Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Some light tanning due to age. Plates bright and vivid.. Year 1980. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> When the first volumes of Die italienischen Bronzestatuetten der Renaissance were published Wilhelm Bode was in his early sixties General Director of the Royal Museums in Berlin and proud surveyor of all the riches those museums had acquired with such extraordinary rapidity. By the turn of the century Berlin was one of the world’s foremost museum cities owing in large part to the sense energy and dedication of Bode and his colleagues. His Kaiser ennobled him for his services and he became Wilhelm von Bode. A greater honor awaited him after death when the Fast German government in recognition of the tireless worker renamed the old Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum the Bode-Museum. Paradoxically the paintings and marbles that were the glories of the Kaiser-Friedrich-Museum and most of the bronze statuettes that figure so splendidly in these plates were already in the West in the museum at Dahlem. Monumental in size and scope the work on bronzes originally appeared in two volumes in 1907. The English edition The Italian Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance followed a year later. In 1912 a third volume was published in German and English. The work effectively inaugurated the modern study of Italian bronzes. It arose from Bode’s long experience as museum keeper and from his shrewd recognition of the need for a body of photographic plates to accompany growing interest in the bronze statuette on the part of collectors. Like everything he touched from Dutch painting to Persian carpets this area of study was itself destined to be a classic field of inquiry and one which would expand his authority. The volumes were patterned on two earlier Bode projects. His massive compendium illustrating Florentine sculpture Denkm?ler der Renaissance-Skulptur Toscanas was issued serially between 1892 and 1905; many of its excellent plates reappeared in The Italian Bronze Statuettes of the Renaissance. His Rembrandt a luxurious eight-volume corpus once considered the Bible of Rembrandt studies appeared between 1897 and 1900. Throughout this period he kept up the flow of articles books and catalogues of museum and private collections that augmented his formidable reputation on many fronts. (OS)