Apelles

Apelles of Kos (/əˈpɛliːz/; Greek: Ἀπελλῆς; fl. 4th century BC) was a renowned painter of ancient Greece. Pliny the Elder, to whom we owe much of our knowledge of this artist (Naturalis Historia 35.36.79–97 and passim), rated him superior to preceding and subsequent artists. He dated Apelles to the 112th Olympiad (332–329 BC), possibly because he had produced a portrait of Alexander the Great.

Biography

Probably born at Colophon in Ionia, he first studied under Ephorus of Ephesus, but after he had attained some celebrity he became a student to Pamphilus at Sicyon He thus combined the Dorian thoroughness with the Ionic grace. Attracted to the court of Philip II, he painted him and the young Alexander with such success that he became the recognized court painter of Macedon, and his picture of Alexander holding a thunderbolt ranked in the minds of many with the Alexander with the spear of the sculptor Lysippus. Hundreds of years later, Plutarch was among the unimpressed, deciding that it had failed to accurately reproduce Alexander's colouring: "He made Alexander's complexion appear too dark-skinned and swarthy, whereas we are told that he was fair-skinned, with a ruddy tinge that showed itself especially upon his face and chest."

Apelles (gnostic)

Little is known about Apelles (mid-2nd century). He was a disciple of Marcion, probably at Rome, but left (or was expelled from) the Marcionite society. Tertullian tells us that this was because he had become intimate with a woman named Philumena who claimed to be possessed by an angel, who gave her 'revelations' which Apelles read out in public.

He then went to Alexandria, where he developed his doctrine, a modified Marcionism, which (according to Tertullian) admitted that Christ possessed true human flesh but continued to deny the nativity.

Apelles wrote a book entitled Syllogisms ('reasonings') though the word itself suggests that Apelles may have intended to oppose Marcion's Antitheses, which set the Old Testament and the New Testament against each other. He is last heard of in Rome in the last portion of the 2nd century.

His followers, the 'Apelliacos' or Apelleasts, are likewise unknown. Tertullian wrote a tract against them which has not survived. Ambrose of Milan in the 4th century directs some of his comments in his De paradiso (On the Garden of Eden) against this sect, but whether the sect was still active or whether Ambrose had merely copied another now lost work of Tertullian on the same subject is unknown.

Apelles (disambiguation)

Apelles may signify:

See also: HMS Apelles