PHEIDIAS, son of Charmides, universally regarded as the greatest of Greek sculptors, was born at Athens about 500 B.C. Hegias of Athens was his first master. To his early career belong a chryselephantine Athene for Pellene and a Marathon memorial at Delphi. To this period also belongs the great bronze Athene whose helmet and spear could be seen above the Acropolis build ings far out to sea. An Apollo, found in the Tiber, bears so many of Pheidias's known characteristics that it may be Pheidias's own work (Schrader, in Jahreshefte, 191i). If so, it is the only original work by him that we have. Our information as to his later career is fuller, but confusing. We know that he made the colossal Zeus at Olympia ; that he controlled the artistic activity at Athens under Pericles, and fell into trouble from Pericles's opponents on charges of peculation, and of sacrilege in representing himself and Pericles on Athene's shield. But the order of these events is obscure. All we know is that the Athene Parthenos was dedi cated in 438.
It is important to observe that in resting the fame of Pheidias upon the sculptures of the Parthenon we proceed with little evi dence. No ancient writer ascribes them to him, and he seldom, if ever, executed works in marble. What he was celebrated for in antiquity were his statues in bronze or gold and ivory. If Plutarch tells us that he superintended the great works of Pericles on the Acropolis, this phrase is very vague. On the other hand, inscriptions prove that the marble blocks intended for the pedimental statues of the Parthenon were not brought to Athens until 434 B.c., which was probably after the death of Pheidias. And there is a marked contrast in style between these statues and the certain works of Pheidias. It is therefore probable that most, if not all, of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon was the work of pupils of Pheidias, such as Alcamenes and Agoracritus, working on his designs, rather than their own.
Among the Greeks themselves the two works of Pheidias which far outshone all others, and were the basis of his fame, were the colossal figures in gold and ivory of Zeus at Olympia and of Athena Parthenos at Athens, both of which belong to about the middle of the 5th century. Of the Zeus we have unfortunately lost all trace save small copies on coins of Elis, which give us but a general notion of the pose, and the character of the head. The god was seated on a throne, every part of which was used as a ground for sculptural decoration. His body was of ivory, his robe of gold. His head was of somewhat archaic type; the Otricoli mask which used to be regarded as a copy of the head of the Olympian statue is certainly more than a century later in style. Of the Athena Parthenos two small copies in marble have been found at Athens (see GREEK ART, fig. 38), which have no excellence of workmanship, but have a certain evidential value as to the treatment of their original. Other works of Pheidias were the Lemnian Athena, an Apollo Parnopius and an Aphrodite Urania at Elis.
The fine torso of Athena in the Ecole des Beaux Arts at Paris, which has unfortunately lost its head, may perhaps best serve to help our imagination in reconstructing a Pheidian original.
As regards the decorative sculptures of the Parthenon, which the Greeks rated far below their colossus in ivory and gold, see the article PARTHENON.
Ancient critics take a very high view of the merits of Pheidias. What they especially praise are his elevated ideas of godhead, and these, the expression of the best religious thought of his time, reacted on the religious conceptions of Greece. A copy of the shield that contained his portrait (the "Strangford" shield) is in the British Museum. Pheidias appears as a vigorous, bald headed old man.
See Petersen, Kunst des Phidias (Berlin, 1873) ; C. Waldstein, Essays on the Art of Pheidias (Cambridge, 1885) ; Colligna, Pheidias (Paris, i886).