Kresilas

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Herma of the Pericles in the British Museum

Kresilas was a Greek sculptor from Kydonia. He lived in the 5th century BC.

He worked in Athens at the time of the Peloponnesian war. There he created, for example a bronze statue of Pericles (440-430 B.C.) with the Corinthian helmet upon the head as sign of his position as strategos. ^[1] its base was found in the Athenian Acropolis; it was doubtless the bronze that Pausanius saw there (I.25.1, I.28.2). It seems the series of Pericles portrait busts derive from it. Kresilas was a follower of the idealistic portraiture of Myron. He created the wounded men and a dying Amazon for Ephesus in concurrence with the best Greek sculptors Pheidias and Polyclitus. It is possible that the theme of the Amazon is the model for many copies. One of the copies of the wounded Amazon of Kresilas (volnerata; Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 75) is in the Vatican Museums (Sosicles type).

[edit] Notes

^ "Cresilas did...the Olympian Pericles, a figure worthy of its title; indeed it is a marvellous thing about the art of sculpture that it has added celebrity to men already celebrated." (Pliny, Natural History, XXXIV.74)