500 and had decided not to rebuild the temples destroyed by the Persians, offers us little for some fifty years. But at
Olympia a new temple of Zeus was being built, and a sculptor imposed a style on his team which typifies for us the early
Classical of roughly the second quarter of the fifth century (the temple was dedicated in 456). Of the two pediments the
western offers Archaic vigour (the centaur fight), the eastern Classical calm which is also a pregnant silence of reflection
and foreboding. While the masons had yet much to learn of anatomy or the proper lie of dress, they succeeded in rendering
nuances of age and mood with a subtlety far removed from the rather theatrical conventions of the Archaic.
Bronze Zeus From Artemisium, recovered from an ancient shipwreck, no doubt en route to Italy. Made about 460-450 B.C.
A prime example of an early Classical bronze (as the Delphi charioteer, or the slightly later Riace bronze - plate facing p.
246). He held a thunderbolt (some have thought him Poseidon with a trident; far less probable).