(a) Central Italy.
During the Renaissance the sculptor's repertory was increased
by the revival of the bronze statuette. Ancient Greek, Roman
or Etruscan votive figures of deities and animals showed
how attractive and durable such small bronze figurines could
be, as well as providing a source of imagery and showing
how the nude could be rendered. The only things akin to
such statuettes in the Middle Ages had been figures that
were integral components of religious precious metalwork
(e.g. images of the Virgin and St John to flank crucifixes),
and so their early history is tentative: statuettes gradually
emerged from such quasi-architectural contexts as small
niches on shrines to become free-standing objects of art
in their own right. They adorned the desks and libraries
of such humanists as Cosimo de' Medici and Piero I de' Medici
and were made for practical purposes (e.g. as paperweights)
or to adorn lamps or inkstands or simply as miniature representations
of things dear to the owner-famous antiquities, patron saints,
handsome men and women or horses.
The attraction of the small-scale and domestic commission
for artist and patron alike was that pagan subjects and
Classical nudity were acceptable (which they were not at
this stage in monumental, and therefore public, sculpture).
The earliest datable examples come from the workshop of
Donatello and Michelozzo di Bartolomeo, probably being cast
by Maso di Bartolommeo. None, however, is by the hand of
the master, although works attached to a feature in an architectural
context, for example the putti on the font in Siena Cathedral
(c. 1416-31; in situ), prove that Donatello was perfectly
capable of making statuettes. His followers all over Italy,
however, rapidly made up for his omission: Bertoldo di Giovanni
and Antonio Pollaiuolo are famed for this type of work,
each producing masterpieces on a miniature scale (e.g. the
former's Bellerophon and Pegasus, c. 1483; Vienna, Ksthist.
Mus.; see Bertoldo di giovanni; and the latter's Hercules
and Antaeus, c. 1475-80; Florence, Bargello.
Specialists in statuettes also emerged to meet the increasing
demand for these artefacts (e.g. Adriano Fiorentino and
Desiderio da Firenze). Andrea del Verrocchio's Putto and
Dolphin (late 1460s-early 1470s; Florence, Pal. Vecchio),
though not quite a statuette (h. 670 mm), inspired generations
of sculptors who specialized in statuettes (e.g. Giambologna).
In Siena, following Donatello's two periods of activity
there, such sculptors as Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio
Martini also worked on a small scale in bronze. While as
early as the 1440s in Rome, Antonio Filarete made an important
contribution with his splendidly modelled reduction (1440-45;
Dresden, Skulpsamml.) of the Classical equestrian statue
of Marcus Aurelius and another showing Hector (c. 1458-60;
Madrid, Mus. Arqueol. N.), also on horseback.
(b) North Italy.
Bronze statuettes seem first to have been produced in the
north of Italy to supplement the antiquities that were then
being excavated and avidly collected. The mania for collecting
seems to have been strongest in this region, inspired by
the humanism of the University of Padua, and perhaps because
antiquities from the Byzantine Empire were available through
the maritime network of Venice, especially after the fall
of Constantinople (now Istanbul) in 1452. The genuinely
Renaissance statuette evolved out of this minor industry
of copying or faking, hence the penchant for subjects from
Classical mythology; nevertheless, the work of the earliest
true specialist in statuettes, Bartolomeo Bellano, is predominantly
religious in its subject-matter, for example David with
the Head of Goliath (version, New York, Met.) or St Jerome
with the Lion (Paris, Louvre).
Bellano encouraged such able pupils as Andrea Riccio and,
perhaps, Severo da Ravenna. Severo was the next great sculptor
specializing in bronze in Padua; his repertory extended
from figures to domestic artefacts, and his oeuvre has now
been disentangled from that of Riccio: most famous are Severo's
group of Neptune and a Dragon (New York, Frick) and a variety
of satyrs, but he also produced statuettes of saints (e.g.
St John the Baptist, Oxford, Ashmolean; and St Sebastian,
Paris, Louvre). Riccio, arguably the most gifted exponent
of the statuette in the whole Renaissance, recreated for
his intensely intellectual patrons in the University of
Padua a series of Classical nymphs, satyrs, handsome nude
shepherd boys, animals and monsters, as well as weirdly
shaped lamps, grotesque masks and even erotica. All were
imbued with a nervous vivacity, conveyed by his subtle modelling
in the wax, conscientious chasing of every detail and hammering
of every exposed surface.
The Paschal Candlestick (1507-16; Padua, S Antonio; is Riccio's
masterpiece, and the repertory that it provides, even-surprisingly-of
mythological figures, enables the attribution to this artist
of many other similar independent statuettes that are neither
signed nor documented. Andrea Riccio's style is quite unlike
the angular, agonized style of Bellano and reverts to a
canon of slim, well-proportioned figures, normally of calm,
Classical demeanour, very intellectually conceived and deeply
spiritual.
A completely different interpretation of antiquity had meanwhile
appeared in Mantua, at the court of the Gonzaga, introduced
by the bronze sculptor Piero Jacopo Alari, nicknamed 'Antico'
from his penchant for direct copies of Classical statuary,
by contrast with Riccio's free variations. Antico burnished
the surfaces of his nude figures to a high polish, blackened
and then partially gilded them, sometimes even inlaying
their eyes with silver. These luxury products appealed to
such demanding, princely patrons as Ludovico Gonzaga and
Isabella d'Este.
