"Bronzes, the rarest and most valuable classical art (Toledo, Ohio)," The Art Newspaper, Oct. 1996, p. 13.

Classical bronzes from North American collections

by Jason Edward Kaufman

TOLEDO, OHIO. About two thirds of the intact large-scale classical bronzes in North American collections go on view this month at the Toledo Museum of Art. The exhibition was assembled by Harvard University to accompany the International Bronze Congress held at the university in May. Guest curator and conference chair Carol C. Mattusch, an art history professor and author of Classical Bronzes: The Art and Craft of Greek and Roman Statuary (Cornell, 1996), estimates that there may be 200 large-scale figurative Greek or Roman bronzes in the United States of which perhaps 25 are complete. She has brought together more than 50 pieces, including 17 of the intact statues, and a single crucial ceramic, the Foundry Cup from Berlin, the only known ancient representation of metalworking in antiquity. The exhibition draws on 22 museums and private collections, the most important being the Getty and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and to a lesser degree the Metropolitan, Toledo, and Cleveland museums, and the Walters Art Gallery (withdrawn after the Harvard showing). Private lenders include Shelby White and Leon Levy, Lawrence Fleischman (whose collection was since acquired by the Getty), Raymond Sackler, Susanne K. Bennett, and John W. Kluge, who has just begun lending from his sizeable holdings. (His smaller bronzes were recently on view at the Boston MFA.)

The criteria for selection were twofold: to illuminate the manufacture of ancient bronzes, and to present works unfamiliar to foreign scholars visiting the 13th International Congress, the first convened in North America. (The next takes place in Cologne in 1999.) Many of the best known pieces in the country were either too fragile to travel, refused, or not requested in the first place, such as the so-called Cleveland Emperor, Getty Athlete, Metropolitan Sleeping Cupid, and Dallas Ruler. But the point was not comprehensivity, nor was it to mount a treasures show of beautiful objects. Rather, the intention was to use modern scientific analyses to illuminate ancient metallurgical practice. In this, Henry Lie (pronouced "Lee"), chief conservator at Harvard’s Straus Center for Conservation, proved invaluable, bringing to bear all the latest techniques, from scanning electron microscopy to lead-penetrating irridium x-radiography. His findings combined with Ms Mattusch’s own extensive knowledge to make a number of points which collectively challenge traditional ideas about the manufacture, patronage, originality, and dating of antique bronzes.

For example, it has been assumed that most antique bronzes are unique original artworks, painstakingly executed under the master’s supervision and at great expense to satisfy specific commissions. But Ms Mattusch demonstrates that this was likely the exception, that more often forgers used an "indirect" lost-wax method which allowed multiple replications. In fact, popular works were not only editioned, but varied to achieve different artistic effects and to meet consumers’ demands. Limb positions could be adjusted, the head turned slightly this way or that, and perhaps a diadem or sandal added by reworking the wax model before casting. And the discovery of traces of tin in the eye of a statue where silver is generally found suggests that when price was an issue, cheaper materials could be substituted. And if multiples were common, so would have been posthumous editions. Models would have circulated like Raimondi engravings in the Renaissance, even handed down from one generation to the next. An example of a generic type is the Aphrodite fingering her necklace, three examples of which are for the first time united in the show. Because each is of a different alloy, the curator believes they were from different shops and possibly even differerent epochs.

How many times have we been told that the Romans made marble replicas of now-lost Greek bronze originals? Now we have to question if the Greek bronzes were editioned and if the Romans themselves didn’t produce the bronze copies. A poorly preserved torso from the Metropolitan appears to be an overcast from an earlier bronze. The skin records repairs pre-existing in the 6th-century-BC-style bronze model from which the piece was cast at an undetermined later date. Thus, connoisseurship, stylistic analysis, and even complete archaeological provenance may not enable conclusive dating. Further study may one day localise or date certain alloys or techniques of facture, but until then, dating of bronzes will remain an extremely inexact science. No wonder Ms Mattusch chose to exclude dates from the object labels.

The market for large-scale antique bronzes is extremely limited, in part because they are exceedingly rare, the bulk of them having been melted down for weaponry, destroyed for religious or political reasons, ritually buried (a typical recourse when Zeus sent an omen via thunderbolt), or shipwrecked. There are only a few survivors, and those tend to be badly corroded from bronze disease, a pernicious process of internal oxydation that only recent advances in treatment have curtailed. "I doubt whether there’s any collector in the world who has more than a half dozen large-scale bronzes," says Jerry Eisenberg, owner of New York-based Royal Athena Gallery and publisher of the antiquities journal Minerva. "If somebody said, ‘Here, I have all the money you want. Go build me a collection of lifesize bronzes,’ I doubt whether anybody could put together five or six pieces from all the dealers in the world." He sells hundreds of pieces a year, but a large-scale bronze "not more than once every year or two."The few that reach the market legally are sold by collectors or an estate, or deaccessioned by a museum. Archaeological discoveries are very infrequent and invariably appropriated by local governments. "Bronze is always more expensive than marble in large-scale ancient art," he explains. "Whereas a marble head could be a few thousand dollars, or it could be half a million, a lifesize bronze head could be a few hundred thousand dollars or it could be a million. It all depends on the piece."

Ms Mattusch observes that some of the collections in America are equal to those in Europe, but she cannot cite a single large bronze in the US which is securely documented as from a specific find sight. (In Europe only a few have been excavated or come from a shipwreck.) "There are pretty good explanations of where they came from," she says, noting that most were parts of old collections in the early part of this century, or were from private collections or dealers who acquired them before the UNESCO convention went into effect. But the provenance notes are filled with phrases like "said to be from," "probably found in," "reported to have been found in," and "unknown." A piece acquired lat year by the Raleigh Museum in North Carolina is one of the latter, "provenance unkown." As Ms Mattusch notes, "Some of the pieces from old collections could be questioned, but nobody does. People are after the more recent collectors, whereas if we looked into the early 20th-century collections we would be shocked."

"The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections" remains at the Toledo Museum of Art (Oct. 13, 1996-Jan. 5, 1997). It premiered at the Sackler Museum at Harvard, and will go to the Tampa Museum of Art in Florida (Feb. 2-April 11, 1997), though lacking a third of the pieces which are being recalled by their lenders.

Jason Edward Kaufman ©