Peiraikos
Peiraikos, or Piraeicus or Peiraeicus (
It is well to add an account of the artists who won fame with the brush in painting smaller pictures. Amongst them was Peiraikos. In mastery of his art but few take rank above him, yet by his choice of a path he has perhaps marred his own success, for he followed a humble line, winning however the highest glory that it had to bring. He painted barbers' shops, cobblers' stalls, asses, eatables and similar subjects, earning for himself the name of rhyparographos [painter of dirt/low things]. In these subjects he could give consummate pleasure, selling them for more than other artists received for their large pictures.
In the terms of later art history, he painted
In Early Modern art criticism
Peiraikos became frequently referred to in discussions of art in the late
In Spain, where
A passage in the diary of Paul Klee meditates on Peiraikos as an "artist-martyr".[24]
In literature,
Rhyparographer
The term used by Pliny has been anglicized as "rhyparographer", "A painter of low or mean subjects", which the
Notes
- ^ Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Piraeĭcus
- ^ Hobey-Hamsher
- ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History, xxxv.112
- ^ Sellers, E., Introduction to "Pliny" (edition as quoted), p. lxxxiv
- ^ Hénin, 135 - "Pline ne sait comment juger Piraeicus"
- ^ Modern scholars have also interpreted Pliny's cryptic remarks with enthusiasm: his "humble line" has been taken as the inability to draw properly, and "consummate pleasure" (consummata voluptas) seen as a verbal play on the pleasure of eating, [1]
- ^ Kettering, 701
- still-lifetradition.
- ^ Elegies III.ix.12
- ^ Hobey-Hamsher
- ^ Courtwright, 500; Sullivan, 237-239
- ^ Sullivan, 236, and the rest of the article
- ^ Sullivan, 240. The whole article provides an extended discussion of the reception of early genre paintings and their context in contemporary art theory. The popularity of Pliny in Northern Europe in particular is discussed on pp. 240-241
- ^ Kwak, 223–228. The painting's location is unknown, and it was last known in a private collection in Berlin in 1929.
- ^ Levine, 571 note 14
- ^ Kettering, 701 and 712, note 40
- ^ Hénin, 135, n. 79
- ^ Kettering, 701 and 712, note 40
- ^ Quoted and discussed in Saporta, 114–119
- ^ Saporta, 118, citing Svetlana Alpers
- ^ Book 1, p. 73 in the 2012 English translation from Getty, google books
- ^ Sohm, 458
- ^ Hénin, 136 and note 80
- ^ Saporta, 119, with quotation
- ^ Saporta, 118-119; and
- OED, "Rhyparographer"
- OED, "Rhyparographer", "Rhyparography"
References
- Courtwright, Nicola, Origins and Meanings of Rembrandt's Late Drawing Style, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 78, No. 3 (Sep., 1996), pp. 485–510, JSTOR
- Hénin, Emmanuelle, Ut pictura theatrum: théâtre et peinture de la Renaissance italienne au classicisme français (in French), 2003, Librairie Droz, ISBN 260000825X, 9782600008259, google books
- Hobey-Hamsher, C., "Peiraikos." Grove Art Online, Oxford Art Online, Oxford University Press, accessed February 22, 2013, subscriber link
- Kettering. Alison M., Men at Work in Dutch Art, or Keeping One's Nose to the Grindstone, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 89, No. 4 (Dec., 2007), pp. 694–714, JSTOR
- Kwak, Zoran, "Taste the Fare and Chew it with Your Eyes’: A Painting by Pieter Pietersz and the Amusing Deceit in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Dutch and Flemish Kitchen Scenes", in On the Edge of Truth and Honesty: Principles and Strategies of Fraud and Deceit in the Early Modern Period, edited by Toon van Houdt and others, BRILL, 2002, ISBN 9004125728, 9789004125728, google books
- Levine, David A., The Roman Limekilns of the Bamboccianti, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 70, No. 4 (Dec., 1988), pp. 569–589, JSTOR
- "Pliny": The elder Pliny's chapters on the history of art, ed. K. Jex-Blake and others, digitized edition of 1896 book from Mamillan & Co. at archive.org
- Plommer, Hugh, "Campanian Still-Life Paintings", review of Les natures mortes campaniennes by Jean-Michel Croisille, The Classical Review, New Series, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Mar., 1967), pp. 98–99, Cambridge University Press on behalf of The Classical Association, JSTOR
- Saporta, Lawrence L., Velázquez: The Spanish Style and the Art of Devotion, dissertation, ISBN 1109124325, 9781109124323, google books
- Sohm, Philip, Caravaggio's Deaths, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 84, No. 3 (Sep., 2002), pp. 449–468, JSTOR
- Sullivan, Margaret A., Aertsen's Kitchen and Market Scenes: Audience and Innovation in Northern Art, The Art Bulletin, Vol. 81, No. 2 (Jun., 1999), pp. 236–266, JSTOR