The Philosophy of Artistic Creation: Phidias, the Ideas, and Cicero

Since Antiquity Phidias seems to be the best sculptor of Gods, because he carved great statues with his human hands and succeeded in giving a physical look to that which is not visible to human eyes. This paper is devoted to Cicero’s attention on the imaginative creation of the artist and on the philosophical features of that demiurgical activity which the Roman philosopher links to his interpretation of the Platonic theory of the Forms. The survey led on some Ciceronian texts shows, from a philosophical and philological point of view, the way in which Cicero reconsiders the role of the phantasia, offering a revalution of the art.