Polygnotus

He was the son and pupil of Aglaophon.{{cite encyclopedia |last=Bieber |first=Margarete |authorlink=Margarete Bieber |editor=William D. Halsey |encyclopedia=Collier's Encyclopedia |title=Polygnotus |year=1976 |publisher=Macmillan Educational Corporation |volume=19 |page=222 }} He was a native of Thasos but was adopted by the Athenians and admitted to their citizenship.

File:Reconstruction of Nekyia by Polygnotus.JPG

File:Reconstruction of Iliupersis by Polygnotus.JPG

File:Reconstruction of the battle of Marathon by Polygnotos.jpg

During the time of Cimon, Polygnotus painted for the Athenians a picture of the taking of Troy on the walls of the Stoa Poikile and another of the marriage of the daughters of Leucippus in the Anacaeum. Plutarch mentions historians and the poet Melanthius attest that Polygnotus did not paint for money but rather out of a charitable feeling towards the Athenian people. In the hall at the entrance to the Acropolis, other works of his were preserved.{{Cite web|url=http://www.athenswalk.net/_/Athens_Walk_4th_route.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130725194421/http://www.athenswalk.net/_/Athens_Walk_4th_route.html|url-status=usurped|archive-date=July 25, 2013|title=Photo guide of Polygnotus street near Archea Agora in Athens|website=www.athenswalk.net|accessdate=October 22, 2024}} The most important of his paintings were his frescoes in the Lesche of the Knidians, a building erected at Delphi by the people of Cnidus. The subjects of these were the visit to Hades by Odysseus and the taking of Troy.

The traveller Pausanias recorded a careful description of these paintings, figure by figure.Pausanias, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Paus.+10.25 10.25–31]. The foundations of the building have been recovered in the course of the French excavations at Delphi. Some archaeologists have tried reconstructing the paintings from this evidence rather than their colours. The figures were detached and rarely overlapping, ranged in two or three rows one above another, and the further were not smaller nor dimmer than the nearer. Therefore, it seems that the paintings of this time were executed on almost precisely the same plan as contemporary sculptural reliefs.

Polygnotus employed only a few simple colours. Technically, his art was primitive. His excellence lay in the beauty of his drawing of individual figures, especially in his art's "ethical" and ideal character. A contemporary and teacher of Phidias, Polygnotus had the same grand manner. Almost childlike simplicity, sentiment at once noble and gentle, and extreme grace and charm of execution marked his works, in contrast to the more animated, complicated and technically superior paintings of later ages.

{{reflist}}

{{refbegin}}

• Pausanias, Description of Greece. W. H. S. Jones (translator). Loeb Classical Library. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. (1918).
• {{1911|wstitle = Polygnotus|volume=22 }}

{{refend}}

{{commonscatinline}}

{{Authority control}}

{{Ancient Greek painters}}

Category:Ancient Greek painters

Category:Artists of ancient Thasos

Category:5th-century BC Greek people

Category:Metics in Classical Athens

Category:5th-century BC painters