Scale, Fix, Finish: Antonio Susini and the Art of Technique in Giambologna’s Florence

Sharifa Lookman, M.A.

In a letter from 1605, the sculptor Giambologna described the work of his longtime student and assistant, Antonio Susini (1558-1624), as “the most beautiful things one can have from my hands,” at once giving credit and taking it away. More than any other medium of the period, bronze casting brought together artists and laborers of such diverse skills and ranks, from mold-makers and wax modelers to foundrymen and goldsmiths. Known as the great “finisher” of Giambologna’s small bronzes, Susini resisted being nameless in this sea of specialists, but by the nature of his work he has toggled in visibility, his name signifying just as much a technical faculty as it does an artist, a material effect more than a person. Reconsidering early modern bronze through the lens of its intermediary ephemera and transmedial labor, this project foregrounds Susini’s role as a materially polylingual technician within a collaborative environment often overshadowed by the rhetoric of singular authorship.

Drawing upon archival research, technical analyses, and firsthand experience in modern foundries, each chapter of my dissertation addresses a distinct aspect of Susini’s wide-ranging technical practice (as miniaturist, modeler, restorer) alongside the practices of other historically underdeveloped artists within his circle, such as Francesco del Conte, Baccio Lupicini, and Pietro da Barga. Set against concerns for the broader historiographical erasure of workshop labor, this project seeks to disavow some of sculpture’s internal hierarchies, showing how, in the case of Susini, auxiliary makers and techniques alone can serve as protagonists. In doing so, it offers an alternate storyline to the production of early modern sculpture—from a technician’s eye-view.