A sumptuous exhibition of small sculptures, “European Bronzes from the Quentin Collection,” has just opened at the Frick. It’s a beautiful, crowded, agitated show of nearly 40 statuettes – mythological, allegorical, and religious – in gleaming, lacquered- and gilded-bronze, precious metal, and terracotta.

Sculptures of Hercules, Mars, and Venus; Christ and St. John the Evangelist; horses, nymphs, and angels all activate the small exhibition spaces. Their bodies – tautly flexed and tightly turning in acts of heroism or athleticism, or languorously poised in acts of sacrifice, devotion, or erotic abandon – all appear to be performing on their pedestals for one another, as if in conversation or competition. The show’s deliciously rich range of lacquered bronze, polished and patinaed, spans in color from golden to copperish to reddish to greenish. In the fantastic “Mercury and Cupid” (early 17th century) by Francesco Fanelli, its surface is a glossy, almost-black, dark chocolate brown.

Coordinated by the Frick’s Associate Curator Denise Allen, “European Bronzes” is arranged chronologically and includes Italian, French, English, and northern-European sculpture made between the late 15th and the mid-18th centuries, during the golden age of the statuette, both in its technical mastery and popularity. The sculptures range in size from roughly three-and-a-half inches to two-and-a-half feet in height.

They were made by artists such as Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi, Francesco and Antonio Susini, Hendrick de Keyser, and Barthelemy Prieur. They were collected mostly in Italy over a period of the last 25 years (with the assistance of art dealer Patricia Wengraf) by the keen eye of Claudia Quentin. A few of the works, including the two masterpieces “Mars” (1570s) and “Sleeping Nymph” (before 1584), both by Giambologna – who perfected the technique of bronze casting – represent the bronze statuette at its best.

Most of the sculptures in “European Bronzes” (High Renaissance, Mannerist, or Baroque) were modeled after large-scale contemporaneous works or after sculptures from antiquity. Some of the sculptors quote themselves. Others quote figures by Michelangelo, Leonardo, Verrocchio, or Mantegna, as well as Greco-Roman marbles of Apollo, fauns, and athletes, the “Belvedere Torso” or the “Laocoon.”

Inspired by Leonardo’s preparatory drawing for “Battle of Anghari,” Giambologna’s strutting, cocksure “Mars,” sans sword, is halted in midstride. Every flexed muscle, vein, toe, and wound-up curl on his head is flared and poised for action. The artist does not merely dutifully count the hairs on Mars’s head; he breathes life and tension into his molten form. Giambologna is remarkably able to maintain the larger moves, the sweeps and curves of Mars’s twisting body, against the tiniest of details: fingernails, furrowed brow, alert gaze, and roiling beard.

The sculptures at the Frick (most often idealized nudes) are intimate in scale yet grand in subject, originally created for people such as princes

and kings. Coveted as precious objects, they were kept on shelves, tables, or in cabinets, and viewed privately. Some were functional as well as decorative.

Included in the show is a wonderful Venetian bronze “A Door Knocker With a Nereid” (16th century). Other sculptures on view, such as Quentin’s first acquisition, “Putto” (c. 1535-40), from Nuremberg, probably originally were intended to hold candles. The tiny, silver, sleekly erotic and succumbing “Christ at the Column” (16th century) by the circle of Guglielomo della Porta in Rome, was placed in a wall shrine for private devotion. Meant to be held in your hands, the figurines have a sense of solid compression and, despite their lofty subjects and intensity, a kind of subdued, inward calm.

Unlike maquettes and sketches for larger sculptures, which in anticipation of their future scale can often feel outwardly expansive, as if they were unfurling in space, the statuettes – wrestling, spearing, clubbing, or fleeing – can feel delicate and quiet: inward. They inspire intimacy and one-to-one reflection.

Giambologna’s reclining “Sleeping Nymph” (probably cast in 1584 for Cardinal Ferdinando de Medici) is weighty, and her splayed, rolling volumes both sink into and swell outward from her chaise. Viewed from the end of her couch, she looks like she is rushing out of a starting gate. Massimiliano Soldani-Benzi’s terracotta “Pieta with Two Putti” (c. 1715) is gently flowing and baroque in feel. It is reminiscent of Bernini’s “Blessed Lodovica.”

Not every work on view is spectacular, but together they remain so. Walking through the exhibition, I could not help but notice, as my eyes grazed one lustrous surface to the next – as I moved from curved horse tail to Orphesus’s upheld violin to the cocked hip of a Venus – that this was the kind of consistency available only in a show comprised from a private collection. The sculptures vary in subject, scale, and period. Yet all the works are held together by a singular vision.

“European Bronzes” is also cause for celebration because of its excellent, lavishly illustrated catalog. With its beautiful, large-scale photographs, including details and various views of each sculpture, and scholarly contributions by Manfred Leithe-Jasper, Patricia Wengraf, and Shelley Sturman, it is a treasure in and of itself.