Bularchus
ancient Greek painter
Bularchus (Ancient Greek: Βούλαρχος) was an Ancient Greek painter; Pliny indicates that he was working in the 8th century BC, during the reign of Candaules, King of Lydia.
Life
Bularchus' Battle of the Magnesians, is the earliest picture of which the ancient writers have left a description. The artist appears to have flourished in the late 8th century BC, as, according to Pliny, this picture was purchased for as much gold as would cover its surface by Candaules, King of Lydia, who died in about 700 B.C.
After Bularchus we encounter a gap of upwards of two centuries and a half in the history of Greek painting. It appears, however, that it was practised on the island of Rhodes, at the time of Anacreon, who lived about 600 years before Christ. That poet, in his twenty-eighth and twenty-ninth Odes, mentions the practice of encaustic painting.
References
Sources
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Bryan, Michael (1886). "Bularchus". In Graves, Robert Edmund (ed.). Bryan's Dictionary of Painters and Engravers (A–K). Vol.
“Bularchus” enters the record as ancient Greek painter. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Bularchus, ancient and Greek can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jan 9, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q328845. VIAF identifies the subject as 96594019. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1886.
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This entry incorporates text from “Bularchus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.