Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes

An important international exhibition comes to the United States this fall, and The Huntington is the first venue on the American leg of its tour. “Beauty and Power: Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Peter Marino Collection” opens Oct. 9 in the MaryLou and George Boone Gallery and continues through Jan. 24, 2011.

The exhibition is a rare look at two dozen exceptional bronze statuettes from the private collec­tion of New York architect Peter Marino. Most of these works, made from the mid-16th to the mid-18th century, never had been on public view before the show’s debut last spring at the Wallace Collec­tion in London. After closing at The Huntington, the exhibition travels to the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

The works highlighted in “Beauty and Power” reflect the collecting passion and acumen of Marino, who has assembled one of the strongest collections of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes in the nation.

“From the first time I had the privilege of viewing Mr. Marino’s collection, I knew we must do what we could to bring these works to Los Angeles audi­ences,” said John Murdoch, The Huntington’s Han­nah and Russel Kully Director of Art Collections.

Bronze statuettes, of an intimate scale ideal for display on a table or mantle, developed as a serious art form in Renaissance Italy with a revival of the ancient Roman bronze casting tradition. Interest in making and collecting them spread north, and they became a popular medium for highlighting sculptors’ technical mastery and aesthetic sophistication.

One of the classic materials of sculpture, bronze has long been valued as a medium by both artists and collectors because of its power to create, out of molten metal, the most complex and satis­fying sculptural forms. Dark and lustrous, with a spectrum of possible surface qualities, bronze sculpture can be used to express the most vivid emotions and experiences.

For centuries, these beautiful works of art have been collected fervently by individuals who take delight in their inventive compositions and erudite subject matter, often inspired by Greek and Roman mythology.

The sculptures on display in “Beauty and Power” will show a gamut of action and emotion, from the theatrical violence of  (ca. 1550-60), attributed to Baccio Bandinelli, to the seductive glamour of (ca. 1720-40) by Antonio Montauti. Other highlights of the exhibition include the French sculptor Corneille van Cleve’s masterpiece , showing the lusty encounter between the abandoned goddess and her rescuer; Florentine sculptor Giovanni Battista Foggini’s heroic ; Ferdinando Tacca’s poignant ; and Robert Le Lorrain’s graceful .