Old Masters
Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection
288 pages, hardback, 280 x 245 mm, 300 colour illustrations
PRICE: £50.00
ISBN: 978 0 900785 77 1
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By Jeremy Warren
With Francesca Bewer, Leda Cosentino and Richard Dorment
Bronze has long been used by sculptors to create complex and beautiful forms, three-dimensional realisations of the most vivid human emotions and experiences. The outstanding collection of European bronze sculptures formed by Peter Marino, here catalogued for the first time and beautifully photographed by Maggie Nimkin, is built around an exploration of the human form, as depicted in this lustrous and sensuous material. With a special focus on French and Italian bronzes of the High Baroque, the collection includes masterpieces by some of the greatest sculptors of their age, among them Ferdinando Tacca, Giovanni Battista Foggini, Robert Le Lorrain and Corneille van Clève. The bronzes presented here illustrate the lively interchange of artists and ideas between Florence, Paris and Rome. They say much about the cultural preoccupations of their age, from the eternal fascination with the ancient world, to more modern concerns, such as contemporary theatre and the legacy of great modern sculptors. Above all, the bronzes in the Marino collection are wonderful works of art, whose beauty and power speak across the centuries to today's audiences.
Accompanies an exhibition at the Wallace Collection, 29 April - 25 July 2010, and later at the Huntington Collections, San Marino, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
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