Phidias

“ The heroes of Phidias are simply representations of such noble human persons as he every day saw, and the gods of Phidias simply representations of such noble divine persons as he thoroughly believed to exist, and did in mental vision truly behold. ”

“ You, who have neither wealth nor powerful connections, to serve the purposes of that ambitious man? And think for yourself, Eudora, if Alcibiades means as he says, why does he seek stolen interviews at midnight, in the absence of Phidias?"
"It is because he knows that Phidias has an uncommon regard for Philæmon," replied Eudora; "but he thinks he can, in time, persuade him to consult our wishes. I know, better than you possibly can, what reasons I have to trust the strength of his affection. Aspasia says she has never seen him so deeply in love as he is now." ”

“ On the other hand, the Athena of Phidias was, in very fact, not so much the deity, as the darling of the Athenian people. Her magnificence represented their pride and fondness, more than their piety; and the great artist, in lavishing upon her dignities which might be ended abruptly by the pillage they provoked, resigned, apparently without regret, the awe of her ancient memory; and (with only the careless remonstrance of a workman too strong to be proud) even the perfectness of his own art. ”

“ HEAD OF THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS BY PHIDIAS. Phidias also executed other works in both bronze and marble. He met an unworthy fate. Upon the famous shield at the feet of the statue of Athena in the Parthenon, among the figures in the representation of a battle between the Athenians and the Amazons, Phidias introduced a portrait of himself and also one of his patron Pericles. The enemies of the artist caused him to be prosecuted for this, which was considered an act of sacrilege. ”

“ But the pure, unconscious love of form, inherited from the Greeks, sometimes turned to passion in Ingres: not in "La Source", she is wholly Greek; but in the beautiful sinuous back of the odalisque we perceive some of the exasperation of nerves which betrays our century. If Phidias' sketches had come down to us, the margin filled with his hesitations, we should know more of his intimate personality. You notice, my dear reader, how intolerant I am of criticism of my idol, how I repudiate any slight suggestion of imperfection, how I turn upon myself and defend my god. ”

“ Then Aristæus bent down and reverently kissed the great sculptor's hands.
"I cannot find words with which to thank you," he murmured, "but I shall pray to the gods night and day that they will for ever bless Phidias, and keep his fame pure, and his hands strong to fashion forms of beauty. And this I know well: that he will always have a resting-place of love and gratitude in the poor image-maker's heart."
And Phidias went on his way, tenfold richer and happier for the image-maker's words. For there is something lovelier than fame and wealth, my children ”

“ But it was Phidias who wrought the goddess's image in gold, and he has his name inscribed on the pedestal as the workman of it; and indeed the whole work in a manner was under his charge, and he had, as we have said already, the oversight over all the artists and workmen, through Pericles's friendship for him; and this, indeed, made him much envied, and his patron shamefully slandered with stories, as if Phidias were in the habit of receiving, for Pericles's use, freeborn women that came to see the works. ”

“ It was in this genius of grouping that I fancy Phidias chiefly excelled all his contemporaries: single statues of Polycletus are said to have been preferred in competitions. To us the art of the Discobolus of Myron seems fully as great as that of any of the figures of the Parthenon; but no other artist seems to have possessed the same architectonic power of adapting large subjects and processions of figures to their places as Phidias.41 How far he was helped or [pg 108] advised by Ictinus, or even by Pericles, it is not easy to say. ”

“ In the later art of Phidias she is still stern and severe, but her face also expresses dignity and grandeur of thought and character. Later still, her warlike attributes are made less prominent: the shield rests on the ground, and the lance is more like a sceptre, until, in the decline of art, she is represented as lovely and gentle, and all her grand power is lost, and she is not above a great number of other goddesses who are attractive for their soft, lovely grace, but have no selfhood, no individuality to command our admiration or respect. ”

“ There is still the flavor of the old stiff simplicity about the faces, about the folds of the robes, about the type of the horses; but the feeling of the artist shines through the archaic simplicity with much clearer light than it does in the more ambitious attempts of the later school. The greatest works of Phidias—his statue of Zeus at Elis, and his Athene in the Parthenon—are lost to us ”

“ The statue by Phidias within the Parthenon offered not merely that form in which she would choose to appear if she showed herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her form as she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon such an image helped the worshipper as much as—perhaps more than—any service or ritual to bring himself into communion with the goddess, and to fit himself, as a citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in politics, in literature, and in art. ”

“ Phidias was alone, with a large unfinished drawing before him, on a waxen tablet. Various groups of statues were about the room; among which was conspicuous the beautiful workmanship of Myron, representing a kneeling Paris offering the golden apple to Aphrodite; and by a mode of flattery common with Athenian artists, the graceful youth bore the features of Alcibiades. Near this group was Hera and Pallas, from the hand of Phidias ”

“ What then remains for me to investigate and determine respecting statues? only to admit the subsistence of deity. But if the art of Phidias excites the Greeks to the recollection of divinity, honour to animals the Egyptians, a river others, and fire others, I do not condemn the dissonance: let them only know, let them only love, let them only be mindful of the object they adore. ”

“ Your life must be saved; even if you reprove me for the means. At midnight, a boat will be in readiness to conduct you to Salamis, where lies a galley bound for Ionia. I hasten to warn Phidias to depart speedily for Elis."
The parting interview between Philothea and her repentant friend was almost too painful for endurance. Poor Eudora felt that she was indeed called to drink the cup of affliction, to its last bitter drop. Her heart yearned to follow the household of Anaxagoras; but Philothea strengthened her own conviction that duty and gratitude both demanded she should remain with Phidias. ”

“ Parallel them with post-Raffaelle artists? If you think you can, you have dared a labour of which the fruit shall be to you as Dead Sea apples, golden and sweet to the eye, but, in the mouth, ashes and bitterness. And the Phidian era was a youthful one—the highest and purest period of Hellenic art: after that time they added no more gods or heroes, but took for models instead—the Alcibiadeses and Phyrnes, and made Bacchuses and Aphrodites; not as Phidias would have—clothed with the greatness of thought, or girded with valour, or veiled with modesty ”

“ Is it not so, Socrates?”
The master silenced with his outstretched hand the murmur of disapproval which arose, and said:
“It must first be proved that Phidias’ statue must borrow gold from the sun, but since that is unproved, it is absurd to talk of a deficit. Moreover, gold cannot be borrowed from the sun. Therefore what Protagoras says is mere babble, and deserves no answer. On the other hand, will Phidias answer this question? ‘When you have made Athene up there on the Parthenon, have you made Athene?’”
“I have made her image,” answered Phidias. ”

“ His statue stands in the sacred grove at Olympia, bearing the simple inscription; 'Phidias, Son of Charmides, sculptor of the Gods.' At his death, the Elians bestowed gifts on all his servants; endowed me with the yearly revenues of a farm; and appointed his nephew Pandænus to the honourable office of preserving the statue of Olympian Zeus."
"Did Phidias express no anxiety concerning your unprotected situation?" inquired Philothea.
"It was his wish that I should marry Pandænus," answered Eudora; "but he urged the subject no farther, when he found that I regarded the marriage with aversion. ”

“ The hand of Phidias forms the Olympian Jupiter of ivory; worship is given to the statue, and it is no longer regarded as a god formed out of a most silly animal, but as the world’s supreme Deity—not because of the bulk of the elephant, but on account of the renown of Phidias. ”

“ Beauty of form did not die out with the ancient Greeks: the Diana of the Louvre and the Medici Venus may be seen any day of any year, on the shores of the far-away islands, by those who know lovely line when they see it, and have not given over their senses, bound and blinded, to the traditions of the schools. If there is any man in the world to-day who can handle a hammer and chisel as Phidias did, let him come to the South Sea Islands and look there for the models that made the ancient Greek immortal. ”

“ At this time the walls of the city were extended, the Odeum, or music theatre, erected, and numerous statues set up in the buildings. Phidias was chosen by Pericles as superintendent of all public buildings in Athens.
The name of Phidias is spoken with reverence by every student of sculpture. He was a supreme artist of varied parts; he carved in marble, made images of ivory and gold, and cast effigies in bronze, besides exercising the art of{273} the painter. Some of his matchless statuary has been happily preserved for us in the British Museum. ”

“ The Vénus de Milo ― that I like to attribute to Phidias, so much the name of this great artist has become generic to me; Da Vinci's Mona Lisa; seem to me, and are, the two great scintillations of the Beauty on this earth and this Work, such as it is done [sic] , the third. Complete and unconscious Beauty, unique and unalterable, or Phidias' Venus, Beauty, having been bitten at the core since Christianity, by the Chimera, and grievously re-emergent with a smile filled with mystery, but with forced mystery that it feels to be the condition of its being. ”

“ The name of Philothea was too deeply engraven to be washed away by the waters of oblivion. He seldom speaks; but when he does, you are ever in his visions. The sound of a female voice accompanying the lyre is the only thing that makes him smile; and nothing moves him to tears save the farewell song of Orpheus to Eurydice. In his drawings there is more of majesty and beauty than Phidias or Myron ever conceived ”

“ They were indeed fashioned by an Ethiopian; but one who had long resided in Athens."
"There is truly a freedom and variety in these figures, which I have rarely seen even in Greece," rejoined Phidias; "and I have never met with those characteristics in Ethiopian or Egyptian workmanship."
"They belong not to the genius of those countries," answered Tithonus: "Philosophy and the arts are but a manifestation of the intelligible ideas that move the public mind; and thus they become visible images of the nations whence they emanate. ”

“ The art of sculpture is of much more ancient origin than those of painting and of statuary in bronze. Phidias himself worked in marble, and there is a Venus of his at Rome, a work of extraordinary beauty, in the buildings of Octavia. He was the instructor of Alcamenes, the Athenian, one of the most famous among the sculptors. By this last artist, there are numerous statues in the temples at Athens; as also, without the walls there, the celebrated Venus, known as the Aphrodite in the Gardens, a work to which Phidias himself, it is said, put the finishing hand. ”

“ It is to the eternal honour of Phidias that he finally broke with hieratic art, whose influence is still traceable in the beautiful statues of Ægina, with their admirably studied but lifeless shapes and grinning heads exhibiting, even in pain and death, the same idiotic smile. The great artist sought the beauty which is the spiritual essence of things, whether it be in the soul seen through the body ”

“ The Athenians said that Phidias, the most excellent sculptor in the world, and surveyor-general of all the works which Pericles ordered to be made for the ornament of the city, drew in the ladies under pretense of showing them the works of the greatest masters; but in truth to debauch and deliver them to Pericles." The [Pg 42] golden statue of Minerva, it should be remembered, was the workmanship of Phidias, and his name was inscribed upon the pedestal. Through the friendship of Pericles he had the direction of everything, and all the artists received his orders. ”

“ His boundless influence was never degraded to unworthy purposes. Architecture, sculpture, and literature, reached their highest point under his protecting hand. Phidias was his director of public works; Sophocles and Euripides were his favoured friends. He governed with moderation and justice, and eschewing all aggression for the mere sake of conquest, endeavoured by every means to consolidate the dominion and to confirm the maritime power of Athens. ”

“ We are informed that the figures in the tympana of the temple at Olympia were executed by Alcamenes and Pæonios; but nothing is said about those figures in the Parthenon. Is there any necessity to suppose these88 works to have been designed by Phidias? Surely not. There were in Athens many other artists of great distinction who were fully able to design and execute them, and among them were men but little inferior to Phidias himself, who would not readily have accepted his designs, and who, by profession, were sculptors in marble—not, like Phidias, sculptors in bronze, or ivory and gold. ”