The Enduring Power of Bronze

“Benvenuto, this figure cannot succeed in bronze,” said Florentine Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici to maverick Mannerist sculptor and goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini. The artist was working on a wax model of Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1545-54), which he hoped to cast in bronze. “The laws of art do not admit of it.”

Despite Cosimo’s misgivings, Cellini persisted. He furthermore chronicled the dramatic casting of this colossal bronze in his autobiography, for posterity. The result has now towered over Florence’s Piazza della Signoria for nearly five centuries, an iconic exemplar of bronze sculpture full of minute details rendered with fluidity and precision. Like other sculptors who preferred bronze to materials that required direct carving, such as marble or wood, Cellini favored working in malleable media like clay or wax before translating his work to a durable final form. An alloy of copper and tin, bronze is one of the earliest man-made materials, one that is able to receive a gradient of different patinations, and has long been prized for its use in sculpture. Historically used for a range of objects, including artillery, bronze was a sculptural material in the ancient era and saw a revival in Renaissance Florence that has helped it remain prevalent until today.

“The great thing about bronze is that it’s stable,” says Robert Bowman, a renowned sculpture expert and co-founder of Bowman Sculpture, a London based gallery specializing in sculpture from the 19th century to the present and leading on the work of Rodin. “Artists are looking for something that will allow them to record their work as a long-term image for a long period of time. And what’s fantastic about bronze is that it’s relatively inexpensive compared to, say, gold or silver. If you think of Greek bronzes, even if they’ve been buried underground or they’ve been left under the sea for 5,000 years, they may have corroded slightly, but they haven’t really gone anywhere.”

From those resilient Greek bronzes and until now, the basic “lost wax” or “sand casting” techniques for casting bronze sculpture have remained fairly unchanged. The patrons are quite different, however, as are the dimensions, styles, subjects, and functions of the sculptures themselves. In antiquity, the Greeks used bronze for public monuments and architecture, whereas the Romans reserved it for portraits and mythological depictions. The situation changed by the Middle Ages, when bronze was used primarily for religious works.

The Renaissance brought a resurgence in exploring the potential of bronze, as artists and patrons harked back to the tastes of Greco-Romans. Renaissance artists produced bronzes of monumental figures, such as David (ca. 1440) by Donatello, and mythological subjects. It also became the choice material for significant religious works such as Lorenzo Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise (1425-52), gilded bronze doors for the Florentine Baptistery.

Experimentation continued into the 17th and 18th centuries, when bronze sculptures often featured contrasts between smooth and highly detailed surfaces, as well as warm brown patina tones and lacquered surfaces that created a rich sense of depth.

“Up until the 19th century, bronze sculpture was either commissioned by institutions, or grand architectural projects, or for the very wealthy. With the greater industrialization of production, plus the greater demand — which obviously fuel each other — you get a much larger amount of sculpture being made, available, and sold,” explains Bowman. “With the rise of the middle classes in the 19th century, there became a demand for beautiful things in your home and a wider range of people could afford them. What we then have is an edition system that comes along in the 20th century.”

This era saw the creation of many sculptures, now treasured worldwide, by French artist Auguste Rodin, for example, in part because bronze allows sculptures to be produced in multiples. “Rodin embraced surface modelling that was expressive, not smooth, capturing texture. This, combined with his ability to combine sensuality, emotion, and philosophy made him the father of modern sculpture,” notes Bowman, an expert on Rodin and the casts he made with the Barbedienne and Rudier foundries. “A good bronze cast accurately captured his modelling, but also allowed him to produce editions of his work, spreading the appreciation of his talent, as a master, around the world.”

Rodin’s rough surface modelling paved a way for other artists to move away from the highly polished textures that historically characterized bronze sculptures. “In the modern period, people were experimenting with texture,” notes Mica Bowman, director of Bowman Gallery. “With a lot of Barbara Hepworth’s bronzes, you see a very highly polished surface in immediate juxtaposition to something that might be more textured, and more heavily patinated.”

“It’s still a very relevant medium for contemporary artists,” she adds, noting that modern acids and materials have enabled artists to experiment with color. “Bronze is bronze, but artists can only really experiment with patina. And you do see some fantastic contemporary bronzes.”

One contemporary artist playing with patina is English sculptor Joanna Allen. “She wanted something a little bit more ethereal and strange with them, something that went from solid to translucent, almost. She has recently been experimenting with what she calls a ‘translucent patina’, which is where bronze is patinated, but in areas you can see com- pletely through to the raw bronze beneath, creating a gradient effect,” Mica describes.

Another contemporary English sculptor using patina untraditionally is Emily Young, who adds an antique, lost-at-sea look to some of her bronzes by bringing out green tones. Still other 21st-century artists, like Henneke Beaumont, seek a visual return to the source, casting bronze works that imitate the clay-like look of the original sculptural model. This trickery grants the sculptures the beauty of clay’s fragile appearance combined with durability.

“Some artists produce their bronzes with a terra- cotta-looking patina, which is kind of a trompe l’œil because you don’t really know what you’re looking at. When you see it, you think, ‘that’s a piece of terracotta,’ and you tap on it and it’s bronze,” Bowman says. “That’s something that I really love because there is a more kind of neutral, natural, earthy ele- ment to the pieces.”