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Why is Xenocrates of Sicyon considered an early art critic?

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Painting by Gustave Courbet showing the artist at his easel in a crowded studio, surrounded by figures including a nude model, onlookers, and a child with a white dog. — Art criticism *The Painter's Studio*, oil on canvas by Gustave Courbet, 1854–55, in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France.

In the context of art criticism, Xenocrates of Sicyon (3rd century BCE) is recognized as an early art critic because he moved beyond general philosophical theorizing to engage with the particulars of artistic practice.1

While earlier philosophers like Plato and Aristotle established foundational theories regarding art as imitation, morality, or psychology, they did not function as art critics in the modern sense. In his History of Art Criticism, Lionello Venturi identifies Xenocrates—a sculptor from the school of Lysippus—as the first true art critic because he attempted to establish a formal relationship between his own artistic principles and the work of specific, concrete artistic personalities.1

By applying his personal philosophy of art to evaluate individual artists and their creations, Xenocrates bridged the gap between abstract judgment and the direct intuition of a work of art, setting a precedent for the connoisseurship that would later define the role of the critic.1