Free Republic

Amateur detectorists James Spark and Mark Didlick will claim half the proceeds. The other half goes to the landowner, as yet unnamed. Quoted by the Mail, Spark reveals they found the Mars statue first. The history hunters believed it to be Victorian. How wrong they were. Once the bust was unearthed, the scale of the discovery became clear! Spark says he and Didlick were “proud to find such an important historical artifact.” He talks about Roman road links in the area, speculating on a possible connection to the burial. After detecting the hoard, the men presented it to the York...

9 of the very many bronze shapes of vessels made in China, mostly from the Shang and Zhou dynasties, 1600 to 256 BC. Music is Feng Ru Song playing Wind Through the Pines from the Taoist Music Orchestra CD, available through Amazon.

In 1964, Italian fishermen off the coast of the Adriatic Sea pulled out of international waters a nearly complete, life-size ancient bronze statue of an athlete. Standing with his weight on his right leg, the nude athlete reaches with his right arm toward the wreath on his head. Victorious in his competition, he will take off his crown and dedicate it to the gods. "The round face, with wide-set eyes, small nose, motionless cheeks, and petite, pointed chin appears somewhat vacuous," writes Jens M. Daehner of the Victorious Athlete. "The face subtly conveys a state of exhaustion, a situational realism...

Sculptures to be displayed at Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, thought to be the only surviving bronzes by the Renaissance artist Two handsome, virile naked men riding triumphantly on ferocious panthers will on Monday be unveiled as, probably, the only surviving bronze sculptures by the Renaissance giant Michelangelo. In art history terms, the attribution is sensational. Academics in Cambridge will suggest that a pair of mysterious metre-high sculptures known as the Rothschild Bronzes are by the master himself, made just after he completed David and as he was about to embark on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. If correct, they are the only...