Why have there been no great early modern women sculptors? Maybe, because nobody has looked for them until today. This online lecture discusses the results of the research project ‘Tender hands and rough stone. A critical re-reading of the biographies of women sculptors’ conducted by Anna Frasca-Rath at the Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg (2021/22). The result of this project is an impressive list of more than 370 women sculptors of the early modern period. How should we write about these women? How can this research contribute to a differentiation of the art historical canon? How can me make use of digital tools for this purpose? And on a broader scale: How can we re-evaluate the women sculptor’s contribution to the history of sculpture?

Dr. Anna Frasca-Rath is Research Associate at Friedrich-Alexander-University Erlangen-Nuremberg. In 2016, she co-curated the first monographic exhibition on John Gibson at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Her book John Gibson & Antonio Canova. Rezeption, Transfer, Inszenierung was published in 2018. In 2021 she co-curated a special issue of the Sculpture Journal on ‘Marble’. Anna is a specialist for Sculpture from the 17th to the 19th century, transnational artistic exchange, especially between Britain and Italy and digital art history.