Zeuxis

, a celebrated painter, born at Heraclea, which some suppose to be the Heraclea of Sicily. He flourished about 468 years before the christian era, and was the disciple of Apollo dor us, and contemporary with Parr has i us. In the art of painting he surpa ed not only all his contemporaries, but also his master, and became so sensible, and at the same time so proud, of the value of his pieces, that he refused to sell them, observing that no sum of money, however great, was sufficient to buy them. His most celebrated paintings were his Jupiter sitting on a throne, surrounded by the gods; his Hercules strangling the serpents in the presence of his affrighted parents; his modest Penelope; and his Helen, which was afterwards placed in the temple of Juno Lacinia, in Italy. This last piece he had painted at the request of the people of Croton a, and that he might not be without a model, they sent him the most beautiful of their virgins. Zeuxis examined their naked beauties, and retained five, from whose elegance and graces united, he conceived in his mind the form of the most perfect woman in the universe, which his pencil at last executed with wonderful succe . His contest with Parr has i us is well known [ See: Parr has i us ]; but though he represented nature in such perfection, and copied all her beauties with such exactne , he often found himself deceived. He painted grapes, and formed an idea of the goodne of his piece from the birds which came to eat the fruit on the canvas. But he soon acknowledged that the whole was an ill-executed piece, as the figure of the man who carried the grapes was not done with sufficient expre ion to terrify the birds. According to some, Zeuxis died from laughing at a comical picture which he had made of an old woman. Cicero , de Invent i one , bk. 2 , ch. 1 .— Plutarch , Parallel a minor a , . — Quintilian.