Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World

Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2015. 367 pages, illustrations (chiefly colour), map; 30 cm. Published on the occasion of the exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, on view at Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, from March 14 to June 21, 2015; at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, from July 28 to November 1, 2015; and at the National Gallery of Art from December 6, 2015 to March 20, 2016. Firm binding, clean inside copy. OVERSIZE! No priority/international, except by arrangement. Richly illustrated with colour plates. "For the general public and specialists alike, the Hellenistic period (323-31 BC) and its diverse artistic legacy remain underexplored and not well understood. Yet it was a time when artists throughout the Mediterranean developed new forms, dynamic compositions, and graphic realism to meet new expressive goals, particularly in the realm of portraiture. Rare survivors from antiquity, large bronze statues are today often displayed in isolation, decontextualized as masterpieces of ancient art. Power and Pathos gathers together significant examples of bronze sculpture in order to highlight their varying styles, techniques, contexts, functions, and histories. As the first comprehensive volume on large-scale Hellenistic bronze statuary, this book includes groundbreaking archaeological, art-historical, and scientific essays offering new approaches to understanding ancient production and correctly identifying these remarkable pieces. Designed to become the standard reference for decades to come, the book emphasizes the unique role of bronze both as a medium of prestige and artistic innovation and as a material exceptionally suited for reproduction." - Publisher. CONTENTS: Map with findspots of ancient bronzes; Reframing Hellenistic bronze sculpture, by Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin; Why bronze?, by Andrew Stewart; Aletheia/Veritas: The new canon, by Gianfranco Adornato; Contexts of discovery, by Sea´n Hemingway; Hellenistic bronze sculptures from the Aegean Sea: Recent discoveries (1994-2009), by George Koutsouflakis and Angeliki Simosi; Bronze sculpture in the Hellenistic East, by Matthew P. Canepa; Eikon chalke: Hellenistic statue honors in bronze, by R.R.R. Smith; Repeated images: Beauty with economy, by Carol C. Mattusch; Looking back: Archaic and classical bronzes of the Hellenistic and Roman periods, by Christopher H. Hallett; The color of bronze: Polychromy and the aesthetics of bronze surfaces, by Sophie Descamps-Lequime; Techno-Chronology? Alloy composition and the use of technical features for the dating of ancient bronzes, by Alessandra Giumlia-Mair; Catalog. Formulas of power: the image of the ruler; Flesh and bronze: bodies ideal and extreme; The new realism of the divine; When pathos became form: likeness and expression; Apoxyomenos and the art of replication; Editions of the past: retrospective styles; Alloy compositions of select bronze sculptures, by prepared by Jeffrey Maish.. 1st. Paperback. Fine. 4to.