The Gods Delight: The Human Figure in Classical Bronze

Rating:
Summary: Gods Delight. The Human Figure in Classical Bronze
Review: "Gods' Delight", an exhibition of ancient small bronzes, is one of the "sleepers" of ancient art history, for specialists and general readers alike. In Greco-Roman studies, exhibitions of the so-called "minor arts" often produce the best art history, when scholars explore the evolution and meaning of ancient forms across media and contexts. (Compare "Glass of the Caesars", "Hellenistic Art in the Walters Art Gallery", and "The Age of Spirituality".) This book has pride of place on my own reference shelves. One could almost make it a textbook for sculpture and the history of taste. (Few standard surveys have a map or timeline - from this book I often xerox for lecture courses the 4 map pages, and the 8-page historical timeline to ancient politics and culture. ) Many American museums shared their finest: it is fitting, also, that a show which explores why and how art was privately patronized draws on some modern private holdings (Levy-White, Fleischmann and Christos Bastis collections). The color and B/W photographs set a high standard for evocative images of metal sculpture; they almost fall out of the page into one's hand, the way they originally cherished. The preface reviews bronze technology, the cultural habits generating Greco-Roman sculpture, and the development of private ownership out of habits of religious dedication. Each segment ( pre-Roman Greek, Etruscan, and Roman-era), is prefaced by a richly illustrated essay; the well-annotated catalogue entries tend to 3-6 pages each. (The contributing connoisseur-curators are also good narrators!)

The bronzes come from a thousand years (8th-c. BCE to 3rd c. CE) across Europe and the Mediterranean - gods and heroes, Victories and Lares, hunchbacked artisans and African slaves, athletes and dwarves, actors and naked nymphs, generals, babies and barbarians, philosophers, musicians and dancers: the crowd speaks equally for distinctive regional and cultural habits, and for themes and styles broadly shared across the Greco-Roman world, because of the commerce in objects and the movement of artists. Some are famous in the field (the inscribed votive Apollo" dedicated by Mantiklos, the Baker Dancer, the Met's exotic Asiatic dancers); much less known are e.g. the miniature magistrates from an applied bronze version of the great Roman historical reliefs, or the "Polykleitan" offerant dedicated by a Romanized Greek, Publius Achaicus. Some exemplify standard genres of quality ornamentation; some vie to be small masterworks, as versions of other masterpieces (like Praxiteles' Knidia or a 5th-c. general) or autonomous creations. Some were mirror-image pairs; others, like the bronze korai, would have seemed in accumulation to make a series too. Some were free-standing; others animated prized objects of social ritual - candelabra holders, mirror and patera handles, chariot and chest appliques, box handles and incense burners. (The two Roman "speaking" incense burners, of an actor and of a singer whose mouths puffed smoke, give form to our metaphor of, "talking hot air" ...). These statuettes are from a world in which the most famous sculptors were applauded for their skill in metal miniatures. These cousins to the great monumental bronzes (on which see e.g. Carole Mattusch) are a vivid document to the impact of "high art" down the social scale; reviewing this show is as if we could look into one of the votive treasuries of Delphi or Praeneste, and into the private cabinets of the Hellenistic kings and the Roman elite.

Rating:
Summary: Gods Delight. The Human Figure in Classical Bronze
Review: "Gods' Delight", an exhibition of ancient small bronzes, is one of the "sleepers" of ancient art history, for specialists and general readers alike. In Greco-Roman studies, exhibitions of the so-called "minor arts" often produce the best art history, when scholars explore the evolution and meaning of ancient forms across media and contexts. (Compare "Glass of the Caesars", "Hellenistic Art in the Walters Art Gallery", and "The Age of Spirituality".) This book has pride of place on my own reference shelves. One could almost make it a textbook for sculpture and the history of taste. (Few standard surveys have a map or timeline - from this book I often xerox for lecture courses the 4 map pages, and the 8-page historical timeline to ancient politics and culture. ) Many American museums shared their finest: it is fitting, also, that a show which explores why and how art was privately patronized draws on some modern private holdings (Levy-White, Fleischmann and Christos Bastis collections). The color and B/W photographs set a high standard for evocative images of metal sculpture; they almost fall out of the page into one's hand, the way they originally cherished. The preface reviews bronze technology, the cultural habits generating Greco-Roman sculpture, and the development of private ownership out of habits of religious dedication. Each segment ( pre-Roman Greek, Etruscan, and Roman-era), is prefaced by a richly illustrated essay; the well-annotated catalogue entries tend to 3-6 pages each. (The contributing connoisseur-curators are also good narrators!)

The bronzes come from a thousand years (8th-c. BCE to 3rd c. CE) across Europe and the Mediterranean - gods and heroes, Victories and Lares, hunchbacked artisans and African slaves, athletes and dwarves, actors and naked nymphs, generals, babies and barbarians, philosophers, musicians and dancers: the crowd speaks equally for distinctive regional and cultural habits, and for themes and styles broadly shared across the Greco-Roman world, because of the commerce in objects and the movement of artists. Some are famous in the field (the inscribed votive Apollo" dedicated by Mantiklos, the Baker Dancer, the Met's exotic Asiatic dancers); much less known are e.g. the miniature magistrates from an applied bronze version of the great Roman historical reliefs, or the "Polykleitan" offerant dedicated by a Romanized Greek, Publius Achaicus. Some exemplify standard genres of quality ornamentation; some vie to be small masterworks, as versions of other masterpieces (like Praxiteles' Knidia or a 5th-c. general) or autonomous creations. Some were mirror-image pairs; others, like the bronze korai, would have seemed in accumulation to make a series too. Some were free-standing; others animated prized objects of social ritual - candelabra holders, mirror and patera handles, chariot and chest appliques, box handles and incense burners. (The two Roman "speaking" incense burners, of an actor and of a singer whose mouths puffed smoke, give form to our metaphor of, "talking hot air" ...). These statuettes are from a world in which the most famous sculptors were applauded for their skill in metal miniatures. These cousins to the great monumental bronzes (on which see e.g. Carole Mattusch) are a vivid document to the impact of "high art" down the social scale; reviewing this show is as if we could look into one of the votive treasuries of Delphi or Praeneste, and into the private cabinets of the Hellenistic kings and the Roman elite.