Polygnotus

Who is Polygnotus?

Polygnotus was an ancient Greek painter from the middle of the 5th century BC, son and pupil of Aglaophon. He was a native of Thasos, but was adopted by the Athenians, and admitted to their citizenship.

He painted for them in the time of Cimon 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. It is mentioned by Plutarch that historians and the poet Melanthius attest Polygnotus as not having painted for money but out of charitable feeling to the Athenian people. In the hall at the entrance to the Acropolis other works of his were preserved. The most important, however, of his paintings were his frescoes in 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.

Fortunately the traveller Pausanias has left us a careful description of these paintings, figure by figure. The foundations of the building have been recovered in the course of the French excavations at Delphi. From this evidence, some archaeologists have tried to reconstruct the paintings, excepting of course the colours of them. The figures were detached and seldom overlapping, ranged in two or three rows one above another; and the farther were not smaller nor dimmer than the nearer. It will hence appear that paintings at this time were executed on almost precisely the same plan as contemporary sculptural reliefs.