'Bronze' at the RA
September 10 2012
Video: RA
Jonathan Jones in The Guardian gives the new show five stars, and detects the hand of none other than Leonardo in one of the exhibits:
Officially Leonardo never finished his only attempt at bronze sculpture, a colossal horse he tried to cast in Milan. Officially the work here, a group of three towering figures that usually stands high on the baptistery in Florence, Italy, is by his friend Giovan Francesco Rustici. But the 16th century art writer Giorgio Vasari claimed Leonardo collaborated with Rustici on this masterpiece and here, up close, you can see that he did. One of the awe-inspiring figures has the bald head and "nutcracker" profile of a Leonardo da Vinci caricature. The whole group is like one of his sketches cast in metal. He surely shaped this eerie work of genius, with Rustici modestly acting as technician.
