Royal Academy of Art

This imaginary recreation of Pheidias' celebrated statue of Zeus enthroned within his temple at Olympia forms the frontispiece to a pioneering book on the chryselephantine sculpture of ancient Greece published in Paris in 1814. The book's author, A.C. Quatremère de Quincy (1755-1849), had trained as both a sculptor and architect and was particularly interested in the idea that it might be possible to rediscover the constructional techniques that the ancient Greeks had employed in such monumental and complex works.