BRONZE. - Used for a great many purposes since antiquity, bronze played a preponderant part in Greek statuary beginning with the Attic period (6th century B.C.). The ancient sources mention its use on several occasions, and many of the surviving original objects made with it provide notable testimony to this.
Even before it was used in casting for sculptures or reliefs, bronze was used in numerous applications as sheet metal, for household furnishings, for personal ornaments, for weapons, for chariots and even for architectural decorations. Pliny in his Naturalis Historia (XXXIV, chaps. 1-93) gives a detailed account of such uses, and comments on and describes many of the most celebrated bronze sculptures of antiquity. The greatest craftsmen of ancient Greece in fact made extensive use of bronze in their most celebrated works, from Myron to Polyclitus, from Phidias to Scopus, to Praxiteles, to Lysippus; and if only very few have come down to us in the originals, many instead are the small votive and ornamental bronzes preserved in museums in every part of the world.
The technique used in antiquity for fusion and for casting reveals a marvelous perfection that goes well with the high artistic quality. The figurative elements (plastic evidence, function of line and planes, coloristic sonority) found a high coefficient in the ductility of the material.
The Egyptians, the Etruscans, and later the Romans were also skilled in the art of bronze, which they used extensively following the example of Greece. Among the most celebrated Etruscan and Roman bronzes are remembered the Mars of Todi, the Capitoline Wolf, the equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius, the Hermae and the decoration of the ships of Nemi, the Victory of Brescia, and some busts of emperors.
In the East too bronze was used from the most ancient times: in China for vases, weapons, ornaments, for sacred statuary (statues of Buddha) and for all the accessories of worship. Japan, tributary to China, gave to the use of bronze a particular character of its own. In India many sacred sculptures, even of large dimensions, were cast in bronze (one recalls, for example, the Dancing Sivas in the circle of fire of the museum of Madras and of the collection of the Bank of Italy). Braziers, bells, incense burners and other objects were also produced, often damascened with silver and gold and enriched with precious stones and enamels.
From the very beginnings of Christian art, small objects such as lamps, medals, furnishings of worship, liturgical accessories, chancel screens, candelabra, door leaves (those in the Lateran baptistery of the 5th century) were in bronze. The technique was perfected more and more with the contributions of Byzantine art in a great many objects adorned with reliefs or inlays. A marvelous example are the great doors of the church of St. Sophia in Constantinople, of the 9th century. The tradition imported from the East, and which had independently had a vitality of its own also in other European centers, was nourished above all by the cenobies and monasteries flourishing in the revival around the year 1000. They continued the use of artistic casting that had been taken up again in the Carolingian age, during which a great number of interesting sculptures were produced (among these is remembered the statuette of Charlemagne of Metz, today in the Louvre). A notable work of diffusion was carried out throughout Germany by the school of the monastery of Hildesheim, which produced works that still today astonish for the perfection of their technique, such as the doors and the bronze column preserved in that cathedral.
With the Romanesque period there was in Italy a more intense revival of the use of bronze in works among the noblest of the art of those centuries. The great Romanesque sculptors: Bonanno Pisano for the doors of the cathedrals of Pisa and Monreale, Barisano for that of Trani and for the others of Ravello and Monreale, Oderisio for that of Troia, together with the anonymous artist, the author of the door of the cathedral of Benevento, much damaged in the last war, all tried their hand at works in bronze. In the other countries of Europe, ecclesiastical furnishings above all were produced, bells and other objects, with a vigorous plastic sense. The complex candelabrum of the cathedral of Milan, attributed to Nicholas of Verdun, is among the most notable northern examples of this period. In the Romanesque age too there were important importations of works from the East: among others the bronze doors damascened with silver for the basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls, for Montecassino, for St. Michael at Gargano.
Among the first fourteenth-century documents are remembered the doors that Andrea da Pontedera sculpted in 1332 for the Florentine baptistery, which were cast by specialists brought purposely from Venice. Seventy years later, victory in the competition announced by the Opera del Duomo allowed Lorenzo Ghiberti to sculpt in gilded bronze, first the northern door and then the eastern one of the same baptistery. The first, commissioned from him in 1403, was completed in 1424; the second, commissioned from him in 1425, was finished in 1452. Alongside him, the greatest sculptors of the Renaissance made much use of bronze for their most successful works: Brunelleschi, Donatello, Verrocchio, Pollaiolo left in Florence and elsewhere incomparable testimonies. Even lesser artists tried their hand at the working of metal. Bartolomeo Bellano of Padua collaborated on the high reliefs of Donatello's pulpits in St. Lawrence in Florence for the last Stories of Christ and left his masterpiece in the reliquary cabinet in the church of the Santo in Padua; Vecchietta, of Siena, sculpted in 1467 the tomb figure of M. Sozzini the Elder, today in the Bargello museum in Florence. Other works of his are the ciborium of the cathedral of Siena and the Risen Christ, of 1476, in the church of the Hospital of Siena. Francesco di Giorgio Martini, in his many-sided activity, also left many works in bronze. Among those that criticism unanimously recognizes as his are remembered the two reliefs with the Flagellation, of the picture gallery of Perugia and of the Deposition of the church of the Carmine in Venice, and the angels of the Sienese cathedral, datable to ca. 1497-99. A vigor never before felt was impressed on their castings by Sansovino in Venice, by Giambologna in Pisa and later by Benvenuto Cellini, of whom is famous the description left to us by himself of the labor for the casting of the Perseus.
In the Renaissance many ecclesiastical accessories were also produced in bronze that were true and proper works of art, whether they were grilles (chapel of the Cingolo in the cathedral of Prato) or pulpits, or objects of smaller size such as candelabra, handbells, basins and collection plates. Worthy of particular mention for its flourishing affirmation in the Italian Quattrocento is also the medal (v.), of which Pisanello was the most celebrated maker.
In the Cinquecento in Germany decorative statuettes were produced, and among the major artists Peter Vischer and Hans Leigenberger had great renown, though they never reached a high artistic level.
Throughout the Seicento, kept alive by great sculptors such as Bernini and Algardi, the tradition of bronze continued to have a very important life of its own, especially in the great funerary monuments of the Roman basilicas and in the decoration of Baroque architecture. Outside Italy in the Settecento began the use of adorning furniture and household furnishings with bronze, especially in France where, during and toward the end of the monarchy, and in the early days of the Empire, furniture of various styles was fashioned but frequently decorated with bronze. The French example was soon followed in England and Germany, but the productions of these countries could not equal the refined elegance of the Parisian chasers. This primacy was maintained throughout the 19th century, and among the greatest artists of France mention must be made of Auguste Rodin, author of celebratory sculptures and portraits (Les Bourgeois de Calais, La Porte de l'Enfer, the busts of Clemenceau, of Victor Hugo and of Benedict XV, all in the Rodin museum in Paris) but also of some religious sculpture, among which a St Jean-Baptiste prêchant of 1879.
Rodin's art was a stimulus to numerous sculptors who, at the end of the century and in the early 1900s, produced numerous works in bronze in the academic taste then prevailing. Very widespread was the decoration of great commemorative architectures (quadrigas of the triumphal arches in Paris, Berlin, etc., sculptures of the monuments to Victor Emmanuel II and to Garibaldi in Rome).
In more recent times the use of bronze in art has been diminishing, with the exception of some happy works by contemporary artists (among them it is worth remembering Arturo Martini) who often also treated religious subjects. It has rather passed into industrial use, in which it has then been combined with many other metals equally employed. - See Pl. X.
