The negative moulds made on the sculptures to be cast in bronze are used to obtain a positive wax of the sculpture itself, of the same thickness that the bronze should have.

The wax thus obtained is retouched, i.e. any imperfections are removed,

until it is perfect and ready to be incorporated into a three-dimensional network of castings,

and then covered with a refractory material called “loto”.

The “loto” mould containing the wax is cooked in the furnace for several days

Cooking melts and burns the wax contained in the “loto” moulds, leaving the empty cavity with the shape of the burnt wax inside.
After cooking, the “loto” moulds are placed in a hole in the ground.

We now proceed to the melting of bronze alloy,

And to the casting of the molten bronze into the “loto” moulds;

Bronze thus takes the place of wax; the moulds are broken to extract the bronze castings

The castings are freed from the castings and sandblasted to clean them from the “loto” leftovers.

The castings are now cleaned and chiseled,

e successivamente rimontate a freddo e poi saldate.

The last phase is the patination of the sculpture: it involves oxidizing the surface of the bronze in the same way that the atmosphere would, over the years, but much more quickly

The lost wax casting technique has remained the same for centuries. Today, of course, methane is used instead of coal for the melting furnaces and for the furnaces for cooking “loto” moulds, electric tools such as hoists, cranes, forklifts, etc. that allow the handling of heavy parts, once done completely by hand.
The only changes related to the materials were the replacement of organic gelatin to make the negative moulds with silicone rubber, and the replacement of beeswax, now very expensive, with paraffin.
Even bronze welding is no longer oxyacetylene flame but takes place with electric welders in an argon atmosphere.

The furnishing of gardens, parks, interiors of villas and hotels is one of the frequent works of the Galleria Bazzanti. Our architects design the furniture on customer request, or collaborate with the architect that the customer already has. A typical case is that of the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, where the Galleria Bazzanti collaborated with architect Roger Thomas on the design and construction of the hotel gardens, building a series of stone and marble furniture accessories. The architect made requests for accessories, leaving to the Galleria Bazzanti the choice of models and sculptural parts. Preparatory drawings have been made to show the architect that, after approval, have been used for the realization of the works: different models of vases, containers, obelisks, etc.

the large fountain with insertions of green marble for one of the pools

yellow Siena marble vases

and other architectural furnishings.

One of the materials that the architect has chosen is “Pietra Leccese” which is extracted in the quarries of the Salento region, in the south of Italy. The characteristic of this stone is that it is not too hard when it is extracted from the quarry and is therefore more easily sculpted than marble. But it has the property of becoming harder and harder over time due to a chemical reaction with the gases of the atmosphere.
It is the material that has been used since the Renaissance for fountains and garden accessories, but especially for the famous Baroque facades of Apulian churches.
The construction of the large stone fountain was particularly delicate. Given the size and transport problems, we had to create it in four slices assembled on site. In some fountains inserts of green marble have been applied.
Another material desired by the architect is the yellow Siena marble, with a typical amber yellow color, extracted from the Montagnola Senese quarries, in the municipality of Sovicille, also used in antiquity. It lends itself very well to being worked and turned for architectural furnishings.

The desire and pleasure that Donatello has in creating the putti makes him sculpt them them at the base of the tomb of the bishop of Grosseto Giovanni Pecci in the cathedral of Siena (1426). They are carved at the bottom, foreshortened, covered by the large parchment than they hold up. The heads and arms can be seen.

But they were not enough, and then he put a half-hidden putto even inside the spiral of the bishop’s pastoral staff.

In each successive work Donatello does not renounce to the putti, as if they were now his signature: in the Festino di Erode (c. 1435), a marble bas-relief at the Musee Wicar in Lille, a half-naked child-putto is half sleeping on the stairs,

in the tomb of Giovanni Crivelli of 1432, in the church of Santa Maria Aracoeli in Rome, two half-dressed flying putti hold the family crest as if to replace the winged victories of the Roman monuments,

In the first half of the 1930s Donatello sculpted the Annunciazione Cavalcanti in gray lime stone “pietra serena” highlighted with gold, still in the church of S. Croce in Florence, where the Cavalcanti family had its own chapel (Ginevra Cavalcanti was the wife of Lorenzo dei Medici the Elder, brother of Cosimo de’ Medici the Elder). In addition to the interesting faces that appear in pairs on the two capitals of the side pillars, Donatello has modeled and placed on the top 6 winged and half-naked terracotta putti, highlighted with gold. The expressions of the side couples are playful, slightly frightened, surprised by the miracle that happens under their feet. They are external spectators who are not part of the composition. They also recall the Baby Jesus who is being born in that moment in Mary’s womb. It is the first time that putti appear in the scene of the Annunciation, making the miracle of conception, thanks to the Holy Spirit, more domestic.

The thread in the hair that holds a flower on the forehead of the left putto is an element will also be repeated in the bronze Attis (Mus. Del Bargello).

For the Basilica of San Peter in the Vatican, Donatello executed, in the thirtys of the ‘400, the great Tabernacle of the Eucharistic Sacrament (228 cm high), later used as a container for a painting of the “Madonna della Febbre” with the Child.

As far as he could he filled it with putti: on the top two winged putti hold open the curtain where a distorted bas-relief of the Deposition appears. On their sides, two other putti behind have the function of caryatids. On the top of the tabernacle two other putti are lying in a relaxed pose. On either side of the painting, two groups of three putti each, made in high relief, observe what is contained in the tabernacle whispering between them. At the bottom, on the base, four putti in bas-relief hold the symbol of the passion of Christ and two other side semi-wheels. All the putti are winged, dressed in classic fashion; Donatello gave those facing the tabernacle freshness and a sense of childhood, of play, of wonder. The Donatellian putti, who take the place of the angels, always defuse the sacred scenes they attend, attenuating their hieratic quality and making them domestic.
A change occurs with the creation of that very particular artifact that is one of the two Cantorie of the Duomo of Florence (Opera del Duomo Museum in Florence), completed in 1439. In this particular monument the winged putti are not accessories or decorations of other works, but are the work itself, the only protagonists that create the work. More than twenty-five putti move in a wild round dance, with almost Dionysian movements, and even the facial expressions confirm this feeling. In this they differ from the putti of ancient sculpture. Those on the right play with vegetable crowns, a symbol of Christianity’s victory over paganism. Donatello has created a continuum of putti without fragmenting the high reliefs in several panels, as in the case of the Cantoria by Luca della Robbia (in the same Museum), and has placed this unique long panel behind a series of five paired columns that somehow divide it, but which give also a new sense of space and depth compared to classic high reliefs. In the left and right-hand panels between the four shelves Donatello places heraldic specular putti playing cymbals and eating grapes from a vase. In the lower part of the Cantoria has created a strip with heads of putti between garlands.

In the same years in which Donatello performed the Cantoria, he also worked at the outside Pulpit of the Prato Cathedral. The contract with Michelozzo (for the architecture of the Pulpit) and Donatello (for the sculpture) was signed in 1428, and the artwork completed in 1438.
It consists of 7 curved marble panels with a golden mosaic as a background, in which the putti dance, as in the Cantoria and with the same bacchanal attitude.

A bronze capital asymmetrically supports the entire pulpit with a putto at the top that comes out with difficulty from under the weight it supports. At the bottom, two Bacchic putti lying with vine leaves and grapes in their hair are looking far away. In the center, among the volutes, five other little putti, in various positions. The capital was cast with lost wax technic in 1433, but was only installed in 1438. The model is by Donatello but it was certainly cast by Michelozzo, master founder.

From the Middle Ages to today, the Arno river has caused about ten disastrous floods in the town of Florence.
In all of them the rains have beaten torrentially without stopping for many days throughout the Arno valley, whose catchment area is very large, slightly less than the whole of Tuscany. The amount of water that poured into the tributaries overflowed, and the Arno water flooded the countryside and the city.
In the Middle Ages the river banks were less resistant and functional than later ones, and in 1167 the Arno flooded nine times, destroying many buildings.

The first flood of which we have certain news are from the Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani occurred in 1333, the first of November; the damage was enormous, and two bridges fell down.

Two centuries later, in 1547, there was a second flood, on August 13, 1547. Also this was also very serious, Giovan Battista Adriani in his History of his times

tells us that it caused more than a hundred deaths.

After just 10 years, on 13 September 1557 there was another, much heavier than the previous one, causing destructions within the city.

Another great flood was that of November 3, 1844. The Gazzetta di Firenze of November 5, 1844 reports that from nine in the morning to two in the afternoon the water had continued to rise, uprooting the Iron Bridge. In the issue of 7 November it writes that the Iron Bridge, overwhelmed, hit the Alle Grazie Bridge, the Arno went over the parapets and flooded the city.

In the lithography by Muzzi and Borrani the Lungarno Corsini and the homonymous Palace are completely flooded, including the Bazzanti Gallery.

From the publication of the Grand Ducal Government it is seen that even 20 years later, in 1864, there was another flood.

The last terrible flood was that of 1966. It occurred on November 4, on the same dates as those of 1333 and 1844. The damage to the buildings was not very large; the damage to works of art was tragic. The muddy water mixed with the house heating oil that came out, by floating, from the hundreds of tanks of the houses. And it had particularly damaged paintings, ancient documents and books. The Lungarni had been completely submerged,

the shoulders completely knocked down,

the damage to the Bazzanti Gallery was enormous.

On the wall of the Bazzanti gallery you can still see, behind the statues, the plates that mark the level reached during the floods of 1844 and 1966, where it is noted that the level of 1966 was considerably higher than in 1844.

Thirty years after the death of St. Benedict (547), author of the famous Rule (the oldest manuscript codex of the Rule, dated 810, Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland),

it was built in 576, between the woods at the foot of Assisi, an oratory of the Benedictine monks of the convent of Monte Subasio. In the ‘200 was a place of prayer and meditation for St. Francis, who restored it: it is the famous “Porziuncola”, where Francis also died in 1226.

Pope Pius V in 1569 began the construction of a large basilica, designed by architect Galeazzo Alessi, around the Porziuncola which constantly attracted crowds of faithful, both for San Francesco and for the indulgences that Pope Honorius III at the beginning of the ‘200 he had established to whom visited it.

Following heavy damage caused by the earthquake of 1832 the basilica was restored and was endowed with a new facade.

The façade seems to have had no peace: in the 20th century it was rebuilt according to a design by the architect Luigi Paoletti and completed in 1930.

On that occasion the monumental Golden Madonna, was placed on top of the façade commissioned at the sculptor Guglielmo Colasanti,

and cast in lost wax at the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in Florence.

On 31 July 1769 the Spanish adventurer Gaspar de Portola, together with Serra and Crespi, two Franciscan friars, discovered a river in Southern California, which baptized Rio de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola of Assisi, because the day after, the first of August, the Feast of the Forgiveness was celebrated in Assisi (the one established by Pope Honorius III). In 1781, Mexican colonists founded a village near the river, also called El Pueblo de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola, now closed in the Olvera Street district of the Los Angeles megalopolis. In 1847, California became American and in 1850 the village, with the shortened name of Los Angeles, became a Municipality, still remaining a small frontier country,

until, in 1892, the discovery of oil made it “explode” in a few decades.

In 1927 the competition for the design of the Palace of Nations in Geneva was announced, and the project

of the team of architects including Carlo Broggi and Jozsef Vago was chosen.

The Beaux Arts French neoclassical style was chosen. The works began in 1931 and ended in 1938. Subsequently, in the 1950s and 1960s it was enlarged.

Up until the 1930s, the management of the main members of the American Woodrow Wilson Foundation,

whose president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

thought about the possibility of donating a monument to be placed in the park of the building, which is the seat of the League Nations. The idea took shape in 1935, when the famous sculptor Paul Manship was contacted.

His first proposal was to model and then cast a monumental door for the assembly hall in bronze. The project was not successful. At that period Manship had fallen in love with the armillary spheres and was studying them, such as the very complex and gigantic armillary sphere built in 1593 by Antonio Santucci (cosmographer of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I dei Medici) at the Galileo Museum in Florence,

and then proposed a large Celestial Sphere in bronze with a steel frame, whose surface was made up of the sculptures of all the zodiacal constellations in lost wax bronze cast with and gilded; the sphere had to have an astronomical rotary movement like that of the earth’s axis.

The construction of the astronomical monument presented many problems, and was entrusted to the Vignali foundry in Florence, which began construction,

directed by the founder-restorer Bruno Bearzi.

For Manship too, the creation of the model had been no small feat.

The work was finished in 1939: in August of that year the Celestial Sphere left the foundry in Florence for Geneva. A tractor brought the railway wagon to the station.

The work was installed in the center of a pool with water in the part of the park near the Palace.

The rotation mechanism of the monument worked for a short time, and after a while the sphere was blocked. Weather conditions soon altered and abraded the gilding of the sculptures. The approximately 1,000 little stars applied to the sculptures have partly detached and lost.

In 2019 the management of the United Nations Palace had issued a tender for the restoration of the work, and had invited the various participants to visit the Celestial Sphere up close. Ferdinando Marinelli Jr., owner of the homonymous Artistic Foundry in Florence and the Galleria Pietro Bazzanti in Florence, together with the stainless steel construction specialist Carlo Lanaro,

analysed the state of deterioration of the work and began to study the best systems to restore the Sphere to its original beauty and functionality. The damage that a clumsy restoration of the year 1983 had added to those due to bad weather (oxidation, sulphating, loss of gilding and of the underlying bolus, rusting of the parts of the steel frame, improper welding, etc.) were also clearly seen, such as the concrete filling of the bronze base, etc. In 2003 two of the sculptures of the Sphere were regilded to begin the final restoration but the project was interrupted. Before the assignment of the work, the United Nations commission asked to see and analyse the previous restoration that the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry had carried out on the bronze sculptures of the Triton Fountain in Valletta, for the Malta Government

In 1984 I was very lucky enough to meet the Architect Dudi Berretti in Florence, on the occasion of the creation of the bronze sculpture “Fountain of the Two Oceans” for San Diego in California. A character of unique sympathy and delicacy.

We quickly became friends. The friendship was cemented when I went, with the sculptor friend Sergio Benvenuti, creator of the model of the fountain,

to assemble the two statues in San Diego, at the foot of a skyscraper built by one of the many companies of Patrick Bowlen , said Pat.

After the job, back in Florence, for a long time I didn’t hear from the friend Dudi.
During the frequent gargantuan dinners made with Sergio Benvenuti, a great eater, we wondered where Dudi had ended up.

The answer came sixteen years later: one morning in 2000 Dudi appeared in Galleria Bazzanti, with his usual radiant smile. Kisses and hugs, immediately for lunch together; “Also call Sergio Benvenuti” he told me. Dudi was born in Fiesole, just outside Florence, and he had studied in Florence. After a few libations he threw in an idea: as he was following the construction of a new stadium for the city of Denver in Colorado financed by Pat Bowlen, and since the football team of the city was owned by Bowlen, he would have liked to have a monument in Florence to be placed outside the stadium.
We were having lunch in a fifteenth-century palace in town, in the restaurant of a famous ancient family producing splendid wines, at our table the empty bottles rapidly increased. Dudi then began to talk about a bronze colossus like that of Rhodes, 40 meters high which, with legs apart, to be the entrance of the cars in the parking of the stadium. The dessert, a delicious trifle, had led to something more probable and achievable: a series of horses of the Broncos breed, which was the name of the Denver team, of which Pat Bowlen was president and owner. I went back to the foundry with Sergio, Dudi went to the hotel to sleep.
The following day, another lunch: Dudi, Sergio and me. We went to Monteriggioni, another big lunch, other wine.

At the café Sergio with his big hands removed everything from the table, and opened a folder with a handful of drawings he had made during the night: a series of seven Broncos horses that ran towards the stadium going up the course of a torrent. Dudi lit up with a beaming smile, made Sergio get up and hugged him. Then he looked at me and asked “can it be done?” and when I replied “certainly” he hugged me too and started laughing with happiness and exclaimed “the fountain of the Broncos horses!”
Two days later Dudi was back in Denver with Sergio’s drawings to propose the Broncos ‘fountain’.
After another two days Dudi called me around midnight, for him it was early afternoon, telling me to have a small model of the horses and the fountain made, and to call him as soon as it was ready. Sergio had an exceptional sculptural ability, and in half a day he had prepared the small clay model.

The following week Dudi was back in Florence with the landscape architect to examine with Sergio the enlarged sketches of the fountain in the foundry.

hey were enthusiastic;

and they were also enthusiastic about the lunches of those days.

Sergio Benvenuti began modeling one big horse after another in clay, whose waxes were made and retouched in the foundry, then castings and assemblies.

During the execution of Dudi’s frequent visits, each time accompanied by an increasing number of various technicians, happy to spend a few days in Tuscany, lunches and dinners were everyone’s favorite pastime.

When the bronze horses began to be packed, Pat Bowlen also visited us in Hawaiian shirt.

Then we all moved to Denver, me, my wife, Sergio Benvenuti and various technicians from the foundry, to assemble the horses bronze statues, one and a half times the size of the originals, at the stadium.
We were welcomed like heads of state: at the immigration office, when they knew that we were the “Broncos horses men” they let us pass immediately shanking our hands: some team manager had sent our data in advance to the competent offices
.

The assembling lasted about ten days

in which Dudi accompanied us on a visit to the town and, mainly, to visit the best restaurants in the city.

Finally the solemn inauguration.

Dudi was fascinated not only by Sergio Benvenuti’s ability to model large fountains with subjects requested by the client, but also by the creations that Benvenuti performed for himself: a series of dancers, often colored, in various dance poses. Sergio was fascinated by the world of dance, and had taken Dudi to his studio in Chianti, where the dancers were exhibited, cast in bronze by the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry.
In a few hours, by telephone, together with Pat Bowlen, Dudi organized an exhibition of Sergio’s dancers and other sculptures made by him in large and elegant tents in Denver near the Broncos Stadium. The exhibition was a great success, so much so that all the sculptures exhibited were sold in a few days.

Some models are exhibited at the Bazzanti Gallery.

“Under the Sun”

“Dancer with blouse”

“Dancer jumping the rope”

“Dancer on the stilts”

“Sitting dancer”

“The cat’s craddle”

“Resting dancer”

“Merry go Round”

“Relax”

“Summer waiting”

“Serenade”

The bronze casting with the lost wax technique was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, so much so that in the Middle Ages the sculpture was made exclusively in marble and stone, and the rare bronze doors were cast in Constantinople, where the Byzantines had retained, in part, the knowledge of this technique.
They were the first Florentine Renaissance artists to re-experiment the lost wax casting technique, helped at the beginning by Byzantine and Venetian artisans. And the first castings, even if of small and bas-relief pieces, came out with various defects, as can be seen in the panels of the Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in which recast was carried out to repair lacks and gaps

The church of Orsanmichele in Florence is dotted outside, in the lower part, with splendid niches in which large bronze and marble sculptures have been placed, each sponsored by one of the 14 Florentine “Arts”. Recently they have all been replaced by replicas and the originals are kept inside the second floor of the building, that is, in the Orsanmichele Museum

The “Art of Money Changers” of Florence commissioned to Lorenzo Ghiberti the one of its patron San Matthew in 1419: it had to be cast in bronze with the lost wax technique, 2.7 meters high, and cast in a single piece, that is with a single bronze pouring. Ghiberti, taking the gamble, accepted the challenge, but it went badly. It seems that the first cast was unsuccessful, and that Ghiberti had to carry out a second one at his own expense. However the story went, what is clear is that the statue that came to us was cast in two times: first the lower part, and then the upper part was poured back on top of the lower. That is, it was performed in two times and in two parts, but not by choice, but because the first cast was unable to complete the upper part of the large statue. Since the statue has arrived to us like this, it also means that it has been accepted by the client.

The St. Matthew cast by Ghiberti was removed from the niche of the church of Orsanmichele and was taken to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence to proceed with its restoration.

The Galleria Bazzanti together with the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry offered to cast the replica of the large sculpture with lost wax technique at their own expense. It was precisely during the study phases, and then at the beginning of the execution of the negative mold, that it became clear that the statue was cast in two stages, with the upper part re-poured over the lower one

It started with the study of wich technique to use for the negative mould which obviously would have not damaged either the patina or the original bronze surface

) and immediately after with the execution of the negative mold in silicone and mother mould

From the negative molds thus made by the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry, waxes were obtained, transformed into bronze with the lost wax technique. The casting was made in 4 parts (two for the body, the head and the hand with the Gospel) assembled and welded with the same bronze alloy.

The replica thus replaced the original with an inauguration ceremony

The replica was appreciated also by the authorities. The subsequent defections of the pigeons contributed to “antiquing” the patina.

The realization of bronze sculptures during ancient times has always been more complex and expensive than that of marble or stone sculptures. Bronze is a metal alloy whose components have been difficult to find in the past, therefore expensive. The Romans considered bronze to be precious and noble, so much so that it was used to cast coins

and mint them.

And also the casting technique was complex, expensive and had high risks of bad success. Widely used in classical times (in ancient Greece there were foundries of semi-serial production), in the Middle Ages bronze sculpture became very rare. It was not until the early Renaissance that works of art through lost wax bronze casting began to be produced, a production that continued to this day.

Bronze is an alloy that is obtained by combining copper and tin in different percentages depending on the characteristics that the metal must have (the alloy obtained from copper and zinc is brass instead). While in the various eras the technique of lost wax casting has remained almost unchanged, for the alloy, that is for the percentages of copper and tin, many tests have been done, in some cases also with the addition in small quantities of other metals, to improve its smoothness during the casting or the mechanical characteristics: alloys for cannons (the bombarda alloy), the alloy for bells, and the statuary alloy used since the late Renaissance for sculptures and coin minting. Biringuccio, in the mid-sixteenth century,

recommends for casting figures a bronze with the percentage of tin variable from 7.4 to 10.7. In the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry the bronze Bz 90/10 is used, in which the percentage of tin is 10%

For the lost wax technique a lot of experience is needed: especially in the past mistakes in the composition of the refractory material, in the cooking of the forms, in the temperature in which the bronze was poured, could compromise the casting.

In the technique of lost-wax casting, materials, tools and machinery, have remained the same since the Renaissance till the mid-1900s. Only after this date some materials and some equipment have changed slightly to make the work of the foundry artisans safer and less tiring. But the technique remained exactly the same, linked to the hands of the craftsman.
(The black and white images refer to the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in the 1950s). The first phase of this technique is the execution of a negative mould over the sculptural work to be reproduced in bronze, such as a clay sculpture.

Getting a negative mold for an all-round sculpture with many undercuts creates difficulties; in antiquity it was used the molding with dowels where the mould was made in many small pieces of plaster called dowels, each detachable and extractable from the sculpture, parts held together by an external counter-shell also in plaster called motherform.

From the Renaissance, it began to be used an elastic substance obtained from animal glue mixed with fat, melted in a bain-marie and applied with a brush on the surface of the sculpture; this glue, as it cools, becomes hard but remains rather elastic and flexible, allowing the detachment from the sculpture even in cases of undercuts.