Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of 19th-Century Britain
Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of 19th-Century Britain

Author: Rebecca Wade

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2018-10-18

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 150133221X

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Born near the Tuscan province of Lucca in 1815, Domenico Brucciani became the most important and prolific maker of plaster casts in nineteenth-century Britain. This first substantive study shows how he and his business used public exhibitions, emerging museum culture and the nationalisation of art education to monopolise the market for reproductions of classical and contemporary sculpture. Based in Covent Garden in London, Brucciani built a network of fellow Italian émigré formatori and collaborated with other makers of facsimiles-including Elkington the electrotype manufacturers, Copeland the makers of Parian ware and Benjamin Cheverton with his sculpture reducing machine-to bring sculpture into the spaces of learning and leisure for as broad a public as possible. Brucciani's plaster casts survive in collections from North America to New Zealand, but the extraordinary breadth of his practice-making death masks of the famous and infamous, producing pioneering casts of anatomical, botanical and fossil specimens and decorating dance halls and theatres across Britain-is revealed here for the first time. By making unprecedented use of the nineteenth-century periodical press and dispersed archival sources, Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of Nineteenth-Century Britain establishes the significance of Brucciani's sculptural practice to the visual and material cultures of Victorian Britain and beyond.

Plaster Casts
Plaster Casts

Author: Rune Frederiksen

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter

Published: 2010-09-27

Total Pages: 765

ISBN-13: 3110216876

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This volume originates from an international conference (Oxford University, 2007). Texts address plaster casts and related themes from antiquity to the present day, and from Egypt to America, Mexico and New Zealand. They are of interest to classical archaeologists, art historians, the history of collecting, curators, conservators, collectors and artists. Articles explore the functions, status and reception of plaster casts in artists’ workshops and in private and public collections, as well as hands-on issues, such as the making, trading, display and conservation of plaster casts. Case-studies on artists’ use of material and technique include ancient Roman copyists, Renaissance sculptors and painters, Dutch 17th-century workshops, Canova, Boccioni and others. A second theme is the role of plaster casts in the history of collecting from the Renaissance to the present day. Several papers address the dissemination of visual ideas, models and ideals through the medium. Papers on modern and contemporary art illuminate the changing uses and semantic values of plaster casts in this period. Amongst the types of casts discussed are artists’ models and final works as well as casts after antiquities, including sculpture, architecture and gems (dactyliothecae). The volume demonstrates the richness of the field, both in terms of the material itself and modern scholarship concerned with it. Conceived as a handbook for students, academics, curators and collectors, the text will form a standard work on the role of plaster casts in the history of Western sculpture.

History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures
History of Restoration of Ancient Stone Sculptures

Author: Janet Burnett Grossman

Publisher: Getty Publications

Published: 2003-12-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0892367237

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The nineteen papers in this volume stem from a symposium that brought together academics, archaeologists, museum curators, conservators, and a practicing marble sculptor to discuss varying approaches to restoration of ancient stone sculpture. Contributors and their subjects include Marion True and Jerry Podany on changing approaches to conservation; Seymour Howard on restoration and the antique model; Nancy H. Ramage’s case study on the relationship between a restorer, Vincenzo Pacetti, and his patron, Luciano Bonaparte; Mette Moltesen on de-restoring and re-restoring in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek; Miranda Marvin on the Ludovisi collection; and Andreas Scholl on the history of restoration of ancient sculptures in the Altes Museum in Berlin. The book also features contributions by Elizabeth Bartman, Brigitte Bourgeois, Jane Fejfer, Angela Gallottini, Sascha Kansteiner, Giovanna Martellotti, Orietta Rossi Pinelli, Peter Rockwell, Edmund Southworth, Samantha Sportun, and Markus Trunk. Charles Rhyne summarizes the themes, approaches, issues, and questions raised by the symposium.