In
fact, he is said to have received Athenian citizenship. He worked
also at Delphi and at other places, after the ordinary manner of
artists.
Painting in this period, as practiced by Polygnotus and other
great artists, was chiefly mural; the painting of easel pictures
seems to have been of quite secondary consequence. Thus the most
famous works of Polygnotus adorned the inner faces of the walls of
temples and stoas. The subjects of these great mural paintings
were chiefly mythological. For example, the two compositions of
Polygnotus at Delphi, of which we possess an extremely detailed
account in the pages of Pausanias, depicted the sack of Troy and
the descent of Odysseus into Hades. But it is worth remarking, in
view of the extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief-
sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens,
alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks
and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical
scenes, a Battle of Marathon and a Battle of OEnoe.
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