Washington statue, Napoleon portrait and Hermitage Jupiter modelled on Phidias's Zeus

George Washington and Napoleon in the Guise of Zeus-Jupiter.

The magnificent marble Washington was commissioned by Congress in 1832 to mark the centenary of the first president's birth. The sculpture is the work of Horatio Greenough. Today the statue, 3.5 metres high, is displayed in the National Museum of American History in the city that bears his name.

The portrait of Napoleon on his imperial throne, painted in 1806 by the French artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, was commissioned either by the Italian government or by the legislative corps of France. It now hangs in the Musée de l'Armée in France.

The colossal 16-tonne statue of Jupiter, by an unknown sculptor of the Flavian era, is one of the best-known exhibits of the Hermitage.

All these works were created after one of the wonders of the world: Phidias' majestic chryselephantine statue of Zeus at Olympia, made in the 430s BC and more than 12 metres high, which was lost around the fifth century, it is believed, in a fire at the Palace of Lausus in Constantinople.