Acting as high-tech art sleuths, members of the Straus Center for Conservation and Technical Studies used a variety of technologies to analyze clay composition, modeling techniques, gilding, and latent fingerprints found in the clay. Art historians provide documentary evidence and analysis of the models as components of large-scale Bernini projects, particularly the spectacular series of angels for the Ponte Sant’Angelo and for the Altar of the Blessed Sacrament in St. Peter’s Basilica, Rome. Other investigations involved the development of a figure for the Cathedra Petri in St. Peter’s, bronzes related to the Fogg’s recently acquiredCountess Matilda of Tuscany, and reattribution of the Personification of Silence, a work once attributed to Bernini.

Ivan Gaskell is Margaret S. Winthrop Curator in the Fogg Art Museum’s Department of Paintings, Sculpture, and Decorative Art at the Harvard University Art Museums; Henry Lie is director and conservator of objects and sculpture in the Philip and Lynn Straus Center for Conservation at the Harvard University Art Museums.

Contributors include Francesca G. Bewer, Eugene F. Farrell, Ivan Gaskell, Colette Czapski Hemingway, Henry Lie, Nancy Lloyd, Jennifer Montagu, Jeannine O’Grody, Kendra Roth, Anthony B. Sigel, Mark S. Weil, and Suzanne M. M. Young.