Palazzo Strozzi exhibition explores what broken sculptures can reveal

Palazzo Strozzi opened Broken: The Power of the Fragment in Florence on 25 September, bringing together more than 80 works and artefacts to examine what damaged sculptures can reveal. The exhibition asks visitors to consider a fragment as an object with a history and expressive force of its own, rather than only as the incomplete remainder of another work.

Organised with the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the show ranges from ancient Egypt to contemporary art. According to Palazzo Strozzi, loans come from collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre in Paris and the British Museum in London. The Florence presentation runs until 24 January 2027.

A face reduced to a detail

One of the exhibition's examples is a limestone fragment showing only the nose and mouth of the Egyptian ruler Akhenaten. The Guardian reports that it was found in dumps south of the Great Aten Temple at el-Amarna. With the rest of the face absent, the surviving carving makes the treatment of the lips unusually prominent.

Co-curator C. D. Dickerson told the Guardian that fragments can direct attention to details a viewer might pass over in a complete statue. Pointing to the Akhenaten fragment, he said: ‘You wouldn’t have considered the subtle way that the lip has been crisply carved in this stone if it had been part of a bigger statue with a bunch of other features.’ That observation is a curatorial reading of the work, not a claim that its original makers intended it to be seen this way.

Damage and political change

Some works carry visible signs of upheaval. The Guardian describes a lifesize kneeling prior from Romainmôtier in Switzerland whose decapitation was likely connected to the iconoclasm of the Protestant Reformation. It also reports that a left foot and right hand survive from an equestrian monument to Louis XIV destroyed during the French Revolution. In both cases, the remaining pieces point to the monument or figure that once stood there.

A 1923 bust of Mussolini by Adolfo Wildt bears a bullet hole through its forehead, damage the Guardian says followed the fall of the fascist regime. Co-curator Andrew Sears told the newspaper that images of rulers were sometimes destroyed during ancient changes of regime or religion because people believed the images contained a ruler's life force. He said some damaged sculptures were subsequently displayed as deterrents. Those accounts show how an object's later treatment can become part of its meaning.

Breakage can also be part of making a work. The exhibition includes a terracotta model of a headless and armless woman, dated to about 1533 and attributed to Michelangelo. The Guardian reports that technical analysis of its breakage points suggests it was deliberately sculpted as a fragment. The exhibition also includes contemporary artists such as Louise Bourgeois, extending the question of what a fragment can express beyond ancient objects and historical damage.

What the pieces cannot settle

The meaning of broken Jōmon dogū figurines remains less certain. The Guardian quotes Dickerson describing intentional breakage and the sharing of pieces between communities. But a Sainsbury Institute educational resource says archaeologists disagree about whether dogū were deliberately broken. At the Shakado site in Japan, it records 1,116 fragments and no complete figurine; fragments from the same figure could be matched in fewer than 3% of cases. It presents communal ceremonies and dispersal as a possible explanation, not an established account.

A 2003 study by archaeologist Akihiko Kaneko offers another caution. Comparing 1,035 Final Jōmon figurines from Iwate Prefecture, Kaneko found that breakage rates varied with the figurines' type, size, form and construction. He concluded that most differences in the rates depended on manufacturing characteristics and said further computer simulation was needed to confirm the results. The findings do not settle why any particular dogū was broken.

Broken remains open at Palazzo Strozzi until 24 January 2027. The museum lists daily hours of 10:00 to 20:00, extending to 23:00 on Thursdays, with paid admission. Its exhibition page identifies Washington as the next venue. For visitors in Florence, the works offer several ways to read a missing part: as a record of damage, a deliberate artistic form, or a question whose answer has yet to be established.