A while back I blogged about the terrible quality of the new Jefferson busts for sale at Monticello. Reader Eric Daniels writes,
You may be interested to know that admirers of Jefferson can purchase an exact replica of Houdon’s bust (not just a copy but a literal casting of the original) from the Giust Gallery in Boston.
They’re expensive, but from the ones I have seen in the collections of my friends, they are phenomenal. One can buy castings of hundreds of famous statues (Winged Victory; Apollo; Jefferson, Washington, Franklin, Lafayette all by Houdon; the life size (53"!) casting of the head Michelangelo’s David; friezes from the Parthenon; and much more). This is all because of the collection of Pietro Caproni. In the late nineteenth century, this master craftsmen convinced the Vatican, the Louvre, the Uffizi, the British Museum, and other collections to allow him to make castings for reproduction (this is unheard of today, when you cannot even take still pictures of some of these). The main website has more information about the history behind these extraordinary pieces and the process the use to remake them today.
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