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.

The beginnings of the extraction of white Carrara marble date back to the 6th century BC, by Etruscan craftsmen active in Pisa and Volterra, witnessed by about a hundred various monuments (cippi of various shapes, decorated stone bases, large vases, but also female statues and large figured cippi found in the Pisan and Volterra area. The various petrographic analysis have established the Carrara origin of the Apuan marble used for these artifacts.

The Romans used to extract already in the 2nd century BC Bardiglio marble in the eastern area of Carrara,

but they discovered in the Polvaccio area a marble quarry better than the Greek one, with a tight grain, very fine crystallization, very bright whiteness, semi-transparency: the Statuary. In the first century BC the Romans conquered the Apuan territory and increased the exploitation of the quarries. Under the emperor Tiberius the best quarries were bought or confiscated and entered the imperial heritage; in an area inside the current Carrara Roman remains indicate the presence of offices and homes of Roman officials who collected the vectigal, the tax placed by the emperor on marble, from which the toponym Vezzala still in use.The port of collection and marble sorting was Luni, about 10 km from the quarries. The excavation of marble, managed on an industrial scale, made this city the most important marble center of the Mediterranean, and its wealth lasted until the 3rd century AD The blocks were transported by large tonnage vessels. The main destination was Rome, but marble was also exported to Provence, Spain, and North Africa. Slaves, prisoners sentenced to forced labor and even free craftsmen worked in the quarries. 189 Roman quarries have been identified in which were found tools, square and marked blocks, coins, parts of sculptures and columns, and sacred aedicules. The most famous, dating from the beginning of the 3rd century AD is that of the Fantiscritti from which the quarries took their name, carved on the marble of the mountain, detached and kept at the Academy of Carrara. It depicts Jupiter embracing his sons Hercules and Bacchus (transformation of the indigenous divinity into Summit God also found in Luni). It was custom of the visitors of the quarries to engrave their signature on the Roman aedicula, as Michelangelo, Giambologna, Canova did and in Russian letters the Russian general Osterman Tolstoi.

The extraction method was mainly based on identifying the natural cracks of the marble and on acting on them for the detachment of blocks: a “V” groove was performed on the block above the natural crack, in which wood wedges were hammered and they were wet; the expansion of the wood cracked and detached the block from the mountain.

In some cases it could be enough to detach the block hammering some iron pins into the natural crack of the marble.

Each marble worker belonged to one of the specialized categories: the marble-cuters who removed the marble blocks in the quarries, the squares that lined the blocks, the sectorial serrarii specialized in sawing the blocks, the lapidaries or the stonemasons, the marble polishers were the pulitores, then the sculptores, then the characterarii sculptors of letters and inscriptions of the gravestones. The blocks were transported downstream to the place reachable by the carts, using the lizza: it was a matter of letting the blocks slide by gravity slowly in a controlled manner on the sides of the mountains on some species of wooden sledges held upstream with ropes.The way of the ancient Romans of detaching blocks from the mountain was used until the nineteenth century, when dynamite started to be used.

With the art and architecture of the early Middle Ages, the reuse of marble from Roman ruins was born, especially columns and capitals for churches, and sarcophagi for the remains of important people and major saints.

It is after 1000 that the extraction of marble starts again in the Apuan quarries: for the construction of the Cathedral of Pisa completed in 1092, of its Baptistery of 1163, of the bell tower of 1174, and of the monumental Camposanto of 1214.

In 1265 Nicola Pisano went to the Carrara quarries to choose the marble for the pulpit of the Cathedral of Siena, in 1302 Giovanni Pisano did the same for the pulpit of the Cathedral of Pisa, and in 1319 large quantities of marble were purchased for the church of Santa Reparata of Florence. In the 1400s, under the lordship of the Malaspinas, the marble worker’s corporation took power, where the number of quarry workers increased year by year, and during the Renaissance the greatest artists arrived in Carrara to choose and buy marbles.

As we have seen the mining technique in the quarries, and also the way of transporting the blocks to the port of Carrara, have remained the same since Roman times until the 1800s. The creation of fairly safe roads that can be traversed by wagons in the quarry areas have always been a difficult and dangerous undertaking.

The attempt was therefore to bring the blocks from the quarry to an underlying flat area, called the poggio caricatore, to which it was possible to access with a driveway. The operation was the  lizza, the one already seen for the Romans, that is the lizza, and it happened in the same way. We continue to use the weight of the load to be lowered to obtain the braking action; the lizza (the sled) on which the blocks were loaded, or more blocks, was made to slide on a floor of wooden sleepers called parati; if necessary they soaped it to reduce friction. When it went over the wall, they moved the parati in front of the lizza, putting new soap, and so on until the arrival. The lizza was connected with large ropes to wooden poles driven into the rock, called piri,

around which 3 or 4 turns of cables were wound, so that the friction slowed the descent of the load.

At the poggio caricatore, the blocks were loaded on very low carts with large, sturdy wheels to support the weight of the marble, pulled by oxen.

The couples of oxen increase according to the size and weight of the blocks.

The charts traveled about 10 kilometers separating Carrara from the port, where the marbles were transferred to the ships to transport them to various ports.

For Florence the ships transported the blocks to the port on the Arno of Pisa, on smallest ships called navicelli

that went up the river to the port of Signa, where they continued until they reached the city through carts pulled by oxes. A particular fairly dangerous job was carried out in the quarry by the tecchiaioli, workers who suspended themselves along the walls of the quarries to eliminate with iron spikes, any areas of the blocks in which friability could be recognized, to avoid falling marble fragments on the quarry work surface.

In the ‘800 for the extraction of the marbles from the quarries was started to be used the gunpowder a practice that continued up to the first years of the ‘900. The use of mines allowed the detachment of very large parts of marble from the mountain. The mine blasting, known as varate, were not frequent, because after each collapse of the quarry wall the blocks had to be worked, cut to size and squared. The marble wall was pierced by drilling deep holes into which the explosive charge (the mine) connected to the detonator was inserted. The hole was closed and the chard was blew up. First, however, a particular tuba was played for a long time, emitting very low notes, to warn of danger.

In this way less than 50% of the marble detached from the mountain was employable, and the waste was therefore very high. Over time, the quarrymen learned to use less powerful and more controllable explosive techniques that produced less waste materials. A further novelty occurred at the end of the 1800s with the invention of helical wire cutting. It is a thin rope with a diameter of about half a centimeter, made of three twisted steel wires. With mobile pulleys, positioned and blocked on the step of the quarry bank from where the block is to be removed, the cable is passed and continuously run by pouring over it silica sand and water which, transported by the cable, kept under pressure over the block, abrade the marble slowly  cutting it. The circuit is a few hundred meters long, and this allows the wire to cool down by getting rid of the heat produced by friction with the marble; a motor pulley gives the wire movement about 5 meters per second.

The ability to manufacture diamond wire has made much faster the cutting of blocks from the mountain: on the wire with a diameter of 5 mm there are small bulges (called perline) close together, each of which is covered with diamond dust blocked: it is made to slide on the marble like the helical wire, but the cut is much faster.

The cutting area is cooled with a continuous jet of water. Even the transport of the marble blocks has completely changed since the post-war period: has been started to use military American trucks left in Italy, and this encouraged the creation of roads that reach the quarrying plans, without the need to carry out the picturesque but slow and dangerous way to get the blocks down into accessible areas. Until a few years ago, the trucks were loaded with winches of the trucks.

Today the load on modern six-wheel drive trucks takes place thanks to the enormous excavator blades of which the quarries are always equipped.

The first documents relating to the arrival in Sydney of Italian ships date back to the mid-800s: in late August 1852, the Italian 150-ton brigantine called Rosa arrived in Sydney; from 1853 to 1855 the ship of the Kingdom of Sardinia disembarked and climbed several times from Sydney Destruction of 400 tons and the schooner Sofia of 120 tons.

But the presence of Italians in Australia dates back to the early decades of the 1800s thanks to the regular arrival of ships carrying various types of goods, mainly due to the almost total lack of local producers. Every arrival was eagerly awaited, to also have news from the rest of the world, given that the first Australian telegraphic line dates back to 1872. From 1816 the sale of Italian decorative elements in iron was advertised in the newspapers; were imported from Italy, and sold to local ladies, fabrics, silk scarves, cloaks; some goods were also purchased in Italy by the British, and resold in Australia. Straw hats, buttons from Florence, etc. were imported from Italy. And in particular Italian marbles, sculptures in Carrara marble and alabaster, mosaics, replicas of Roman sculptures from Pompeii, Etruscan and Renaissance.

The Italian Government was not interested in Italy’s participation in the exhibition, so much so that it even denied the sending of an official representative to the inauguration. He also refused any economic support to the Italian producers who participated. It was only the Chamber of Commerce of Florence that supported the group of producers and merchants who decided to send their goods.
Men and materials embarked in the ports of Livorno and Naples on the Ben Vorlich ship of 1504 tons, which landed in Sydney on 2 August 1879.

A neoclassical Victorian-style building with a dome, the Garden Palace, was built specifically for the Exhibition, in which the Italian pavilions measured around 1,000 square meters.
The newspapers (the South Australian Chronicle and Weekly Mail, the Telegraph and Shoalhaven Advertiser) wrote that the main attraction were the sculptures in Carrara marble of the Studio Bazzanti from Florence , beautiful replicas of classical statues .

On September 22, 1882, while in Florence the Bazzanti Sculpture Studio was by the owners Pietro and Niccolò set up partly as a sculpture sales gallery, in Sydney a huge fire completely destroyed the Garden Palace in less than an hour with all its contents .

Also for the subsequent Sydney International Exhibition the Italian Government took no interest in it. The reins were taken in hand by the Venetian firm Olivieri and Sarfatti who became the Italian exhibitor agency and took charge of collecting goods in Italy, packing and transporting them to Melbourne, organizing and positioning goods in Melbourne, and shipping them back to Italy at the end of the exhibition.

The “Royal Transport Europe” ship of 680 tons commissioned by the King of Italy for the shipping of Italian goods at the Exhibition, sailed from Venice on 12 June and arrived in Melbourne on 6 September 1880. It made a stopover in Brindisi, Port Said, Aden, Ceylon , Singapore, Java, Albany.

Italy had an excellent position in the Melbourne Exhibition Building, with corner salons on the ground floor; in total around 50,000 square meters.

The Bazzanti Gallery exhibited 6 marble sculptures, including the so-called “Michelangelo Giovane”. It was very successful.

It was thanks to this exhibition that 24 years later, in 1904, the sale of a series of replicas of marble classics began between the Pietro Bazzanti Gallery and Son and the so-called Felton Bequest, that is, the Bequest legacy with whose funds were purchased museums for the National Gallery of Victoria.

Since the early 1900s, relations with Australian customers have continued to this day; we particularly like to remember the bronze replica of the Porcellino by Tacca that the Marchesa Fiaschi Torrigiani bought in 1969 from the Bazzanti Gallery to donate it to the Sydney Hospital, and a second bronze boar that in 2007 reached the city of Mandurah not far from Perth.

a replica of Venus identical to that signed by the artist and finally a bas-relief with the allegory of Francis I

(both at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna); there is a replica of the latter at the Bargello National Museum in Florence.
Giambologna himself had organized in his artistic foundry the production of several replicas of his original models, which when in 1580 the pupil-assistant Antonio Susini entered the master’s workshop, took place the repeated reproduction of his models; and when Susini in 1600 opened his own workshop in Via della Pergola in Florence, the casting of bronzes continued on the master’s models, which was still in effect until the late ‘600.
But it was the Tacca who had begun to create reduced models of classical art and Michelangelo’s masterpieces reductions for this last lost.
The Tacca was also the maker of the “Porcellino“, the wild boar, placed outside the Mercato Nuovo in Florence.

There is a common thread that unites the Renaissance foundry of Giambologna and his pupils with the Fonderia Ferdinando Marinelli of today: from master to disciple, from headmaster in apprentice, the knowledge and techniques of the ancient art of lost wax casting have arrived, without interruption, at the Marinelli Foundry.

See also: Marinelli Foundry History