Statue of Zeus
Statue of Zeus, was a colossal chryselephantine (gold and ivory) sculpture of the foremost Greek god enthroned. Completed in 430 bce by the Greek sculptor Phidias, the cult statue was housed and venerated in the Temple of Zeus, which was constructed between 470 and 456 bce at Olympia, Greece, an ancient sanctuary. Because the statue has not survived, knowledge of its appearance and construction depends on ancient descriptions and other surviving evidence, supplemented by modern scholarly interpretation.
Process
Phidias was commissioned to construct the depiction of Zeus about 438 bce, just as he was finishing a figure of Athena for the Parthenon in Athens, another colossal chryselephantine cult statue that has since been destroyed. The statue of Zeus took the artist and his workshop about eight years to make. Working in a building to the west of the Temple of Zeus, they placed strips of ivory, possibly softened by heat, vinegar, or beer, and sheets of gold over a wooden framework.
Description
The statue, almost 40 feet (12 meters) high, represented the god sitting on an elaborate cedarwood throne ornamented with ebony, ivory, gold, and precious stones. To flaunt the lavish ivory that was used to represent Zeus’s flesh, the artist represented the god with bare arms and chest, with gold drapery only around his waist. Both the gold and ivory would have been polished to a luminous sheen. On Zeus’s outstretched right hand was a statue of Nike (Victory), and in Zeus’s left hand was a scepter on which an eagle, his totem, was perched. Phidias carefully rendered the details of Zeus’s face and body, giving particular attention to the god’s expression, hair, beard, and drapery. Precious stones, colored glass, and other decorative materials further enriched the statue’s appearance, possibly including gemstones for eyes. So majestic was the statue that it was regarded as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
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The Temple of Zeus
Likely completed in 430 bce, the statue of Zeus was the finishing touch to the Temple of Zeus, which had been constructed about 26 years earlier. It was the largest and most important building at Olympia, and it was one of the largest Doric temples in Greece. Built by the architect Libon of Elis, the temple was made of a coarse local shell conglomerate, the exposed surfaces being covered with a coat of fine white stucco. It was richly decorated with sculpture, including scenes from mythology on its gables and the 12 labors of Heracles on the metopes. The statue of Zeus would have been housed inside the temple’s cella, the lofty central hall. The roof tiles were of marble, with some scholars theorizing that they may have been thinly cut so as to be translucent and allow light to illuminate the statue within. The colossal seated figure, richly adorned with gold and ivory and visible through the portico’s columns, likely formed an imposing representation of the god at the center of Olympia’s religious life.
Popularity
With the installation of the monumental statue of Zeus, the sanctuary at Olympia reached the pinnacle of its artistic and religious development and became one of the most celebrated religious centers in ancient Greece. Widely depicted on coins, the statue ranked among the most renowned works of sculpture in antiquity and served as an influential model for later representations of seated deities and rulers. The statue remained popular for hundreds of years, but with the spread of Christianity in the 4th century ce, the temple fell into disuse.
Disappearance
The fate of the Statue of Zeus, of which no accurate copies survive, is uncertain. It may have been ruined along with the Temple of Zeus, perhaps by fire in 426, through the destruction of pagan temples ordered by Eastern Roman Emperor Theodosius II in 435, or during a series of powerful earthquakes in the 6th century. Another possibility is that the statue was moved at some point to Constantinople (now Istanbul), then the capital of the Eastern Roman Empire, and exhibited as part of a collection of so-called pagan antiquities in the Palace of Lausus. If so, it may have been destroyed in a fire there about 50 years later.