Phidias stamped Classical Greece onto gold, ivory, and bronze
Phidias, active about 480 to 430 BC, designed the Olympian Zeus counted among the Seven Wonders and the Acropolis Athenas that defined Periclean Athens. No securely original statue survives, yet Roman copies and ancient testimony still call him the pivot of Classical sculpture.
Phidias built his reputation on bronze and on gold and ivory rather than marble; Plato claimed he seldom if ever carved stone. His first works honoured the victory at Marathon, including a bronze group at Delphi of Apollo, Athena, Attic heroes and the general Miltiades. On the Acropolis his colossal bronze Athena Promachos could be seen from far out at sea, and Pausanias called the bronze Athena Lemnia, made for Athenian settlers on Lemnos, the finest of his works to look at.
From 447 BC Pericles, drawing partly on Delian League funds, put him in charge of the great building programme on the Acropolis. The marble for the Parthenon's pediment figures arrived only in 434 or 433 BC, so much of the temple's sculpture was probably carved by his workshop and pupils such as Alcamenes and Agoracritus. His two supreme works were the gold-and-ivory Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon and the seated Zeus at Olympia, of about 432 BC, one of the Seven Wonders, with an ivory body, a golden robe and a throne covered in sculpture.
His end is murky. After the Athena Parthenos he was accused of skimming gold; he reportedly weighed the removable robe to clear himself, only to be charged with putting portraits of himself and Pericles on the shield. Plutarch says he died in prison, while another tradition claims the Eleans executed him after he finished their Zeus. Excavations at Olympia from 1954 to 1958 uncovered his workshop, with tools, terracotta moulds and a cup inscribed I belong to Phidias, though its authenticity is disputed. The Greek letter phi, used for the golden ratio from about 1910, was chosen in his honour.
Source: Phidias
