Sculpture

This installation celebrated Walter A. and Vera Eberstadt's notable gift of Giovanni Francesco Susini's Lion Attacking a Horse and Leopard Attacking a Bull to The Frick Collection in 2002. The drawings, prints, books, and objects on display illustrated the subject of combating animals, as it was handed down from classical antiquity and transformed in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century art.

The Fitzwilliam Museum's collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes is one of the finest in Great Britain. Beginning February 15, The Frick Collection presented thirty-six of the Fitzwilliam's bronzes, many of which have never before been seen in America. Dating from the turn of the sixteenth century to the early years of the eighteenth century — the period that saw the flowering of the bronze statuette as an independent art form — the sculptures are remarkable for their beauty and refinement.

Created to delight and engage their audiences over countless viewings, bronze statuettes enjoyed immense popularity with rulers and the wealthy educated classes who collected them between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The Frick Collection was pleased to have, as its special fall exhibition, European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection, the first public presentation of a distinguished, little-known private collection devoted to the art of these small- and medium-scale sculptures.

This was the first exhibition devoted to Willem van Tetrode, the Northern sculptor who brought the tradition of the classically inspired Italian Renaissance bronze home to the Netherlands. During almost twenty years in Italy, Tetrode studied and restored antique marble sculpture and worked for celebrated artists such as Benvenuto Cellini. From these experiences Tetrode invented expressive small bronzes showing the male nude in poised or violent motion. These heroic nudes transformed the Renaissance bronze statuette into a powerful Northern idiom.

The Frick Collection presented the first monographic exhibition dedicated to Andrea Riccio (1470–1532), one of the most creative sculptors of the Renaissance. On view were thirty-one autograph works representing every phase of Riccio’s career, three bronzes believed to be derived from the artist’s lost compositions, and two life-size terracotta sculptures. Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze was shown exclusively at The Frick Collection.