The desire to decorate one’s home with replicas of masterpieces from the past is a fashion that has existed since the Roman era. The Romans in fact loved to make copies of Greek sculptures, often “reversing” the materials: often marble statues were reproduced in bronze, and vice versa. A good part of the Greek sculptures are known to us thanks to the replicas of ancient Rome.
A particular example is the one of the colossal Farnese Hercules sculpted in bronze by the Greek artist Lysippus in the 4th century. A.C., and replicated in marble in the first century B.C. probably from a Roman workshop that signed it with the name of the Greek Glicone falsifying its attribution.

We know that in Rome there were shops and art galleries with such copies for sale; in the second half of the nineteenth century the Dutch painter Alma Tadema imagined just two of these galleries of ancient Rome.

The fashion to perform replicas of ancient masterpieces has continued over the centuries, until today. There are many examples, starting with the “Porcellino” of Florence, the bronze fountain of the boar: in the 1500s the Medici family ordered to make a negative mold on the original ancient Greek marble and to reproduce it in bronze (See also The Porcellino of Florence). Other examples are the Diana Huntress of the Louvre Museum, a Roman copy of an original Greek bronze, attributed to the sculptor Leocare (325 BC.) that has been lost. A negative mold was made and from which in 605 a bronze replica was cast for a fountain of the palace of Fontainbleau;

bronze replica of the Bazzanti Gallery from an original mold;

the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican Museums, also this is a Roman copy of marble from the 2nd century B.C. of the Greek bronze of Leocares of 350 BC, of wich Francsco Primaticcio perfomed the negative mold and cast in bronze in 1541 for the Castle of Fontainebleu, bronze replica of the Bazzanti Gallery from an original mold;

the group of Wrestlers, also a Roman marble copy of the first century B.C. of the lost Greek original of bronze of the III sec. a.C., probably of Lysippus,

bronze replica of the Bazzanti Gallery from an original mold;

the Mars Ludovisi of the Borghese Gallery, Roman copy of an original Greek sculpture of 320 BC attributed to Scopa or Lisippo. The negative mold was ordered to Velasquez to make a bronze copy requested in 1650 by Philip IV, king of Spain,

bronze replica of the Bazzanti Gallery from an original mold;

It is interesting to see how even Michelangelo was “replicated” a few years after his death: in 1570 Egnazio Danti, famous mathematician and cartographer, obtained the authorization from the Grand Duke Cosimo I of the Medici Family to make the negative mold of the 4 marble figures sculpted by Michelangelo for the Medici tombs: Sunrise, Sunset, Day and Night. In 1573, six years after Michelangelo’s death, the negative mold was executed by his brother Vincenzo Danti, who had been in Rome to study the works of the great Master. And he made the negative molds not on the marble statues, but on the original clay models that Michelangelo had created as a model to sculpt the four marbles, which evidently had not been destroyed. These casts were then taken the year after to the Academy of Perugia.

In the Bazzanti Gallery there are the bronze castings of the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry taken from the original moulds by Vincenzo Danti

In the second half of the nineteenth century the painters of the style characterized by the reconstruction of life scenes from Greece and ancient Rome, contributed to revive the fashion of classical furnishings already present in the Renaissance.

In 2013 the Artistic Foundry Ferdinando Marinelli, together with the Bazzanti Art Gallery and the friend Federico Frediani, organized e a bronze sculpture exhibition at the Italian Cultural Institute of Los Angeles together.

On that occasion he was invited to spend two days in the villa of friends of Federico in Malibu. And there, at lunch, after Ferdinando had cooked a “risotto”, he met Dr. Liviu Eftime and his wife Adina. Two art lovers, like all the friends in the company. Dr. Liviu is also an exceptional painter, his wife is a writer. A pleasant friendship is born. Liviu mentions a new villa for which he would like to sculpt and cast bronze doors.

At the end of 2017 a series of phone calls between Los Angeles and Florence: Liviu has been creating the models of his door in clay, asking us how to execute the negative molds and how to send them to the Foundry in Barberino val d’Elsa (Florence). In March 2018 he sent photos of his work

In April 2018 the negative molds arrive in the Foundry. A few days later Liviu arrives in the Foundry too and our friend Federico Frediani comes to visit us. We go immediately to have lunch together in the country.

During his visits in Tuscany Liviu closely follows the work of the Foundry, retouching the waxes; he argues that the work of art is never finished, and in every processing phase he wants to make changes and modifications, just as Leonardo da Vinci did on the Gioconda painting, which he always carried with him in his travels and which he constantly retouched.

The waxes are covered with refractory material (“loto”) and the “loto” molds are fired in the furnaces.

The processing of the newly cast bas-reliefs is performed by the Marinelli’s Foundry together with Liviu.

The bas-reliefs are welded and assembled to form the two parts of the door followed by a well-deserved lunch.

In January 2019 Liviu returns to Italy in the Foundry for final testing, and then we celebrated with another lunch.

The doors, patinated, waiting for the packaging and shipping to Laguna Beach.