Unalloyed Insights

The copper came from Cyprus, the tin from far-off Britannia, and the Greeks wrought the ensuing alloy, bronze, in myriad forms: vases, swords, tripods, safety pins, mirrors, votive statuettes, household icons and colossal public statues. Most of the large statues have been lost, broken up or melted down, but thousands of graceful hand-sized household objects and prized miniatures remain. Though fragmented and stained with the crusts, scars and patina of age, they nonetheless offer spirited insights into classical days and ways.

How deftly the Greeks--and Romans and Etruscans--wrought this versatile metal from 1700 B.C. onward can be seen from a display of 316 classical bronzes, covering a period of 23 centuries, selected from 79 private and museum collections by David Gordon Mitten of Harvard's Fogg Art Museum (see color opposite). The first exhibition on such a scale ever to be circulated in the U.S., the classical bronzes will be shown at the City Art Museum of St. Louis in March, later at the Los Angeles County Museum.

The great charm and enduring value of the pieces assembled are that they reflect a culture that drew no distinction between major and minor arts. Anything from a horse bit to a box top was seen as an object of beauty, while each bronze affirmed in subtle ways the flavor of its region. Where Sparta reigned, simplicity and self-discipline are powerfully reflected in the lancet-eyed Laconian warrior whose body and thoughts alike are swathed in a foreboding cloak.

Fleshy & Glowering. Few bronzes of Athens' great Age of Pericles exist, but Hellenistic sculptures of the succeeding Alexandrian empire, when taste ran to mannered elegance, survive in great numbers. One of the most popular goddesses was Aphrodite, identified by peoples in conquered Egypt and Syria with Isis. She was commonly portrayed primping at her mirror, fixing her hair or adjusting her sandal. St. Augustine testifies that even in his time (the 4th century A.D.) her worshipers repeated these gestures in front of her idol as a form of veneration.

The Romans, by and large, adopted Greek styles as their own, became the world's first "antique" collectors by buying Grecian art. Workmen throughout the far-flung empire harked back to Periclean models, though the 2nd century Jupiter found in Belgium is Roman in its compact proportions. The Romans' greatest innovation was the realistic portrait, and their skills are powerfully summarized in a fleshy, glowering face, described by Yale Art Historian Sheldon Nodelman as "by far the most important of the Roman bronzes, one of the most striking pieces in the show." Though the portrait has not been formally identified, the Fogg's Mitten says that "there is no question" but that it is the brutal but brilliant emperor Caracalla (A.D. 188-217) who murdered his brother (and co-emperor) in order to secure sole power, put to death some 20,000 of his brother's supporters, but also adorned Rome with many handsome public buildings. Imperial statues such as this were set up both in homes and public squares, and Romans were expected to burn incense to them. Failure to worship the imperial god, as the early Christians knew, was punishable by imprisonment and death.

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