CRESILAS, a Cretan sculptor of Cydonia. He was a contem porary of Pheidias, and the sculptor of one of the Amazons in the famous competition at Ephesus (see GREEK ART) about 45o B.C. As his Amazon was wounded (volnerata; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 75), we may perhaps identify it with the figure, of which several copies are extant, represented as drawing back her chiton from a wound under the right breast. Another work of Cresilas of which copies survive is the portrait of Pericles, the earliest Greek por trait which has been with certainty identified, and which fully confirms the statement of ancient critics that Cresilas was an art ist who idealized and added nobility to men of noble type. An extant portrait of Anacreon is also derived from Cresilas.
See H. Stuart Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, § 148 (1895) ; E. A. Gardner, Handbook of Greek Sculpture, pp. 370 (1915) ; A. Furtwangler (trans. E. Sellars), Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, p. 115 ff.