Directors’ Foreword

The Getty has long been committed to the appreciation, study, and conservation of ancient bronzes. Much like Cicero and others who valued these works for their history, beauty, and craftsmanship, J. Paul Getty himself greatly admired bronze sculpture. Among the early purchases that pleased him most were statuettes of gods and heroes. When he passed away in 1976, he was negotiating for the purchase of the rare life-size image of a victorious athlete that has come to be known as the Getty Bronze. Subsequently acquired by the museum that bears J. Paul Getty’s name, that statue was the inspiration for the award-winning international loan exhibition Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World, a project that brought together an exceptional group of ancient bronzes from around the world. The exhibition opened at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence in spring 2015, was seen by more than 165,000 people at the Getty Center in the summer and autumn of that year, and closed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, in spring 2016.

The exhibition’s run in Los Angeles provided the backdrop for the XIXth International Congress on Ancient Bronzes, which the J. Paul Getty Museum and the Getty Conservation Institute were pleased to cohost in October 2015. Over the course of five days, archaeologists, art historians, curators, conservators, and scientists presented the papers published here addressing the diverse aspects involved in the production, reception, and conservation of bronzes of various kinds—not just sculpture—from many cultures and periods.

We are grateful to all of those who came to Los Angeles to present their research and engage in a fruitful exchange of ideas, as well as the many colleagues across the Getty Trust who assisted the organizers of the Congress—the editors of these proceedings—in making it such a success. We are also thankful to the staff of Getty Publications, who have launched this first electronic edition of the Congress papers, advancing the Getty’s leadership role in the digital humanities.

Pliny the Elder wrote that bronze sculpture “has flourished to an extent passing all limit and offers a subject that would occupy many volumes if one wanted to give a rather extensive account of it” (Naturalis historia 34.37). It is our hope that these essays, representing the fruits of research shared at the XIXth International Bronze Congress, provide a lasting contribution to the study and conservation of ancient bronzes and a volume that would assist even Pliny in recounting the history of this treasured medium.