The Greeks, who learned much about metalwork from the Egyptians, excelled in hammering, casting, embossing, chasing, engraving, soldering, and metal intaglio. Among the ancients, the great emphasis of technology was on aesthetic expression, not on practical utilization. Greek coin dies rank with the finest work of this kind that the world has ever seen. Pottery and bronze hammer-and-cast work were important crafts of ancient Greece. Vases of terra-cotta were often designed to resemble those of bronze, and both kinds were widely used in antiquity. Unlike terra-cotta, which is breakable but otherwise practically indestructible, bronze is subject to corrosion; and a surviving Greek bronze vase in good condition is therefore something of a rarity. The body of the vase, which was hammered out of a sheet of malleable bronze, was usually left plain; the handles, feet, and overhanging lip, which were cast, were decorated. The applied elements were rivetted or soldered.

It was in the time of Lysippus, the distinguished sculptor who flourished about 330 bc, that the fine Greek beaten work for decoration of armour, vases, and objects of domestic use reached its perfection. It was executed by a hammer worked from behind, the outlines being afterward emphasized by chisel or punch; or metal plate was beaten into a mold formed by carving the subject in intaglio upon a resisting material. The embossed shoulder straps of a cuirass, called the “Bronzes of Siris” (4th century bc; British Museum, London), are in exceedingly high relief and are beaten into form with wonderful skill with the hammer. The relief depicts the combat between the Greeks and the Amazons.

Greek bronze statuettes—originally dedicatory offerings in shrines, ornamental figures on utensils, or decorative works of art—have survived in large numbers. They were usually cast solid, rarely hollow. Sometimes even large statuettes were cast solid. (The advantage of solid casting is that the mold can be used repeatedly, whereas in the hollow-casting process the mold is destroyed.) Greek bronzes were originally golden and bright, and they were often decorated with silver or niello for colour contrast. Bronze statuary hardly existed before the introduction of hollow casting, about the middle of the 6th century bc, after which bronze became the most important medium of monumental sculpture; its strength and lightness admitted poses that could not be reproduced in stone.

Etruria

The Etruscans used bronze for cast and beaten work; and although few large works remain, the museums of Europe display a marvellous variety of admirably formed small bronzes. A masterpiece of bronze Etruscan sculpture is the “Chimera” (a mythological beast with a goat’s body, a lion’s head, and a serpent’s tail) from Arezzo, a 5th-century bc ex-voto from a sacred building, found in 1553 and partly restored by Benvenuto Cellini (Museo Archeologico di Firenze). Etruscan bronze workers produced, often for export, votive statuettes, vessels, furniture, helmets, swords, lamps, candelabra, mirrors, and even chariots. An Etruscan chariot of c. 600 bc in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has a body and wheels of wood, sheathing of bronze, and tires of iron, the high front embossed with archaic figures of considerable grace. The Etruscans inlaid bronze with silver and gold in a manner that proves that their skill in this mode of enrichment equalled that of the Greeks and Romans. Many delicately engraved bronze objects were made in the Latin town of Praeneste (modern Palestrina), which possessed a highly developed bronze-working industry. From Praeneste came a remarkable cylindrical container of the late 4th century bc, now in the Villa Giulia, Rome; its richly engraved surface provides a good example of the perfection of ancient drawing.

Rome

Etruscan cities, like those of Greece, were crowded with bronze statues of gods and heroes; and Rome derived its best adornment from the pillage of Etruria and then of Greece. Distinctly Roman work is hard to trace, as the conquered Greeks worked for their masters, and the Romans copied wholesale from the Greeks. Temple statues were nearly always of bronze, but after about 190 bc the metal was chiefly used for architectural decorations and portraiture. The bronze doors of the Pantheon and of the Temple of Romulus in the Roman Forum still occupy their original positions. Two bronze doors in the Lateran Baptistery are supposed to have been brought from the Baths of Caracalla by Pope Hilarius in the 5th century. Also in the Lateran church are four fine gilt-bronze fluted Corinthian columns.

Much Roman small work was exceedingly fine, though it is generally conceded that Roman productions are less aesthetically attractive than those of the Greeks. Pompeii and Herculaneum were essentially Greek towns, and the many beautiful bronzes in the Museo e Gallerie Nazionali di Capodimonte, Naples, collected from the ruins of private houses there, are of Greek workmanship. These included statuettes, mirrors, and all kinds of bronze work useful in a house. Many of these pieces were originally attached to pieces of furniture.

During the closing years of the republic, brass, produced by what came later to be known as the calamine (zinc-carbonate) method, became an important material for the first time. Its various uses included parade armour, as may be seen in a Roman embossed brass helmet in the Castle Museum, Norwich, England.

Teutonic tribes

The Teutonic tribes who conquered and divided the Roman Empire were little versed in the monumental arts and unskilled in figure representation; but in metalworking, in the making of weapons and other utilitarian objects, and in the delicate ornament of the goldsmith’s art they excelled. They were among the earliest in Western Europe to develop the use of enamel decoration on bronze in the champlevé technique.