mistake, with a modesty that did him honour, he yielded up the palm, saying that
whereas he had managed to deceive only birds, Parrhasius had deceived an artist.^31
Undermining the seeming preference for verisimilitude, however, Pliny
follows this with one resembling that of Seneca.
It is said that Zeuxis, I believe, painted a child carrying a bunch of grapes and that,
as the grapes were so life-like that they attracted the birds, a spectator declared that
the birds were making an adverse criticism of the painting: for they would not have
flown down if the child had been life-like. They say that Zeuxis removed the grapes
and kept what was best in the picture rather than what was most lifelike.^32
Yet only thefirst of Pliny’s stories, and not the more ambivalent latter one,
would become central to European art history as it drew on these sources
nearly two millennia later.
All three stories frame visual mimetic representation in relation to out-
ward reality. Seneca’sversion“makes a formal distinction between the test of
likeness (similitudo) and the test of excellence.”^33 Zeuxis’greatness emerges
from his capacity to learn. While he demonstrates his skill at verisimilitude
by again choosing to realistically represent the bird-fooling grapes, he
chooses the more complex art of representation that reveals itself as such,
rather than that which is merely realistic. Pliny’sfirst story offers likeness as
an ideal for the unsophisticated. In contrast, Parrhasius’work reveals art as a
theatrical stage. He shows a doublyfictive space, managing“to create the
illusion of a space in whichfiguration was destined to appear.”^34
Hinging on the device of the veil, the Islamic story of competing Greek
and Chinese artists uses a similar narrative framework but resolves it
differently. The content of the image is largely irrelevant. Al-Ghazali
describes the painting only in terms of its multitude of colors, indicating
the expense and trouble invested in the painting rather than what it shows.
Nizami describes the painting as“idolatrously beautiful forms.”It is not
clear if the forms are idolatrous because they come from the false prophet,
because they come from theArtang, because they are so beautiful that they
lead to idolatry, or because they represent sinful practices such as singing-
girls or drinking. Realism itself might be idolatrous. Rumi describes even
less, noting only their stunning beauty.
Whatever the paintings show, their colors shine through the clarity of
the mirror–sight comes not through the eye, but through the polished(^31) Bryson, 1983 : 1. Note the parallel with Qadi Ahmad’s story of the bears, where the deceptive
nature of sculpture fools only bears and pagan idolaters.
(^32) Bann, 1989 : 32. (^33) Bann, 1989 : 33. (^34) Bann, 1989 : 35.
172 Deceiving Deception