Measuring Genius: 3D scanning and Jean-Antoine Houdon’s Portraits of Benjamin Franklin
Jack Hinton, Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Philadelphia Museum of Art
An exhibition held at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2006, entitled “In Pursuit of Genius: Jean Antoine Houdon and the Sculpted Portraits of Benjamin Franklin”, provided the unique opportunity to bring together multiple versions of the sculptor Houdon’s iconic portrait of the American statesman Benjamin Franklin, realized in 1778 during the latter’s residence in France as a representative of the American colonies, where he was tasked with obtaining financial and military support for the Revolutionary War. Four very high quality and reliably dated versions of the bust were at the centre of this presentation: the juxtaposition reopened important questions about the sequence of creation of these busts and related works. With the generous agreement of the lenders of the sculptures, an interdisciplinary collaborative project of technical study and measurement using 3D scanning was undertaken, providing new insight into the realization of this famous portrait and the relationship between key versions of the bust, and more generally significant information on Houdon’s studio practice and the production of serial versions of sculpture in the late 18th – early 19th centuries. This paper will recount the background to and goals of the project, the various stages of research and execution, and its conclusions.
Speaker Biography
Jack Hinton is Assistant Curator of European Decorative Arts and Sculpture at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. His research interests include work on sculpture from the medieval period through the 18th century, and on Renaissance and Baroque tapestries, ceramics and furniture. His most recent exhibition (and accompanying publication) was on the subject of German stoneware ceramics from 1300-1900, in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art. He is the co-author, with P. Andrew Lins and Melissa Meighan, of ‘Encountering Genius: Houdon’s Portraits of Benjamin Franklin’.
