isn't easy to come across one single model who is beyond criticism in every detail, you combine the best features of every one of a number of models and so convey the appearance of entirely beautiful bodies. Much later, Cicero(Bc 106-44) who must have derived the story from a Greek source, told how the fifth-century painter Zeuxis had employed five different young women as models for a single picture of Helen, for he did not believe that it was possible to find in one body all the things he looked for in beauty, for his nature has not refined to perfection Ideas' as any single object in all its parts. The urge to idealize was, nevertheless, held in check by the need for verisimilitude and it is significant that the same two artists should have been celebrated also for their illusionistic skill. According to Pliny the Elder, who had access to Greek sources lost to us, Zeuxis painted some grapes with such success that birds flew up to them' and Parrhasius depicted a linen curtain with such truth' that Zeuxis asked for it to be drawn aside.