Andrea Riccio at Frick Collection

"Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze" will appear exclusively at New York's Frick Collection from October 15, 2008 to January 18, 2009

The first museum exhibition devoted to the autograph bronze works of Italian Renaissance sculptor and goldsmith Andrea Briosco Riccio (1470-1532) will appear in New York this Fall and Winter. Andrea Riccio: Renaissance Master of Bronze will be on view exclusively at the Frick Collection from October 15, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

Riccio is usually seen as an antiquarian sculptor whose works were made for a closed circle of humanist collectors in Padua. The exhibition's curators, however, have chosen to present him as an artist whose technical virtuosity, knowledge and power of expression rivaled those of Donatello, Andrea Mantegna and Leonardo da Vinci. More than 30 statuettes and reliefs, including six from the Frick Collection, will represent every phase of Riccio's career. Joining them will be a number of bronzes thought to be derived from some of the artist's lost compositions. Attention will be paid to Riccio's casting technique.

Andrea Riccio trained in the Paduan shop of Ambroglio di Cristoforo Briosco, his father and a goldsmith. His interest in bronze stautuary led him to study with sculptor and architect Bartolomeo Bellano, a pupil of Donatello. Known for his mythological figures that decorated everyday objects, Riccio's masterpiece remains his 12-foot-high Paschal Candlestick in Padua's Basilica of S. Antonio. He received religious commissions for churches in Venice and Verona. Other prominent examples of his work include Boy Milking a Goat in Florence's Bargello National Museum, Warrior on Horseback in London's Victoria and Albert Museum, Arion in Paris' Musée du Louvre and a Satyr in New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.