Perhaps the most famous of all the Greek artists was Pheidias, who lived around 490-425 BC. In addition to the stone sculptures for which he is most famous, Pheidias also created paintings, engravings and metalwork.
In 448 BC he was selected as artistic director of the great public building programme in Athens that was initiated to celebrate the recently achieved peace with the Persians. This included construction of the Parthenon, the great temple to Athena replacing that destroyed by the Persians, and the stone sculptures that Pheidias carved on this temple are his greatest surviving works.
He also created a great statue of Athena for the interior, of gold and ivory, and another of bronze to stand outside on the Acropolis.
A close associate of Athens' leading citizen, Pericles, around 438 BC he was accused of theft and impiety in an attempt to discredit Pericles: the latter survived the slander but Pheidias moved to Olympia where he sculpted the great chryselephantine (gold and ivory) statue of Zeus, regarded later as one of the Seven Wonders of the World.
