Bronze Sculpture - History

The great civilizations of the old world worked in bronze for art, from the time of the introduction of bronze for edged weapons. The Greeks were the first to scale the figures up to lifesize. Very few examples exist in good condition of these cast works. The seawater-preserved bronze, now called "The Victorious Athlete" is a fine example but painstaking efforts were required to bring it to its present state for museum display. Far more Roman bronze statues have survived. Over the long creative period of Egyptian dynastic art, small lost wax bronze figurines were made in large numbers and several thousand of them have been conserved in museum collections. From these beginnings, bronze art has continue to flourish up to the present.