Travel Tip: Art and Archaeology in United States
Renaissance and Baroque Bronzes from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

The Fitzwilliam Museum’s collection of Renaissance and Baroque bronzes is second only to that of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. The Frick Collection presents thirty-six of the Fitzwilliam’s finest bronzes.

Massimiliano Soldani Benzi’s Leda and the Swan is one of the signature works from the Fitzwilliam collection, as well as one of the latest, having been cast around 1717. Soldani was Master of the Mint to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany, and in the early eighteenth century his small bronzes — often erotic in subject and always sensual in handling — were avidly collected by Europe’s nobility. Today Soldani is acknowledged as one of the last great Italian masters of the bronze statuette. Elegantly composed groups such as the Leda and the Swan were the trademarks of his production.