- Bronze and brass
- Silver and gold
- East Asia
- East Asia
Lead has two main uses in which some artistic purpose may be served: in architecture, as a material for roof coverings, gutters, piping, and cisterns; and in decorative art, as a material for sculpture and applied ornament. As an architectural material it has the advantage of being easily worked and yet offers great resistance to climatic conditions. The low melting point of lead and its relative freedom from contraction when solidifying make it particularly suitable for casting, and it has been used as a substitute for bronze or precious metals.
The earliest known lead sculptures are small votive figures found at Troy and Mycenae. In the Hellenistic period lead sarcophagi were known, and the Romans made much use of the metal. Large amounts of worked lead in various forms have been found in those parts of England where the Romans had permanent settlements.
England was one of the main lead-producing areas in the Middle Ages, and lead was more widely employed there than on the continent of Europe. In the 12th century the German monk Theophilus, in his treatise on metalworking, refers to lead only in connection with casting rods for stained-glass windows and as a material through which silver sheets might be hammered; but in England at about the same time a remarkable series of lead fonts was cast, of which 16 still survive in position, the most famous being those at Walton-on-the-Hill, Surrey, and at Wareham and Dorchester in Dorset. Lead was also used in the Middle Ages for church roofing; and it was used, doubtless because of its cheapness, for the small badges or medallions sold to pilgrims at the great medieval shrines. Lead could even be useful, in the proper disguise, to simulate rich ecclesiastical objects, for not all religious institutions were wealthy: a group of 14th-century caskets covered with lead tracery, gilded to look like precious metal, have survived in church treasuries. These were used as reliquaries, but some were originally made for secular purposes.
Renaissance to modern
The Renaissance passion for collecting bronze medals and plaquettes led to a demand for cheap replicas, and these were made with great precision in lead. The metal also played an important role in the goldsmiths’ trade. The fashion for elaborate relief ornament of the Renaissance and Mannerist periods called for a degree of skill in modelling that was beyond the powers of the average goldsmith. The practice therefore grew up for the pattern makers of Augsburg and Nürnberg, Germany, to sell lead models of ornamental details and figures from which goldsmiths working elsewhere could in turn make molds. An extensive collection of these models is preserved in the Historisches Museum, Basel, Switzerland. The trade expanded to include large medallions and plaquettes, the chief masters of which were the German goldsmiths Peter Flötner, Jonas Silber, and the Master H.G. (Hans Jamnitzer) and the Dutch goldsmith family of van Vianen. Lead in sculpture is more suitable for the production of small figures than life-size statues, which, if unsupported, become distorted through their own weight. Among the few life-size equestrian lead statues is one of Frederick Louis, prince of Wales, in the grounds of Hartwell House, Buckinghamshire, England. From the 16th century, lead appeared in England in the form of gutters and pipe heads (which carried rainwater down from the gutters), often with cast ornament. Some of the late 17th- and early 18th-century pipe heads, cast with the arms of the owner of the house and the date of erection, are important decorative features.
An extension of the use of lead took place with the introduction of lead garden sculpture—figures, vases, and urns—in the late 17th century. An example of that work is a pair of garden vases 15 feet high at Schloss Schleissheim in Bavaria. The silvery gray colour of such sculpture and its resistance to the weather made it suitable for use in the many formal gardens that were created at that time. English garden sculpture rarely achieved any particular aesthetic status, but in 18th-century Germany and Austria lead was used for more serious sculpture by a group of artists of high standing. In the 19th century lead was out of favour with sculptors, partly because improved transport made it possible to bring marble from Italy at low cost. Its soft colouring and the fact that it does not reflect light give it advantages, however, and it was used in the 20th century by Aristide Maillol and by Sir Jacob Epstein, who executed the lead figure of the Virgin and Child in Cavendish Square, London.John F. Hayward