Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze
October 15, 2008 through January 18, 2009
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’s 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.
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Andrea Briosco Riccio (1470-1532), Lamp, 15th century, 16.83 cm high. The Frick Collection, New York, photo: Michael Bodycomb |
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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 für 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, Mr. and Mrs. Howard Phipps, Jr., 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 indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.
Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum
February 10 through May 10, 2009
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Francisco de Zurbarán, 1598-1664, Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, 1633, oil on canvas, 62.2 x 109.5 cm, The Norton Simon Foundation |
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The Frick Collection is pleased to present a selection of five masterpieces
of European painting from the highly acclaimed Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California. The exhibition, on view in the Oval Room from February 10 through May 10, 2009, will afford New York and East Coast audiences the occasion to see superb masterworks from the collections of the Norton Simon Art Foundation and The Norton Simon Foundation, a very special opportunity as both institutions generally do not allow their works to travel. The five featured paintings are Jacopo Bassano’s (Jacopo da Ponte, 1510–1592) Flight into Egypt, c. 1544–45; Peter Paul Rubens’ (1577–1640) Holy Women at the Sepulchre, c. 1611–14; Guercino’s (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, 1591–1666) Aldrovandi Dog, c. 1625; Francisco de Zurbarán’s (1598–1664) Still Life with Lemons, Oranges and a Rose, 1633; and Bartolomé Esteban Murillo’s (1617–1682) Birth of Saint John the Baptist, c. 1655. None of these artists is represented in the Frick’s collection, and the outstanding quality of each of these Old Master paintings makes them well suited to be viewed in the company of the Frick’s works.
The project is organized by Colin B. Bailey, Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator of The Frick Collection, and Carol Togneri, Chief Curator of the Norton Simon Museum, with Margaret Iacono, Assistant Curator of the Frick. This exhibition marks the beginning of a series of reciprocal loan exchanges between the two institutions.
Masterpieces of European Painting from the Norton Simon Museum follows in the Frick tradition of presenting important Old Master paintings from American institutions that are less accessible to the New York public. Previous projects in this series have been: Masterpieces from The Cleveland Museum of Art (November 2006–January 2007); Masterworks from The Toledo Museum of Art (October 2002–January 5, 2003), and In Pursuit of Quality: 25 Years of Collecting Old Masters, Paintings from The Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth (November 1989–January 1990).
Norton Simon (1907–1993) was a pioneering entrepreneur whose enormous wealth derived from numerous business ventures ranging from the creation of a sheet metal distribution company and the triumphant revival of Hunt Foods, Inc. to the eventual formation of Norton Simon Inc., a multiindustry conglomerate that included Hunt-Wesson Foods, McCall’s Publishing, Max Factor cosmetics, and Avis Car Rental. Simon’s focus turned to art in the 1950s, and in the same intelligent and strategic manner employed to forge his business empire he amassed an art collection of great renown. Like museum collection of Henry Clay Frick, whom Simon admired enormously and whose museum was used as a model for his own, Simon’s evolved as his tastes did. His first acquisitions were Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by such recognized masters as Degas, Renoir, Gauguin, and Cézanne. In the 1960s he began acquiring Old Masters and Modern works, choosing to sell many of his acclaimed French Impressionist paintings at the decade’s close; in the 1970s Simon’s appreciation for Indian and Southeast Asian art emerged and was reflected in his burgeoning collection. Today the Norton Simon collections consist of Western and Asian art spanning more than 2,000 years and contain paintings, sculpture, works on paper, and photography.
The The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated publication with an essay by the authority on the collection of Norton Simon, Senior Curator Sara Campbell, as well as in-depth catalogue entries by Margaret Iacono. The softcover publication will be available in the Museum Shop of the Frick, in the institution’s Web site (shopfrick.org), and by phone 212-288-0700. |
