Sculpture Workshops as Space and Concept

This book explores the multifaceted aspects of sculptor's workshops from the Renaissance to the early nineteenth century. Contributors take a fresh look at the sculptor's workshop as both a physical and discursive space. By studying some of the most prominent artists' sculptural practices, the workshop appears as a multifaced, sociable and practical space. The book creates a narrative in which the sculptural workshop appears as a working laboratory where new measuring techniques, new materials and new instruments were tested and became part of the lived experience of the artist and central to the works coming into being. Artists covered include Donatello, Roubilliac, Thorvaldsen, Canova, and Christian Daniel Rauch. The book will be of interest to scholars studying art history, sculpture, artist workshops, and European studies.

Jane Fejfer is Associate Professor at The Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen. Kristine Bøggild Johannsen is Curator at the Thorvaldsens Museum, Copenhagen.

1. Introduction Jane Fejfer and Kristine Bøggild Johannsen 2. The Absent Center: Donatello in the Workshop Daniel Zolli 3. Ambiguous Narratives of Making. Some Questions about the Workshop Practices of Eighteenth-Century British Sculptors Malcolm Baker 4. More than Gossip and less than Monuments. Forms of Ambition in the 1790s and early 1800s Roman Bust Head Tomas Macotay 5. Master and Servant. Canova's Workshop and the Formation of Sculptural Autonomy Johannes Myssok 6. Likeness, Ideality, and Equality. On Thorvaldsen's Portrait Busts and His Workshop Practice Kira Kofoed 7. The Final Touch. On Thorvaldsen's Marble Surfaces Amalie Skovmøller 8. Female Patronages: The Unstable Beginnings of Christian Daniel Rauch as a Portrait Sculptor in Berlin, Rome and Carrara Astrid Fendt