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Réunion des Musées NationauxThe moulding shop of the Louvre and the museums of France
Themoulding shop of the Louvre was created in 1794, two years after the creation of the museum of the Louvre. Born from the will of the Lights to spread artistic and scientific knowledge, its vocation first was to provide to the museums and Art schools faithful reproductions of masterpieces of the ancient statuary. Since 1895 it is attached to the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN). At present its role has widened to the general public: every one can acquire a moulding of good quality there.
The funds whose moulding shop of the Louvre ensures the conservation, the use and the sale does not solely consist of the mouldings of the collections of the Louvre. French and foreign museums appear in it too. The 5000 references of the catalogue make it a vast repertory of the world statuary, a history of the sculpture from the origins to our days. This continuous enrichment makes it possible to say that this workshop is in itself a museum: the vicissitudes of the History do that, sometimes, it is necessary to refer to the moulding to know the original state, sometimes even some masterpieces od the past, destroyed along historical events, are only known today by their print.
Jean-Rene Gaborit, general conservative in charge of the department of sculptures, likes to quote this sentence of a scientist "antique dealer" of the beginning of the XIXth century: « Le plâtre sorti du moule formé sur la statue ou le bas-relief en conserve toutes les formes et suffit pour en transmettre exactement toutes les beautés » (the plaster, coming from the mould formed on the statue or the low-relief, keeps all the forms of them and is enough to transmit exactly all the beauties of them). It is there the mission and the ambition of the moulding shop.
All the marketed mouldings carry the stamp of the Réunion des Musées Nationaux (RMN), a certificate of guarantee of the source and the quality of their manufacture.
This know-how recognized worldwide is available to institutions as well private individuals. The workshop still carries out the print on the original or, thanks to technological progress obliges, through digitalization, and manufactures the model which will then be used for the plaster or bronze, resin, terra cotta reproduction. |  |
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Creations from Réunion des Musées Nationaux | | | | | | | | | | |
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