Few tales of artistic triumph can rival the story of Zeuxis. As
first reported by Cicero and Pliny, the painter Zeuxis set out to
portray Helen of Troy, but when he realized that a single model
could not match Helen's beauty, he combined the best features of
five different models. A primer on mimesis in art making, the
Zeuxis myth also illustrates ambivalence about the ability to rely
on nature as a model for ideal form. In Too Beautiful to Picture,
Elizabeth C. Mansfield engages the visual arts, literature, and
performance to examine the desire to make the ideal visible. She
finds in the Zeuxis myth evidence of a cultural primal scene that
manifests itself in gendered terms. Mansfield considers the many
depictions of the legend during the Renaissance and questions its
absence during the eighteenth century. Offering interpretations of
Angelica Kauffman's paintings, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and
Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Mansfield also considers
Orlan's carnal art as a profound retelling of the myth. Throughout,
Mansfield asserts that the Zeuxis legend encodes an unconscious
record of the West's reliance on mimetic representation as a
vehicle for metaphysical solace. Elizabeth C. Mansfield is
associate professor of art history at the University of the South.
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