Reviews of books 609XXXsecondary reviewReviews of booksReviews of booksREVIEWS OF BOOKSAnthony Radcliffe and Nicholas Penny, Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500–1650 : The Robert H. Smith Collection. London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2004.320pp. $40.00. ISBN 0 85667 590 3

Art of the Renaissance Bronze 1500–1650 is the updated and expanded catalogue of thecollection of the American entrepreneur Robert H. Smith, a collection that beganwith Smith’s first purchase in 1978. The original catalogue, published in 1994, waswritten by the eminent scholar of Italian bronzes, Anthony Radcliffe, and encom-passed the collection as it then existed, a fairly homogeneous group of bronzes centredaround a strong selection of objects created by Giambologna and his school in thelate sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

The updated catalogue has been overseen by Nicholas Penny, Senior Curator ofSculpture and Decorative Arts at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, with mostof the new entries provided by him. However, a few other entries have been addedby a younger generation of scholars, including Marietta Cambareri, and there is anessay at the end of the catalogue by Shelley Sturman that discusses bronze castingtechniques. This latter reflects the growing awareness of the importance of this fieldfor the question of attribution.

Many of Radcliffe’s entries remain largely untouched from the 1994 edition,although the format has been changed somewhat with the technical analysis of eachitem now placed at the end of the entry. The bibliographies have also been updatedand photography of the new acquisitions is more lavish than in the original version.Photographs from the 1994 edition have been re-used, but often on a larger scale andwith a greater clarity in the printing.

In 1994, the catalogue was organized into artistic schools and along roughly chron-ological lines. The acquisitions made by Smith in the intervening years reflecthis growing confidence and maturity as a collector, with a number of interestingpurchases, particularly outside the core group of Giambologna-school bronzes. Theresulting collection has therefore acquired a depth that it lacked previously, andapproaches something of the level of a study collection of north Italian bronzes ofthe sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Penny has divided the group into sevensections with an introductory essay at the beginning of each. These include threesections on (effectively) Florentine bronzes, one on Venetian bronzes, one on domestic/utilitarian bronzes, a section on the revival of the antique statuette and a section onthe French sculptor Barthelemy Prieur.

The resulting format makes the catalogue easily accessible, and Penny’s seven intro-ductory essays are aimed at the intelligent reader who has an interest in art historybut who may not have a profound knowledge of bronze sculpture of the period. Theessay by Sturman on the casting process also helps to decipher many of the technicalmysteries of the subject. Although at times disjointed, it nevertheless provides asuccinct description of the relevant issues of alloys, the lost wax process and thedifference between direct and indirect casting.

However, it is in the individual entries that this catalogue really comes into its own.Both Radcliffe and Penny are scholars with an enormous depth of knowledge thatstretches beyond the normal confines of the field. The entry on a bronze figure ofthe Young Hercules Resting (cat. 11) written by Radcliffe is a case in point. He attributes

610 Reviews of books

the bronze to north Italy in the late fifteenth century, and begins by outlining theeight known examples of the model, spread among museums and private collectionsaround the world. He analyses the individual casting technique and finish of eachexample, and groups several together on the basis of facture. His discussion of theorigins of the composition encompasses a large spectrum of sources, including boththe sculptural and the graphic. He notes the relationship of the pose to a figure onthe reverse of a medal by Camelio, and outlines the argument for a possible connec-tion between the bronze and a lost marble by Michelangelo. Parallels are also drawnwith a chimneypiece relief in the Residenz in Munich, a drawing by BaldassarePeruzzi in Dresden, and Benozzo Gozzoli’s frescoes in the Palazzo Medici, Florence.Numerous other possible connections are also discussed.

Penny’s entries are equally wide-ranging. His experience as a scholar and curatoris as much or more to do with paintings than it is with sculpture, and one might haveexpected his entries to be even more heavily punctuated with references to graphicsources. Certainly such references do exist, as with his entry on the group of Tarquinand Lucretia (cat. 43), which is attributed to Pietro Tacca. In this instance, he suggeststhat the increasing popularity of the subject in the second half of the sixteenthcentury was due to Titian’s painting of the subject, subsequently disseminatedthrough an engraving by Cornelius Cort. It is clear, however, that Penny is equally athome in the sculptural tradition. His note on the group Theseus Slaying the CentaurBienor (cat. 21) attributed to Tetrode, includes a discussion of the fact that elementsof the bronze such as the centaur’s hooves and right hand are free of, and actuallydescend lower than, the integral bronze plinth. This clearly shows that the bronzewas never intended to have a wider pedestal, and that it was always intended to ‘spillout’ into the viewer’s space. It is Penny’s suggestion that this quite radical motif mayhave been the result of Tetrode’s collaboration with Cellini in the 1540s on the latter’sPerseus with the Head of Medusa, which exhibits a similar blurring of the boundariesbetween object and viewer, especially with the blood spurting from the neck of thefallen gorgon.

If there is to be a criticism of this catalogue, it is not with the scholarship but withthe decision not to include comparative illustrations. It has obviously been a consciouschoice to focus on the objects themselves, and the collection stands up beautifully todetailed photographs. However, the entries draw upon so many other sources that itis unrealistic to assume that most readers would have easy access to the literaturecited. In his entry on the Rape of a Sabine (cat. 44), for example, Radcliffe refersrepeatedly to three engravings by Jan Muller of Adrien de Vries compositions. Hisarguments are quite dense, and could have been simplified for the reader with theinclusion of even a small reproduction of the engravings in question.

Art of the Renaissance Bronze is an authoritative catalogue of one of the most importantcollections of Italian bronzes in private hands today. Written by two of the mostrespected scholars in the field, it easily overcomes any shortfall in format and willprovide, in future, the starting point for any discussion of the bronze models con-tained therein. It can also serve as a useful and serious introduction to the subjectfor the uninitiated.

Donald Johnston