Pictor in fabula

Thy tragic pencil, Aristides, caught*
Each varied feeling, and each tender thought,
While moral virtue sanctified thy art,
And passion gave it empire o’er the heart.

Notes, p. 62-63 :

* Note VII. Verse 202.
Thy tragic pencil, Aristides, caught. The city of Thebes had the honour of giving birth to this celebrated artist. He was the first, according to Pliny, who expressed character and passion, the human mind, and its several emotions; but he was not remarkable for softness of colouring. “His most celebrated picture was of an instant (on the taking of a town) at the mother’s breast, who is wounded and expiring. The sensations of the mother were clearly marked, and the fear least the child, upon failure of the milk, should suck her blood.” “Alexander the Great”, continues the same author, “took this picture whith him to Pella.”

It is highly probable, according to the conjecture of Junius (in his learned treatise de Pictura Veterum) that the following beautiful epigram of Æmilianus was written on this exquisite picture:
Ἑλκε, ταλαν, παρα μητρος ὁν ουκ ετι μαζον αμελξεις
Ἑλκυσον ὑστατιον ναμα κατα φθιμενης.
Ηδη γαρ ξιφεεσσι λιποπνοος· αλλα τα μηθρος
Φιλτρα καὶ εἰν αἴδῃ παιδοκομειν εμαθον.

It is not ill translated into Latin by Grotius:
Suge, miser, nunquam quae posthac pocula suges;
Ultima ab exanimo corpore pocula trahe!
Expiravit enim jam saucia; sed vel ab orco
Infantem novit pascere matris amor.

But this is far inferior, and so perhaps is the original itself, to the very elegant english version of it, which Mr. Webb has given us in his ingenious and animated « Inquiry into the Beauties of Painting ».
Suck, little wretch, whilst yet thy mother lives,
Suck the last drop her fainting bosom gives.
She dies; her tenderness outlasts her breath,
And her fond love is provident in death.
Webb, Dialogue 7, p. 161.

Oh! Love, it was thy glory to impart

Its infant being to this magic art!

Inspir’d by thee, the soft Corinthian maid*

Her graceful lover’s sleeping form portray’d:

Her boding heart his near departure knew,

Yet long’d to keep his image in her view:

Pleas’d she beheld the steady shadow fall,

By the clear lamp upon the even wall:

The line she trac’d with fond precision true,

And, drawing, doated on the form she drew:

Nor, as the glow’d with no forbidden fire,

Conceal’d the simple picture from her fire,

His kindred fancy, still to nature just,

Copied her line, and form’d the mimic bust.

Thus from thy power, inspiring Love, we trace

The modell’d image, and the pencil’d face!

Notes, p. 59-60 :

* Note IV. Verse 126.

Inspir’d by thee, the soft Corinthian Maid. Pliny has transmitted to us the history of the Maid of Corinth and her father. “Dibutades, a potter of Sicyon, first formed likeness in clay at Corinth, but was indebted to his daughter for the invention; the girl being in love with a young man who was soon going from her into some remote country, traced out the lines of his face from his shadow upon the wall by candle-light. Her father, filling up the lines with clay, formed a bust, and hardened it in the fire with the rest of his earthen ware.” Plin. Lib. 35.

Athenagoras, the Athenian philosopher, gives a similar account of this curious and entertaining anecdote, adding the circumstance that the youth was sleeping when the likeness was taken from his shadow.

Περιεγραψεν αὐτε κοιμωμενε εν τοιχῳ την σκiαν.

The same writer, who lived in the second century of the Christian aera, informs us that this monument of ancient was extant at Corinth in his time, though Pliny seems to intimate that it did not survive the taking of that city by Mummius.

In the Poesies of Fontenelle there is an epistle from the Maid of Corinth, whom the author walls Dibutadis, to her imaginary lover Polemon. She describes her own work in the following stanzas:

Une lampe pretoit une lumiere sombre

Qui m’aidoit encore à rever.

Je voyois sur un mur se depeindre ton ombre ;

Et m’appliquois à l’observer ;

Car tout plait, Polémon, pourvu qu’il represente

L’objet de notre attachement :

C’est assez pour flatter les langueurs d’une amante

Que l’ombre seule d’un amant.

Mais je poussai plus loin cette douce chimere ;

Je voulus fixer en ces lieux,

Attacher à un mur une ombre passagere,

Pour la conserver à mes yeux.

Alors en la suivant du bout d’une baguette,

Je trace une image de toi ;

Une image, il est vrai, peu distincte, imparfaite ;

Mais enfin charmante pour moi.

Note IX. Verse 210.

The gay, the warm, licentious Zeuxis drew. The Helen of Zeuxis is become almost proverbial: the story of the artist’s having executed the picture from an assemblage of the most beautiful females is mentioned (though with some variation as to the place) by authors of great credit, Pliny, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, and Cicero. The last gives a very long ad circumstantial account of it.

De Inventione, lib. 2.

If the story is true, it is perhaps one of the strongest examples we can find of that enthousiastick passion for the fine arts which animated the ancients. Notwithstanding her praeminence in beauty, it seems somewhat singular that the painter should have chosen such a character as Helen, as a proper decoration for the Temple of Juno. A most celebrated Spanish Poet, though not in other respects famous for his judgment, has, I think, not injudiciously metamorphosed this Helen of Zeuxis into Juno herself.

Zeusis, Pintor famoso, retratando

De Juno el rostro, las faciones bellas

De cinco perfettissimas donzellas

Estuvo attentamente contemplando.

Rimas de Lope de Vega. Lisboa, 1605, p. 51-52.

Junius supposes this picture to have been rated a little to high.