Dead or Alive? Giving Life to Bronze

Abstract To produce a bronze statue, clay, wax, and bronze are modelled and literally poured into being, transformed by means of wax from solid to liquid and back again to solid. The metamorphosis of materials is the essence of the process; the finished product can make a statue seem to be a living being. Inlaid stone eyes, copper lips, silver fingernails, gave life to the metal, as did light moving across a polished bronze body. Ancient testimonia reveal a fascination with the lifelike appearance of bronzes. Odysseus sees in the palace of Alkinoos ‘golden youths (χρύςειοι κοῡροι), holding in their hands blazing torches, and standing on the strong-compounded bases, to shed a gleam through the house by night, and to shine on the banqueters’ (Homer Odyssey 7.100–102). In Rome, Lucretius scorned his contemporaries who had ‘golden images of boys (aurea simulacra) holding flaming torches in their right hands to light banquets that last into the night’ (De rerum natura 2.24–26.15). There are also reports of statues actually coming alive: at Olympia, a boxer who was defeated by Theagenes of Thasos beat up the victor’s statue every night, until eventually the statue fell on him and killed him. The man’s sons sued the statue for murder, and the Thasians threw the statue in the sea, whereupon their crops failed. The oracle of Apollo at Delphi made them recover the statue: fishermen recovered it, the statue was reinstated, and all was well (Pausanias 6.11.5–9).