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Aristeides [Aristides]
( fl 4th century BC). Greek painter(s) from Thebes. There appear to have been two painters named Aristeides, perhaps grandfather and grandson; none of their works survive. According to Pliny (Natural History XXX.75) an Aristeides was a pupil of Euxenidas, a contemporary of Parrhasios and Timanthes. The same author named the painter and sculptor Euphranor among his pupils (XXXV.111). This Aristeides would have flourished in the first half of the 4th century BC. Elsewhere, however, Pliny (XXXV.110) mentioned an Aristeides who was a pupil of his father Nikomachos of Thebes. He must be the Aristeides who was a contemporary of Apelles and whose style and works the author described (XXXV.98–100). This Aristeides would have worked in the second half of the 4th century BC. Pliny criticized the younger Aristeides for using colours that were a little harsh but praised him for being the first painter to depict the soul and to give expression to the affections and emotions. Many of the paintings ascribed to that Aristeides suggest the emotional quality of his work: The Suppliant, so moving that his voice could almost be heard; the Girl Dying for Love of her Brother; and the much-praised picture of a Sick Man. Henry Fuseli (Lecture I) pointed to the balance of pity and disgust inherent in Aristeides’ painting of a City Sacked, in which a mother dying from a wound fears that her baby will drink blood rather than milk from her breast. Aristeides also painted a portrait of Leontion, the pupil and mistress of Epicurus, which perhaps gave rise to his reputation as a pornographer. Aristeides’ pictures sold for vast sums. Attalos II, King of Pergamon (reg 160–139 BC), tried to buy for 600,000 denarii a painting of Dionysos that fell to the Romans when Corinth was sacked in 146 BC. Roman soldiers had been using the picture as a dice-board. When the Roman general L. Mummius learnt the value Attalos placed on the painting, however, he removed it to the Temple of Ceres in Rome, where it was later destroyed in a fire (31 BC). Pliny (XXXV.24) believed it to have been the first foreign painting dedicated at Rome.
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