Model:

Antonio Canova, Cupid and Psyche

1787-1793 – Musée du Louvre, Paris

Purchased by Gioacchino Murat, Canova's famous masterpiece represents a scene from the myth handed down in the Metamorphoses of Apuleius, and was a milestone in the sculptor's career: he himself made a second copy of the work in 1795 for Catherine II of Russia (today 'Hermitage), and at least five others were created by his pupil Adamo Tadolini with small variations.

Model:

Michelangelo Buonarroti, David

1501-1504 - Gallerie dell'Accademia, Florence

The work was commissioned by the workers of the Cathedral of Florence, and placed in front of the entrance to Palazzo Vecchio as a symbol of the ability of the Florentines to prevail thanks to their intelligence and courage. When the statue was unveiled it aroused everyone's admiration, immediately becoming a symbol of the city.

Model:

FEDEZ, aka Federico Leonardo Lucia (Milan, 15 October 1989)

Real life laser and photogrammetric scanning

Model:

Agesandros, Athanodoros, Polydoros, Laocoon and his sons

40-30 BC / BCE - Vatican Museums, Vatican City

The statuary group, which in the original also includes the two little children crushed by sea serpents, was found in 1506 in Rome on the Esquiline and immediately identified with the work described by Pliny as the masterpiece of the three famous sculptors of Rhodes. Julius II purchased it for the Vatican's Courtyard of Statues, making it one of the most famous pieces.

Model:

Aphrodite of Milos

150-125 BC / BCE - Musée du Louvre, Paris

The work was found without its arms on the Greek island of Milos in 1820. Its exhibition the following year in Paris caused a sensation, not only for its beauty: it was in fact the first statue in the collections to come directly from Greece, and the first to be exposed although incomplete of the arms, on whose original position archaeologists started a heated debate.

Model:

Apollonios, Belvedere Torso

1st Century BC / 1st Century BCE - Vatican Museums, Vatican City

Perhaps a fragment of a sculpture depicting the Greek hero Ajax Telamonius, and a copy from a 2nd century bronze original, the statue has been known in Rome since the fifteenth century and became one of the ancient sculptures most admired by artists up to the present day. Among others, it served Michelangelo as a model for the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, and three centuries later for Dante's Barque by Eugène Delacroix.

Model:

Torso Gaddi

1st Century BC / 1st Century BCE - Uffizi, Florence

The work, derived from a prototype from the 2nd century BC, is probably the fragment of a Centaur statue. Very well known in the Renaissance age, it was often depicted in paintings and used as a reference model by artists for its extraordinary anatomical rendering, considered so perfect that the missing parts were never reintegrated.

Model:

Colossal statue of Constantine (right hand)

313-324 AD / 313-324 CE - Capitoline Museums, Rome

One of the most important works of late ancient Roman sculpture, the gigantic statue (total height 12 m) was an acrolith, that is, it was composed of various marble parts assembled together with other materials. It dominated the Basilica which bears the name of the emperor himself, where it was found collapsed in 1486 to be taken to the Palazzo dei Conservatori, home of the city collections.