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Matisse to Picasso: a compositional study of modern bronze sculptures

Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry volume 395, pages 171–184 (2009)Cite this article

Abstract

Inductively coupled plasma-optical emission spectroscopy (ICP-OES) was used to determine the bulk metal elemental composition of 62 modern bronze sculptures cast in Paris in the first half of the twentieth century from the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. As a result, a comprehensive survey of the alloy composition of the sculptures of many prominent European artists of the early twentieth century is presented here for the first time. The sculptures in this study consist of predominantly copper with two main alloying elements (zinc and tin). By plotting the concentrations of these two elements (zinc and tin) against each other for all the sculptures studied, three clusters of data become apparent: (A) high-zinc brass; (B) low-zinc brass; (C) tin bronze. These clusters correlate to specific foundries, which used specific casting methods (sand or lost wax) that were influenced by individual preferences and technical skills of the foundry masters. For instance, the high-zinc brass alloys (with the highest levels of tin and zinc and the lowest melting temperature) correspond to most of the Picasso sculptures, correlate with the Valsuani foundry, and are associated with the most recent sculptures (post-WWII) and with the lost-wax casting method. By expanding the ICP-OES database of objects studied, these material correlations may become useful for identifying, dating, or possibly even authenticating other bronzes that do not bear foundry marks.

 

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Notes

  1. It is important to note that ellipses highlighting the three clusters have been drawn on the figures to simply guide the eye and have no statistical significance. However, given that the plots already give quite clear separations of the groups, statistical analysis was not deemed necessary at this time.

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Acknowledgements

This research benefited from the financial support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The authors thank Juris Sarins (SIPI Metals Corporation) and Phil Meehan (Atlas Bronze) for providing bronze reference materials and Saman Shafaie and Keith Macrenaris (Northwestern University) for numerous useful discussions. A portion of this work was completed at the Northwestern University Analytical Services Laboratory (NU-ASL). A description of the facility and full funding disclosure can be found at http://pyrite.chem.northwestern.edu/analyticalserviceslab/asl.htm.

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Affiliations

  1. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Marcus L. Young & David C. Dunand

  2. The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 60603, USA

    Suzanne Schnepp & Francesca Casadio

  3. The Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA, 19101, USA

    Andrew Lins & Melissa Meighan

  4. Department of Chemistry, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, 60208, USA

    Joseph B. Lambert

Authors
  1. Marcus L. Young
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  2. Suzanne Schnepp
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  3. Francesca Casadio
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  4. Andrew Lins
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  5. Melissa Meighan
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  6. Joseph B. Lambert
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  7. David C. Dunand
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Correspondence to Francesca Casadio.

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Young, M.L., Schnepp, S., Casadio, F. et al. Matisse to Picasso: a compositional study of modern bronze sculptures. Anal Bioanal Chem 395, 171–184 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-009-2938-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00216-009-2938-y

Keywords

  • Bronze sculpture
  • ICP-OES
  • Modern bronze