For the ancient Greeks, bronze was the substance of the divine. Stone was permanent and earthly. But bronze caught light, gleamed like skin in sunlight, and carried a warmth that made the gods it depicted seem almost alive. The tragedy is that almost none of it survives. Of the thousands of large-scale bronze sculptures produced in ancient Greece, only a handful remain. The rest were melted down by Romans looting conquered cities, and by medieval foundries recycling metal for weapons and bells. What we have lost is almost incomprehensible in scale.
Greek bronzes were produced using the lost wax method. A sculptor modeled the figure in clay and wax, encased it in a clay mold, then fired the whole assembly. The wax melted away, and molten bronze was poured into the hollow left behind. Eyes were inlaid in glass and stone. Lips were rendered in copper for a ruddier tone. The finished object was subtly polychromatic, a figure that read differently in torchlight than in open sun.
Our greatest surviving bronzes were saved by shipwreck. The Riace Warriors, found by a diver off the coast of Calabria in 1972, are two life-size figures with intact inlaid eyes and copper lips still parted after 2,500 years. The Artemision Bronze, Zeus or Poseidon, arm raised mid-throw, was recovered from a wreck off the Greek coast in the 1920s. Both were almost certainly Roman plunder lost at sea. The pattern is telling for sure. The sea preserved what civilization could not.
The marble sculptures that fill our museums today, such as the Discobolus and the Doryphoros, are almost all Roman copies of lost Greek bronzes, translated into a more durable but far less luminous material. We are, in most cases, looking at shadows of shadows. The originals, with their caught light and inlaid eyes, are somewhere in the earth, the sea, or long since melted into something else entirely.
About the Author
Morgan Avery Mucha is a junior year art history student specializing in Ancient Greek art, with a focus on visual culture and material/ religious practice. She can read and write Ancient (Attic) Greek and has written for her academic blog, Art Abloom, for three years, engaging with classical art, archaeology, and historical interpretation.
Read more on the Honors Blog.
Leave a Reply