A spokesperson says---
"...Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450-1500 brings together nearly forty works-including statues, reliefs, candelabra, medals, and more-by some of the most influential sculptors in this period, among them Donatello, Vecchietta, and Francesco di Giorgio...
...The exhibition is divided into thematic sections...
...The first section explores the position of bronze in fifteenth-century Siena across both decorative and utilitarian purposes-from its use in churches and household settings to stables, the battlefield, and beyond. This section highlights the complex site of the bronze foundry, where engineers, founders, goldsmiths, and sculptors shared materials and expertise and could each have a hand in the creation of a single object. The complexities of bell casting is represented by a majestic work created in 1454 for a church outside Siena connected to its great hospital complex, Santa Maria della Scala. Other objects include an ornate flagpole-torchère, a horse ring, and a gilded trefoil relief possibly used as a sword pommel... Nearby, books with drawings of bronze cannons made for the powerful Orsini family and the Sienese state attest to the prestige of the city's founding industry.
...devoted to Donatello... and to his Sienese sojourn of 1457-61... He is therefore represented by the... tomb slab of Giovanni di Bartolomeo Pecci, Bishop of Grosseto-cast before his arrival in the city and sent there for assembly and installation. An over life-size bronze with traces of inlaid enamel or resin...
The third and largest gallery within the exhibition dives deeper into the possibilities and challenges of expression in bronze. Following the tomb slab by Donatello, the first grouping further explores the memorializing potential of bronze in funerary sculptures... a notable example in the show is the unfinished monument commemorating Mariano Sozzini the Elder, a jurist of European renown and friend of Pope Pius II... Sozzini appears newly laid upon a bier, dressed in the robe and headband of his profession, with... drapery and lifelike face, feet, and hands that may have been molded directly from the corpse. This section of the show also includes Vecchietta's last will and testament, which features, in place of a signature, a drawing of his Christ as the Man of Sorrows uniquely created for his own funerary chapel...
The next section features a grouping of... bronze portrait medals... The group of eight works are all made by or attributed to Francesco di Giorgio, with portraits of notable rulers, humanists, bankers, and soldiers on the obverse and mythological or allegorical subjects on the reverse...
The central section of this gallery reunites for the first time all the portable bronze reliefs produced in Siena in the period... Represented here is Francesco di Giorgio... reliefs by his master, Vecchietta... Among these is his... Resurrection of Christ...
The next display is devoted to a group of six freestanding statues and statuettes...
This display includes a Hercules from Berlin newly attributed to Francesco di Giorgio, shown alongside a closely related statuette from the Frick. Completing the group is a third, monumental Hercules from Dresden... In another pairing, a Frick statuette of David with the Head of Goliath, attributed to Giovanni di Stefano, is shown alongside a smaller work of the same subject attributed to Francesco di Giorgio from the Capodimonte Museum in Naples.
...a panel in this section explains the complex, multistep process of bronze casting-notably the lost-wax method..."
