Bronze Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts

I recently visited the Bronze exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.  The exhibition was an exploration of bronze sculpture's achievements over more than five thousand years and its richness and diversity - historical, geographical and also stylistic.

Bronze is an alloy consisting mainly of copper with lesser amounts of tin.  Unalloyed copper is difficult to cast but the tin content reduces its hardness as well as affecting its colour.  From as early as 3000 BCE copper was also alloyed with lead to facilitate casting by making the molten metal more fluid.  Many brass artworks commonly described as bronze are in fact copper-zinc alloys.

Bronze is uniquely suited to the rendering of varied textures and finishes and to capturing the fall of light.  The material's strength and ductility also permit extraordinary compositional boldness.

The human figure, in action or at rest, nude or draped, is probably the single most popular subject for bronze sculpture, whether monumental statuary or small-scale statuettes.  Examples of small-scale statuary are shown below:

"Buddha Shakyamuni in Abhaya-Mudra", India, Late 6th-century. 68.6cm tall.

"St John the Baptist Preaching to a Levite and a Pharasee" by Giovani Francesco Rustici, 1506-11. 262cm tall.

"Portrait of King Seuthes III" Thracian, 4th-century BCE. 39cm tall.

"Danaide" by Constantin Brancusi, 1918. 28 cm tall.

Man's relationship with the animal kingdom has been a theme for bronze sculpture since ancient times, such as the fantastical stylisation of the Chimaera of Arezzo, shown below.

"Chimaera of Arezzo", Etruscan, c. 400 BCE. 129 cm long.

Animal forms in bronze appear not only as statues in their own right but also as decorative elements such as the menacing insects of Louise Bourgeois.  An example is Spider IV below:

"Spider IV" by Louise Bourgeois, 1996. 203.2 cm across.

Ancient groups of castings such as the Chariot of the Sun, dating from 14th-century BCE and created from bronze and gold leaf demonstrate the sophisticated casting technologies available to early cultures.

"Chariot of the Sun", Trundholm, Seeland, 14th-century BCE. 60 cm long.