Bertoldo di Giovanni at the Frick Collection

In January I made a trip to New York, just to see the Bertoldo di Giovanni exhibition at the Frick Collection. I had no idea that New York would be closing down in a couple of months. My Ph.D. is in Italian Renaissance Sculpture, this was the first time the entire body of Bertoldo’s work has been shown in one place, and I was a graduate school colleague of Jim Draper, the Bertoldo expert to whom the catalogue is dedicated. It seemed important to go.

The Frick Collection has two small special exhibition galleries in the lower level, separated by a small vestibule where the exhibition catalogue is on display, usually with one work. I like this arrangement, mainly because it limits the number of objects on view and makes it easy to focus on the individual works of art without worrying about getting through an enormous display. I find it liberating that the exhibitions are relatively small and focused. Because exhibitions at the Frick are more scholarly than most, there are usually few visitors, again encouraging careful study of the works of art.

The Frick doesn’t permit photographs, but at an earlier visit the guard helpfully told me that the images are all available online, and that proves true for Bertoldo also. It is lovely that the Frick provides photographs and information on the works at its exhibition website, so you can see everything in the exhibition online. At the same time, it is particularly characteristic of sculpture exhibitions that reproductions cannot capture the spatial aspects of the works, the depth of relief, the details that can be seen from different viewing angles, and the way the art object actually occupies space. I love this about sculpture and I believe some painting experts find it challenging.

The exhibition included nineteen of the twenty works the curators think can be attributed to Bertoldo. One series of reliefs was noted only in the catalogue, since it is attached to a building, the Palazzo Scala della Gherardesca in Florence. And one series of reliefs, in the exhibition, was executed by at 

least five different artists, presumably after designs by Bertoldo. Bertoldo worked in Donatello’s studio had a role in training Michelangelo. Art historians see many connections among the three artists; part of the role of the exhibition was to call attention to Bertoldo as an artist in his own right, rather than just a conduit between two Renaissance geniuses. I much appreciated that. The exhibition catalogue is full of fascinating information and richly illustrated. Bertoldo was close to Lorenzo de’ Medici and even lived for a time in the Medici Palace.

Battle between Romans and barbarians, marble, late second century CE, Camposanto, Pisa. 

Bertoldo di Giovanni, Battle, bronze, ca. 1480-85, Museo Nazaionale del Bargello, Florence

The first work one saw, in that introductory vestibule, was Battle, ca. 1480-85, a bronze relief roughly 18 by 40 inches. Bertoldo copied it from a much larger marble Roman sarcophagus that he would have seen in the Benedictine abbey of San Zeno in Pisa. The sarcophagus was damaged, with most of the heads and the center portion gone, so he had the opportunity to revise it, at the same time he acknowledged his classical source. The label included a photograph of the sarcophagus and I was struck by how similar the compositions were; he definitely was copying the antiquity at the same time he was improvising on the theme of battle. Scholars have attempted to identify a specific battle, either mythological or contemporary, but they do not agree on the subject.  Seeing the work in person makes the high relief more striking; multiple heads and arms are in complete three dimensions. The faces, clothing, hair, and musculature of the men and horses are in crisp detail, the result of careful carving and polishing that were necessary to complete Renaissance bronzes after they are cast.

The interaction, intertwining of the active men and horses provides much to investigate. The relief is flanked by three female and one male standing figures, with two bound and captive nude males at their feet. The standing figures are copied, but modified, from the Roman original.

In the catalogue entry, Alexander J. Noelle points out that Bertoldo probably visited Pisa relatively often and acknowledges Wilhelm von Bode’s thought that Bertoldo would have accompanied Lorenzo de’ Medici on his frequent visits to Pisa, where Lorenzo had a home. Lorenzo was the de facto ruler of Florence, although he did not have any official position. Bertoldo had the unusual opportunity to be a friend of Lorenzo and at some times even to live in his palace. So, we might imagine Lorenzo and Bertoldo discussing the relief and Lorenzo asking Bertoldo to make him a version of the battle for his fireplace in the Palazzo Medici. The plan might have been simply to depict a battle, with no specific one in mind, providing his patron, Lorenzo de’ Medici, with a gorgeous classical subject for his palazzo.

How would he have made this copy? I imagine that he made detailed drawings and perhaps even modelled a copy of the relief in clay in Pisa and transported them to Florence, where he would have made the final wax model and had the bronze cast in a foundry there. Julia Day, in the exhibition catalogue, suggests that since Bertoldo lived in the Medici Palace, he may not have had space for his own foundry and used that of another artist and bronze caster, probably Adriano Fiorentino.

Bertoldo di Giovanni, Orpheus , ca 1471, bronze, Museo Nazionale del Barbello, Florence

One of my favorite works in the exhibition is the small bronze titled Orpheus, but which has also been thought to represent Apollo. With his twisting body suggestive of dancing, his upturned head that seems in a bit of a trance, and his roughly formed lira da braccia (a common Renaissance stringed instrument), he evokes a spirit of music. The sculpture shows especially effectively how much work an artist does after a bronze is cast, chiseling, filing, and polishing the surface, since parts of it -half the face, the hair, the instrument, part of the torso and animal skin on his shoulders – are still rough-cast. The unfinished quality interestingly romanticizes the image. The catalogue reports a 1471 document published in 2005 that says Bertoldo gave a bronze of Orpheus to a woolen merchant to pay his bill. It is fascinating that the cast itself is seriously flawed, with a huge crack up the back, and to think Bertoldo gave up on it because of the flaw. In addition, he used it to pay a debt in 1471 and may have passed it to the woolen merchant without finishing it.

Bertoldo di Giovanni, Bellerophon Taming Pegasus, ca. 1480-82, bronze, Kunstkammer, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Another documented work by Bertoldo is Belleraphon Taming Pegasus, which has the fascinating signature “Bertoldo modeled me, Adriano [Fiorentino] cast me,” documenting the association between Bertoldo the sculptor and Adriano the founder. Presumably Bertoldo did the final chasing after Adriano cast the figures in bronze. It captures the active nude Belleraphon taking control of the winged horse, Pegasus, with highly polished and carefully detailed surfaces.

Donatello?, Bertoldo di Giovanni?, St. Jerome, ca 1465-66, wood, gesso, paint, Pinacoteca Comunale, Faenza

A wood sculpture of St. Jerome, covered in gesso and paint, seems to be the most controversial object in the exhibition, attributed to Donatello and/or Bertoldo. I gather that scholars continue to debate who made the figure, but my own response was to be repulsed by the odd color of the skin. I wondered how much it has been restored and what it might have looked like before it was repainted. The catalogue discusses what the conservators discovered during the restoration, and its photographs indicate that the surface was probably pretty completely remade so the work looks almost new.

Bertoldo di Giovanni and Followers, Frieze for the Portico of Vill Medici at Poggio a Caiano, ca 1490, glazed terracotta, Villa Medicea di Poggio a Caiano, Polo Museale della Toscana

The exhibition contains mostly bronzes, but I was surprised to see a terracotta frieze, from front of the Medici villa at Poggio a Caiano, arranged around the walls of the second gallery. While the unidentified subject is definitely classical, it’s obvious that several artists – the catalogue says five – executed it and there is no documentation that Bertoldo was associated with it. The attribution comes from the fact that he died at Poggio a Caiano and thus might have been there to design the frieze, which possibly he and others executed. The reliefs are varied in quality, with different depths of relief, different spacing of figures, and more and less clumsy modelling. But since it was intended for an upper cornice on the outside of a building, having the figures silhouetted against a blue background with some of the eyes exaggeratedly deep, might have been all that was necessary. It did make we want to go to Poggio a Caiano.

The exhibition also included six medals designed by Bertoldo. Nicely displayed, so both sides can be seen, they are historically interesting. Having some experience with medals, I find them very difficult to appreciate, however, without being able to hold them, since they were intended to be handled.

This was one of a series of exhibitions examining the work of Renaissance artists who worked in bronze. The Frick has a large collection of small bronzes and it’s impressive that they are using the collection as a springboard for fascinating exhibitions with substantial scholarly catalogues.