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Volume 101 No. 4
October 1997
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Pheidias elephantourgos
Kenneth D.S. Lapatin
In this paper the author examines the philological and archaeological evidence that techniques of softening ivory and manipulating its shape were employed by Pheidias and his successors in the production of monumental chryselephantine statues. Prior to the Classical period, gold and ivory images appear to have been constructed of individually carved ivory faces and limbs attached to bodies fashioned of wood and subsequently gilded. The colossal scale of the Athena Parthenos and Zeus Olympios, however, constituted considerable technical difficulties, for the exposed flesh of these statues far surpassed the size of any tusk. Greek and Latin authors suggest that by the mid-fifth century B.C., age-old techniques of furniture production had been developed to such a degree that tusks could be "unscrolled" into thin sheets of ivory with substantially larger dimensions than sectioned pieces; classical and medieval sources, moreover, preserve recipes for chemically softening ivory to shape it as desired. Unscrolled and softened ivories, examples of which are presented here, are extremely flexible and can be pressed into and formed by molds, procedures remarkably akin to those employed in wood-working, goldsmithing, and indirect lost-wax bronzecasting. Pheidias and his successors thus appear to have ingeniously adapted techniques employed in allied crafts to create their most celebrated statues in gold and ivory.
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