Hours of Night and Day: A Rediscovered Cycle of Bronze Reliefs

Created around 1730, this group of reliefs adds fundamentally to our understanding of bronze sculpture in the period between the late Baroque and the Enlightenment. The sculptor Pietro Cipriani, who collaborated on the reliefs with the painter Giovanni Casini, emerges as a key Florentine bronze artist of the early 18th century. The works help confirm that the rich tradition of bronze sculpture in Florence - initiated by Giambologna and influential across Europe - continued for one generation longer than scholars previously believed. The reliefs also show that the last major exponent of this tradition was Pietro Cipriani. The Hours of Night and Day sculptures beautifully encapsulate early 18th-century European ideas about the cyclical nature of time and about the characteristics of particular moments.