Like seeing art of Roman chapels in technicolor for first time

Elizabeth Jones (left), Shawon Kinew, and Jiwon Lee.

Veasey Conway/Harvard Staff Photographer; photo illustration by Liz Zonarich/Harvard Staff

Liz Mineo

Harvard Staff Writer

March 9, 2026 6 min read

Students create relief sculptures in stucco using centuries-old methods to gain deeper insight into how, why artists made choices

The vibe was festive, with jazz playing in the background. Students worked quickly but didn’t rush to form relief sculptures of fruit — apples, lemon, pomegranate, strawberries, cherries, leaves, all set against an arch.

The group of 11 had gathered at the Harvard Art Museums’ Materials Lab on a recent Friday afternoon to try their hands at sculpting in stucco, a thick, gritty compound made of lime, sand, and marble dust that had been widely used for decorative purposes during the Renaissance and Baroque periods across Europe.

Held as part of the graduate seminar “Sculpture, Theory, Practice: Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, Serpotta,” taught by Shawon Kinew, assistant professor in the Department of History of Art and Architecture, the workshop aimed to bridge the theory and practice of sculpture.

“As an art historian, sometimes our discipline can become a little removed or abstracted from the actual materiality or the physical object itself,” said Kinew. “It’s always a valuable experience when you have that tactile understanding of what the artist was doing. Our aim in this workshop is to challenge our knowledge with the practical experience of art-making — what changes for the art historian when she knows how to make.”

Students of the graduate seminar “Sculpture, Theory, Practice: Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, Serpotta” try their hands at sculpting in stucco.

Photos by Lauren McMahon

A detail of the armature, the framework supporting the individual relief sculptures, made by students.

Conservator Alberto Felici applies a final layer of marmorino, a mix of lime and marble dust, on one of the sculptures.

Felici, who led the stucco workshop with conservator Elisabeth Manship, shows one of the relief sculptures.

Each relief sculpture was designed to be placed together so that the arches could form a circle.

Wearing white coats and blue gloves, students followed recipes of stucco mixes, materials, and techniques used centuries ago by artists Alejandro Casella, Pietro da Cortona, and Giacomo Serpotta as they molded relief sculptures from the armature, the framework supporting a sculpture, to the final layer of marmorino, a mix of lime and marble dust.

By the end of the workshop, students left with lessons beyond art history or stucco decoration.

Nathaniel Shields ’26, a master’s student in engineering and business, said the workshop helped him gain a better appreciation of art and what it takes to produce it, as well as a chance to practice what he was learning in class.

“It’s a huge privilege to be able to enter a class like this, where you have the ability to consider things from the historical perspective, but also the practical perspective,” said Shields. “After reading and learning about this material and the artwork in class, obviously the ability to put your hands into some stucco and try to make something yourself is pretty exciting.”

Kinew’s class focuses on artists such as Donatello, Michelangelo, Bernini, and Serpotta, and their use of materials such as bronze, wood, marble, wax, clay, and stucco.

The workshop’s focus on stucco was significant, said Kinew, because art historians have overlooked the material despite its widespread use across Europe between the 16th and 18th centuries.

Giacomo Serpotta’s work in Oratorio di San Lorenzo, located in Palermo, Italy.

Photo by Shawon Kinew

“Stucco sculpture is one of the most important and ubiquitous media of Renaissance and Baroque Italy, and still it is rare for it to get the same scholarly treatment as fresco or marble sculpture,” said Kinew.

Similar to marble but much cheaper and lighter, stucco was mostly used in sculpture and decoration in churches and palaces throughout Italy and Europe.

Due to its lightness, sculptors favored stucco as a “material of flight,” said Kinew. “It could render the most fantastic visions of flight — flying figures that seem suspended in air, rays of light, sunburst figures, all of which could only be achieved in stucco,” she added.

Tony Sigel, a former senior conservator at Harvard Art Museums, aided students during the workshop. He highlighted the role of the Materials Lab, which hosts hands-on classes for the public, campus groups, and students.

“Having a room like this in a museum like this is a very unique thing,” said Sigel, “and having the course taught by conservators is a gift.”

Conservators Alberto Felici and Elisabeth Manship, who led the workshop, said they hoped the students learn lessons that will help them in careers as art historians — or even as art enthusiasts. Felici and Manship are lecturers and researchers in the renowned conservation program of the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Southern Switzerland.

“The main takeaway for me is that they realize how complicated it is,” said Felici. “It’s important that the students are able to understand the behavior of different materials, the thinking and the work that went into creating the art so that they would be able to better understand the aim of the artist.”

“The main takeaway for me is that they realize how complicated it is.”
Alberto Felici

In addition, students learned how much of this kind of art was a collective effort, Manship said. By working in groups, students replicated the workshop system used by Italian artists, who often collaborated with dozens of assistants and craftsmen on large projects.

“We forget that there were huge groups of people working together even if we only know the name of one artist,” Manship said.

For students, the best part was being able to work with a material they have been studying. They didn’t mind the challenges of dealing with stucco, a self-hardening material that requires fast work and nimble fingers.

“I’m not very good at what I’m doing,” said History of Art & Architecture concentrator Charlie Benjamin ’26 as he worked on sculpting a lemon. “I have a lot more appreciation for the artists themselves … In a way, the workshop demystified the art-making process, which you think of as a spontaneous act of creation, and you realize just how much sweat and forethought has to go into something [like] creating art.”

For Kinew, the workshop was a return to the legacy of art history classes that included making, which began at Harvard with Edward Waldo Forbes’ signature course, “Methods and Processes of Italian Painting,” known to students as the “Egg and Plaster” course, in 1932.

An art historian and pioneer in art conservation, Forbes taught students how to recreate early Italian paintings by using egg tempera, made from pigments mixed with egg yolk.

“Forbes’ students came to understand Giotto and Michelangelo by painting in tempera and in fresco,” Kinew said. “This was a moment when the study of art history was wholly integrated with art-making, a time when art history found its home in the museum.”

Kinew hopes that the workshop will help students and art lovers gain a deeper artistic appreciation of stucco as a decorative and sculptural art form.

“My hope is that now when we visit Roman or Palermitan chapels, we will see these spaces in all their complexity and parts, as stucco confections,” Kinew said. “It will be like seeing these spaces in technicolor for the first time.”