The Little Bronzes

Talking about the current show at Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, Director Arthur van Schendel had to admit to a certain bewilderment. "Strange," said he, "though they were well known, there has never been a show of Italian bronzes." Until now scattered in scores of collections, the 203 Renaissance statuettes on display are small masterpieces that were in their way as highly prized as the metal and marble giants that adorn Italy's piazzas and palazzos. Shown in force, they present the Renaissance with such an intimacy that to see them is almost to hear the heartbeat of an era.

The exhibition itself has been a boon to scholarship as well as esthetics. Gathered by arrangement with the Italian government, the show went first to London's Victoria and Albert Museum. There, Curator of Sculpture John Pope-Hennessy, who selected the parts of the show that came from outside Italy, was able to make comparisons never before possible. As a result, about 30 attributions have been corrected.

Loving Patina. Since the making and collecting of statuettes was the custom in ancient Rome, it was inevitable that the men of the Renaissance should revive it. They read of superb little sculptures like the Hercules that the poet Statius insisted Hannibal had admired and that Sulla used for adorning his banquet table. Fifteenth century connoisseurs not only collected ancient statuettes but also began commissioning contemporary ones.

Donatello, the greatest sculptor of the century, introduced the statuette with his small putti in the Baptistery of Siena. From then on, the great studios turned out an army of naked gods, young shepherds, heroes on horseback, satyrs and saints. Many were received with such affection that they acquired a gleaming patina from the caresses of their owners. They were used as decorations for furniture, as inkwells, even as perfume burners to rid the air of the stench of sewage. But mostly they were loved as works of art in themselves.

Hypnotic God. One of Donatello's greatest successors was Antonio del Pollajuolo, whom Lorenzo de Medici called "the principal master" of Florence. His writhing Hercules and Antaeus, the only surviving statuette, positively known to be his, almost cries out in agony. Wild Man on Horseback, by Bertoldo di Giovanni, a pupil of Donatello, rides with savage majesty upon a steed of extraordinary elegance. Though less renowned, Alessandro Vittoria left in his 19 1/2-in.-high Neptune a figure of hypnotic power. There is no doubt that this small god could quell a storm with his anger.

In the gilded works, the mood is often different. In his Apollo Belvedere, Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi (Antico), the best of the bronze sculptors at the Gonzaga court in Mantua, produced a figure of almost stylized grace. The Homage to Sculpture is blatantly--though magnificently--contrived. Bernini's 6-in. masks seem at first glance to be pure theater, yet they provide a kind of climax to the show. The Renaissance master, having unlocked the classic secrets of the human face and figure, could now take liberties with nature. It is Bernini's triumph that the masks are mood rather than melodrama; there is violence here, but no violation of the sculptor's art.

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