A Dictionary of Greek and Roman biography and mythology

1. C.FabiusPictor, painted the temple of Salus (aedem Salutis pinxit), which the dictator C. Junius Brutus Bubulcus contracted for in his censorship, B. C. 307, and dedicated in his dictatorship, B. C. 302. This painting, which must have been on the walls of the temple, was probably a representation of the battle which Bubulus had gained against the Samnites [BUBULCUS, No. 1]. This is the earliest Roman painting of which we have any record. It was preserved till the reign of Claudius, when the temple was destroyed by fire. Dionysius, in a passage to which Niebuhr calls attention, praises the great correctness of the drawing in this picture, the gracefulness of the colouring and the absence of all mannerism and affectation. (Plin. H.N. 35.4. s. 7; V. Max. 8.14.6; Dionys. A. R. 16.6, in Mai's Exc.; Cic. Tusc. 1.2.4; comp. Liv. 10.1; Niebuhr, Hist. of Rome, vol. iii. p. 356.)