Greek Art And The Classical Period

Pheidias was the dominant artistic figure of the 5th century BC, and unfortunately, none of the artist’s original works survived until modern times, but there is an unusually high number of literary sources for his career. Plutarch, tells us of the events leading to the artist’s death in Athenian prison, while Pausanias, being an eyewitness to his statues themselves, describes the two bronze statues of Athena made by Pheidias. The artist’s contributions include new ways of using sculpting materials, an unprecedented style of representing the gods and the insertion of ideal proportions into sculptures.

To see Pheidias’ contributions to Greek art and culture, we have to be familiar with the characteristics of art in the Classical Period. Greek sculptors, in the Classical Period, began to show human body in a relaxed, natural pose, and not in the rigid, symmetric posture of the Archaic Period. They began giving more importance to the idealization of the body at the cost of the face. Bronze became the primary material for free-standing statues, and because it is much lighter than marble it permitted the creation of new poses such as contrapposto, in which the weight of the body is shifted onto a single foot. Pheidias had a great influence on the speed and character of these improvements in sculpture.

Pheidias worked in marble, bronze, chryselephantine (gold and ivory) and acrolithic, although his best-known works are in chryselephantine. The earliest works of the sculptor were a group of figures in bronze created in Delphi. He created Athena Promachos on the Acropolis and the Lemnian Athena in bronze. His three known chryselephantine statues include the Zeus at Olympia, the Athena at Parthenos and the Aphrodite Ourania at Elis. Pliny...

... middle of paper ...

... construction of the Parthenon how to use a clay model for faithful reproduction in all its detail. This was why drapery in the pediments of Parthenon is an innovation, being wholly dependent on clay-modelling.

Phidias’ works were also acclaimed for their representation of divine subjects. The artist used gold, ivory, glass, rock crystal to describe the gods to be bright, radiant, and luminous, similar to the way they are represented in Iliad and other ancient texts. He translated Greeks’ interpretation of the gods into visible images.

It is unfortunate that we aren’t able to view the artist’s original works today. Pheidias will always be remembered for setting the standards for the Classical Period and onwards, with his idealized form of human bodies, his ways of making the gods seem both human and divine, and his innovative methods of using sculpting materials.