The Art of Apelles

By "The Art of Apelles" I mean the art for which Apelles is most famous, that of representing things in pigments on flat surfaces. Arts are differentiated and defined largely by their products. In what follows I shall use the word "picture" for the products of the art of Apelles-and not, say, for abstract or non-representational paintings. I shall try to say what it is for one thing to be a picture of another and what the word "picture" means in this slightly restricted but quite common use. Pictures seem to have affinities on the one hand with verbal descriptions and on the other with such things as imitations, forgeries, toys, impostors, artificial limbs and decoy ducks. Some theories of what a picture is exploit the first set of affinities and some the second. I start by considering two well known theories, one of each sort. Although both may be said to derive from Wittgenstein, the first receives its fullest development in Prof. Nelson Goodman's The Languages of Art and the second in Mr Roger Scruton's Art and Imagination. The second theory seems to me nearer the mark. One advantage it has over the first is that it allows for the obvious fact that a picture must in some degree resemble what it depicts. But Scruton's version is open to fatal objections. Hence I go on to offer an alternative version, a salient point in which is that the notion of a picture is, in a sense I try to explain, a formal concept. The works of Apelles included: a portrait of Philip of Macedon; a picture of Aphrodite rising from the sea and wringing out her hair; and a picture of Calumny, preceded by Envy, Intrigue and Deception, and followed by Repentance and Truth, dragging her victim before a man with large ears, attended by Ignorance and Superstition. Since all these works have been lost they will do conveniently as examples.