Military sculpture reductions on display

Cal Lutheran exhibit features copies of famed statues

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The original “Equestrian Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni,” made after the military commander’s death by Andrea del Verrocchio, dates to the late 1400s and stands in Venice, Italy. 

(THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Aug. 18, 2016) An exhibit of small reproductions of giant military sculptures will open Aug. 26 in the William Rolland Gallery of Fine Art at California Lutheran University.

“Historical Military Reductions” runs through Oct. 29 on the Thousand Oaks campus.

Battles and war heroes have been celebrated in monumental sculpture for millennia. Warriors are featured on horses during combat, in contemplation before entering a campaign, or in the moments before death. Over many generations, skilled artists have created reductions, sometimes of works that have since been lost.

The exhibition features four 20th-century bronze reductions of acclaimed military sculptures dating from antiquity. “The Dying Gaul,” depicting the defeat of the Galatians, was probably commissioned in bronze in the third century B.C., but only a marble copy remains in Rome. The reduction of “Alexander the Great on Bucephalos” was based on a first-century Roman copy of a sculpture of the Macedonian king and his beloved horse that probably dated to the fourth century B.C. The original “Equestrian Statue of Bartolomeo Colleoni,” made after the military commander’s death by Andrea del Verrocchio, dates to the late 1400s and stands in Venice, Italy. The marble original of Vincenzo Vela’s “The Last Days of Napoleon I” from 1871 was displayed at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1867, where it won a prize and garnered the artist fame.

The pieces are from the William Rolland Collection.

Admission is free. The gallery, located in William Rolland Stadium, is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday. For more information, contact curator Rachel T. Schmid at 805-493-3697 or rollandgallery@callutheran.edu or visit CalLutheran.edu/rolland.

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