The Eye “Cast” on Renaissance Sculpture by Nineteenth-Century America

• In Event: Beautifying Life: The Roles of Italian Renaissance Sculpture in the Late Nineteenth Century

Abstract

When late nineteenth-century sculptors learned about Renaissance sculpture, they were not working with the same information available to us today. They could travel to Italy, of course, and they could buy a limited supply of photographs. Still another important but relatively unexplored way that late nineteenth-century American artists were able to access Renaissance sculpture was through the casts available from commercial sources. Such casts were purchased with care, and often displayed in homes as works of art or kept for study in artists’ studios. This paper will explore the intriguing light shed by sale catalogs of casts on nineteenth-century America’s configuration of Renaissance art, particularly Quattrocento Tuscan sculpture. The choices available for purchase were surprisingly limited and attributions were often very different from our current ones. This is significant in understanding the impact of the Quattrocento on Americans between the Civil War and the beginning of the twentieth century.

Author

• Martha L. Dunkelman, Canisius College