La Estatua De Zeus (Ingles)

Mariano Socolovsky
5th Semester
History of arts
Mr. David
09-14-2012

GREEK ART: “Sculpture of Zeus at Olympia”

In the ancient Greek religion, Zeus was the Father of the gods and men, the god of sky and thunder, the king of the gods. It was created by Phidias –( Phidias was an Athenian sculptor, the son of Charmides, and is generally acknowledged as the greatest ancient Greek sculptorand instigator of the classical style of the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Although few facts are known about his life, it is believed he lived from around 490 until 430 BC, A brother of Phidias, Panoenos, was a painter, and is mentioned among those artists, twenty or more in number, who in conjunction with Polygnotus, one of the chief painters of his day, were employed in the decoration of the Poecileor Painted Portico, one of the many beautiful buildings erected by Cimon)- in the V century b.C. at the venue for the Olympic games. It occupied half of the width of the aisle of the temple built to house it. The sculpture was wreathed with shoots of olive worked in gold and seated on a magnificent throne of cedarwood, inlaid with ivory, gold, ebony, and precious stones. It´s odd to find a bronzesculpture preserved like this one, because most of the coins or other sculptures that were made of bronze, no longer exist now.

Every four years, athletes would compete in different sports to honor Zeus, the King of the gods. Those olympic games took place at Olympia, present day Southern Greece, which wasn´t a normal town. It was ONLY for the temple of Zeus and its games. Zeus was soimportant to them that the wars would stop during the olympic games, so they could all admire and honor their greatest od. A few months after the temple was built, the authorities decided to built a monumental statue of Zeus, inside the temple. They hired Phidias, who had worked in Athens, in another sculpture, and they gave him the resources to make the monumental statue. It had different aspects, thestatue. For example, Phidias tried to make it so powerful, that he put signs of victory all over the statua, like in its right hand, theres like an angel that meant victory. In this statue, Zeus was sat like he was about to stand up. On the outside, the statue gave an impression that it was made of pure gold and ivory, but the truth is, that ONLY the outside part had gold and ivory, on the inside,it was made of Wood. It also had a lot of jewels, on its feet for example, or in his eyes.

What is really interesting about this statue, is its height. It was almost 40 feet high. Zeus´s head almost touched the ceiling. Imagine how much gold, jewels, ivory and specially Wood, did Phidias need to build this beast. Some thought that they should have removed the ceiling so they could appreciateevery detail, while others thought that it was better like that, so they could understand the great power and size of their god.

Phidias invented a new technique so that it was easy to manipulate the ivory. You can´t carve directly into the ivory, it was very hard with no technology, so what Phidias did to solve this was : 1. He covered the ivory with fish skin. 2. He put the covered ivoryinside a recipient with boiling water and vinegar. 3. He waited about 15 minutes and then took out the ivory. The boiling water and vinegar made the ivory flexible, so he could manipulate it easily. Every ivory section was made to fit exactly. IT TOOK OVER 7 YEARS that Phidias was satisfied that everything was perfect.

Nothing in the world was compared with going into the temple, and seeing thishuge statue, some say it was like being struck by a friendly lightning. Your soul could see through Zeus and you could find all of the answers. Actually, it is said that every day, the temple was visited by a lot of people who wanted to know something, the answer to their problems. We know that everything you need to know is hidden somewhere in your brain, so this was fake, but obviously, they...