Is it possible that the apotheosis of Western sculpture was achieved over 2,000 years ago and it’s been all downhill since then? A new blockbuster exhibit, ‘Power and Pathos: Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World,’ strongly buttresses this view.

Greek bronzes hold a rarified place in the art world, both in terms of quality and scarcity. Most Greek sculpture that has survived is carved from marble. In ancient times, however, bronze was more highly prized and served as the material of choice for the wealthiest patrons and most skilled artists. Unfortunately, bronze was also easily melted down for recycling and most pieces have been lost to time and history. Carol C. Mattusch, a bronze expert at George Mason University, estimates that “There are probably fewer than 200 ancient large-scale bronzes, Greek and Roman, unless you want to count an arm here and a leg there.”

So it’s a remarkable curatorial achievement that ‘Power and Pathos’ brings together 50 or so of the most spectacular surviving masterpieces in one exhibit. The show opens March 14 at the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, before moving to the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles in July and then the National Gallery of Art in Washington in December. Classical scholars and sculpture lovers are abuzz over the breadth of the show, declaring it one of those rare museum shows that is worth getting on a plane to see. Adding to the allure of the show, many of the pieces have an exciting back-story: a number have been discovered by fisherman or divers at the bottom of the sea. One of the newer stars of the show is the first century B.C. Croatian Apoxyomenos, or Statue of an Athlete, discovered at a depth of about 150 feet in 1997 in the Northern Adriatic off the coast of Croatia. It is largely intact, making it one of the most striking underwater discoveries of the last 20 years. Indeed, from a preservationist’s point of view, the best thing that could happen to a Greek bronze is that it was lost at sea in a shipwreck or buried in a landslide or earthquake.

The works in the show come from “thirty-four museums in thirteen countries on four continents who have entrusted us with many of their most celebrated treasures,” according to the exhibition catalog.

The show is a veritable Murderers’ Row of Greek bronzes, pieces that have been famous for centuries, including the Terme Boxer, from Rome, Sleeping Eros, from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boy with Thorn, also from Rome. The piece also contains some memorable newer discoveries that have never traveled before. The Getty, which was the driving force behind the exhibition, custom-built specially reinforced shipping crates for the different works and provided them to the different museums for transport.