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Protogenes. A celebrated Greek painter of Caunus, in Caria, who lived for the most part at Rhodes, in the time of Alexander the Great and his first successors. He died B.C. 300. His poverty seems to have prevented him from attending the school of any of the celebrated masters of his age, for no one is named as his instructor. He long remained poor, until the unselfish admiration which his contemporary and brother painter Apelles showed for his works raised him in riper years to great celebrity. His works, owing to the excessive care he bestowed on them, were few in number; but their perfect execution led to their being ranked by the unanimous voice of antiquity among the highest productions of art. His most celebrated works were a "Resting Satyr," and also a painting representing the Rhodian hero, Ialysus. On the latter he spent seven or, according to others, as many as eleven years. To insure its permanence he covered it with four distinct coats of paint, so that when the upper coating perished the lower might take its place.
This text is from: Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities. Cited Nov 2002 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
His (Apelles of Colophon) greatest contemporary was Protegenes of Caunus, an insignificant town on the Carian coast, subject to Rhodes, where the artist took up his abode. Mr. Torr (Classical Review, 1890, p. 231) suggests that the artist had been accustomed to paint pictures of ships, as thank-offerings for escapes at sea. At any rate, it was probably mainly due to Apelles that his work came to be known and appreciated: on the other hand, this seems inconsistent with the fact that Pliny places him among those who practised sculpture as well as painting. Besides a few portraits, of Philiscus, Antigonus, and the mother of Aristotle, and one work in Athens, his chief themes seem to have been drawn from the local traditions of Rhodes; an often repeated anecdote records his presence at the sacking of Rhodes by Demetrius in B.C. 304, which we may take as a central point of his chronology. Demetrius spared the town from burning in order to save the picture by Protogenes of the Rhodian hero Ialysus. In this picture occurred the dog, the effect of whose foaming mouth was said to have been attained by Protogenes throwing his sponge in desperation at the picture; and the partridge, which though a mere detail attracted so much attention that the artist, in annoyance, erased it. To attain this high degree of realism, he is said to have worked very slowly, and it was against this impression of laboriousness that the criticisms of Apelles were directed.
This extract is from: A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890) (eds. William Smith, LLD, William Wayte, G. E. Marindin). Cited July 2004 from The Perseus Project URL below, which contains interesting hyperlinks
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