The subject of this book is an allegory of Calumny by the classical painter Apelles and its use as a model during and after the Renaissance. The connection between Calumny and Envy, the supreme enemy of Virtue, made this allegory a topic of con-tinuous concern for those schooled in or affected by the traditions of Humanist ethics. And the painting itself, which was known through a description by the Greek writer Lucian, was believed to have been Apelles' response to the slanderous accusations of a fellow artist who envied his success. Thus, on two counts, this allegory was of exemplary importance in Renaissance art and in the ever-increasing discussion of the value of art in the Renaissance by both painters and critics.

In this book David Cast traces two distinct intellectual traditions that evolved around the theme of Calumny between 1400 and the middle of the nineteenth century: the tradition of forms, of im-ages giving rise to other images, and the purely literary tradition that preserved the meaning of these forms. The visual record, which touches on other themes connected with Apelles and with the battle between Vice and Virtue, begins with Botticelli, Raphael, Mantegna, and Dürer and ends with Ingres and Daumier. The literary tradition begins with the rediscovery of Lucian in the Renaissance and ends quietly and inevitably in the middle of the nineteenth century when the values of Humanism had been supplanted by evidently different descriptions of social and private behavior.