Bronze

On stepping into the Central Hall at Burlington House, the visitor slips into a dark, sea-blue space, essentially empty except for one form, mounted on a raised platform in the center but seeming to float in the quiet aquatic atmosphere. The Dancing Satyr, one of the life-size Greek bronzes most recently dredged up from the bed of the Mediterranean, soars through the room, his head thrown back in drunken abandon, locks streaming to the side. As remarkable as the size, the naturalistic modeling of form, and the inlaid alabaster eyes are, it is the drama of the satyr’s pose that arrests the viewer and plants the seed for the Royal Academy exhibition’s theme. Given the fragmentary state of the Greek figure, its standing leg not found with the rest of the body off the coast of Sicily in 1998–99, the miracle of this statue in particular, and of bronze in general, is that one bronze leg, one bronze ankle, and one bronze foot are sufficiently strong to support the cavorting figure. Bronze, unlike clay, stone, marble, or ivory, has sufficient compression and tensile strength to replicate the biomechanics of the musculoskeletal system. This simple but extraordinary fact is the rationale behind the exhibition at the Royal Academy: how humans the world over, with the notable exceptions of native Americans and Australians, have crafted sculptures from this curious alloy of copper to wonderful effect. The sweeping theme of sculptures in copper alloys—the curators are quick to point out that distinctions between bronze (copper alloyed with tin) and brass (copper alloyed with zinc) are largely academic and did not inflect the choice of works for the exhibition—from nearly six thousand years of human history on three continents, is a difficult one to organize. David Ekserdjian and Cecilia Treves, lead curators of the show, eschewed the traditional march of time and adopted an installation based on the formal types conventionally cast in the medium: figures, animals, objects, groups, reliefs, gods, and heads. The basilica-like hall of the second gallery welcomes a cast of characters from renowned collections worldwide, presenting them lined up with ceremonial formality. A Nigerian seated figure of the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century confronts the colossal Rustici figures from the north door of