The sculptor of the Parthenon Pheidias made a bronze Athena that stood on the Acropolis in Athens. It was dedicated and paid for by a colony of Athenians on the island of Lemnos in the north Aegean Sea, shortly after they began living there in 451 BCE.
Pausanias and Lucian, both writing in the second century, considered the Lemnian Athena to be Pheidias’s best work — quite a claim given that he also made the cult statue of Athena inside the Parthenon.
The sharp features and hollow eyes are commonly features of cast metal sculpture, reinforcing the belief that this is a Roman copy of the bronze Pheidian original
Bologna
Lippold: Griechische Plastik, 145 (n.8), pl. 51.3
Richter: Sculpture & Sculptors of the Greeks (1950), 227, fig.614
Lawrence: Classical Sculpture (1928), 198, pl. 50a
Bulle: Der Schöne Mensch im Altertum (1922), pls. 247-8
Hurwit: The Athenian Acropolis, 27 & 151
