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Updated: June 27, 2025
Pheidias was an Athenian by birth, the son of Charmides. He studied first under Hegias, then under Ageladas the Argive. He became the most famous sculptor of his time, and when Pericles wanted a director for his great monumental works at Athens, he summoned Pheidias.
It presents the same general characteristics as the Doryphorus, a well-modelled but thick-set figure standing in an attitude of repose. What Polycleitos did for the male form in these two statues he did for the female form in his Amazon, which, according to a doubtful story, was adjudged in competition superior to a work by Pheidias.
Both nations underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development; it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes.
Great artists, however, had previously made themselves famous, like Miron, Polycletus, and Ageladas; but the great riches which flowed into Athens at this time gave a peculiar stimulus to art, especially under the encouragement of such a ruler as Pericles, whose age was the golden era of Grecian history. Pheidias or Phidias was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic poetry, sublime and grand.
One now stands on Monte Cavallo, in front of the great Quirinal Palace, betwixt the two well-known gigantic groups of men and horses, statues of Greek origin, supposed to be those of Castor and Pollux, executed by Pheidias and Praxiteles; and the other in the large open space in front of the great Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.
Pheidias was more essentially ideal than either of these, as we shall presently see, but he also most diligently preserved in the Parthenon and other works a spirit of measure and reasonableness. Measure and balance in art differ widely from mere convention.
'In the eighth century before Christ, he goes on to say, 'in the eighth century before Christ, in the heart of a world of idolatrous polytheists, the Hebrew prophets put forth a conception of religion which appears to me to be as wonderful an inspiration of genius as the art of Pheidias or the science of Aristotle.
As has been said already, most of the best work in sculpture apart from these bronze and marble portraits of contemporaries was reproduction of Grecian masterpieces dating from the time of Pheidias onward. Particularly did the Roman affect the more elaborate work of the period of the later "Macedonian" kings.
From Pheidias to Rembrandt there is no onward movement. A Savant may out-lustre a Savant, a Poet never throws a Poet into the shade. Hippocrates is outrun, Archimides, Paracelsus, Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, La Place, Pindar not; Pheidias not. Pascal, the Savant, is out-run, Pascal, the Writer, not. There is movement in art, but not progress.
It was dignified and noble, but at the time of its conception Pheidias had not freed himself from the convention and traditions of the earlier school, and the stiff folds of the tunic, the cold demeanor of the goddess, recall the masters whom Pheidias was destined to supersede.
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