Plaster Cast ~ Our Gallery
The artifacts of this category are reproductions in plaster of the most remarkable sculptural production conserved in the most beautiful museums in the world. From the art of Etruscan, Greek and Roman civilizations, to representations in high and bas-relief in Early Medieval Period style and Gothic style with barbaric heritage, until the valuable all-round artworks from the Renaissance.
In this category you will find statues, sculptures, busts, torsos, heads and bas-reliefs.
Plaster is applied to the original to create a mould or cast, a negative impression, of the original. This mould is then removed and fresh plaster is poured into it, creating a copy in plaster of the original. Usually very elaborate moulds were made out of several to even dozens of pieces, to cast the more difficult undercut sculptures.
Use of such casts was particularly prevalent among classicists of the 18th and 19th centuries, and by 1800 there were extensive collections in Berlin, Paris, Vienna and elsewhere. By creating copies of ancient Greek and Roman sculptures held at various museums across Europe in this way, a reference collection of all the best and most representative sculptural types could be formed, at a fraction of the cost of purchasing original sculptures, which scholars could consult without necessarily having to travel abroad to see all the originals.
Edouard Joseph Dantan, Un Moulage Dans La Serre, 1897
