of “
Pericles, son of Xanthippus, Athenian”, Roman copy of the original by Kresilas,
Vatican Museums (no. 269). In Athens he created, for example, a bronze
statue of
Pericles (440–430 BC) with the
Corinthian
helmet upon the head as a sign of his position as
strategos. Pliny the Elder said of it: "a work worthy of the title; it is a marvellous thing about this art that it can make famous men even more famous". Its base was found in the Athenian
Acropolis; it was doubtless the bronze that Pausanias saw there (Pausanias I.25.1, I.28.2). It seems the series of Pericles portrait busts derive from it,
of which there are examples at the
Vatican Museums,
British Museum (found at
Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli, and owned by
Charles Townley) and
Altes Museum. Kresilas also created the wounded men and a dying
Amazon for
Ephesus in
concurrence (in a
competition with
Phidias and
Polykleitos), possibly the model for many copies, one of which is the
wounded Amazon of Kresilas (volnerata;
Pliny, Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 75) in the
Vatican Museums. He has also been identified as the originator of the Velletri type of
Athena statue (
Athena of Velletri). He created a Diomedes statue according to
Homer's description.
"Cresilla" In 1804 CE, Kresilas was mistakenly identified as a woman named "Cresilla" by
Matilda Betham, who thought "she" had placed third behind
Polykleitos and
Phidias in a competition to sculpt seven Amazons for the
Temple of Artemis at Ephesus. As a result, Kresilas
was mistakenly included in artist
Judy Chicago's symbolic history of women in Western civilization,
The Dinner Party. ==References==