Excursions in Art and Letters

by William Wetmore Story

29. At the entrance of the Ismenion, near Thebes, are two marble statues called Pronaoi—one of Athena, ascribed by Pausanias to Scopas, and one of Hermes, ascribed by Pausanias to Phidias.

30. A Zeus, at the Olympieum at Megara. The head of this statue was made of gold and ivory, the rest of clay and gypsum. “This work is said (λέγουσι) to have been made by Theocosmos, a citizen of Megara, with the assistance of Phidias,” says Pausanias, and it was interrupted by the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war. Probably it was executed solely by Theocosmos.

31. The statue of Nemesis, at Rhamnus, in marble, attributed to Phidias by Pausanias; but there can be little question that it was made by Agoracritos.

32. The Amazon. This statue, which is highly praised by Lucian, was, according to Pliny, made by Phidias in competition with Polyclitus, Ctesilaus, Cydon, and Phradmon; the first prize being given to Polyclitus, the second to Phidias, the third to Ctesilaus, and the fourth to Cydon.

33, 34, 35. Three bronze statues mentioned by Pliny, the subjects not stated, and placed by Catulus in the Temple of Fortune.

36. The marble Venus in the portico of Octavia, which Pliny says “is said to be by Phidias.”

37. The Horse-Tamer, in marble, now existing, and standing before the Quirinal in Rome.

There are some other statues attributed to Phidias by various writers, which may be at once rejected. Among them were the statues of Zeus and Apollo at Patara, in Lycia, which were supposed by Clemens Alexandrinus to have been by Phidias, but which are clearly settled to have been by Bryaxis. So also the Kairos, or Opportunity, by Lysippus, was attributed to Phidias by Ausonius; and the famous Venus of the Gardens (ἐν κήποις), by Alcamenes, was said to have received its finishing touches from him.

It will, I think, be clear that many of the statues in the foregoing list must also be rejected. In the last ten years of his life he executed only two statues, each colossal—the Athena of the Parthenon, and the Zeus at Olympia. Taking the earliest date of his artistic career at five years before the battle of Marathon, according to the theory of Thiersch, he would, as we have seen, have had forty-five years only in which to execute the other thirty-five statues, besides all the other and minute work to which, as we shall see, he gave his genius. Several, at least, of these statues are colossal, several elaborately wrought in ivory and gold; and it is in the highest degree improbable that they could have been executed in this period of time.

On examination of the list, three at least will be seen to rest purely on tradition. The Apollo Parnopius and the Athena at Elis are mentioned by Pausanias as being “said to be” by Phidias. The Venus of the portico of Octavia “is said to be by Phidias,” says Pliny. Little weight can be given to current and common opinion in respect to the authorship of works of art executed many centuries before, about which there is no written documentary proof. In our own time it is always exceedingly difficult, and often impossible, to decide upon the authorship of pictures and statues of one hundred years ago. Double that period, and the difficulty would of course be enormously increased. Now Pausanias wrote some six hundred years after the death of Phidias, and yet we are ready to accept as authoritative his passing statement that a certain statue “is said” to be by Phidias. How many statues at the present day are said to be by Michel Angelo, which he never saw! How many spurious Raffaelles and Titians adorn our galleries! Do we not know that every traveler in Italy sees statues “said to be” by Michel Angelo in such numbers that ten Michel Angelos could not have made them all? There is scarcely a church that does not boast of something from his hand. There is no reason to suppose that the case was not similar in Greece fifteen hundred years ago, and none to suppose that Pausanias was superior in artistic knowledge and acumen to any average intelligent traveler of his day. He did not stop to investigate the grounds upon which the popular or accidental account given him as to the authorship of any work was founded, nor does he pretend to have done so. He took it for what it was worth. “They say the statue is by Phidias.” He had, besides, as far as we know, no written authority for what he said,—at least he cites none.