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NYTimes
New York Times
25 Dec 2024
Felicia CraddockDmitry Kostyukov For The New York Times


NextImg:In France, This Workshop Copies the World’s Great Sculptures

The “Venus de Milo.” The “Discobolus.” “The Seated Scribe.” None of those or other great sculptures may be available as gifts this holiday season, but precise reproductions, made from molds of the originals, are.

As gifts go, “it’s original,” said Sophie Prieto, the head of the Plaster Cast Workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn, the organization that works with all of France’s national museums.

Ms. Prieto had just set a 15-inch plaster copy of Alexander the Great’s foot back in its place on a wooden pallet in the workshop’s main corridor and moved into its airy reception hall. In the corner, to her left, loomed a wingless copy of the Louvre’s almost 11-foot-tall “Winged Victory of Samothrace” statue.

And as the atelier’s archive has molds of more than 6,000 artworks, buyers will not be short of choice. “We have objects from all times and periods,” Ms. Prieto said, “from prehistory to the ’50s.”

Founded in 1794, the workshop was established in the bowels of the newly created Louvre to create plaster casts of sculptures for its own display and to provide French art schools with much-needed reproductions. (To be the best, “you need to see the best,” Ms. Prieto said.)

ImageA person in a gray cardigan, plaid skirt and black glasses holds a small, intricate statue while standing in a workshop.
Sophie Prieto, the head of the Plaster Cast Workshop of the GrandPalaisRmn, in Saint-Denis in December. She said the workshop had “objects from all times and periods,” which molder-casters recreate in plaster.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

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