Cleanthes () was an ancient painter of Corinth, who was mentioned among the inventors of that art by Pliny the Elder and Athenagoras of Athens.Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.5Athenagoras of Athens, Legatio Pro Christianis 100.17
A picture by him representing the birth of the goddess Minerva was seen in the temple of Diana near the Alpheius River (Artemis Alpheionia).Strabo, Geographica viii. p.343b.Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 8.346c This work was not, as the archaeologist Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard once said, in a "ludicrous style", but rather in the severe style of ancient art.Friedrich Wilhelm Eduard Gerhard, Auserlesene griechische Vasenbilder, i. p. 12 Modern scholars now believe Gerhard to be conflating Cleanthes with the artist Ctesilochus.Pliny the Elder, Natural History 35.40
Two 19th-century frescos in Hermitage are reconstructions of his paintings by Johann Georg Hiltensperger.
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