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Bronze statues created from the merging of art and technology evoke a glorious past.
Dr. Carol Matush introduces us to the crafting of bronze sculpture in ancient Greece and
Rome.
Myth, man, and metal.
Sing, O clear-voiced muse, of Hephaestus renowned for skill, who along with grey-eyed Athena
taught fine crafts to men of this earth.
Indeed, before that time, they used to live in mountain caves like wild beasts.
But now, thanks to Hephaestus, the famous craftsman, they have learned crafts, and easily
for the full year they lead a carefree existence in their own homes.
But have mercy on me, Hephaestus, and grant me virtue and happiness.
A long time ago, in the age of the gods, Hephaestus was born, son of the goddess Hera, queen
of Mount Olympus.
According to the myth, he was so pitifully lame and ugly at birth that his angry mother
threw him from the heights of Mount Olympus into the sea below, where he was rescued by
two sea goddesses.
With a volcano as his furnace and bellows, anvil, hammer, and tongs as the tools of his
trade, Hephaestus created metal ornaments of great beauty for his rescuers.
His mother, Hera, so the story goes, noticing the goddess's exquisite jewelry, was so jealous
that she restored him to her favor.
In the workshop of Hephaestus, 20 bellows worked day and night.
From his forge came tools, weapons, and jewelry.
Nothing was beyond his imagination and skill.
He worked in silver, gold, and bronze.
It is even said that Hephaestus invented the first robots, a set of golden mechanical women
to help him with his tasks.
One day, Zeus, king of the gods, ordered Hephaestus to create the first woman.
Using clay, he made Pandora.
This clay image was of great beauty, and the gods adorned her with golden ornaments crafted
by Hephaestus.
A golden crown was placed on Pandora's head by Athena, goddess of wisdom.
And Aphrodite, the wife of Hephaestus, gave her a gift of golden necklaces.
Hephaestus, craftsman for the gods, is actually a very odd fellow.
No father is mentioned in stories of his birth.
Only Hera, his mother, begins his lineage, his creation an act of woman alone.
Although ancient images of Hephaestus show an upright man, written descriptions characterize
him as lame in both legs.
Being ugly and misshapen, he was unique among the beautiful Greek gods.
But he was also unique as a clever and gifted artist and inventor.
Some of his inventions were used to avenge wrongs done to him.
Crafty Hephaestus punished his mother, Hera, for throwing him down from Mount Olympus.
He sent her a beautiful golden throne.
She didn't know the throne was a trap.
When she sat in it, she couldn't get up.
Dionysus, god of wine, came to her rescue.
He made Hephaestus drunk, then brought him back to Mount Olympus to free his angry mother.
Ironically, ugly Hephaestus was married to Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty.
When she was unfaithful to him, he hammered out a bronze hunting net to ensnare her as
she lay in the arms of Ares, god of war.
A tale so amusing that a 17th century Dutch artist painted it.
Hephaestus produced much more than magical inventions and splendid jewelry.
He was also known for his magnificent craftsmanship in making armor.
In the Iliad, Homer describes how Hephaestus made the armor for the hero Achilles to use
in the Trojan War.
He also made a winged golden cup to carry the sun god Helios across the sea each night.
And it is said, he built a bronze house for himself on Mount Olympus.
Hephaestus, blacksmith, sculptor, architect and inventor, was revered by the Greeks, along
with Athena, as the patron god of handicrafts.
He personified the Greek ideal of Technae, the concept of creativity where the artist
was not only creator, but craftsman as well.
An artist who displayed both creative and practical skill, who could combine ingenuity
and invention, was said to have Technae and was highly respected by the ancient Greeks.
Two artists of the 6th century BC, Roicus and Theodorus from the Greek island of Samos,
are credited with bringing the knowledge of bronze casting from Egypt to Greece.
In fact, these two individuals could do many things.
Roicus worked on the construction of an early temple of Hera, and Theodorus made the labyrinth
in Samos, a magnificent seal ring for a 6th century ruler, and a sculpture of himself
holding a miniature four-horse chariot in his hand.
Other great sculptors of antiquity, whose names have survived until today, are also
credited with many skills.
A sculptor named Scopas of Paros was also an architect, and Phidias, known for his beautiful
statues in bronze, used gold and ivory to make the colossal statue of Zeus at Olympia.
For all of them, glorious Hephaestus, who surpasses all the other gods in craftsmanship,
was their prototype and ideal.
Hephaestus was the god to thank if a sculptor successfully melted and cast the bronze for
a statue.
To trace the craft of bronze sculpture to the historical past, we turn to ancient writers.
Through them we learn that Greeks traded in Egypt and settled there in the 7th century
BC.
At that point, Egyptians were making their best large-scale bronzes.
The Greeks learned this technology, but adapted it to their own styles of images.
They had already been producing small-scale bronzes since the 10th century BC, but archaeological
evidence shows that by the middle of the 6th century BC, large-scale hollow bronzes were
being produced.
Excavations in the center of Athens have uncovered many ancient foundries, which reveal that
the bronze casting industry flourished there for about 1200 years.
Indeed, many metalsmiths in modern Athens have their shops in the same region of the
city.
Although few examples of large-scale bronze statuaries survive from classical times, archaeological
and literary evidence make it clear that bronze was a preferred medium.
Cities and sanctuaries throughout the classical world were filled with bronze statues, the
same way modern cities are adorned with our own heroes in bronze.
And small bronzes served as decorative embellishments in private homes and gardens, just as they
do today.
We may well ask, what happened to them all?
Many ancient bronze sculptures were melted down to make weapons or utilitarian objects.
Public statuary of famed leaders fell victim to political change, and early Christians
destroyed bronze gods, considering them a dangerous pagan influence.
Not least of all, corrosion took a terrible toll.
Corrosion of statues just about inevitable for those displayed out of doors will lead
to bronze disease.
One type turns bronze a beautiful but fatal emerald green.
If left untreated, this very porous metal could disintegrate to almost nothing.
Luckily for us, a small number of bronzes have survived the ages, either buried in
the ground, usually as a result of earthquake or fire, or underwater, as a result of shipwreck.
When Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, people and possessions in the ancient cities of Pompeii
and Herculaneum were buried instantly.
As a result, archaeologists have excavated hundreds of bronzes at those sites.
One famous discovery was made in the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of North Africa, near the
present-day fishing port of Maria.
In 1907, nearly 2,000 years after a heavily laden Greek cargo ship sank, local sponge
divers discovered marble columns encrusted with shellfish and sponges at a depth of 130
feet.
Between the columns and partially buried in the sand were marble and bronze statues of
all sizes.
During the next six years, archaeologists, with a crew of divers, rescued the treasures
from the ocean floor.
Included is this beautiful bronze boy made to serve as a lamp holder, possibly for a
wealthy private owner, a female dwarf dancing with castanets, and a herm with the turbaned
head of Dionysus.
Herms were often set up in public places to protect wayfarers.
This one, ironically, did not work its magic on the doomed ship which held it.
These statues were discovered by divers in 1972, named the Riace bronzes for the place
near which they were found.
They stand over six and a half feet tall.
Shipwrecks suggest a flourishing trade in sculpture.
Cargo ships carried both older works and newly produced pieces from Greece to Italy, most
destined to serve as decorative items for private owners.
Jewelry was used to adorn many statues, just as Pandora was adorned with necklaces and
crown from the forge of Hephaestus.
This statue of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, has small round holes in her ears, for earrings
to be inserted.
Here a small Aphrodite fingers her gold necklace and wears gold bracelets and anklets.
A plump Eros at her side wears a silver necklace.
The raised arm and bent fingers of this Aphrodite suggest she too once plucked at a gold or
silver necklace.
An Aphrodite just like her has marks of corrosion where her necklace once lay.
This Aphrodite also wore a silver headband.
There is still a small section of silver near the right ear.
The rest of the headband shows the bronze underneath.
It has a rough texture made by a pointed tool used to help attach the silver.
Statues representing male gods or men who were public figures were rarely adorned with
jewelry, but their clothing could be adorned with inlaid patterns or stripes.
On this Roman bronze, a reddish copper stripe indicated senatorial rank.
According to Pliny, an ancient Roman writer, rings were placed on the left hand of statues
of public figures, reflecting an early custom of wearing an iron or gold ring on the fourth
finger of the left hand.
Pliny goes on to say that people also placed them on the index finger of statues of the
gods.
Interestingly, tales of Hephaestus describe many articles of jewelry made in his fiery
forge, but nowhere are fingerings mentioned as part of his craft.
The recovery of almost identical bronze statues provides much new information about the production
of statuary.
Most scholars date the two Riace bronzes to the 5th century BC, but many have dated each
one to a different decade.
Scholars have also argued that they were made by different artists.
Both statues are now thought to have originated in the same workshop, examples of serial production.
In other words, the two statues are derived from one basic model, even though they look
quite different from each other.
How do we know this is so?
For answers, we must investigate the technique of bronze making as it was done in the ancient
world.
There is little written about foundries and metal workers.
The texts we do have were written at many different times, ranging from Homer's 8th
century BC description of Hephaestus hammering out armor in his workshop to passing references
about technique from as late as the 3rd century AD.
To add to the problem, the writers were not artists or bronze casters.
They were poets, historians, travelers, and philosophers, and what they had to say about
bronze casting was usually colored by their particular point of view.
Luckily for us, a kylex, or Greek wine cup of red and black earthenware, vividly depicts
scenes in an ancient foundry.
Called the Berlin Foundry Cup, for the city in which it is displayed, these are the only
illustrations that show the production of large bronze statuary.
On one side of the cup, workmen stoke a furnace and assemble a life-size statue of an athlete.
One hand is being attached, the head is still lying on the floor.
In the background, tools hang on the wall and what look like models for the feet of
a statue.
On the other side of the cup, a colossal statue of a warrior is being smoothed and polished
with rasps.
Inside the cup is Hephaestus, hammer in hand.
The goddess Thetis waits for Hephaestus to finish making armor for her son Achilles.
To make bronzes, Greek and Roman sculptors used a technique known as the lost wax process,
a technique which lends itself well to serial production.
Imagine a busy workshop in ancient Athens.
With production demand high, they might not have cast statues one at a time.
Instead, a number of body parts might have been kept on hand, all cast to the same scale,
ready for a buyer to order a statue.
We have this statue of a boy in motion, where the styles of head and body do not seem to
match.
This hypnos, god of sleep, has the same curious juxtaposition of elements.
Did they come out of workshops which mass produce limbs and use them when needed with
a customized head?
The lost wax process, updated with modern materials, is still used today.
At the Johnson Atelier in Mercerville, New Jersey, sculptors from all over the world
have their work cast in bronze using the lost wax process.
As they probably did in ancient times, artists create the original model out of clay.
Next a wax working model is made from the clay model.
In fact, many wax working models could be made from the one clay model.
The artist may then individualize the wax working model by carving or modeling distinctive
details in the wax.
The final result is a unique finished bronze.
To understand, let us walk through the process step by step.
The sculptor began with modeling clay, probably making a small scale version of the statue
called a maquette.
Next came a full size clay model.
This could be either a general model without much detail, or it could be as detailed as
a finished work of art.
Then separate clay molds, called master molds, were taken, each for a different part of the
statue.
The complete set of master molds were lined with a thin layer of beeswax.
When the wax had cooled and hardened, the master molds were removed, leaving the beeswax
sections.
They were put together to form a complete hollow wax working model.
This hard wax working model was sturdy enough to stand on its own and could be quickly finished
or revised with individual details, which might involve adding locks of hair, adjusting
limbs, or sculpting characteristic ears and nose.
Fingernails could be outlined, and a turban-like hairstyle was given to this ancient portrait
of a woman.
A real hair net was pressed against the surface of the wax working model, leaving behind a
most realistic impression.
After the skilled artistic work was completed in the wax, actual production began.
A wax gate system was attached to the wax model, with a funnel at the top for receiving
the molten bronze.
Each separate part of the wax working model had been given a clay core.
Iron rods, known as the armature, were stuck into the clay core to stabilize and strengthen
it.
Metal pins, known as chaplets, were stuck through the wax into the core to hold it firmly
in place for the next step.
This entire apparatus was then covered with clay, called an investment mold.
After the clay had dried, the molds were baked to remove all moisture and to burn out the
wax.
This left a network of hollow channels where the gates had been, all attached to the cavity,
which had once been the wax working model.
Then the molds were packed in dry sand for stability, and molten bronze was poured through
the gate system.
Classical statues were usually cast in sections of size, which would allow two men to lift
and pour the heavy molten metal.
After casting, the statue's sections were left to cool.
The clay investment mold was broken away and discarded at last.
Now came the work of finishing the statue.
As we can see on the Berlin Foundry Cup, rasp-like instruments were used to remove the blackened
surface of the bronze.
Finally, the separately cast parts of the statue were fitted together and joined.
A nude figure usually was cast in relatively few parts, but a draped statue could be cast
in many pieces.
In this statue of a man in a toga, the joints of limbs and head could be concealed beneath
folds of the separately sculpted clothing.
At this stage, imperfections were patched and smoothed.
Materials for eyes could be stone, bone, glass, ivory, or silver.
Inset eyes rested in a sheet copper envelope, the edges cut and curled into lashes.
This statue of a child god had its eyes overlaid with silver and silver teeth.
Nipples might be the heads of copper nails.
Even silver fingernails might be glued in place.
Objects associated with a particular god or person were added.
In this statue of Dionysus, the raised right hand suggests that a wine cup with two looping
handles may have dangled from the limp fingers.
The fingers of his left hand, curled more firmly, suggest that he held a staff called
a thyrsus.
Lucius Ferris was co-emperor of the Roman Empire from 161 to 169 AD.
This statue of him once held a sword in one hand, a spear raised in the other.
We know from the biographers that Lucius put gold dust in his hair to make it blonder.
We know from this statue, heavily muscled, powerful individual, that it is quite different
from the actual appearance of Lucius.
Its appearance is intended to show the strength of the emperor, his power, and his authority
over the admiring audience below.
Standing nudes with an ideal athletic form were a common statue type for nearly seven
centuries.
The powerful torso was used interchangeably to represent gods, victors, and rulers.
What more magnificent symbol of power could there be than a nude man in peak condition?
The viewer's recognition of the ruler depended primarily upon the portrait head affixed to
the body.
Clothing was an important element in the finishing of bronze statuary.
Bronze clothes of great detail and style were separately cast.
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, had holes at the shoulders for pins to secure her sculpted
chiton.
Or, looking at the statue of a young boy, we see an extraordinary assortment of garments
designed in the style of the east.
He wears an odd, pyramidal hat and baggy leggings.
There is an undertunic with loose, long sleeves, over that a sleeveless tunic.
A broad sash falls from a loop on either hip.
Finally, a cloak buttoned at his right shoulder drapes over his chest and hangs down his back
to just below his knees.
Two statues of this unusually dressed boy have been found.
One is displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and the other at the
Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore.
Modern technology has proved to be very important in revealing new aspects of ancient bronzes.
We take it for granted that doctors use the latest technology to analyze the workings
of the human body, but the study of classical sculpture now includes x-rays, endoscopes,
computer images, and metallographic analysis to probe the mysteries of ancient bronzes.
For example, a radiograph of Artemis reveals that six large leaded areas on the statue
are ancient.
And small lead spills spotting the statue's interior are the result of a 20th century
attempt to reattach Artemis to her base.
Copper tin and lead are the main ingredients of ancient bronze alloys, though the percentages
vary.
It is rare to find two bronzes that look alike and have the same combination of these metals
as well as the same traces of other elements.
Scientists have made that match with these herms and with the boys in eastern dress.
Scholars may then conclude they were produced in the same workshop.
Amounts of each metal also determine color.
A high percentage of copper results in the reddish-brown tint, which we usually associate
with bronze.
A relatively high percentage of lead or tin will make the statue more gray.
For naturalism, after casting, a statue could be artificially colored.
According to the evidence that's available, the Greeks and Romans certainly did this.
The black patina on this surface was produced by an application of sulfide.
Even today, bronzes may be artificially patinated or actually painted.
At the Johnson Atelier, sculptors may coat their pieces with corroding chemicals, controlled
to give the bronze a specific color, or even paint them with automobile paint specially
formulated to be impervious to the weather.
Ancient statues also had inlaid and overlaid metals to add color.
This is not always easy to detect or identify.
Conservation scientists working with an instrument called a scanning electron microscope with
energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy confirm the presence and approximate purity of silver,
lead, or gold.
What we thought were silver eyes in this statue are actually tin.
The effect is similar, but tin is much less expensive.
Was the artist trying to cheat his customer or perhaps save him some money?
Gilding gave a statue special distinction.
The whole surface of this statue of a Roman emperor was once gilded, and the statue stood
three times life size.
This life size gilded horse head and the gilded sword are all that remain of a full scale
equestrian monument which would have honored a member of the Roman imperial family.
The horse's bridle is heavily decorated with brasses and once with stones as well for a
ceremonial parade.
The monument would have looked somewhat like this famous statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome.
Traditionally, the study of classical sculpture has focused upon the idea of the Greek bronze
original and the Roman marble copy.
But curiously, even when two very similar bronze statues have been found, we tend not
to conclude that they might have been part of a production line, perhaps in a popular
series that sold particularly well.
Instead, we concentrate on their differences, giving them different artists, different dates.
And yet, technically, they are just alike in measurements, in how they were made, and
what they were made of.
These three Aphrodites are very similar in size, proportion, and configuration.
The likeness has previously been studied in terms of their relative styles.
We now know from technical examination that all three statuettes belong to a series based
upon a single original model.
The subtle differences among the three were the result of individual changes made in separate
wax working models.
Arms were adjusted, an arm band hides this join, and a headband was added on this one,
perhaps to suit the buyer.
The traditional preoccupation of the art historian with identifying artists and dating their
original works is beginning to change.
The focus is becoming broad and interdisciplinary, and we are looking at bronzes as we have never
looked at them before.
Archaeologists, art historians, and conservation scientists are teaming up to explore new paths.
Our discoveries are yielding information that leads us to a new understanding of this major
art form.
Traditional bronze sculptors, like their patron god Hephaestus, knew how to please their customers.
We are just now beginning to see the full picture and recognize the breadth of craftsmanship
of these artists of antiquity.
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