Work in Progress Summer 2025 - 'The Atoms of the Ancients': The Michelangelo Seal & the Survival of Sculptural Monuments in the Early Eighteenth Century

Karl-Magnus Brose (Census Fellow): '"The Atoms of the Ancients": The Michelangelo Seal & the Survival of Sculptural Monuments in the Early Eighteenth Century'

In 1737, the sculptor Edme Bouchardon (1698-1762) made the bold and unprecedented move of exhibiting a drawing of an ancient engraved gem at the Paris salon. Thought to have been the personal seal of Alexander the Great, the gem purportedly passed through Michelangelo’s hands before entering the cabinet of Louis XV. While the life-size marble statue has dominated the field of aesthetics and the art historical imaginary, in the early eighteenth century engraved gems enjoyed an unparalleled reputation as sculptural monuments of antiquity. Thanks to their miniscule size, intaglio gems were easily reproduced in a variety of media including sulphur, plaster, glass paste and print that allowed them to circulate widely across Europe in large series. What would it mean to rethink the sculptural monument as a portable matrix for reproduction? What kind of memory and survival of the antique emerged in these transfers across media? Drawing from examples in sculptural practice and contemporary treatises on engraved gems, I will argue that these practices of remediation formed the basis for the theorization of ancient sculpture and the first histories of art in the eighteenth century. 

Karl-Magnus Brose is a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia and 2024-25 Census x Warburg x Bibliotheca Hertziana Census Fellow at the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. His dissertation “Forms of the Antique: Edme Bouchardon and the Sculptural Imaginary, 1723-1762” examines the ways that the reproduction and circulation of handheld and portable sculpture such as gems and medals shaped the practice of modern sculptors and the theoretical coordinates of art historical thinking in the eighteenth century. His project with the Census studies the relay between ancient and modern portraiture in early eighteenth-century Rome, asking how processes of transfer and reproduction in a variety of materials and formats redefined the medium of sculpture.