compositions by Polygnotus which were appearing on public buildings in Athens.