Euripides, monumental painting, and the portrayal of space in the fifth century BCE*

Abstract

Technical advances in the visual arts were a routine occurrence over the course of the fifth century BCE after the Persian wars, the period which encompasses the lifetime of the Athenian tragedian Euripides (c.485-407 BCE). They seem to have come steadily and in rapid sequence, with each new development rendering obsolete all previous notions about representation, and bringing the art of painterly mimesis to the very threshold, or so it must have seemed, of nature itself. Whereas the developmental history of Greek sculpture may be said to peak just after mid-century with the invention of the Polykleitan canon, developments in painting gain momentum in the second half of the century, leading to the great flowering of the next. It is important not to underestimate, for the period in question, the cultural and intellectual weight of changes wrought on the history of painterly representation by individual artists, and their potential to captivate, to challenge and, occasionally, to offend, an engaged, inquisitive populace. The methodical transformation of a two-dimensional surface into a unified pictorial field of vision, or, to put it somewhat differently, the replication of optic reality through a series of calculated falsifications — in short, the painting of space — was the result of one of the most radical visions ever entertained by a small segment of humankind. The equally methodical dismantling of their achievement in the early years of the twentieth century constitutes one of the greatest acts of homage in the history of art.