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| Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Pan ca. 1510-20 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Satyress with Urn ca. 1510-20 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Satyr with Urn ca. 1510-20 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"The great master of the small bronze in the early Renaissance, Andrea Briosco, called Riccio, trained first as a goldsmith in the workshop of his father, Ambrogio Briosco. He owes his renown to the bronze statuettes and functional objects he cast for a small circle of clients, particularly in his native Padua. Many of them were made in homage to the art of antiquity; Riccio borrowed motifs from ancient sources and combined them in novel ways to give them fresh meanings for his humanist patrons in that university town."
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| workshop of Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Triton and Nereid ca. 1525 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| workshop of Andrea Briosco, called Riccio Seated Satyr with a Shell ca. 1520-30 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Andrea Briosco, called Riccio The Rothschild Lamp ca. 1510-20 bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Although members of his workshop and his followers issued, on a level of mass production, bronze oil lamps as well as inkwells and candlesticks, Riccio himself produced only a handful of them, including some unique oil lamps, which transcend utility to become masterpieces. Long in the collection of the Rothschild family, this is one of three superlative examples of its kind."
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| Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Genius of the Dance 1864 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"Carpeaux's high relief on the façade of the Opéra Garnier in Paris, with its naturalistic nudes embodying Dance, is one of the great monuments of Second Empire style. The limestone group was vilified and even splattered with ink but also found admirers, as witness the many bronze reductions of the crowning figure, an inspired teenager who conducts the rhythms of the dancers. This cast, with its very evident seams, is a chef modèle, which was easily disassembled and its separate parts then served for the casting of more elegantly assembled and finished commercial editions."
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| Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi Leda and the Swan Andromeda and the Sea Monster ca. 1725 bronze statuettes on marble bases with bronze mounts Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
"Master sculptor Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi cast the bronze groups of Andromeda and the Sea Monster and Leda and the Swan as pendants. Each depicts an episode from classical mythology, and the two are visually linked by opposing compositions. Leda reclines, forming a diagonal from the lower right to the upper left. This line is balanced by that created by Andromeda – a diagonal moving from the lower left to the upper right – as she attempts to escape. Both figures also display heightened emotion: Leda expresses seductive eroticism, and Andromeda expresses terrifying horror. Each group retains its original base, golden reddish lacquer patina, and elaborate matching bronze mounts on the base."
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| Anonymous Italian sculptor after a drawing by Rosso Fiorentino Pluto and Cerberus ca. 1600-1620 bronze statuette Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"The god of the underworld is posed at the mouth of hell with his fierce three-headed companion, Cerberus, who exhibits the features of a spaniel, a lion, and a wolf. Pluto has lost the spear on which he leaned. Rosso Fiorentino, a painter and a printmaker, was prominent among the Italian artists lured to France by François I. His drawing for Pluto was engraved several times. This cast is probably the one that belonged to the great seventeenth-century sculptor and art collector François Girardon."
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| Edgar Degas Dancer putting on her stocking ca. 1890-95 bronze statuette Minneapolis Institute of Art |
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| Anonymous Italian sculptor Apollo 16th century bronze statuette Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Antoine-Louis Barye Theseus and the Minotaur modeled 1843, cast 1857 bronze statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"This sculpture was one of five works that Barye submitted to the 1843 Salon, only to have them all rejected. Subsequently, it was listed in the catalogue issued by the firm of Besse et Cie in 1844 as "one of the most beautiful works, one of the most energetic figures that modern sculpture has produced." No other work reflects Barye's neoclassical training as vividly as Theseus and the Minotaur. Even the arrangement of the hero's hair is borrowed directly from a recently discovered Greek statue in the Louvre: the Apollo of Piombino."
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| Antoine-Louis Barye River God modeled 1866-67, cast ca. 1876 bronze statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Antoine-Louis Barye River God modeled 1866-67, cast ca. 1876 bronze statuette Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
"These bronzes are reductions of the stone sculptures that the architect Hector-Martin Lefuel commissioned in 1866 for the Carousel entrance, a narrow double passageway leading into the courtyard of the Louvre. Barye adhered to the ancient Roman tradition of showing nude male figures leaning against upturned water urns as symbols of rivers. Originally the River Gods flanked Barye's large relief of Napoleon III dressed as a Roman Emperor and mounted on a horse. After the fall of Napoleon III in 1870, the relief was removed and replaced."
– quoted texts based on curator's notes at the respective museums