Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World

by Jens M. Daehner (Editor), Kenneth Lapatin (Editor)

For the general public and specialists alike, the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC) and its diverse artistic legacy remain underexplored and not well understood. Yet it was a time when artists throughout the Mediterranean developed new forms, dynamic compositions, and graphic realism to meet new expressive goals, particularly in the realm of portraiture. Rare survivors from antiquity, large bronze statues are today often displayed in isolation, decontextualized as masterpieces of ancient art. Power and Pathos gathers together significant examples of bronze sculpture in order to highlight their varying styles, techniques, contexts, functions, and histories.
 
As the first comprehensive volume on large-scale Hellenistic bronze statuary, this book includes groundbreaking archaeological, art-historical, and scientific essays offering new approaches to understanding ancient production and correctly identifying these remarkable pieces. Designed to become the standard reference for decades to come, the book emphasizes the unique role of bronze both as a medium of prestige and artistic innovation and as a material exceptionally suited for reproduction.
 
Power and Pathos is published on the occasion of an exhibition on view at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence from March 14 to June 21, 2015; at the J. Paul Getty Museum from July 20 through November 1, 2015; and at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, from December 6, 2015, through March 20, 2016.

Genres: Art, Nonfiction, History

368 pages, Hardcover

First published May 1, 2015

Reviews

[Michael Finocchiaro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Last summer, I took an absolutely mesmerizing class about ancient bronze sculpture at the Louvre and this catalog was highly recommended in the Bibliography. It is beautifully illustrated and was the catalog from a major exposition at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in 2015 (with participation of the Getty Museum in LA.) it does a great job explaining the history of bronze from Ancient Greece to the Hellenistic period. It may sound super boring and banal, but when you think that only about 5 life-size bronze statues exist today that are reasonably verifiably dated to between 300 BC and 100 AD or thereabouts, despite us also having documentary evidence that there existed tens if not hundreds of thousands of these pieces back then, it gives you pause. The problem - which Leonardo ironically dealt with over 1400 years later still! - was that bronze statues were commonly melted down to make weapons during civil unrest or economic downfalls. In fact, the bronzes we have found were either buried under landslides (such as the boxer in Rome at the Palazzo Massimo having been found in 1885 while excavating the Quirinal) but far more often in shipwrecks (like the Riace warriors in Reggio Calabria) when rich Roman aristocrats were shipping spoils back from Greece for installation in their villas but the cargo was lost in a shipwreck.
The expo featured nearly all of the most important remaining bronzes along with sources and derived works. This catalog is a wealth of information and contains gorgeous photography of these stunning works of art.

[David Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid catalog of a magnificent exhibit. Although there is the inevitable uneven quality of a multi-author work, the weakest elements are strong enough, and the best truly excellent. The photography and production values are also quite high.