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Updated: May 19, 2025
Both these statues were of the sort called Chryselephantine, from the Greek chrousous, golden, and elephantinos, of ivory; that is, they were constructed of plates of gold and ivory, laid upon a core of wood or stone. The style was not new, though its invention was at one time ascribed to Phidias.
Seen thus, with the cloth-of-gold dalmatic above his pontifical tunic, the mitre surmounting his clear-cut impassive face, and the crozier held aloft in his jewelled gloves, he might have stood for a chryselephantine divinity in the porch of some pagan temple.
The statues, by Archias's orders, were to be executed in chryselephantine work, and the gold and ivory which this required might only too easily awaken the vice of cupidity in the honest and frugal Biamites. So nothing could be done about it, not to mention the fact that he was forbidden, on pain of being sold to work in a stone quarry, to open the studio to any one without his master's consent.
Now, I thought, when this horrible woman represented the transformation into the spider with such repulsive accuracy, Hermon will believe that this is the true, and therefore the right, ideal; nay, I was deceived myself while gazing. But, eternal gods! as soon as I imagined this Arachne in marble or chryselephantine work, what a painful feeling overpowered me!"
Now, I thought, when this horrible woman represented the transformation into the spider with such repulsive accuracy, Hermon will believe that this is the true, and therefore the right, ideal; nay, I was deceived myself while gazing. But, eternal gods! as soon as I imagined this Arachne in marble or chryselephantine work, what a painful feeling overpowered me!"
The festive gods of the "Iliad" made man a deity to himself, and his soul the dwelling-place of Ideal Beauty. In this Ideal they lived, and moved and had their being, and came forth thence, bronze, marble, chryselephantine, a statuesque and naked humanity, chaste in uncomprehended sin and glorified in antique virtue.
The most famous works of Phidias were the two chryselephantine statues to which reference has just been made, and two or three other statues of the same materials were ascribed to him. He worked also in bronze and in marble.
Both the Olympian Zeus and the Athene were of chryselephantine work offering enormous technical difficulties, but in spite of this both showed almost absolute perfection of form united with beauty of intellectual character to represent the godhead incarnate in human substance.
This is what is called repousse work. These bronze reliefs were of small size, and were used for ornamenting helmets, cuirasses, mirrors, and so on. Gold and ivory. Chryselephantine statues, i.e., statues of gold and ivory, must, from the costliness of the materials, have been always comparatively rare.
The statue of the Olympian Jupiter by Phidias was considered the highest achievement of this department of Grecian art. It was of colossal dimensions, and was what the ancients called "chryselephantine;" that is, composed of ivory and gold; the parts representing flesh being of ivory laid on a core of wood or stone, while the drapery and other ornaments were of gold.
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