pediment-figures

It will be observed that the hair of this head is not worked out in detail, except at the front. This summary treatment of the hair is, in fact, more general in the metopes than in the pediment-figures.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art

To begin with, the workmanship here displayed is rapid and far from faultless. Unlike the Aeginetan pediment-figures and those of the Parthenon, these figures are left rough at the back. The garments represent a thick woolen stuff, whose folds show very little pliancy. The formal, starched-looking folds of the archaic period have disappeared.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art

Lest what has been said should suggest that the sculptors of the Olympia pediment-figures were indifferent to beauty, attention may be drawn again to the superb head of the Lapith bride. The twelve sculptured metopes of the temple do not belong to the exterior frieze, whose metopes were plain, but to a second frieze, placed above the columns and antae of pronaos and opisthodomos.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art

Yet even in their ruin and their isolation the pediment-figures of the Parthenon are the sublimest creations of Greek art that have escaped annihilation. We have no ancient testimony as to the authorship of the Parthenon sculptures, beyond the statement of Plutarch, quoted above, that Phidias was the general superintendent of all artistic works undertaken during Pericles's administration.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art

The work probably belongs in the last quarter of the sixth century. The pediment-figures from Aegina, the chief treasure of the Munich collection of ancient sculpture, were found in 1811 by a party of scientific explorers and were restored in Italy under the superintendence of the Danish sculptor, Thorwaldsen.

Frank Bigelow Tarbell - A History of Greek Art