Full Description
The fruits of sixteen years of discriminating acquisition on the international art market, Robert Smith's is one of the most important collections of European bronzes in private hands today. The collection embraces the Renaissance in Italy and northern Europe in such a way that its components complement and enhance the appreciation of each other. Central to the collection is a group of thirteen pieces that illustrate the legacy of Giambologna in Florence. Also assembled are pieces by independent contemporaries: Alessandro Vittoria and Francesco Segala in the Veneto, and the younger Genoese-born Niccolo Roccatagliata, whose surviving work is of the utmost rarity. A selection of fine early North Italian bronzes serves as an introduction to the collection; the Netherlands and France are also well represented. Many pieces have distinguished provenances, and all have been exhaustively researched. The book comprises not just a catalogue but an important and original contribution to scholarship in its own right.
This new and extended version of the first edition retains the entries written by Anthony Radcliffe with a few additions or corrections, and an entry that he drafted on the miniature cannon signed by Orazio Antonio Alberghetti has also been incorporated. New entries have been supplied by Marietta Cambareri, currently Curator of Sculpture in the 'Arts of Europe' section of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, by Fabio Barry, Mellon intern for 2004 in the Department of Sculpture at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and by Nicholas Penny.
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Part One: Bronze Objects Made for Use
Part Two: The Revival of the Antique Bronze Statuette
Part Three: New Developments in Venice
Part Four: New Developments in Florence and North of the Alps
Part Five: Small Bronzes By and After Giambologna
Part Six: Barthélemy Prieur
Part Seven: Florentine Seventeenth-Century Bronzes
Interpreting the Bronzes: A Technical View by Shelley Sturman
Bibliography Abbreviations
