Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 130

If the proverbial “glory of Greece” rested on two men’s shoulders, it would be Pericles and Phidias. Phidias was the most celebrated Greek sculptor and the overseer of the sculptural work for Pericles’s building projects on the Athenian Acropolis (downtown Athens).

One of Phidias’s greatest sculptures was the 40-foot-high, gold-and-ivory statue of Athena, which once stood in the Parthenon. It and most of Phidias’s works are lost. His only surviving sculpture (or perhaps it’s the work of his workshop — see the following icon paragraph) are the friezes and pediment statues of the Parthenon, many of which are now in the British Museum. But these and the praise of ancient writers are enough to ensure the sculptor’s immortality. The ancients called Phidias’s works sublime and timeless.

The first-century Greek writer Plutarch, who saw the Parthenon and Phidias’s work five centuries after they were executed, wrote:

There is a sort of bloom of newness upon those works of his, preserving them from the touch of time, as if they had some perennial spirit and undying vitality mingled in the composition of them.

The surviving Parthenon statues (many in fragments and now in the British Museum) have the same qualities that ancient writers raved about:

 Omnipresence: The figures seem to be watching themselves as they participate in the action, as if they were of this world and yet beyond it, part of the Greek heaven, Olympus.

 Realistic spirit: Even though the heads of the Three Goddesses are missing, the superbly rendered fabrics (which have the wet or clingy look pioneered by Phidias) speak for them, revealing the moods, spirit, and down-to-earth sensuality of the flesh-and-blood women behind the clothes.

 Participation: What are the three goddesses doing? Watching the birth of Athena, the goddess of wisdom, springing full-grown from the brow of her father Zeus.

Today, even though they are in ruins, the “vitality” of the Parthenon statues endures.