Artlog

This will be the first monographic exhibition ever dedicated to Riccio, one of the greatest and least-known bronze masters of the Renaissance. The long-overdue exhibition and publication will focus on Riccio autograph works and will present more than thirty statuettes and reliefs from every phase of his career. These works will be joined by the few bronzes believed to be derived from the master’s lost compositions. Held in the fall of 2008, Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze, will be shown exclusively at The Frick Collection.

Current scholarship primarily presents Riccio as an antiquarian whose sculptures satisfied the erudite tastes of a closed circle of Paduan humanist collectors. This exhibition aims to change these perceptions dramatically by presenting bronzes that reveal him to be a sculptor whose creative genius equaled that of Donatello, whose understanding of antiquity rivaled Mantegna’s, and whose ability to express human passion could approach Leonardo’s own. The aesthetic impact generated by showing Riccio’s small bronzes together in a monographic exhibition will emphasize that his art, like that of all great Renaissance masters, expressed universal themes that speak to a wide audience, today as they did then.

Curated by Denise Allen, Curator at The Frick Collection, and a Renaissance specialist, and Peta Motture, Curator of Renaissance Sculpture, Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue that will include essays on Riccio’s life and career and on the artist and the small bronze as an art form. It will also feature a technical study of Riccio’s casting technique. Authors include the exhibition curators and other leading scholars in the fields of Renaissance sculpture and bronze technique, among them Richard Stone, Senior Museum Conservator, Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Volker Krahn, Chief Curator, Skulpturensammlung und Museum Byzantinische Kunst, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin; Dimitrios Zikos of the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; Davide Banzato, Director, Musei Civici di Padova; and Claudia Kryza-Gersch, Curator of Renaissance Sculpture, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. The catalogue will include detailed scholarly entries for each sculpture and will be richly illustrated with new photographs of Riccio’s bronzes.

Major funding for Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze has been provided by The Christian Humann Foundation and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.

Additional support has been generously provided by Mr. and Mrs. Walter A. Eberstadt, Mr. and Mrs. J. Tomilson Hill, Peter P. Marino, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation, Hester Diamond, and The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation.

The project is also supported, in part, by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

The catalogue was made possible by the Robert Lehman Foundation, Inc. and the Thaw Charitable Trust.

This exhibition is supported by an inde