APELLES, the most famous painter of ancient Greece and of antiquity: b. in the 4th century B.C., probably at Colophon. He first studied at Ephesus, under Ephoros, and at tracted by the renown of the Sicyonian school, he studied later at Sicyon. In the time of Philip he went to Macedonia and there a close friendship between him and Alexander the Great was established. The most admired of his pictures was that of Venus rising from the sea and wringing the water from her drip ping locks. His portrait of Alexander with a thunderbolt in his hand was no less cele brated. His
unremitting, especially in drawing, so great as to give rise to the proverb eNo day without a line. g He is also the subject of many anec dotes, among which may be cited his reprov ing the cobbler. It was Apelles' habit to listen to the criticisms of the common people of his pictures by concealing himself nearby. A cob bler, having pointed out a fault in the shoe of a figure, Apelles rushed out and rectified it, but when the cobbler later criticized the legs of the figure Apelles told him to stick to the shoes, or, as the proverb has it, aLet the cob bler stick to his last" His renown was at its height about B.C. 330, and he died near the end of the century. Consult Houssaye,