Bronze sculpture - Definition and Overview

Jeté, a bronze by Enzo Plazzotta at Millbank, Westminster, London

A bronze sculpture of Richard the Lionheart (Richard the First), outside Parliament, London, England. Sculpted in 1860 by Carlo Marochetti

Bronze is the most popular metal for cast metal sculptures; a cast-metal sculpture of bronze is often called a bronze. Common bronze alloys often have the unusual and very desirable property of expanding slightly just before they set, thus filling the finest details of a mold.

The manufacture of bronzes is highly skilled work, and a number of distinct casting processes may be employed, including lost-wax casting (and its modern-day spin-off ceramic shell casting), sandcasting and centrifugal casting. In the lost-wax casting method, the artist starts with a full-sized model of the sculpture, most often a clay model. A mold is made from the clay pattern; a wax is then cast from the mold. The wax is then invested in another kind of mold or shell, which is heated in a kiln until the wax runs out. The investment is then filled with molten bronze.

Bronzes on Wikipedia pages include:

Sculptors

• Maggi Hambling
• Henry Moore
• Enzo Plazzotta
• Felix de Weldon

People

• Andrew Browne Cunningham, in Trafalgar Square, London, England.
• George VI of the United Kingdom, at Carlton House Terrace, London, England.
• Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson - relief panels of his Victory at Cape St Vincent, and Death.
• A conversation with Oscar Wilde by Maggi Hambling, installed in Adelaide Street, near Trafalgar Square, London in 1998.
• Shepherd and Sheep by Dame Elisabeth Frink Paternoster Square
• Young Dancer by Enzo Plazzotta, on Broad Street, London.
• Temperance, a statue atop a drinking water fountain to the north end of Blackfriars Bridge, London.

• in the National Statuary Hall Collection, United States Capitol, Washington, USA, 55 statues, including
  • Edward Lewis Bartlett
  • George Clinton
  • John Campbell Greenway
  • Ernest Gruening
  • Eusebio Francisco Kino
  • Joseph Wheeler

Abstract and Symbolic

• Henry Moore bronzes

Animals

• Charging Bull - by Arturo Di Modica, in Bowling Green park near Wall Street in New York City
• Mustangs at Las Colinas
• Nelson's Column - Sir Edward Landseer's Lions guard the diagonals
• [[1] (http://members.vol.at/schmiede/gsteinbock.htm)] - a QT-VR animation showing a ibex sculpture in tombak sheet metal

See also

• Erotic art in Pompeii
• List of artworks
• List of sculptors