"That Phidias especially excelled in creating images of the gods, and that he preferred, as subjects for his art, those among the divinities the essence of whose nature was spiritual majesty, marks the fundamental characteristic of his art, and explains its superiority, not only to all that had been produced before his time, but to all that was contemporary with him, and to all that came after him. Possessed of that unsurpassable masterly power in the representation of the physical form to which Greek art, shortly before his time, had attained by unceasing endeavor, his lofty genius was called upon to apply these results to the embodiment of the highest ideas, and thus to invest art with the character of sublimity, as well as with the attributes of perfect beauty. Hence it is said of him, that he alone had seen images of the gods, and he alone had made them visible to others. Even in the story that, in emulation with other masters, he made an Amazon, and was defeated in the contest by his great contemporary Polycle'tus, we see a confirmation of the ideal tendency of his art. But that his works realized the highest conceptions of the people, and embodied the ideal of the Hellenic conception of the divinity, is proved by the universal admiration of the ancient world. This sublimity of conception was combined in him with an inexhaustible exuberance of creative fancy, an incomparable care in the completion of his work, and a masterly power in overcoming every difficulty, both in the technical execution and in the material."