The Beauty of Bronze

Oxford University's Ashmolean Museum houses one of the world's largest collections of small Renaissance and Baroque bronzes, largely thanks to the generosity of Charles Drury Edward Fortnum (1820-1899). The British historian and collector was particularly fond of early Italian bronzes and ‘utensils’ - inkwells, candlesticks, saltcellars, mirrors and seals - but was less interested in sculpture from the late 1500s onwards, although he did acquire a number of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century bronzes that deserve to be better known.

This book provides an overview of the collection and an overview of the development of small bronze sculpture over a six-century period from around 1200 to 1800, most of which was produced during a shorter period from around 1450 to 1650.