Small Bronzes in the Renaissance

This far-ranging book presents the most recent research on small-scale bronze production of the Renaissance. The contributors to the volume--an international group of curators, art historians, and conservators--analyze the production and collecting of small bronze sculptures from the fifteenth through the early seventeenth century in both Italy and the North. They offer new assessments and attributions of these fascinating works of art, the result of an intense collaboration between artists and collectors.

The book sheds light on the origins of the “household” bronze in Florence around the middle of the fifteenth century and on the groundbreaking developments in North Italy that followed. It reexamines the contribution of Donatello and his immediate followers in the first stages of bronze production as well as proposing a number of new attributions. Among the book’s other topics are casting procedures, including a proposal for a method used by Donatello; the spread of technological and artistic advances from Italy into the Northern countries; the work and workshop practices of sculptors of North Italy; and the assembling of personalized collections of small bronzes by German, English, and American connoisseurs from the eighteenth century to our own.


Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts / Distributed by Yale University Press

Debra Pincus is an independent scholar living and working in Washington, D.C.