The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

form of equine connoisseurship responsive to the dignity of the artist’s identity as well as
his skill.” 136 Additional evidence pointing to the same direction derives also from Pliny’s
characterization of the employment of animals as “a sound test in artistic skill,” which
speaks not only of the trust placed upon animals as good judges of lifelikeness in art, but
also of recognition of lifelikeness as an exceptional skill of artists. That Apelles was one
of these artists is also evidenced in another passage of Pliny which presents him as the
creator of exceptionally lifelike images, in this case of human beings. 137
Both stories recorded by Pliny indicate that non-human animals such as birds and
horses were considered reliable guides even to extreme cases of lifelikeness in works of
art in Classical Greece. Furthermore, the fact that animals, as part of the natural world,
consider works of art to be so lifelike suggests a specific attitude toward art itself: that it
has surpassed its own essence as a man-made creation and is now accepted as nature even
by nature itself.
The literary sources examined in this essay indicate that animals played a
significant role in the perception of lifelikeness in ancient Greek art. Animals featured
not only as subjects of works of art valued for their lifelikeness, which in some cases was
perceived as exceptional, but they were also considered a reliable standard of judging
equally exceptional lifelike art. This double capacity of animals in the realm of
136 Mitchell, “Illusion” 336-337.
137 “He [Apelles] also painted portraits so absolutely lifelike that, incredible, as it sounds, the grammarian
Apio has left it on record that one of those persons called ‘physiognomists,’ who prophesy people’s future
by their countenance, pronounced from their portraits either the year of the subjects’ deaths hereafter or the
number of years they had already lived” (Pliny, NH 35.88-35.89); translation: H. Rackham, ed., tr., Pliny.
Natural History IX. Books XXXIII-XXXV (Cambridge, Mass. and London, 1952; repr. 1995) 327. For the
idea of Apelles as the most accomplished painter of lifelike images in antiquity, and its influence on
Renaissance artists, who saw Apelles as a model of an artist to be imitated, see D. Cast, The Calumny of
Apelles. A Study in the Humanist Tradition (New Haven and London, 1981) 161-173.
97