Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 03.djvu/615

BRONZE. between the two masses of refractory substance the wax instantly melts and disappears and when the bronze has hardened and the mold is broken up, the surface of the cast will be a perfect reproduction of the sculptor's design. Practically all ancient artistic work in bronze was produced in this way. The process is called in modern times {{subst:a` cire perdue, 'with lost wax'; and it is evident that only one bronze casting can be obtained from each mold so made.

{{sc|Ancient Bronzes}}. Working on these lines, the Etruscans especially, and at a later time the Greeks, produced bronzes in great numbers and of singular interest, the Etruscans putting into them the highly ornate and fantastical spirit of their decorative sense uncontrolled by the existence of a loftier expressional art. The more important works of the Greeks of classical times, excluding those connected with buildings, were in bronze, and their marbles were more commonly replicas or copies by inferior artists, used for the adornment of porticoes, gardens, or the like, while the original bronze filled its place in the temple for which it was made. The same tendency existed among the Romans. Bronze statues brought home by conquerors, or made by Grecian and other artists in the service of the masters of the world, filled not only Rome itself, but the other great cities of the Empire. The value of the metal, and the ease with which it could be broken up and cast or made into coins, has caused the disappearance of nearly all of these. A very few Greco-Roman bronzes have been brought to light by recent diggings and explorations; but these are nearly always utensils, tablets bearing inscriptions, and the like. Busts, and heads cut from lost statues, exist in considerable numbers. In the British Museum there are several of great interest, but these belong mainly to the period of the long-established Empire. In the little museum at Brescia, in Lombardy, is a bronze statue of heroic size, strongly resembling in its pose and general character the famous "Venus of Mile," and generally called the "Victory of Brescia." In the museum in Berlin there is a statue called the "Praying Boy." but the arms are restorations, although seemly and probable ones. The two or three large bronzes in the Etruscan Museum in Florence are of singular importance, especially the so-called "Orator"; they are not Etruscan in the sense of belonging to the years of the independent life of Etruria. The famous "She-Wolf" in the Palace of the Conservators in Rome is the most valuable piece of pure Etruscan bronze-work known to us; the two children are Sixteenth-Century additions. Besides these few pieces, the contents known as the Halls of the Greater and Smaller Bronzes in the Naples Museum contain the most valuable survivals of the Imperial period. In the third of the halls of larger bronzes there are forty-two statues and busts, all of human subjects and of life size or larger, most of them found in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum. The halls of the smaller bronzes contain many statues and groups found in the same villa, and also the vast accumulation cf decorative utensils found in Pompeii. Among them is the "Sleeping" (or "Drunken") "Faun." the "Hermes" seated on a rock, the six splendid draped female figures of pure Greek type known as the "Actresses" or the "Danseuses," the busts called "Apollo" and "Ptolemy," and the priceless head which has been called "Plato" from its sweet and cheerful gravity. In all these works the textile and tenacious "character of the metal is allowed to dictate the character of the design. Only detailed description would make it clear how greatly these bronze pieces differ from works carved in hard material, such as marble or close-grained stone, or even wood or ivory. From the hair-dressing, in slight and thin corkscrew curls carried all around the head, and held in place by a. broad band, as in the "Apollo" and the "Ptolemy," to the treatment of the thin folds of light drapery, and again to the mere pose of the figure in a position which no marble could be made to maintain, the metallic character of the design is always prominent.

{{sc|Mediæval Bronzes}}. The use of bronze was not entirely abandoned during the Middle Ages. The toreutic or embossed statues of certain mediæval tombs, such as that of Edward III. in Westminster Abbey, are well known. In Italy such work was more common, largely because of the Byzantine influence; and church doors, as at Benevento, Milan, and Pisa, were made as easily in a pure and graceful Twelfth-Century style as the barbarous work of Verona and Ravello had been achieved two centuries earlier. The tendency of the Middle Ages was, however, to use metals mainly for the decoration of objects of religious and civil ceremony. In this way bronze served as a background for enameling, and for the framework of elaborate altar-pieces and the like. With the classical Renaissance in Italy, however, the use of bronze in the antique manner for statuary, bas-reliefs, busts, and the like was revived. Such pieces as the doors of the Baptistery in Florence, by Andrea Pisano and by Lorenzo Cihiberti, and those of the sacristy of the Cathedral near by, the work of Luca della Robbia; such statues as the "David" of Donatello, the "David" of Verrocehio, the "Perseus" of Cellini with its imaged pedestal, the "Mercury" of John of Bologna : such bas-reliefs as those of Donatello in the altar of San Antonio in Padua, and as those which adorn the pedestal of the statue of Duke Cosinio in the square in Florence; such pieces of decorative art as Pollajuolo's tomb of Pope Sixtus IV. and the candelabrum of the Florence Baptistery; such equestrian statues as that of Colleone in Venice, by Verrocehio, that of Gatamalata in Padua, by Donatello, and two by John of Bologna, the Dukes Cosimo and Ferdinand de'Medici, in Florence, are indeed the be.st known of this period; but they are only a few out of a great number.

{{sc|Modern Works in Bronze}}. The work of the bronze-caster was less actively pursued during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries, although there was no time when important works were not in progress; but with the Nineteenth Century, the growing wealth of the communities and their desire to put up, as out-of-door memorials, works which should be less perishable than the decaying marbles led to a remarkable revival of the art in a very remarkable manner, and to the starting of many important bronze-foundries. In the middle of the Nineteenth Century most important works were cast in Munich, but excellent foundries now exist in many of the great cities. In America there are two or three—one especially in New York, which does anything the sculptor can demand, if bronze is capable of it. In the use of bronze for more minute and delicate ornamental purposes, the example of the Vol. III—35.