ALCAMENES, a Greek sculptor of Lemnos and Athens. He was
a younger contemporary of Pheidias and noted for the delicacy
and finish of his works, among which a Hephaestus and an
Aphrodite "of the Gardens" were conspicuous. Pausanias
says (v. 10. 8) that he was the author of one of the pediments
of the temple of Zeus at Olympia (see GREEK ART), but this
seems a chronological and stylistic impossibility. At Pergamum
there was discovered in 1903 a copy of the head of the Hermes
"Propylaeus" of Alcamenes (Athenische Mittheilungen,
1904, p. 180). As, however, the deity is represented in
an archaistic and conventional character, this copy cannot
be relied on as giving us much information as to the usual
style of Alcamenes, who was almost certainly a progressive
and original artist. It is safer to judge him by the
sculptural decoration of the Parthenon, in which he must almost
certainly have taken a share under the direction of Pheidias.
Initial text from 1911 encyclopedia -- Please update as needed