Renaissance metalwork at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Siren
  ca.  1570-1590
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Siren
ca. 1570-1590
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Anonymous Italian sculptor
Siren
ca. 1570-1590
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

No miniature, the bronze siren at the Metropolitan Museum measures more than a yard across. She was probably made for the Colonna family in Rome toward the end of the 16th century, passing into the collections of the high-flying and rapacious Barberini family during the first part of the 17th century. Curators report a 1644 inventory describing "a siren of bronze, with a crown on her head" displayed in a small room in the Palazzo Barberini apartments of Cardinal Antonio Barberini.

More Renaissance metalwork of equally staggering remoteness and refinement appears below –

Filarete
Cincinnatus at the Plough
ca. 1450
bronze plaquette
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ludovico del Duca
Angel
ca. 1590-1600
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giambologna
Triton
1560s
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giambologna
Triton
1560s
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alessandro Vittoria
St. Sebastian
1566
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alessandro Vittoria
St. Sebastian
1566
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Alessandro Vittoria
St. Sebastian
1566
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Filippo Negroli
Burgonet
1543
steel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Filippo Negroli
Burgonet
1543
steel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Filippo Negroli
Burgonet
1543
steel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Filippo Negroli
Burgonet
1543
steel
Metropolitan Museum of Art

European bronzes at the Getty, 16th-17th centuries

Caspar Gras
Kicking Horse
ca. 1630
Getty

Bronzes, mostly small in scale, from collections at the Getty in Los Angeles. The earliest was made in 1543 and the latest in 1630. As a group, they span the century when Mannerism was shading into Baroque.

Alessandro Vittoria
Mercury
1559-60
Getty

Italian sculptor
Two Sphinxes
ca. 1560
Getty

Willem Danielsz van Tetrode
Warrior
1562-65
Getty

Hans Mont
Mars & Venus
1580
Getty

Benedikt Wurzelbauer
Neptune
16th century
Getty

Tiziano Aspetti
Nude
ca. 1600
Getty

Italian sculptor
Dog & Bear
ca. 1600
Getty

Adriaen de Vries
Juggling Man
ca. 1615
Getty

after Gian Lorenzo Bernini
Neptune
1620s
Getty

Giovanni Francesco Susini
Abduction of Helen by Paris
1627
Getty

attributed to Francesco Primaticcio
Double Head
ca. 1543
Getty

The final object (an exotic oddity, celebrity-haunted, and new to the museum) has naturally attracted curatorial attention –

"This intriguing sculpture was cast from the female head of the ancient marble statue Cesi Juno (Rome, Capitoline Museum), which Michelangelo described as the most beautiful object in Rome. It may be one of the bronze casts after antique Roman statues that the French king Francis I commissioned from Primaticcio, his court artist for the château at Fontainebleau outside Paris. Double Head is depicted in a print of about 1650 above the entrance to a garden at Fontainebleau. It then passed to several famous collectors, including the 18th-century connoisseur Pierre Crozat and the 20th-century designer Yves Saint Laurent."

European marble sculpture, 15th-19th centuries

Jean Antoine Houdon
Marble bust of Denis Diderot
1773
Metropolitan Museum of Art

European marble sculpture from the Metropolitan Museum in New York. This group covers just four hundred years, from the early 1400s to the early 1800s. .
.

Italian sculptor
Marble relief with angel
ca. 1430-35
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Battista Lorenzi
Marble statues of Alpheus & Arethusa, from a grotto
1568-70
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tullio Lombardo
Marble statue of Adam, from a tomb installation
ca. 1490-95
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Antonio Novelli
Marble bust of Christ the Redeemer, from a larger sculptural scene
ca. 1650
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Tullio Lombardo & workshop
Marble three-quarter statue of a young warrior, possibly a guardian figure from a tomb
early 16th century
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Antoine Houdon
Marble statue of a bather, from a fountain
1782
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Philippe Laurent Roland
Self-portrait
1785
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean Antoine Houdon
Marble bust of Sabine Houdon, the artist's daughter
1788
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Philippe Laurent Roland
Painted terracotta bust of a sleeping boy
ca. 1774
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Jean-Baptiste Pigalle
Marble bust of Madame de Pompadour
ca. 1748-51
Metropolitan Museum of Art

 

Bertel Thorvaldsen
Marble relief of Nessus abducting Dejanira
1820s
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Danish sculptor Bertel Thorvaldsen (1770-1844) designed his 19th-century relief of a centaur-abduction (immediately above) to invite comparison with the Parthenon friezes with centaurs among the so-called Elgin Marbles that had recently been brought to London. Thorvaldsen was widely admired in his day for successfully reviving the standards of ancient sculpture. But no one any longer believes that he succeeded in doing that.

Metope from the Parthenon with centaur
447-438 BC
British Museum

Metope from the Parthenon with centaur
447-438 BC
British Museum

Righteous Madonnas

Madonna & Child
carved ivory
Sri Lanka
ca. 1690
Victoria & Albert Museum

The stiff upright virgin predominated in mainstream European art all through the 1400s, but she gradually disappeared during the 1500s. By the 17th century, virgins had learned suppleness and sinuosity. The ivory Madonna from Sri Lanka (above) though dating from the 17th century, reflects the older hieratic tradition, as adapted by the unknown Asian artist.

Paolo de San Leocadio
Madonna & Child with Saints & Knight of Montesa
ca. 1472-76
Prado

Master of the Virgin of the Catholic Kings Ferdinand & Isabella
Madonna & Child
ca. 1491
Prado

Carlo Crivelli
Madonna & Child Enthroned
1472
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Carlo Crivelli
Madonna & Child
ca. 1480
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giovanni Bellini
Madonna & Child
ca. 1470
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Giovanni Bellini
Madonna Adoring Sleeping Child
1460s
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Donato de' Bardi
Madonna & Child with St. Agnes & St. Philip
ca. 1425-30
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Filippino Lippi
Madonna & Child
ca. 1483-84
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Pesellino
Madonna & Child with six Saints
1440s
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Michele da Verona
Madonna & Child with St. John the Baptist
1490s
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Antonio Rossellino
Madonna & Child with Angels
ca. 1455-60
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ambrosius Benson
Madonna & Child with St. Anne
ca. 1528
Prado

Francesco Francia
Madonna & Child
1490s
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Cosimo Rosselli
Madonna & Child with Angels
ca. 1480-82
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Andrea Mantegna
Holy Family with St. Mary Magdalene
ca. 1495-1500
Metropolitan Museum of Art

Georges Trubert
Madonna of the Burning Bush
1480s
Getty