Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

"One of the world's leading authorities on ancient bronze sculpture, Carol C. Mattusch urges us to discard the terms "Greek original" and "Roman copy" and to adopt instead terms that distinguish unique works from those produced in series and those produced as variations on a theme. She discusses the dating of bronzes based on criteria of technique and style, and considers technical innovations in the art of portraiture. Most controversially, she offers evidence that Greek artists cast bronzes in series based on a single model." "Mattusch points out that examples of series castings can be found among the statuettes and vessel attachments from the Geometric and Orientalizing periods. From the Classical period onward, statues also appear to have been cast in series. Certain styles and types of images that achieved widespread popularity during the Hellenistic and Roman periods were produced in large quantities and in several different places." "This book will raise important new questions in the field of Classical bronze sculpture. How long might a single model remain in use and how far might casts from it be transported for production? What is the significance of an artist's signature on a work in a series and what influence was wielded by the potential buyer? And, given these issues, what should the criteria be for distinguishing Greek works from Roman ones?"--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Mattusch (George Mason Univ.), a recognized expert, has produced an informative, perceptive study of Greco-Roman bronze statuary. She describes the artistry and craft of bronze sculpture from clay model to mould to cast to finished work, establishing thereby criteria for dating, or not dating, individual pieces, based largely on technical matters, contextualized within the range of Greek stylistic evolution and the persistence of prestigious or popular types. Mattusch also exposes modern restorations and fakes, eliminating them from the ancient repertory; indicates the importance of serial production in the foundries; and deals, at length, with the alleged "original," an issue of great interest to historians, collectors, and all those concerned with the aesthetic character of reproductions. Because the ancient original is almost always a lost clay model, the surviving bronze cast exists at some distance from its artistic conception; even further removed, not the least by the alteration of medium, are marble copies of ancient bronzes, traditionally used to invoke the lost works of Greek masters. All this, and much more, has been soberly laid out in this excellent, definitive, yet accessible work of technical and visual analysis that combines general and particular observations. Undergraduate; graduate; faculty; general. R. Brilliant Columbia University