Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500

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Siena produced some of the most technically and iconographically inventive bronzes in 15th-century Italy—yet they have remained almost entirely absent from the history of Renaissance sculpture, and Siena has never been distinguished for its bronzes in the way it is for its paintings. This volume, and the exhibition at the Frick it accompanies, is the first sustained attempt to change that. 

The bronzes Siena produced in the 15th century are remarkable for the range of their textures, their unusual iconography, their exceptional formats, their prominent display in both public and private spaces and their central role in the liturgy. Almost nowhere in Italy did a local artistic tradition rely so heavily on a single medium—and in Siena, bronze was not simply a medium but a world—one shared by sculptors, engineers, bell founders and military architects. Figures such as Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio and the lesser-known artists recovered here through new archival research emerge from these pages as transmedial practitioners of extraordinary range, operating at the intersection of art and technology in ways that conventional art-historical categories have consistently obscured. The reasons for that obscurity are as much historiographical as geographical: conquered by Florence in 1555, Siena entered the art-historical record largely on Florentine terms, its Quattrocento dismissed as a retardataire interval between a celebrated medieval golden age and the eventual assimilation of the maniera moderna. Essays by an international team of scholars, led by Giulio Dalvit, curator of the exhibition, present new documentary evidence and subvert longstanding Florentine-centric canons, highlighting the innovation, prestige and ambition of local bronze production. 

Authors: Giulio Dalvit, Giampaolo Ermini, Gabriele Fattorini, Laura Goldenbaum, Machtelt Brüggen Israëls, Scott Nethersole, Alison Wright, Giulia Zaccariotto 

Publisher: The Frick Collection in association with Paul Holberton Publishing

Hardback, 9 1/16 x 12 3/16 in., 384 pages