Famous Bronze Statues: 12 Great Survivors
The most famous bronze statues are survivors. Bronze melts into cannons and coins, so most ancient bronzes are gone. These twelve made it, through shipwrecks, tsunamis, mistaken identity and one casting that nearly burned down the sculptor’s house.
Why bronze is the rarest survivor
Almost every ancient bronze was melted down for weapons or money. Marble survived because nobody can melt it.
One statue on this list survived 1,800 years because Rome mistook its rider for the wrong emperor.
Two were pulled out of the sea by a snorkeler in 1972.
One sat through a tsunami that carried away the building around it.
And the most famous bronze of antiquity is here as a ghost: it no longer exists.
1 | The Riace Bronzes (about 450 BC)
In 1972 a snorkeler off the coast of Calabria saw an arm rising from the sand. Under it were two Greek warriors, life size, with copper lips, silver teeth and bone eyes.
Almost no original Greek bronzes survive on land. These two spent 2,000 years protected by the sea that sank them, and now live in a museum in Reggio Calabria.
2 | The Equestrian Statue of Marcus Aurelius (about 175)
The only large equestrian bronze to survive ancient Rome, and it survived by mistake: medieval Rome believed the rider was Constantine, the first Christian emperor, so nobody dared melt him.
The original now sits indoors in the Capitoline Museums, with a replica on the piazza Michelangelo designed for it.
3 | David, Donatello (about 1440)
The first freestanding nude statue cast in Europe since antiquity: a teenage David in a shepherd’s hat, one foot on Goliath’s severed head.
It stood in the Medici courtyard in Florence, a private provocation long before Michelangelo’s giant made David public. The tradition it broke open is the story of the nude in art.
4 | Perseus with the Head of Medusa, Benvenuto Cellini (1554)
The casting nearly failed. Cellini, sick with fever, watched the metal curdle, and by his own account threw his household pewter, plates and all, into the furnace to save the pour.
The statue came out whole except three toes, finished later. It still stands where Florence first saw it, in the Loggia dei Lanzi.
5 | The Horses of Saint Mark (ancient, Venice)
Four gilded horses with the strangest passport in art. Cast in antiquity, looted from Constantinople by Venice in 1204, looted from Venice by Napoleon in 1798, returned in 1815.
The originals retired indoors in the basilica museum; replicas stand on the facade. Plunder did not end with them: I cover the biggest modern art heists in Grand Theft Museum.
6 | The Capitoline Wolf (date disputed)
The she wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, the logo of Rome itself. For centuries it was presented as Etruscan work from around 500 BC.
Radiocarbon tests published in 2012 point to a casting in the Middle Ages, more than 1,500 years later. Rome kept the symbol and quietly updated the label.
7 | The Great Buddha of Kamakura (1252)
A 13 meter seated Buddha that once sat inside a great hall. In 1498 a tsunami swept the hall away. The bronze stayed.
It has sat in the open air ever since, five centuries of weather on its shoulders, and you can step inside the hollow body.
8 | The Benin Bronzes (13th to 19th century)
Thousands of cast plaques and heads made for the royal court of Benin, in present day Nigeria, with a casting technique European visitors could not match.
British forces carried them off in the raid of 1897 and they were sold across Western museums. Several countries and institutions have begun returning them to Nigeria.
9 | The Burghers of Calais, Auguste Rodin (1889)
Six men of Calais walking to their expected execution in 1347, ropes on their necks, keys in hand. The city that commissioned it wanted heroes on a pedestal.
Rodin gave them despair at ground level, and insisted the group stand where citizens could look them in the eye. Twelve casts exist, from Calais to Tokyo.
10 | The Colossus of Rhodes (destroyed 226 BC)
The ghost of the list. A bronze sun god some 33 meters tall, one of the seven wonders, felled by an earthquake after about 60 years standing.
The wreck lay on the ground for eight centuries before being sold for scrap, hauled away, says the legend, on 900 camels. And no, it never straddled the harbor: engineers agree the pose is impossible in bronze.
11 | Manneken Pis (1619, Brussels)
Fifty five centimeters of urinating toddler, and one of the most kidnapped artworks in history. The statue has been stolen or attacked so often that the one on the corner today is a 1965 replica.
He also owns more clothes than most people: a wardrobe of over 1,000 costumes, managed by its own museum.
12 | The Thinker, Auguste Rodin (1904)
The most recognized bronze pose on earth, cast again and again: more than 25 authorized casts exist. One of them, in Cleveland, was damaged by a bomb in 1970 and left unrepaired on purpose.
Who he really is, and why there is no single original, is in my list of the most famous statues in the world.
Standing in front of the survivors
Florence gives you Donatello’s David and Cellini’s Perseus in one afternoon. Rome has the Marcus Aurelius and the Wolf on the same hill.
For the carved side of the story, my lists of famous marble sculptures and the greatest sculptures pick up from here.
Bronze, quick answers
What is the most famous bronze statue? The Thinker by visibility, the Marcus Aurelius by miracle of survival, the Riace warriors by quality.
Why are ancient bronzes so rare? Bronze was money and weaponry waiting to happen. Most statues were melted down centuries ago.
Did the Colossus of Rhodes straddle the harbor? No. The image is a Renaissance invention, and the pose would have collapsed under its own weight.
Is the Capitoline Wolf really ancient? Probably not. Radiocarbon dating points to a medieval casting, though the debate continues.
Where can I see original Greek bronzes? Reggio Calabria for the Riace warriors, Athens for the Artemision god, and very few other places on earth.
A last number: of all the thousands of large bronzes ancient Rome displayed, the equestrian Marcus Aurelius is the only one of its kind that still exists. One mistaken identity saved 1,800 years of history.