New York City’s Frick Collection’s newest exhibit centers on Siena, Italy’s, matchless works of Bronze Sculpture, featuring items never before seen. The Frick Collection presents the first-ever exhibition focusing on the destination as a center of artistic excellence and technical innovation in bronze sculpture during the Italian Renaissance.

Siena: The Art of Bronze, 1450–1500 brings together nearly 40 works, including statues, reliefs, candelabra, medals and more by some of the most influential sculptors in this period, among them Donatello, Vecchietta and Francesco di Giorgio. Owing to their size and importance, many of these objects have never been shown outside of Tuscany, let alone in the United States.

Building on popular past presentations of bronze sculpture at Frick, the exhibition invites visitors to appreciate the medium’s extraordinary beauty and versatility while learning about the complex technical and political challenges Sienese bronze workers faced. The Art of Bronze is organized by Giulio Dalvit, Frick’s associate curator, who also authored an accompanying catalogue alongside a team of international contributors.

Italian lenders to the exhibition include Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Florence; Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples; Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia; Museo Diocesano Albani, Urbino; and Museo Civico, Siena. Other major lenders include National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; British Museum and Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and collections in Berlin, Dresden and Vienna.

“Between 1450 and 1500, almost nowhere in Italy did local artistic traditions rely so heavily on a single medium as Siena’s did on bronze,” said Dalvit. “Yet, the Tuscan city has been celebrated chiefly for its paintings, as demonstrated by the landmark exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting, 1300–1350, presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the National Gallery, London, in 2024–25. Now, we are excited to bring long-overdue attention to Sienese bronze sculpture, exploring both the medium’s and the city’s underappreciated importance in Renaissance art history. Uniting some forty masterworks for the first time in one location, this exhibition highlights the revelatory achievements of Sienese artists, which constitute nothing short of a golden age of bronze sculpture.”

A hilltop town in Tuscany, Siena was a crucial center of artistic innovation in Renaissance Italy, owing in part to its position as one of the most important pilgrimage stops on Via Francigena, which connected Rome to France and England. After its defeat in the 1550s by Florence, Siena stood in its rival city’s political and cultural shadow, framed as the epitome of the medieval past.

This exhibition challenges that perception by providing an in-depth survey of Siena’s unparalleled achievements in sculpture, as well as offering a study of bronze as a medium in all its complexity. Through small-scale jewel-like works, visionary reliefs and breathtakingly ambitious life-sized statues, the show will take visitors on a journey through the remarkable diversity of forms that Sienese sculptors were able to achieve.

The exhibition runs through Jan. 18, 2027.