iThe Frick CollectionUpper East Side
Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500
Nearly forty Renaissance bronzes, including works by Donatello and Francesco di Giorgio Martini, exploring the innovations of Sienese sculptors in the second half of the 15th century.
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Donatello's bronze tomb slab for Bishop Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci is one of only eight signed works by the artist in existence, and this is its US debut. Look closely and you can see where it is worn smooth: it lay in the floor of Siena Cathedral, and people walked over it.
Nearly forty bronzes fill the three Lauder Exhibition Galleries: statues, reliefs, candelabra and medals, many never shown outside Tuscany. The first room covers foundry practice and bell casting, the second Donatello's stay in Siena from 1457 to 1461, and the largest the funerary sculpture, portrait medals and statues. Several works sit in open-backed cases that show the casting behind them.
Galerie called it "by no means blockbuster-sized, but rather a well-curated jewel box", and the New Criterion calls it the first survey anywhere of Siena's bronze masters. Admission is $30 and the Frick recommends timed tickets. It runs until 18 January.
Editor's pick
Donatello's bronze tomb slab for Bishop Pecci, from Siena Cathedral, on its first trip to the United States. Around it, nearly 40 bronzes cast in Siena between 1450 and 1500. Best for anyone who already loves the Frick's own bronzes.
Look for
Donatello's tomb slab for Bishop Pecci
A bronze funerary slab of Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci, one of only eight signed Donatello works, shown in the US for the first time.
The Mariano Sozzini the Elder monument
The only surviving bronze effigy of a layman from 15th-century Italy, a tomb figure of a lawyer rather than a bishop.
Vecchietta's Resurrection, 1472
Christ rising from the tomb in a bronze relief the dealer Joseph Duveen gave Henry Clay Frick, a major source of inspiration for the show.
Hercules Triumphing over the Nemean Lion
A late-1480s statuette about 16 inches tall, attributed to Francesco di Giorgio, one of three Hercules bronzes with newly clarified dating.
Francesco di Giorgio's Lamentation
A bronze about 86 by 75 cm, c. 1475, of the Lamentation at the foot of the cross, lent from Santa Maria del Carmine in Venice.
Good for
- Nerding Out
- Out-Of-Town Guests
Skip if
You want a blockbuster: Galerie calls this a small, well-curated jewel box of bronzes.
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Image credits
8
- Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500The Frick Collection
- There Are No Words: Si Lewen's ParadeCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Krasner and Pollock: Past ContinuousCourtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art
- The Frick CollectionJim.henderson / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain
- The Metropolitan Museum of ArtHugo Schneider, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
- Neue Galerie New YorkFrancesca.hyanna19 via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
- American Museum of Natural HistoryIngfbruno, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0
- ApertureCourtesy of Aperture