ZEUXIS ZIEGENBALG- 



171 



siveness to the human figure. He stood extremely 

 high in his profession, excelled all his predecessors, 

 and many stories are told of the fidelity with which 

 he copied nature. One of his most famous pictures 

 was a Helen, which he executed for the Crotonians 

 (according to some, for Agrigentum), as an orna- 

 ment for their temple of Juno. This figure was 

 celebrated by the poets and amateurs of antiquity, 

 as the finest specimen of art existing; and the 

 artist himself, who was very vain and ostentatious, 

 inscribed under it the lines of Homer, in which 

 Priam speaks his admiration of the beauty of Helen. 

 As models, he had selected five beautiful girls. He 

 became very rich, and, at length, gave his pictures 

 away, affecting to regard them as above all price. 

 One of his finest performances, a Hercules strang- 

 ling some Serpents in his Cradle, with Alcmena 

 and Amphitryon looking on in terror, was presented 

 to the Agrigentines. Of the circumstances of his 

 private life, little is known ; nor is it recorded how 

 long he lived. Tradition, most likely erroneously, 

 attributes his death to a very whimsical cause. It 

 is said, that, having painted an old woman, on at- 

 tentively surveying his work, he was seized with 

 so violent a fit of laughter that he died on the spot. 

 His contest with Parrhasius is well known. Zeuxis 

 painted some grapes so naturally that birds flew to 

 peck them. Parrhasius painted a curtain so na- 

 turally as to deceive Zeuxis himself, who asked to 

 have it drawn aside, and, on learning the deception, 

 acknowledged himself vanquished, as he had only 

 deceived birds, while Parrhasius had deceived an 

 artist. At another time, he painted a boy with 

 grapes, at which the birds again flew. " If," said 

 he, " the boy had been painted as well as the grapes, 

 the birds would not have approached." 



Lucian, has preserved a short notice of one of his 

 pictures, which will serve to give some idea of the 

 style and composition which this great master oc- 

 casionally adopted. 



" Among other strange subjects Zeuxis painted a 

 female centaur suckling two young twin centaurs. 

 There is now a copy of this picture at Athens, the 

 exact counter-part of the original, which Sylla, the 

 Roman general, is said to have sent with other pic- 

 tures to Italy. The vessel in which they were 

 embarked, sunk, I believe, about Cape Malea (St 

 Angelo), when the picture and every thing else on 

 board was lost. However, I saw the copy at 

 Athens, and I will endeavour to describe it. 

 Though I have no pretensions to any skill in judg- 

 ing of paintings, 1 have a complete recollection of 

 this, as I saw it only a short time ago in the house 

 of a painter at Athens ; and perhaps the exceeding 

 admiration which I then felt may help me in my 

 description. The female centaur was represented 

 reclining on some luxuriant grass, with the whole 

 horse part of the figure on the ground, and the hind 

 legs stretched out. The female or fore part was 

 slightly raised, and rested on the bend of the elbow. 

 The fore feet were not stretched out like the hind 

 legs, which would have been inconsistent with the re- 

 clining posture ; but one fore leg had the knee bent 

 and the hoof turned under, while the other, on the 

 contrary, was in an erect position, fixing itself 

 firmly on the ground, just as a horse does when he 

 is going to spring up. One of the young centaurs 

 the mother held in her arms and suckled, as a fe- 

 male does; the other was sucking like a colt. 

 Above this group, on a kind of eminence, the old 

 centaur, the father, is seen looking down and smil- 

 ing. He is only about half visible ; in his right 



hand he holds up a lion's cub which he raises above 

 his head, pretending to frighten the young cen- 

 taurs. What I most admired in this picture of 

 Zeuxis is, the power which he has shown of giving 

 variety to his subject. He has made the man alto- 

 gether a formidable looking fellow, very wild, his 

 hair tossed in confusion, and all over rough and shag- 

 gy : his shoulders are upraised, his look altogether 

 savours of the wild beast, though he is smiling ; he 

 is like a tenant of the mountains, untamed. The 

 female, on the contrary, is the model of a most 

 beautiful Thessalian mare, unbroken and unused to 

 the saddle : the upper part, the female, is exceed- 

 ingly beautiful, except the ears, which are those ot 

 a satyr. The union of the two bodies is managed 

 so dexterously that you hardly see where one 

 animal begins to change into the other. One of the 

 young ones seems savage even in its infant state ; I 

 was surprised at the look which both of them cast 

 up towards the lion's cub, which they did as natur- 

 ally as two children, all the time, however, keeping 

 close to their mother's breast." 



ZEYD. See Seyd. 



ZEYST, OR ZEIST; a village of above 1200 

 inhabitants, with a fine castle, in the province of 

 Utrecht, in the Netherlands, a league from the city 

 of Utrecht, in an agreeable country containing many 

 gardens and walks. It formerly belonged to the 

 counts of Nassau, and was sold, in 1752, to a mer- 

 chant in Amsterdam, who gave it to the Moravian 

 Brethren for the establishment of a settlement, 

 which at present consists of 300 members. They 

 have built here brother and sister houses, and 

 manufactories, where they make gloves, leather, 

 ribands, gold and silver work, soap, candles, &c., 

 of excellent quality. Not far from Zeyst there is a 

 heath, where the French-Dutch army raised a pyra- 

 mid of earth a hundred and forty-eight feet high, 

 on the occasion of Napoleon's assuming the crown. 



ZIA. See Zea. 



ZIEGENBALG, BARTHOLOMEW, a celebrated 

 Protestant missionary, was born at Pullnitz, in Up- 

 per Lusatia, June 14, 1683. Having gone through 

 the usual course of school education at Gorlitz and 

 Berlin, he removed, in 1703, to the university of 

 Halle, where he applied himself closely to biblical 

 literature. About this time, the king of Denmark 

 being desirous of sending some qualified missionary 

 to India, Ziegenbalg was particularly recommended 

 to him; and, in 1705, he was ordained at Copen- 

 hagen for that purpose. He sailed to India the 

 same year, and arrived at Tranquebar, in July, 

 1706, but met with great opposition on the part of 

 the Danish authorities, who, for a short time, even 

 confined him ; nor was he allowed to proceed in a 

 translation of the New Testament into the Malabar 

 language, which he had commenced. Orders, how- 

 ever, arriving from Copenhagen for the Danish 

 authorities to protect the missionaries, and also re- 

 ceiving great pecuniary assistance from England 

 and Germany, he was enabled, in 1711, to make a 

 voyage to Madras, and also to visit the territories 

 of the Mogul. In October, 1714, he sailed for 

 Europe, and reached Copenhagen in the following 

 year. He was received with great respect, and, 

 after completing a dictionary of the Malabar lan- 

 guage, which was printed at Halle in 1716, quarto, 

 he visited England, where he obtained an audience 

 of George I., and the members of the royal family; 

 and obtained a passage to India by the direct coun- 

 tenance of the East India company. He accordingly 

 embarked at Deal, in March, 1716, and arrived at 



