About

The most famous myth about the birth of painting is probably the one told by Pliny the
Elder in his Natural History c. 75 AD: the story of Dibutade’s daughter, the young woman
who drew the outline of her lover’s shadow in charcoal on the wall of her house before he
left for a long journey, capturing his silhouette to give his presence the illusion of eternity.
This woman, whose first name Pliny omits to mention, was the first painter in history. Kora
of Sicyon—her actual name—created painting as an antidote to absence and disappearance,
and invented an art whose necessity has been continually …