Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 8.djvu/17

 PAINTERS AND SCULPTORS PHIDIAS*

(about 500-432 B.C.) Phidias, one of the greatest sculptors the world has seen, and whose name has become, as it were, the synonym of his art, was born at Athens about 500 b.c. He belonged to a family of artists, none of whom indeed were distinguished in their profession, but their varied occupations furnished the atmosphere in which such a talent as that of Phidias could best be fostered and brought to maturity. His father was Charmides, who is believed to have been an artist, because the Greeks, in their inscriptions, did not associate the name of the father with that of the son unless both were of the same calling. A brother of Phidias, Panoenos, was a painter, and is mentioned among those artists, twenty or more in number, who in conjunc- tion with Polygnotus, one of the chief painters of his day, were employed in the decoration of the Poecile or Painted Portico, one of the many beautiful buildings erected by Cimon. The Poecile was simply a long platform, with a roof supported by a row of columns on one side and by a wall on the other. It was called " the painted," because the wall at the back was covered with a series of large historical pictures containing many figures, and recording some of the chief events of the time, together with others relating to an earlier and more shadowy epoch. The subject of the painting, executed, at least in part, by the brother of Phidias, was the Battle of Marathon, in which great event it is thought he may himself have taken part. The boyhood of Phidias fell in a time of national revival, when under the influence of an ennobling political excitement, all the arts were quickened to a fresh, original, and splendid growth. The contest between the Greeks and Persians, which had begun with the Ionian revolt, was in full activity at the time of his birth. He was ten years old when the battle of Marathon was fought, and when he was twenty, four of the most striking events in the history of Greece were crowded into a single year ; the battle of Thermopylae, the victory at Salamis, and the twin glories of Platasa and Mycale. His early youth, therefore, was nourished by the inspiring influences that come from the victorious struggle of a people to maintain their national life. He was by no means the only sculptor of his time whom fame remembers, but he alone, rejecting trivial themes, consecrated his talent to the nobler subjects of his country's religious
 * Copyright, 1894. by Selmar Hess.