In the late Nineteenth century the American sculptor Harriet Hosmer was accused by her contemporaries for the “extensive” use of assistants for the realization of her sculptures. However, making sculpture has always been a collaborative process, and as such it has already been described by Plinius in his Historia Naturalis. Famous examples range from the cooperations between Praxiteles and Nikias, Gianlorenzo Bernini and Giuliano Finelli, Falconet and Marie-Anne Collot, Antonio Canova and Adamo Tadolini, to Auguste Rodin and Camille Claudel. These outstanding examples are only a tip of an iceberg of uncountable collaborations between well-known “artist” and/or anonymous “others” throughout the centuries. From this perspective Hosmer’s workshop practice was, as she and most of her contemporaries stated clearly, quite common for her time – and for sure a manifestation of her artistic success (one could compare her atelier with the larger workshops of Bernini, Canova, or Thorvaldsen).
