Art in bronze and brass
Art in bronze and brass dates from remote antiquity. These important metals are alloys, bronze composed of copper and tin and brass of copper and zinc.
Proportions of each alloy vary slightly. Bronze may be normally considered as nine parts of copper to one of tin. Other ingredients which are occasionally found are more or less accidental. The result is a metal of a rich golden brown colour, capable of being worked by casting — a process little applicable to its component parts, but peculiarly successful with bronze, the density and hardness of the metal allowing it to take any impression of a mould, however delicate. It is thus possible to create ornamental work of various kinds.
Casting
The process of casting in bronze and brass is known as cire perdue, and is the most primitive and most commonly employed through the centuries, having been described in by the monk Theophilus, and also by Benvenuto Cellini. Briefly, it is as follows: a core, roughly representing the size and form of the object to be produced, is made of pounded brick, plaster of paris or other similar substance and thoroughly dried. Upon this the artist overlays his wax, which he models to the degree required in his finished work. Passing from the core through the wax and projecting beyond are metal rods. The modelling being completed, called lost-wax casting or machine-casting, the outer covering which will form the mould has to be applied; this is a liquid form of clay and plaster sufficiently thin to find its way into every detail of the wax model. Further coatings of liquid are applied, so that there is, when dry, a solid outer coating and a solid inner core held together by the metal rods, with the work of art modelled in wax between. Heat is applied and the wax melts and runs out, and the molten metal is poured in and occupies every detail which the wax had filled. When cool, the outer casing is carefully broken away, the core raked out as far as possible, the projecting rods are removed and the object modelled in wax appears in bronze. If further finish is required, it is obtained by tooling.Greek and Roman
Copper came into use in the Aegean area near the end of the predynastic age of Egypt about 3500 BC. The earliest known implement is a flat celt, which was found on a Neolithic house-floor in the central court of the palace of Knossos in Crete, and is regarded as an Egyptian product. Bronze was not generally used until a thousand years or more later. Its first appearance is probably in the celts and dagger-blades of the Second City of Troy, where it is already the standard alloy of 10% tin. It was not established in Crete until the beginning of the Middle Minoan age. The Copper Age began in northern Greece and Italy c. 2500 BC, much later than in Crete and Anatolia, and the mature Italian Bronze Age of Terremare culture coincided in time with the Late Aegean civilisation. The original sources both of tin and copper in these regions are unknown.Earliest implements and utensils
Tools and weapons, chisels and axe-heads, spearheads or dagger-blades, are the only surviving artifacts of the Copper Age, and do not show artistic treatment. But some Early Minoan pottery forms are plainly copied from metal prototypes, cups and jugs of simple construction and rather elaborate design. The cups are conical and sometimes a stem-foot; there are oval jars with long tubular spouts, and beaked jugs with round shoulders set on conical bodies. Heads of rivets which tie the metal parts together are often reproduced as a decorative element in clay. The spouted jars and pierced type of axe-head indicate that metallurgical connections of Early Minoan Crete were partly Mesopotamian.Minoan and Mycenaean
Weapons and implements
It is known that Middle Minoan bronze work flourished as an independent native art. To the very beginning of this epoch belongs the largest sword of the age, found in the palace of Malia. It is a flat blade, 79 cm long, with a broad base and a sharp point; there is a gold and crystal hilt but no ornament on the blade. A dagger of somewhat later date, now in the Metropolitan Museum of New York is the earliest piece of decorated bronze from Crete. Both sides of the blade are engraved with drawings: bulls fighting and a man hunting boars in a thicket. Slightly later again are a series of blades from mainland Greece, which must be attributed to Cretan craftsmen, with ornament in relief, or incised, or inlaid with gold, silver and niello. The most elaborate inlays, pictures of men hunting lions and cats hunting birds, are on daggers from the shaftgraves of Mycenae. These large designs cover the whole of the flat blade except its edge, but on swords, best represented by finds at Knossos, the ornament is restricted to the high midribs which are an essential feature of the longer blades. The type belongs to the beginning of the Late Minoan age. The hilt is made in one piece with the blade; it has a horned guard, a flanged edge for holding grip-scales, and a tang for a pommel. The scales were ivory or some other perishable substance and were fixed with bronze rivets; the pommels were often made of crystal. A rapier from Zapher Papoura is 91.3 cm long; its midrib and hilt-flange are engraved with bands of spiral coils, and its rivet-heads with whorls. Ordinary Mycenaean blades are enriched with narrow mouldings, parallel to the midribs of swords and daggers, or to the curved backs of one-edged knives. The spearheads have hammered sockets. Other tools and implements are oval two-edged knives, square-ended razors, cleavers, chisels, hammers, axes, mattocks, ploughshares and saws. Cycladic and mainland Greek weapons show no ornament but include some novel types. A tanged spearhead has a slit or slipped blade for securing the shaft; and the halberd, a west European weapon, was in use in the Middle Helladic Greece. There are few remains of Mycenaean metal armour; a plain cheek-piece from a helmet comes from Ialysos in Rhodes, and a pair of greaves from Enkomi in Cyprus. One of the greaves has wire riveted to its edge for fastening.Utensils
and Mycenaean vessels are many. First in size are some basins found at Tylissos in Crete, the largest measuring 1.40 metres in diameter. They are shallow hemispherical bowls with two or three loop-handles riveted on their edges, and are made in several sections. The largest is composed of seven hammered sheets, three at the lip, three in the body, and one at the base. This method of construction is usual in large complicated forms. The joints of necks and bodies of jugs and jars were often masked with a roll-moulding. Simpler and smaller forms were also cast. The finest specimens of such vases come from houses and tombs at Knossos. Their ornament is applied in separate bands, hammered or cast and chased, and soldered on the lip or shoulder of the vessel. A richly decorated form is a shallow bowl with wide ring-handle and flat lip, on both of which are foliate or floral patterns in relief.A notable shape, connecting prehistoric with Hellenic metallurgy is a tripod-bowl, a hammered globular body with upright ring-handles on the lip and heavy cast legs attached to the shoulder.
Statuettes
Purely decorative work is rare among Minoan bronzes, and is comparatively poor in quality. There are several statuettes, very completely modelled but roughly cast; they are solid and unchased, with blurred details. Well known are a figure of a praying or dancing woman from the Troad, now at Berlin, and another from Hagia Triada; praying men from Tylissos and Psychro, another in the British Museum, a flute-player at Leyden, and an ambitious group of a man turning a somersault over a charging bull, known as the Minoan Bull-leaper. This last was perhaps a weight; there are smaller Mycenaean weights in the forms of animals, filled with lead, from Rhodes and Cyprus. Among the latest Mycenaean bronzes found in Cyprus are several tripod-stands of simple openwork construction, a type that has also been found with transitional material in Crete and in Early Iron Age contexts on the Greek mainland. Some more elaborate pieces, cast in designs of ships and men and animals, belong to a group of bronzes found in the Idaean cave in Crete, most of which are Asiatic works of the 9th or 8th centuries BC. The openwork tripods may have had the same origin. They are probably not Greek.Hellenic and Italian
Geometric Period
During the Dark Ages of the transition from bronze to iron, the decorative arts stood almost still but industrial metalwork was freely produced. There are a few remains of Geometric bronze vessels, but as in the case of the Early Minoan material, metal forms are recorded in their pottery derivatives. Some vase-shapes are clearly survivals from the Mycenaean repertory, but a greater number are new, and these are elementary and somewhat clumsy, spherical or biconical bodies, huge cylindrical necks with long band-handles and no spouts. Ceramic painted ornament also reflects originals of metal, and some scraps of thin bronze plate embossed with rows of knobs and lightly engraved in hatched or zig-zag outline doubtless represent the art which the newcomers brought with them to Greek lands. This kind of decorative work is better seen in bronzes of the closely related Villanova culture of north and central Italy. A novel feature is the application of small figures in the round, particularly birds and heads of oxen, as ornaments of handles, lids and rims. The Italian Geometric style developed towards complication, in crowded narrow bands of conventional patterns and serried rows of ducks; but contemporary Greek work was a refinement of the same crude elements.Engraving appears at its best on the large catch-plates of fibulae, some of which bear the earliest known pictures of Hellenic mythology. Small statuettes of animals were made for votive use and also served as seals, the devices being cast underneath their bases. There is a large series of such figures, mostly horses, standing on engraved or perforated plates, which were evidently derived from seals; among the later examples are groups of men and centaurs. Pieces of tripod-cauldrons from Olympia have animals lying or standing on their upright ring-handles, which are steadied by human figures on the rims. Handles and legs are cast, and are enriched with graceful geometric mouldings. The bowls are wrought, and their shape and technique are pre-Hellenic. Here are two of the elements of classical Greek art in full course of development: the forms and processes of earlier times invigorated by a new aesthetic sense.