Phidias sculpted the ancient Statue of Zeus at Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders.
Phidias was one of Classical Greece’s most celebrated sculptors. Ancient accounts associate him with the enormous seated image of Zeus made for the Temple of Zeus at Olympia. The statue used a chryselephantine technique, covering a wooden framework with gold and ivory.
The figure showed Zeus seated on a richly decorated throne, holding a statue of Nike in one hand and a sceptre in the other. Its scale and costly materials helped make it famous throughout the ancient Mediterranean.
The statue is often confused with Phidias’s other major work, the Statue of Athena Parthenos in Athens. Both were large chryselephantine sculptures, but the Zeus statue stood at Olympia and was counted among the Seven Wonders. It was later lost, and no complete original survives.