By the time of Nero it had become so much injured
that it had to be replaced by a copy.
Protogenes was another painter whom even the slightest sketch
cannot afford to pass over in silence. He was born at Caunus in
southwestern Asia Minor and flourished about the same time as
Apelles. We read of his conversing with the philosopher Aristotle
(died 322 B.C.), of whose mother he painted a portrait, and of his
being engaged on his most famous work, a picture of a Rhodian
hero, at the time of the siege of Rhodes by Demetrius (304 B.C.).
He was an extremely painstaking artist, inclined to excessive
elaboration in his work. Apelles, who is always represented as of
amiable and generous character, is reported as saying that
Protogenes was his equal or superior in every point but one, the
one inferiority of Protogenes being that he did not know when to
stop. According to another anecdote Apelles, while profoundly
impressed by Protogenes's masterpiece, the Rhodian hero above
referred to, pronounced it lacking in that quality of grace which
was his own most eminent merit.
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