enhance form and to suggest movement in a three-dimensional composition is one
of the many techniques perfected in the classical period.
Classical painting
In the absence of any surviving originals, the history of Greek painting has to be
inferred from later copies (sometimes in the form of mosaics) and has to be
reconstructed from accounts of it in later writings, particularly those of the elder Pliny
(AD23/4–79), a Roman polymath who has a long section on Greek art in his Natural
History. Apollodorus, an Athenian painter of the mid- to late fifth century, was nick-
named ‘the shadow painter’, which suggests that he was the first to make extensive
use of highlighting by means of shading, a technique scarcely used in the line drawing
of the vase painters. Pliny says he was the first to give a realistic presentation of
objects and that he paved the way for his younger contemporary Zeuxis of Heraclea
(Natural History,35, 60). Pliny also records a trial of skill between Zeuxis and
Parrhasius of Ephesus in the art of illusion. Zeuxis produced a picture of grapes so
successfully represented that birds flew up to the stage building where the paintings
were exhibited. Parrhasius’ contribution was a picture of a curtain so naturalistic that
ART 251FIGURE 61 Deities from the Parthenon frieze
Source:British Museum, London