Two sculptures of the 16th century have been enthroned since 1908 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York (MET). These works will be copied with 3D technology and their replicas will be installed in their château of origin, in Périgord. The copies will be manufactured within a few months, thanks to an exceptional partnership imagined 70 years ago and sealed in mid-February between the museum American and the Department of Dordogne. It is the company Atelier des Facsimilés Périgord (AFSP) which will reproduce these two imposing sculptures by an anonymous artist, dated 1504 or 1515.
Replicas made in the heart of Périgord
These two biblical scenes, baptized “Entombment of Christ” and “Pietà with donors”, occupied the chapel of the Château de Biron (Dordogne) for almost 400 years. Standing on a natural promontory, destroyed, rebuilt and renovated over the centuries, the castle has belonged since 1978 to the department which has made it a tourist and cultural centre.
Particularity of the agreement between the Dordogne and the MET, the two replicas will be manufactured locally. The facsimiles will take shape using 3D technology to digitally model and avoid working on site and moving these monumental original works.
In addition to the use of this modern technique, it will take “90% of artistic work to reproduce the wear and tear of time”, such as the patina on the marble of the statues, explains Francis Rigenbach, director of the AFSP. These replicas will cost “around 350,000 euros”.
More than 70 years of negotiations
Spotted by experts at the end of the 18th century, the two sculptures were sold in 1907 by the last Marquis de Biron to the American banker John Pierpont Morgan, president of the MET, who exhibited them there from 1908. In 1953, the Dordogne and the Château de Biron negotiated for four years with the New York museum to recover the sculptures in the form of casts, in vain.
In 2018, Périgord resumed the exchange with the MET and the first technological tests were carried out in 2022. The agreement was signed on February 15. “This type of relationship and exchange assures us that works of art exist in two places,” said Griffith Mann, curator at the MET.
