Andrew Lacey
Visiting Research Fellow
The bronze sculptures of Andrea Briosco
I am currently collaborating with Peta Motture into the casting techniques of the Paduan-based sculptor, Andrea Briosco, called Riccio (1470-1532). Combining my own technical and archaeological experimental reconstructions together with Peta’s art-historical and contextual research, we will explore and physically test ideas about Riccio’s techniques, so as to shed light on his practice and its significance within his artistic and cultural context. The project focuses on statuettes, including selected bronzes by makers closely associated with Riccio’s production, in the V&A and, where feasible, other relevant UK and European collections.
My career has followed two strong but parallel paths: that of contemporary artist specialising in bronze sculpture, the other as an independent scholar studying the analysis, facture and reconstruction of ancient and historical bronze sculptures. Resent projects include the recreation of Giambologna’s figure of Mars for the Wadsworth Atheneum museum of Art. I have also published widely on bronze Sculpture.
Selected publications
Guidelines for the Technical Examination of Bronze Sculpture. David Bourgarit, Jane Bassett, Francesca G. Bewer, Arlen Heginbotham, Andrew Lacey and Peta Motture (eds), Los Angeles: Getty Publications, 2025.
Lacey, A. (2022) ‘Thinking through moulds: Metal flow and visualizing the unseen’, West 86th: A Journal of Decorative Arts, Design, History and Material Culture, 28(2).
Lacey, A. (2022) ‘Collaborations in absentia’, in Posthumous Art, Law and the Art Market: The Afterlife of Art. Abingdon: Taylor & Francis, pp. 69–81.
Lacey, A. and Lewis, S. (2020) ‘In pursuit of magic’, in Making and Knowing Project, Smith, P.H., Rosenkranz, N., Uchacz, T.H., Taape, T., Godbarge, C., Pitman, S., Boulboullé, J., Klein, J., Bilak, D., Smith, M. and Catapano, T. (eds.) Secrets of Craft and Nature in Renaissance France: A Digital Critical Edition and English Translation of BnF Ms. Fr. 640. New York: Making and Knowing Project.
Lacey, A. (2020) ‘Impressions: An artist-founder’s impressions of Medardo Rosso, artist-founder’, in Finding Lost Wax: The Disappearance and Recovery of an Ancient Casting Technique and the Experiments of Medardo Rosso. Leiden: Brill, pp. 317–324.
Lacey, A. (2018) ‘The sculptor at work: Recreating the Rothschild bronzes’, in Avery, V. (ed.) Michelangelo: Sculptor in Bronze. London: Philip Wilson Publishers and Bloomsbury Publishing, pp. 175–190.