Paeonius

Paeonius.
Greek sculptor from Mende in Thrace, active in the second half of the 5th century bc. The only surviving work certainly by him is a marble statue of winged Nike (Victory) (c.420 BC) found at Olympia in 1875 and now in the museum there. An inscription on the pedestal names him as the sculptor and also says he won a competition to make the acroteria of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. This perhaps misled Pausanias into saying that he made the sculpture of the east pediment of the temple, for this is appreciably earlier in date and clearly different in style (Pausanias also seems to have erred in his attribution of the west pediment; see Alcamenes). The Nike—a virtuoso piece of carving in its depiction of clinging, wet drapery and the first representation of a partially nude divinity in Classical Greek art—is a key work in the sculpture of its period, announcing a new flamboyant or ‘rich’ style, just as the Tyrannicides group (see Critius) marks the beginning of the Severe style.