Blending new tech with an ancient trade to replicate Michelangelo

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On this very day 451 years ago the world lost its greatest artist, unbeknownst to the 16th Century Italians that mourned Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni’s demise at the age of 88 his legacy would never be surpassed.

Some 430 years after The Divine One’s first work – The Madonna of the Stairs – with Italy in the grip of Benito Mussolini’s fascist ideology perching on the edge of the Great Depression a clandestine decision was take to begin protecting some of Italy’s finest artworks.

Instructions were given to several foundries to take direct casts of the original Renaissance masterpieces; Fonderia Artistica Ferdinando Marinelli took charge of Michelangelo’s moulds. Those moulds remain the only moulds ever cast from the original masterpieces.

Renaissance Masters are art liaisons with the official declaration and authorisation to reproduce 28 works of Michelangelo from the bronze castings taken from the Marinelli moulds. To create 1/1 replicas Renaissance Masters have called upon techniques new and old to maximise accuracy.

Leading US-based 3D Scanning firm Scansite were granted access to the casting, which they scanned using a variety of techniques in order to get the most accurate point clouds and 3D models. Those models are then handed to 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing experts Fathom who 3D print the models in wax using their line of Stratasys printers.

The final step in the process takes the 21st century technology and utilises the 3D printed model in a process that has remained unchanged for over a thousand years, lost wax casting.

The lost wax casting of the replicas is done by Artworks Foundry and their expert founder Piero Mussi. Mussi spent years working with foundry masters in his and Michelangelo’s native Italy before moving to Northern California and opening Artworks Foundry in 1975. The foundry prides itself on staying true to the expertise and traditions Mussi learnt from his masters.

For Mussi 3D printing and scanning is the most significant development for the ancient trade as he tells the Fathom website: “Now we have the facility to be able to reproduce something that is very faithful to the original and that’s something that’s never been done in the past. No artist can do it. Only the technology can do it.”

The amalgamation of bran-new technologies alongside masters of an  ancient trade has produced the most faithful replicas of The Divine One’s works to date.