This is the repository for Guidelines for the Technical Examination of Bronze Sculpture. This digital book was first published February 11, 2025, by the J. Paul Getty Museum. It is available online at https://www.getty.edu/publications/bronze-guidelines/ and may be downloaded there free of charge in multiple formats.

About the Book

Since the fourth millennium BCE, bronze has been the preferred medium for some of the most prestigious and sacred works of art. But only through interdisciplinary research can the fabrication of these extraordinary objects be properly investigated, interpreted, and documented. This innovative publication bridges the expertise of myriad art-technological specialists to create a new framework for advancing the understanding of bronze sculpture.

Essential reading for curators, conservators, scientists, archaeologists, sculptors, metallurgists, founders, dealers, collectors, and anyone interested in the life cycle of a bronze, this volume explains how to identify the evidence of process steps, metals used, casting defects, and surface work and alterations before moving on to address analytical techniques ranging from visual exams to imaging, material analyses, and dating. The guidelines are accompanied by detailed illustrations, including videos, charts, and animations; a robust vocabulary, ensuring precision across English, German, French, Italian, and Chinese; a diverse selection of case studies; and a comprehensive bibliography.owned by artists.

Using this Repository

This is one in series of multiformat publications using Quire™, Getty’s multiformat publishing tool.

We are dedicated to maintaining this publication for years to come at the permanent URL, https://www.getty.edu/publications/bronze-guidelines/, and in its various formats and incarnations. For any updates to the book, we will be following something between an app and traditional book publication model. Updates will only be made in regulated chunks as formal revisions and new editions and will always be thoroughly documented here in the repository, as well as in the revision history included with each of the book’s many formats.

The primary content pieces of the book can be found in the content directory. The main branch represents the current, published edition at all times, and the revisions branch, when present, will show changes currently under consideration. We invite you to submit suggestions or corrections via pull request on the revisions branch, by posting an issue, or by emailing us at [email protected].

Development Notes

This project was last built with the following software versions:

• Node 18.20.5
• Quire CLI 1.0.0-rc.25

Branches

branch	about
main	The primary branch
first-pages, second-pages, third-pages, final-pages	Versions of the project at various stages
first-pages-hugo, prototype	Early, prototype versions of the project created for testing
forthcoming	A static placeholder page that was displayed at the book’s final URL on getty.edu prior to publication
revisions	Any revisions currently under consideration but not yet published

Figure Images Submodule

Many of figure images for Bronze Guidelines are licensed from third parties for use exclusively in this publication. As such, they are kept in a separate, private repository, https://github.com/thegetty/bronze-guidelines/, which is linked to this main publication repository as a submodule in content/_assets/images/figures/. When cloning this repo for further development, you’ll permissions for the private repository and will need to clone recursively in order to clone both the main repo and the submodule.

git clone --recursive https://github.com/thegetty/bronze-guidelines.git

Build and Deploy the HTML Version

1. Set publication.url to https://www.getty.edu/publications/bronze-guidelines/

2. Run quire build

3. In _site find all instances of src=\"/_assets/images/ and replace with src=\"/publications/bronze-guidelines/_assets/images/

4. Copy content/embeds/ into _site/

5. Run netlify deploy

Create a PDF Version

1. Build the current site: npm run build

2. Move needed files (which Vite is otherwise removing) into the _site directory: rm -r _site/_assets/images/figures && cp -r content/_assets/images/figures _site/_assets/images/figures && cp public/pdf.html _site && cp public/pdf.css _site

3. Fix the font paths: Open _site/pdf.css, find /_assets/fonts/ and replace with _assets/fonts/

4. Output the PDF: npm run build:prince

Create an EPUB Version

1. Set publication.url to http://localhost:8080/

2. Run quire build

3. Run the following regex find and replace patterns:

   href="visual-atlas/([0-9]{3})/
   href="page-94_print-visual-atlas.xhtml#fig-$1
   
   href="visual-atlas/v([0-9]{2})/
   href="page-94_print-visual-atlas.xhtml#vid-$1
   
   href="tables/([0-9]{2})/
   href="page-95_tables.xhtml#table-$1
   
   <video.*?video>
   [nothing]
   
   #fig-121"
   #fig-121-print"
   

4. Run quire epub

5. Unzip the resulting EPUB file, and in the package.opf file, run the following regex find and replace pattern:

   <item id="([0-9])
   <item id="pic-$1
   

6. Zip the file back up

7. Run EPUB validation to confirm

Customizations Made to 11ty Templates/Files

_includes/components/analytics.js _layouts/base.11ty.js Added Google Analytics 4

_includes/components/figure/caption.js Remove hard-coded <em> tags

_includes/components/contributor/bio.js _plugins/shortcodes/contributors.js Fix contributor id values to avoid EPUB validation errors

_includes/components/copyright/licensing.js Customized licensing language

_includes/components/figure/modal-link.js _includes/components/figure/label.js _includes/components/figure/video/element.js Linked figures to iframe viewer rather than modal

_includes/components/figure/video/element.js Added Poster image to Vimeo output so that could show poster on page, and iframe embed in modal.

_includes/components/figure/image/element.js _includes/components/figure/image/html.js Allow annotated images to display in line on page, not just modal

includes/components/figure/image/print.js Output ALL image layers for checkbox and radio button annotations

_includes/components/figure/table/html.js Updated link to open iframe viewer instead of modal

_includes/components/head.js _includes/components/head-tags/opengraph.js _includes/components/head-tags/twitter-card.js Update and clean-up handling for social sharing

_includes/components/icons.js Add some icons and made sure they are consistent weight and size

_includes/web-components/lightbox/index.js Add <details> element around lightbox captions

_includes/components/modal/index.js Added class to enable styling in modal vs. inline

_includes/components/navigation.js Removed title truncation in navbar, and show section titles/links in center instead of home page link

_includes/components/object-filters/object-card/object-image.webc Fixed source of thumbnails for videos and embeds/tables

_includes/components/page-header.js _includes/components/table-of-contents/item/list.js _layouts/table-of-contents.11ty.js Added handling for contributor_as_it_appears at the page-level

_includes/components/page-title.js Wrap label, label divider, and title elements in their own spans. Don't include an empty .quire-page-seperator element to avoid EPUB validation error

_includes/components/scripts.js Add call for custom.js file

_includes/def.liquid Custom include to create definition pop-ups.

_includes/web-components/modal/index.js Allow links with .q-figure__modal-link classes anywhere, open figure in modal.

_includes/translation-headings.liquid Assigns title with liquid variable to be used in vocab page accordions and includes accordionGlobalControls

_layouts/base.11ty.js Add page layout as data attribute on <body> to facilitate styling

_layouts/entry.liquid Use figureAllOutputs shortcode

_layouts/entry-embed.liquid Variant of layout: entry but uses renderFile in place of canvas panel for special embeds (3d-models, svg, etc.)

_layouts/page.case-study Copy of entry layout but with default pageHeader and no abstract or tombstone.

_layouts/visual-atlas.liquid New layout specifically to create grid of all figure images.

_plugins/filters/fullname.js Join names with a non-breaking space.

_plugins/filters/getContributor.js Include local sort_as value if one is given, so page-level contributors are sorted whether defined on page or in publication.yaml

_plugins/markdown/index.js content/_assets/javascript/application/index.js Create better line breaks for URLs by inserting zero-width spaces, but remove space when copied to clipboard

_plugins/shortcodes/accordion.js content/_assets/styles/components/accordion.scss Adjusted appearance of accordions copy icon and tooltip

_plugins/shortcodes/cite.js Return the id, highlighted in yellow, if citation is missing in references.yaml

_plugins/shortcodes/contributors.js Refactor logic to handle oxford commas correctly

_plugins/shortcodes/def.js Custom shortcode to display vocabulary pop-ups with definitions and links.

_plugins/shortcodes/figure.js _plugins/shortcodes/figureAllOutputs.js Exclude regular figures from EPUB and PDF

_plugins/shortcodes/figureGroup.js Rewrote to output a wrapped set of figures, not broken down into rows.

_plugins/shortcodes/objectGroup.js A variant of the figure group shortcode, but creates groups of simple figure thumbnails that are linked to open in the custom iframe viewer.

_plugins/shortcodes/objectLink.js Based on open and previously ref, creates figure object links that open in iframe viewer

_plugins/shortcodes/index.js

_plugins/transforms/outputs/epub/index.js _plugins/transforms/outputs/epub/transform.js Copy embed image files to EPUB

_layouts/page.liquid content/_assets/javascript/application/iframe-viewer.js content/_assets/styles/iframe-viewer.css Add iframe-based image viewer

content/_assets/javascript/application/intersection-observer-factory.js Changed rootMargin to 0 for better slide triggering

content/_assets/javascript/application/index.js Add script for iframe-based image viewer; allow only one pop-up to be open at a time; fix max-width of pop-ups, especially for narrower Visual Atlas text areas; manage loading indicator on case study pages

content/_computed/eleventyComputed.js Add page tags value as classes, and contributor_as_it_appears as data item

content/_assets/javascript/custom.js content/_assets/styles/custom.css

Colophon

Headings are set in Akrobat, by Fontfabric, available under a Free Font End User License Agreement. The body text is Noto Sans, by Google, available under the SIL Open Font License (OFL).

License

© 2025 J. Paul Getty Trust

The text of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. All images are reproduced with the permission of the rights holders acknowledged in captions and are expressly excluded from the CC BY-NC license covering the rest of this publication. These images may not be reproduced, copied, transmitted, or manipulated without consent from the owners, who reserve all rights.