And yet, many have attempted to recreate the lost masterpieces of ancient painters like Zeuxis and Apelles. Since the Renaissance, artists such as Botticelli, Titian, or Ingres used written descriptions to create their interpretations of these vanished works, like Botticelli's version of Apelles' Calumny or various takes on his Venus Anadyomene.

Today, though, we have a better understanding of ancient painting techniques and styles. The frescoes of Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the surrounding Vesuvius area provide our primary insight into ancient painting. These works showcase diverse styles, subjects, and techniques, from architectural trompe-l'oeil to imitations of panel paintings.

Yet these frescoes alone cannot provide a complete picture. The artists who painted them were not of the same caliber as the renowned masters mentioned by Pliny. Moreover, these works were painted on walls rather than wooden panels—the equivalent of today's canvas—which entailed fundamentally different painting techniques. Fresco painting requires working quickly on wet plaster with water-based pigments, resulting in distinctive brushwork and technical constraints that differ greatly from the methods used on wooden panels, where painters could work more deliberately with tempera or encaustic techniques. Additionally, they date from several centuries after the classical and Hellenistic periods when the most celebrated ancient painters worked.

The Macedonian tomb frescoes, discovered more recently, are actually contemporary with these great masters. However, they too are wall paintings rather than panel works, and unlike some Pompeian examples, they were specifically designed as tomb decorations rather than attempts to replicate panel paintings.

Perhaps our most valuable reference comes from the Fayum mummy portraits found in Egypt. Thanks to the region's arid climate and their burial conditions, these wooden panel paintings have survived remarkably well. Though created several centuries after the classical period, they may represent our closest link to ancient master paintings. Their quality varies, but the finest examples clearly demonstrate their inheritance of the classical tradition of realistic portraiture.

To reconstruct ancient paintings, we can synthesize these various sources: combining the brushwork and texture of Fayum panels, the compositions from Roman frescoes that imitate panel paintings, and other relevant ancient artworks based on subject matter. Modern image generation technology now allows us to experiment with these combinations.