Cleanthes (artist)

Cleanthes (Ancient Greek: Κλεάνθης) was an ancient painter of Corinth, who was mentioned among the inventors of that art by Pliny the Elder and Athenagoras of Athens.[1][2]

A picture by him representing the birth of the goddess Minerva was seen in the temple of Diana near the Alpheius River (Artemis Alpheionia).[3][4] This work was not, as the archaeologist Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard once said, in a "ludicrous style", but rather in the severe style of ancient art.[5] Modern scholars now believe Gerhard to be conflating Cleanthes with the artist Ctesilochus.[6]

Two 19th-century frescos in Hermitage are reconstructions of his paintings by Johann Georg Hiltensperger.

  1. ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.5
  2. ^ Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio Pro Christianis 100.17
  3. ^ Strabo, Geographica viii. p.343b.
  4. ^ Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 8.346c
  5. ^ Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder, i. p. 12
  6. ^ Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.40