Phidias

Phidias (d c.430 bc). Greek sculptor, active mainly in Athens, the most famous artist of the ancient world. No work survives that is certainly from his own hand, but through copies, descriptions, and above all the surviving sculpture of the Parthenon at Athens, which Phidias supervised, a fair idea can be gained of his style. In antiquity he was most celebrated for two enormous chryselephantine cult statues—of Athena, inside the Parthenon, and of Zeus in the temple dedicated to the god at Olympia. The statue of Zeus, a seated figure about 12 m (40 ft) high and one of the Seven Wonders of the World, is known through reproductions on Roman coins. The statue of Athena (dedicated 438 bc), a standing figure about 9 m (30 ft) high, is known through several (much smaller) copies. Phidias also made two bronze statues of Athena for the Acropolis in Athens: the huge Athena Promachos (champion), in which the goddess was shown holding a spear; and the Lemnian Athena (so called because it was dedicated by Athenian colonists going to Lemnos between 451 and 448 bc). The Athena Promachos is represented on coins and the Lemnian Athena can be partially reconstructed from what are thought to be two fragmentary copies: a remarkably sensitive head in Bologna (Mus. Civico Archeologico) and a substantially complete figure in Dresden (Albertinum). Other copies have been credibly associated with works of Phidias mentioned in ancient sources, and recently the two bronze statues of warriors found in the sea near Riace in 1972 (‘The Riace Bronzes’) have been linked with his name because of their superlative quality; they are now in the archaeological museum at Reggio di Calabria.

The greatest testimony to his genius, however, is the sculpture of the Parthenon (447–432 bc), the most ambitious sculptural undertaking of the age, consisting originally of a low-relief frieze about 160 m (525 ft) long, 92 metopes in high relief, and groups of free-standing figures on both pediments. Much of the sculpture still survives, mainly in the British Museum, London (see Elgin Marbles). The quality is variable, as a team of sculptors was involved, and Phidias could not have carved more than a tiny fraction of the work himself, but the finest parts exemplify the harmony and serene majesty that earned the raptures of ancient commentators and stand as the greatest surviving examples of the classical period in Greek art.

In spite of his fame and the prominent works on which he was employed, there is much that is enigmatic about Phidias' career, not least about the end of his life. When the great statesman Pericles, his friend and patron, fell out of favour, Phidias was accused of misappropriating gold supplied to him for the statue of Athena. Then, according to Plutarch, having cleared himself of this charge, he was thrown into prison for impiety on the ground that he had introduced portraits of Pericles and himself on the shield of the goddess (a copy of the shield—the ‘Strangford Shield’—is in the British Museum). Plutarch says that Phidias died in prison, but according to another ancient source he escaped and went to Olympia to work on his statue of Zeus, the date of which is uncertain. In 1954–8 Phidias' workshop at Olympia was excavated. Moulds, scraps of ivory, and other fragments were discovered, and, remarkably, a cup bearing the inscription ‘I belong to Phidias’—the great man's tea-mug, as it were. This poignant relic is in the Olympia Museum.