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Nature and Art, Making and Knowing: Reconstructing Sixteenth-Century Life-Casting Techniques*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Pamela H. Smith  and
Tonny Beentjes
Pamela H. Smith
Affiliation:
Columbia University [Smith]
Tonny Beentjes
Affiliation:
University of Amsterdam [Beentjes]
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Abstract

Almost every Kunstkammer in sixteenth-century Europe contained small reptiles or plants cast from life in a variety of media. This widespread technique, which used small, recently killed animals as a pattern to create lifelike sculptures, was often prized more highly than works sculpted with the hand. An unstudied, late sixteenth-century French technical manuscript records a practitioner's experiments in casting from life, among many other subjects. This article investigates both the techniques and the significance of life-casting on the basis of this treatise, incorporating the examination of surviving sixteenth-century European life casts and the reconstruction of the manuscript's recipes and technical instructions, arguing that life-casting in the sixteenth century was viewed in part as a means to the knowledge of nature.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 1 , Spring 2010 , pp. 128 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Renaissance Society of America

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Footnotes

*

Research for this article was supported by a Samuel H. Kress Paired Fellowship, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

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