Word: colleoni
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...slenderness of the old priest, who was probably about 80 when the likeness was made. His face is all parchment and bone. The prow of a nose and the jutting underlip have a fierce antique gravity, like Renaissance portrait sculpture-one thinks of the faces of Verrocchio's Colleoni or Donatello's Gattamelata. Every cut of the chisel seems to possess the final, unlabored Tightness of a brush stroke by a master of sumi-e (ink painting). There is probably not a sculpture on view in America this week that gives a clearer impression of the mystery...
Nothing Oldenburg does is lacking in irony-and this includes his wish to make monuments. The traditional language of monuments was heroic-Napoleon gesturing on a marble plinth festooned with trophies and Graces, or Verrocchio's statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni raking his bronze eyes across a conquered piazza from his striding horse. The monumental hero is, actually and metaphorically, bigger than life. But to make one, there has to be some belief in heroes, and there must be something to celebrate...