Eupompus

Eupompus (Ancient Greek Εὔπομπος) was a Greek painter who lived roughly between 450 and 40 BC according to the reference record, although the exact dates are uncertain. He is regarded as the founder of the great Sicyonic school of painting, which flourished in the 4th century BC at Sicyon in Ancient Greece. His importance lies in giving the Sicyonic tradition its own identity alongside other schools.

Eupompus was a contemporary of Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Timanthes, and he was the teacher of Pamphilus of Amphipolis, who in turn taught Apelles. Before his time, scholars distinguished the Hellenic and Asian schools; with Eupompus came the Sicyonic and Attic schools, the latter led by Apollodorus. His work was highly esteemed in his lifetime, and it changed how citizens thought about schools of art.

Very few of his works survive in the sources. Pliny the Elder describes a painting by him of a victorious athlete holding a palm branch. Beyond that single reference, his style can only be reconstructed from later authors and from the development of the school he founded.

Eupompus was eclipsed by his successors and is chiefly remembered for advice said to have been given to the sculptor Lysippus: to follow nature rather than any master. The maxim is often cited as an expression of the ideal of direct observation of reality.

His legacy passes through Pamphilus and Apelles, whose work shaped later Greek painting. The English writer Ben Jonson mentioned him in his Discoveries, and Aldous Huxley wrote a story about him in his first collection, Limbo, though these later references are literary in character.