LOS ANGELES — It’s almost as if the dozens of exquisitely detailed, often perfectly intact bronze sculptures on display at the J. Paul Getty Museum disappeared into an ancient witness-protection program — and decided to stay there for thousands of years.
“Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World,” which recently opened at the museum, brings together more than 50 bronzes from the Hellenistic period that extended from about 323 to 31 B.C.
Many of them, such as the life-size figure of an exhausted boxer, his hands still bandaged from a match, brow cut and bruised, are stunning in their detail. So is the “The Medici Riccardi Horse,” a horse’s head complete with flaring nostrils and a detailed mane. “Sleeping Eros” shows an infant sprawled out sound asleep on a pedestal. One arm is draped across the child’s chest, his tousled hair in gentle repose.
Perhaps even more stunning, however, is that any of these things survived.
Thousands of such beautifully detailed bronzes were created during the Hellenistic Age. Larger works were assembled piece by piece and welded together by artisans working in almost assembly line fashion and displayed in public places and the homes of the well-to-do.
But most, say the exhibition’s co-curators, Kenneth Lapatin and Jens Daehner, eventually were melted down and turned into something else such as coins.
“We know Lysippos made 1,500 bronzes in his lifetime, but not one survives,” Lapatin said of the artist said to be Alexander the Great’s favorite sculptor. “They’ve all been melted down.”
To this day, roads, fields and other public places across Greece and much of the rest of the Mediterranean are dotted with empty stone bases where bronze statues once stood, added Daehner during a walk-through of the stunning, hilltop museum ahead of the exhibition’s opening.
Which is why you rarely see more than one or two when you visit most any museum, said J. Paul Getty Director Timothy Potts.
The nearly 60 that will be on display at the J. Paul Getty until Nov. 1 are thought to represent the largest such collection ever assembled. They have been contributed by 32 lenders from 14 countries on four continents.
