Moulded on the Best Originals of Rome. 18th Century Production of Plaster Casts of Antique Sculpture and their Trade in Germany, in: Eckart Marchand/Rune Frederiksen (Hrsg.), Plaster

Charlotte Schreiter

Moulded on the Best Originals of Rome. Eighteenth-Century Production and Trade of

Plaster Casts after Antique Sculpture in Germany

in: Eckart Marchand, Rune Frederiksen (Hrsg.), Plaster Casts: Making, collecting, and displaying from classical antiquity to the present, International Conference at Oxford University, 24-26

September 2007 (Berlin 2010), 121-142.

Making and Distribution from the Eighteenth to the Twentieth Century

AUTHOR’S COPY | AUTORENEXEMPLAR




“Moulded from the best originals of Rome” – Eighteenth-Century Production and Trade of Plaster Casts

after Antique Sculpture in Germany1

CHARLOTTE SCHREITER

In 1794, a catalogue was published entitled Casts of antique and modern stat-ues, figures, busts, bas-reliefs moulded from the best originals in Rost’s art dealers shop in Leipzig (Fig. 6. 1). It listed fifty-four full-scale statues and seventy-five busts as well as numerous small-scale copies and “study pieces” – single hands, feet, monuments and reliefs among others. Fifty-six separately bound copper engravings illustrate a representative range of the most impor-tant pieces. This was the first time that the Leipzig art dealer Carl Christian Heinrich Rost (Fig. 6. 2) had published an illustrated catalogue of all the casts of antique and modern sculptures available in his shop.2

This impressive catalogue in two volumes was in turn only one part of a substantial work comprising etchings and music supplies as well as other goods such as Wedgwood ceramics or Italian cork models and dactyliothe-cae.3 As far as its presentation is concerned, the core of the publication – the illustrated catalogue – must be considered at the least outstanding, if not unique. This catalogue was neither the first one to be published by Rost, nor the only one in circulation in the central German cities and courts at the end of the eighteenth century, but in terms of its comprehensiveness it exceeded any ___________ 1 This contribution was written in the context of the project “Brave Old World: Places, Pro-

grammes and Materials about 1800” within the Collaborative Research Centre 664 “Transfor-mations of Antiquity” at the Humboldt University Berlin <http://www.sfb-antike.de/index.php?id= 330&L=6> [accessed 15 July 2009]. I would like to thank Barbara Lück, Steffen Zarutzki, Daniela Stief, Per Rumberg, Deborah Cohen, Florian von Ehrenstein, Claudia Sedlarz and Marcus Becker for discussion, practical assistance and translation.

2 [Rost], Abgüsse antiker und moderner Statuen, Figuren, Büsten, Basreliefs über die besten Originale geformt in der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig ([Leipzig], 1794).

3 This subdivision was also characteristic of the two preceding catalogues. [Rost], Verzeichnis aller Kunstsachen, welche bey Carl Christian Heinrich Rost in seiner Handlung in Auerbachs Hofe zu Leipzig um die billigsten Preise zu haben sind, Leipziger Jubilatemesse (Leipzig, 1779), and [Rost], Anzeige aller Kunstwerke der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig, Zweyte Abthei-lung (Leipzig, 1786).



Charlotte Schreiter 122

Fig. 6. 1: Carl Christian Heinrich Rost, sales-catalogue, 1794: Abgüsse antiker und moder-ner Statuen, Figuren, Büsten, Basreliefs über die besten Originale geformt in der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig, Frontispiece.

Fig. 6. 2: Portrait of Carl Christian Heinrich Rost. Anton Graff, c. 1794. Museum der Bil-denden Künste, Leipzig.

comparable work, including earlier catalogues by Rost himself. Even looking through the catalogue today, one is impressed by the great variety of high-quality plaster casts of that epoch on offer.

The most important pieces were presented in outline drawings. The reduc-tion of the figures to outlines corresponds to Winckelmann’s belief that these constituted the essence of the statues themselves.4 Short explanatory texts specified the art historical importance of the individual antique sculptures. References to respective museum catalogues and commented catalogues – such as Casanova’s Discorso sopra gl’antichi5 – emphasize the aspiration to seriousness. The artist commissioned to carry out the drawings, Schnorr von Carolsfeld, was chosen carefully: he was engaged upon the recommendation

___________ 4 C. Weissert, Reproduktionsstichwerke. Vermittlung alter und neuer Kunst im 18. und frühen 19.

Jahrhundert (Berlin, 1999), pp. 9-10. 5 G. B. Casanova, Discorso sopra gl’antichi e vari monumenti loro per l’uso degl’alunni dell’eletto-

ral accademia delle belle arti di Dresda (Leipzig, 1770).



“Moulded from the best originals of Rome” 123

of the Director of the Leipzig Academy, Adam Friedrich Oeser.6 Not wishing to provide a mere sales catalogue, the publisher (Rost) explicitly presented himself as a patron of the fine arts: He stated that he had not spared himself any effort to obtain the casts of the best antique artefacts in order to offer them to connoisseurs of the fine arts at a reasonable price.7

The particular phrasing of the catalogue’s title with its deliberate reference to the fact that the casts were “moulded from the best originals” is the starting-point of this paper. If Rost was able to offer such a large number of allegedly good casts at that time, he must have had very good sources. In the following I shall consider how, towards the end of the eighteenth century, plaster casts of antique statues were brought to Germany, who produced them, who sold them, how they were accepted by the public and how eventually a fiercely competitive market for such goods developed.

Numerous publications have concentrated on issues such as the circulation of antique sculptures, the composition of individual collections, the estab-lishment of new collections and their significance for European culture. They deal with a Europe-wide phenomenon and emphasize similarities rather than differences.8 Regarding the general enthusiasm for antiquity, Germany in the eighteenth century in fact differed only slightly from other countries. How-ever, the Grand Tour and the purchasing of antique art were not easily open to German princes and aristocrats who were precisely the ones who set the trend for the establishment of collections of antique works of art and casts in Ger-many from the 1760s onwards.9 A depth of material knowledge of antique art comparable to England, depending on the distribution of sculptures and plas-ter casts, did not exist in Germany.10 ___________ 6 Rost, Abgüsse, pp. 3-4. Cf. Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste,

54.2 (1795), announcement, p. 370. 7 C. C. H. Rost, Verzeichnis aller Kunstsachen, welche bey Carl Christian Heinrich Rost in seiner

Handlung in Auerbachs Hofe zu Leipzig um die billigsten Preise zu haben sind, Leipziger Jubi-latemesse (Leipzig, 1779), p. 3; Rost, Anzeige, p. 4; Rost, Abgüsse, pp. 4-5.

8 H. Beck et al. (eds), Antikensammlungen im 18. Jahrhundert, Frankfurter Forschungen zur Kunst, vol. 9 (Berlin, 1981), pp. 273-91; F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, 5th edn (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1998); H. Ladendorf, Antikenstudium und Antikenkopie. Vor-arbeiten zu einer Darstellung ihrer Bedeutung in der mittelalterlichen und neueren Zeit (Berlin, 1953), esp. pp. 51-74; O. Rossi Pinelli, ‘La pacifica invasione dei calchi delle statue antiche nel-la Europa del Settecento’, in S. Macchioni (ed.), Studi in onore di Giulio Carlo Argan (Rome, 1984), pp. 419–26.

9 J.-P. Haldi, ‘Die Rezeption römischer Antikensammlungen durch “Grand Touristen” im 18. Jahr-hundert’, in Weiss and Dostert (eds), Schönheit weissen Marmors, pp. 17-22.

10 Cf. the situation in England: V. Coltman, Fabricating the Antique. Neoclassicism in Britain, 1760 – 1800 (Chicago, Ill., 2006), esp. pp. 123-64 (‘“Familiar objects in an unfamiliar world”. The Cachet of the Copy’); F. Haskell and N. Penny, Taste and the Antique, 5th edn (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1998), pp. 85-91 and passim; A. Wilton and I. Bignamini, Grand Tour. The




As a region, central Germany – approximately the area of today’s German federal states Hessia, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Saxony – was largely cut off from the acquisition and direct reception of antique art due to its fragmen-tation into very small princedoms with their meagre financial assets. Only few representatives were able to purchase antique art directly from the Roman art market. As a result, this region in the heart of Germany offered a promising market for imaginative producers and distributors of cheaper plaster casts of inferior quality. In the relatively short time frame from the end of the 1760s to about 1794, this region not only experienced the sudden appearance of travelling Italian plaster cast dealers and the foundation of princely collections, galleries and museums, but also the rise of fierce competition among local dealers and manufacturers.

Some collections of plaster casts had existed in Germany as early as the eighteenth century, but only from the early nineteenth century onwards – during and after the Napoleonic wars – did the number of collections increase sig-nificantly.11 It can be assumed that antique art – not only prints and small size copies – had been increasingly noticed even earlier. We know, for instance, that the Berlin Academy owned since the end of the seventeenth century a collection of plaster casts moulded from antique statues that served for study purposes.12 Although the eighteenth-century composition of the collections has been examined, and published inventories exist, many questions regarding the inter-relations between different collections remain as yet unanswered.

Around 1770 the small range of existing plaster casts was commonly re-garded as a lack. Hence, Johann George Sulzer postulated in his Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste [...] of 1771, that all academies should have a complete collection of the best antiquities. According to him, the only reason ___________ Lure of Italy in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1996). For the ‘Grand Tour’ of German aristo-

crats, cf. N. Himmelmann, Utopische Vergangenheit (Berlin, 1976), pp. 46-51; C. Hass-Schreiter and S. Prignitz, ‘Teilabgüsse berühmter Antiken in Lauchhammer’, in Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, pp. 67-85, at pp. 68-9, note 15; cf. J. Rees and W. Siebers (eds), Erfahrungsraum Europa. Reisen politischer Funktionsträger des Alten Reiches 1750 – 1800; Ein kommentiertes Verzeichnis handschriftlicher Quellen, Aufklärung und Europa, Schriftenreihe des Forschungszentrums Europäische Aufklärung, vol. 18 (Berlin, 2005).

11 H.-U. Cain, ‘Gipsabgüsse. Zur Geschichte ihrer Wertschätzung’, in H. Maué and W. Pülhorn (eds), Anzeiger des Germanischen Nationalmuseums und Berichte aus dem Forschungsinstitut für Realienkunde (Nuremberg, 1995), pp. 200-15, esp. 207-8; J. Bauer, ‘Gipsabgußsammlungen an deutschsprachigen Universitäten’, in Jahrbuch für Universitätsgeschichte, 5 (2002), pp. 117–32, at p. 119.

12 Cain (note above), pp. 204-5; K. Stemmer, ‘Antikenstudium nach Abgüssen an den Kunstaka-demien des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in A. von Specht (ed.), ‘Die Kunst hat nie ein Mensch allein be-sessen’, Akademie der Künste. Hochschule der Künste. Dreihundert Jahre, exh. cat. Berlin, Akademie der Künste und der Hochschule der Künste (Berlin, 1996), pp. 67–74, esp. p. 71 and p. 38, cat. I 2/14 with fig. (Th. Kirchner).




why this had not been the case was that the permission for taking moulds was too often refused.13 Goethe’s personal reports document the alternatives avail-able. According to him, sculptural works had been hard to find during his youth in Frankfurt. Only later did Italian plaster moulders arrive, bringing with them original casts, making new moulds and recasting them. These casts were obtainable at a fairly low price, so that he was able to build up his own small collection.14

Since 1707 the Düsseldorf Electoral Prince Johann Wilhelm had started to compile a first class collection of casts taken directly from antique originals.15 Conte Fede – himself a renowned collector – acted as his negotiator in Rome. He had access to the collections of the Medici, Borghese, Ludovisi, Odescal-chi and Farnese and had permission from the pope and the Roman Senate to produce casts from statues in the Capitoline collections. The casts were made by Manelli.16 A first delivery arrived in Düsseldorf in 1710. Because of the serious difficulties in transporting the plaster casts without damaging them, the decision was taken to deliver the moulds rather than the casts to Düssel-dorf. This is one of the few cases in the eighteenth century in which one can be sure that the moulds sold in Germany were taken directly from the origi-nals in Italy.17 By 1714 the collection had grown to between eighty and one-hundred pieces.18 In the middle of the century the collection was transferred to the Mannheim palace19 and then again in 1767 to the specially established Antikensaal at the Mannheim Academy (Pl. 6. A). The moulds were also fi-nally housed there.20 This ‘Hall of Antiquities’ served not only as a classroom for art students, but also as a source of models for copies of antique statues for ___________ 13 J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste. In einzeln, nach alphabetischer Ordnung

der Kunstwörter auf einander folgenden, Artikeln abgehandelt, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1771–1774), I, p. 4; Similar Rudolf Erich Raspe to Christoph Martin Wieland in a letter from 1774: Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge’, p. 285, note 9.

14 Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Aus meinem Leben. Dichtung und Wahrheit, Book 13.3 (WA I, 28, S. 188f.) cited in: Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge’, p. 283 note 2 as well as Italienische Reise, remark 14 April 1788, (ibid. note 3).

15 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, pp. 312-14. The history of the Mannheim Antikensaal is now described in detail by Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’, pp. 243-7.

16 ‘Fede group’ according to H. Walter, ‘Fundgeschichte und Echtheit der sog. Fede-Gruppe’, in H. Walter (ed.), Die Rezeption der Metamorphosen des Ovid in der Neuzeit. Der antike Mythos in Text und Bild, International Symposium of the Werner Reimers-Stiftung, Bad Homburg v.d. H., 22 to 25 April 1991 (Berlin, 1995), pp. 239–51, at p. 240, note 9.

17 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 364 (appendix VII.3: inventory of 1795). 18 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 312 and note 1 as well as p. 313; register in the

appendix VII.2: ibid. p. 362-3; Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’, pp. 246-7. 19 Concerning the circumstances in particular: Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 314. See

also Schiering, ‘Der Mannheimer Antikensaal’, p. 258; Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’, pp. 247-8. 20 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 315.




the park of the Schwetzingen palace. Thus, the reconstruction of the invento-ries reveals a representative spectrum of casts taken from antique statues, in no way ranking below that of other European and Italian collections.21 Sur-prisingly enough, however, only a limited number of further casts was pro-duced from them, most of which were intended for the requirements of the Mannheim court.

The Antikensaal rapidly gained wide renown and the numerous reports in various journals of the day reflect strong interest in it. Hofmann and Socha have compiled the contemporary sources on the Antikensaal.22 Among them the very first one in Meusels Miscellaneen artistischen Inhalts is important, since it lauds the just opened hall in a relatively widespread public medium.23 Goethe visited the Antikensaal in October 1769. His report of the visit, that impressed him deeply, has become famous.24 There, he was for the first time confronted with a large number of casts of complete sculptures.25 The casts left a profound impression on him, that he revised only when he came to know the originals on his journey through Italy. Before then, he had never seen Laocoön together with his sons even though he possessed a bust and had seen the single figure of the father in a cast in Leipzig.26

For a certain period, the Mannheim Antikensaal, with its restriction to plaster casts, remained a solitary case. Other princes in central Germany took antique artworks out of their ‘Kunstkammer’, supplemented them with appro-priate acquisitions and completed their statue galleries – partly with plaster casts after antique sculptures. Among them, Wörlitz is one of the earliest ex-amples and certainly the most coherently designed. Following the English Country House model and built in the Palladian style, the Wörlitz castle is one of the first neo-classical castles in Germany.27 Prince Leopold III Friedrich Franz of Anhalt-Dessau had met Bartolomeo Cavaceppi in Rome in 1766.28 ___________ 21 Schiering, ‘Der Mannheimer Antikensaal’, pp. 257-72; Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’, pp. 243-57;

D. Kocks, Der Antikensaal in der Mannheimer Zeichnungsakademie 1769–1803; exh. cat. Mann-heim, Archäologisches Seminar, University of Mannheim (Mannheim, 1984).

22 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, pp. 317-34; Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’, pp. 466-75. 23 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 317. 24 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 318 (Letter from Goethe in Frankfurt to Langer from

30 November 1769), cited in Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, pp. 318-20. 25 Schiering, ‘Der Mannheimer Antikensaal’, p. 258. 26 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, p. 319; referred to also by Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal’,

pp. 249-50, notes 68-9. 27 D. Rößler, ‘Die Antikensammlung des Fürsten Leopold Friedrich Franz von Anhalt-Dessau in

Wörlitz’, in H. von Hesberg and D. Boschung (eds), Antikensammlungen des europäischen Adels im 18. Jahrhundert (Mainz am Rhein, 2000), pp. 134-46.

28 T. Weiss, foreword in Weiss and Dostert (eds), Schönheit weissen Marmors, p. xi; Rößler (note above), pp. 136-9.




Shortly afterwards Cavaceppi was commissioned to build up the collection of antiquities for Wörlitz. Not only did he have control over acquisitions, but also over supplementing, restoring, copying and providing antique sculp-tures.29 The reference to English models was not limited to the architectural design, but also comprised the collection of antique sculpture which included antique originals as well as copies. Cavaceppi, who had numerous clients in England, was well versed in this process.30 As a result, an overall concept could be developed which was groundbreaking for the German neo-classical style.

In Mannheim and Wörlitz a single Italian representative had been respon-sible for the acquisition of casts and antique art. Yet not every court was able to commission a Conte Fede or a Cavaceppi. Courts such as Gotha, Kassel, Rudolstadt and Weimar had to use different sources (Pl. 6. B). The purchase of casts was generally connected with the founding of smaller academies of arts.31 Some of these ancient plaster casts have survived at these sites. The example of Gotha offers an exemplary sequence of purchases: Between 1771 and 1773 Duke Ernst II commissioned Jean-Antoine Houdon to sculpt por-traits of members of the court.32 The intention of the Duke – to establish a collection of casts after his accession in 1772 – had been facilitated by the acquisition of plaster casts from the collection of Houdon. Eleven casts based on works of other artists and on antique statues belonged to this group.33 Fol-lowing this acquisition of casts made by a renowned artist from abroad, fur-ther casts were commissioned directly in Rome by the Duke’s agent Reiffen-stein, while others were bought from travelling Italian plaster moulders. Around 1775, some plaster casts were purchased from the Ferrari brothers – Italian plaster cast dealers operating in Germany at this time who were known to have left “a reasonable amount of this kind of statues” in the castle of Friedenstein in Gotha.34 However, a further important contribution to this

___________ 29 See esp. Weiss and Dostert (eds), Schönheit weissen Marmors. 30 S. Howard, Bartolomeo Cavaceppi, Eighteenth-Century Restorer (New York, 1982), pp. 107-

35, esp. pp. 113-16. 31 Cf. C. A. Mihai, ‘“Gute Regenten, errichtet gute Kunstschulen!”. Die thüringischen Kunstaka-

demien und Zeichnungsschulen’, in Maaz et al., Antlitz des Schoenen, pp. 119-41. 32 U. D. Mathies, ‘Jean-Antoine Houdon, Ernst II. und die französische Aufklärung’, in A. Schutt-

wolf (ed.), Die Gothaer Residenz zur Zeit Herzog Ernsts II. von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1772 – 1804), exh. cat. Gotha, Schloss Friedenstein (Gotha, 2004), pp. 71-84, at pp. 71-2.

33 A. L. Poulet, U. D. Mathies and C. Frank, ‘Etat des choses: A Recently Discovered Document by Houdon’, in A. L. Poulet and G. Scherf (eds), Jean-Antoine Houdon. Sculptor of the Enlighten-ment, exh. cat. Washington, Los Angeles and Versailles (Chicago, Ill., 2003), pp. 29-39, pp. 355-60; See esp. Mathies (note above), pp. 72-3, notes 13-14.

34 ‘Kunstnachrichten. Aus Italien. Nachrichten von Kunsterfindungen. 1776. Mayland. Gypsabgüsse der Gebrüder Ferrari’, in Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allgemeinen Litteratur, (1776), 2.T., pp. 272-3.




collection was made by the local court artist Friedrich Wilhelm Doell in the 1770s during his stay in Rome at the behest of the Duke. He made or pur-chased copies after antique originals as well as plaster casts, among them central pieces like the Apollo Belvedere, Borghese Gladiator and Venus de Medici.35 When the collection of casts was founded in 1779, Doell contributed several works.36 In 1782 he returned to Gotha and became Director of the Academy. He apparently continued to produce further casts based on his own models and moulds and established a business connection with Rost in Leip-zig.37 Only later was the aforementioned ‘wholesaler’ Rost commissioned to provide additional works, for which Doell had no model to draw upon. These however were based on antique sculptures in Dresden and Berlin – works such as the Dresden Vestal Virgins (Herculaneum Women) or the Berlin Knöchelspielerin (Girl Playing Knucklebones).38

Significantly, despite the wide range of sources on which the Gotha col-lection drew it was always assumed at the time that the casts were taken from the original statues in Italy.

This last statement particularly holds true for the Ferrari brothers from Milan, who in the late 1760s travelled through Germany with their moulds and cast them on the spot. They seemed to have been able to meet the need for casts of the best antique artefacts of the highest quality. Indeed they had al-ready gained a good reputation before they came to Gotha. Wherever they went, they sold casts of some of the best known antique statues: the Florentine Dancing Faun (Faun with Clappers), the Borghese Gladiator, the Venus de’ Medici, Laocoön without the sons, as well as some busts, primarily of Laocoön and his sons and of Niobe and her children (Figs 6. 3-4). In fact, they were not actually artists, but travelling craftsmen. Among the Italian traders of plaster casts, who, according to contemporary sources could be met in any larger city, the Ferrari brothers were particularly well known by name, since they left their mark throughout Germany and did not miss any of the prince’s palaces already mentioned.39

___________ 35 Rau, Friedrich Wilhelm Doell, p. 35 (quotation), note 115: Weimar, GSA Sign. 06/375 (letter of

5 April 1777, by Doell to Bertuch). 36 U. Wallenstein, ‘Herzog Ernst II. als Sammler von Altertümern’, in A. Schuttwolf (ed.), Die

Gothaer Residenz zur Zeit Herzog Ernsts II. von Sachsen-Gotha-Altenburg (1772 – 1804), exh. cat. Gotha, Schloss Friedenstein (Gotha, 2004), pp. 229-52, at p. 233 and note 18-19 as well as p. 243 cat. 16.10: Tanzender Faun (that is the Faun with the Clappers, made from the piece that had been recently excavated) by Doell.

37 Rau, Friedrich Wilhelm Doell, pp. 205-6, p. 208. 38 Rau, ‘“Unter diesen Göttern zu wandeln”’, p. 86, note 11. 39 Cf. J. G. Sulzer, Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste. In einzeln, nach alphabetischer Ordnung

der Kunstwörter auf einander folgenden, Artikeln abgehandelt, 2 vols (Leipzig, 1771–1774), I,




Fig. 6. 3: So-called Son of Laocoön. Plaster cast of the head of the subjected figure of the Wrestlers in the Uffizi, Florence (marble, h: 89 cm). Abgußsammlung, Göttingen. Acquired from the Fratelli Ferrari in 1771.

Fig. 6. 4: So-called Son of Laocoön. Another plaster cast of the head of the subjected figure of the Wrestlers, Florence, cf. Fig. 6. 3. H: 45.5 cm. Goethe Nationalmuseum, Weimar.

The most precise description of their activities is that of Christoph Boehringer in 1981, who published parts of the archival material available in Göttingen listing the purchases of plaster casts.40 He has shown that between 1771 and 1775, the Ferrari brothers were the main suppliers of the collection of casts in Göttingen initiated by Christian Gottlob Heyne. As early as 1767 Heyne pur-chased two heads from the Ferrari brothers, possibly as some kind of test pur-chases.41 Four years later, in 1771, a further acquisition of four heads fol-___________ p. 4: “Man findet in allen beträchtlichen Städten Italiener die Gipsbilder verkaufen, von denen man

dieses lernen kann”; Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 276, comments – like many others – that these were generally travelling plaster traders, without any concrete evidence. He counts the Ferrari brothers amongst them. In fact they play a special part, as discussed below.

40 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’. 41 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 277; Cf. now: N. Plesker, ‘Das Königlich

Academische Museum in Göttingen’, in Savoy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst, pp. 261-77, at p. 266, notes 47-9.




lowed. These were listed as “Laocoön”, “Son of Laocoön”, “Apollon Pythius” and “Rotatore”. At that time, the collection contained approximately eighteen plaster casts, and Heyne proposed to add these heads and display them on consoles in the library.42 This purchase seems to have been the precondition for acquisitions in the following years, which went beyond the scope of small busts. Thus, in 1772, the first complete figures, the Florentine Dancing Faun and the Venus de’ Medici, were purchased,43 although both statues had no statue-support and their surfaces seemed rather dull.44 At the same time, the two busts of Seneca and Cleopatra were bought. The figure of Laocoön without his sons and the Borghese Gladiator were added in 1774.45 The Laocoön pre-sumably originated from the same moulds as the casts of the academies in Leipzig and Dresden: it is a fact that the Ferrari brothers were able to sell their Laocoön several times.46

The first doubts as to whether the plaster casts of the Ferrari brothers were taken directly from the originals were expressed by Heyne as early as 1774.47 He also considered a possible connection between their status as aftercasts and recent deliveries to the Russian Czarina of new casts from Rome that he suspected to have been copied by the Ferrari.48 Göttingen acquired a set that was rather typical for the Ferrari brothers.49 A last plaster cast was bought from the Ferrari brothers in 1775, the Apollo Belvedere, again a statue de-prived of its support and with a dull surface.50 From now on Heyne tried hard to purchase original plasters casts, but he succeeded only once.51

His critical judgment concerning the Ferrari casts, however, does not seem to have had any influence on public opinion. Indeed, the year 1774 must be considered as an eminently successful one for the Ferrari brothers: not only did the academies in Leipzig and Dresden purchase casts from them, but the Leipzig Academy even awarded them a certificate emphasizing their technical ___________ 42 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 277, note 20: Universitätsarchiv Göttin-

gen 4/VdI/22, and Hss. In the Archaeological Institute: Heyne A Blatt 4-7. Complete quotation ibid., p. 278.

43 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 279, note 25: Göttingen Arch. Inst, Hs Heyne A 8.

44 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 279. 45 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 279, note 28: Hs. Arch Inst. Göttingen

Heyne A 9-11. 13. 46 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 280, note 30. 47 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 281. 48 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 280. 49 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 280. 50 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, pp. 280-1, note 33: Nds. Staats- und Univer-

sitätsbibliothek Göttingen Hs. Heyne 33 c 23 (13-15). 51 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 281-2.




skills and the high quality of their casts, especially that of Laocoön without his sons, Ganymede and the Borghese Gladiator. The Academies in Leipzig and Dresden as well as some individual collectors had purchased these and some busts from the Ferrari brothers.52 Among their other customers was Carl Christian Heinrich Rost. The Ferrari casts had been recommended to him by the Weimar merchant and entrepreneur Friedrich Justin Bertuch. He decided against the figure of Laocoön because of its size, but he purchased three busts: Socrates, Diogenes and a Madonna.53 There is evidence of two further rec-ommendation letters in the same year by Kassel and Weimar scholars, who were compiling collections of casts. 54 On this occasion, the Ferrari brothers sold busts in Weimar. The close resemblance of the two Sons of Niobe to the casts in Göttingen (Figs 6. 3-4) reveals the vendors’ rather limited repertoire that by this time was well recognized.55 Nevertheless, the Weimar Academy of Arts purchased thirteen plaster casts in 1776, among them the Apollo Bel-vedere, and Ganymede as well as various busts.56

A short announcement in the Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allge-meinen Litteratur (Journal on Art History and General Literature) of 1776 entitled Kunstnachrichten. Aus Italien. Nachrichten von Kunsterfindungen. 1776. Mayland. Gypsabgüsse der Gebrüder Ferrari (Art News. From Italy. News of Artistic Inventions. 1776. Milan. Plaster Casts of the Ferrari Broth-ers) seems to be the last clear indication of the Ferrari brothers’ activities in Germany.57 The text announces their arrival in Germany the following sum-mer. It emphasizes the quality of their casts taken from the originals and de-scribes them as being very exact and with sharp outlines, available at a rea-sonable price. Gotha, Kassel and Braunschweig are mentioned as references. ___________ 52 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 281, note 34: Göttingen, Archäologisches

Institut, Akte Heyne A 12: “Pünktliche Abschrift des Leipziger Attestats”. 53 Letter by Rost to Bertuch in the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv Weimar, Sign. GSA 06/1561 (letter 4). 54 Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge’, pp. 284-7. 55 Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge’, p. 288 figs 1 – 2 (dating c. 1770), cf. with the head of the subjected

figure in the Florentine Wrestlers (so-called Niobide), Göttingen Abgußsammlung inv. A 1357 (C. Boehringer, in K. Fittschen (ed.), Die Skulpturen der Sammlung Wallmoden, exh. cat. Göt-tingen (Göttingen, 1979), pp. 112-13, no. 61) and head of one of Niobe’s sons (so-called Schräg-stehender Niobide, “Leaning Niobid”), Göttingen Abgußsammlung inv. A 1345 (Boehringer, ibid., p. 105, no. 13). Online-Inventory Göttingen <http://viamus.uni-goettingen.de/fr/mmdb/d> [accessed 16 July 2009].

56 Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge’, p. 284, note 5 (Thüringisches Haupt- und Staatsarchiv Weimar, A 1059); Rudolf Erich Raspe (Kassel): Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 274 and note 4; cf. now K. Krügel, ‘“Ich freue mich auf die Pariser Abgüsse” – Ein Beitrag zur Sammlung antiker Abgüsse in der Herzogin Anna Amalia Bibliothek’, in: H. Th. Seemann (ed.), Europa in Wei-mar: Visionen eines Kontinents, Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 2 (Weimar, 2008), pp. 173-197, at p. 178.

57 Journal zur Kunstgeschichte und zur allgemeinen Litteratur (1776), 2.T., pp. 272-3.




This confirms that they stayed in Germany only temporarily, travelling from court to court, casting on the spot from the moulds they carried with them.58 Looking at the sources, the impression arises that they were recommended by letter. It seems, they went back to Milan at the end of the season, in winter and there is no further mention of their presence in Germany. However, as I shall discuss, they must have returned once more. Their reputation was based on emphasizing their Italian background that apparently offered sufficient guarantee of the quality of their casts. In this advertisement the horrendous costs of acquiring casts from Italy is the Ferrari brothers’ strongest card.

The enormous logistical and financial difficulties involved in purchasing good casts directly in Italy – and, most notably, in having the casts transported to Germany undamaged – are the main reason for the efforts made in the suc-ceeding period to produce casts directly in Germany. The market now shifted to the ambitious commercial centres, primarily to the trade fair city of Leip-zig, which flourished after the Seven Years’ War, and also to Weimar, which was prominent due to its prospering local production of consumer goods.59 The clientele extended to the gentry and bourgeoisie. The reason for the dis-appearance of the Ferrari brothers from the German market is revealed by Carl Christian Heinrich Rost’s catalogues. By the end of the 1770s he had taken over an art dealer’s shop in Leipzig, which stocked several small scale plaster busts.60 Catalogues published by Rost are the main sources for the following events as well as some documents from the municipal archive in Leipzig and from the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv in Weimar; detailed inventories, account books or order books have, up to now, unfortunately, not been found. Yet, it seems likely that Rost delivered casts to the collections in Rudolstadt and Lauchhammer.61 ___________ 58 The remark that the Ferrari brothers were resident in Leipzig seems unreasonable in the light of

this. Cf. N. Plesker, ‘Das Königlich Academische Museum in Göttingen’, in Savoy (ed.), Tem-pel der Kunst, pp. 261-77, at p. 266.

59 On Leipzig see for example A. Schoene, ‘Die Leipziger Ökonomische Sozietät von 1764 bis 1825’, in Neues Archiv für sächsische Geschichte, 70 (1999), pp. 53-78. On Weimar see for example C. Hill, ‘“Zum Besten meines Vaterlandes” – Friedrich Justin Bertuch in Weimar: Herzoglicher Geheimsekretär und Unternehmer’, in K. Scheurmann and J. Frank (eds), Neu ent-deckt. Thüringen. Land der Residenzen, exh. cat. Schloss Sondershausen, 2 vols (Mainz am Rhein, 2004), I, pp. 275-8.

60 Carl Christian Heinrich Rost in Auerbachs Hofe zu Leipzig, welcher die seit vielen Jahren etablirte Handlung des verstorbenen Herrn Johann George Oetterich Retz, für seine eigene Rechnung käuflich an sich gebracht, verkauft in und ausser Messen folgende Waaren [...] (Leipzig, [before 1779]); Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und der freyen Künste, 23.2 (1779), pp. 336-42.

61 Rudolstadt: Maaz et al., Antlitz des Schoenen, pp. 257-68, cat. 66-84; D. Winker, ‘Die Antiken-sammlung am Rudolstädter Hof’, in K. Scheurmann and J. Frank (eds), Neu entdeckt. Thüringen. Land der Residenzen, exh. cat. Sondershausen, 2 vols (Mainz am Rhein, 2004), II, pp. 107-11;




Publishing a first catalogue in 1779, the art dealer Rost had already estab-lished a workshop for casts as early as 1778.62 The collection of plaster casts seems to have grown, but there is no reference to the Ferrari brothers, although he must have contacted them about that time. The moulds must have been purchased between 1779 and 1782, in order to publish a new catalogue, of which, as far as I know, no copy has survived. Its existence, however, is proven indirectly by announcements.63 Rost’s shop was situated prominently in a vault of the popular Auerbach Court, where he probably displayed a fair number of his casts to the public. Thus, compared to the travelling dealers, he had the advantage of a permanent salesroom.

Rost, not doubting the high quality of the Ferrari casts, informed the read-ers of his 1782 catalogue that he had made a contract with the Ferrari brothers entitling him to use their moulds. It can be assumed that Rost’s view of the Ferrari brother’s casts was generally shared at that time. Nevertheless, he decided to add a specific touch to the collection beyond the too well known and limited assortment of the Ferrari brothers. His attempt to order moulds and casts in Italy cannot be verified in detail, although in 1786 he had an-nounced the possibility of acquiring the Flora Farnese by subscription, and as early as 1794 he offered the small scale copy of this sculpture made by Doell in Rome in 1774.64

A further moulding campaign became important at that time: in 1782, Rost had called for a sale by subscription, principally of newly made casts of the collection in Dresden,65 one of the few collections from Rome that had been purchased in its entirety by a German court. The collection had been acquired for Dresden by the Saxon King August the Strong in 1773. It was never displayed adequately, since, due to lack of money, nothing became of extensive plans for a new museum of sculpture.66 From the collection of Prince Eugen in Vienna the three Herculanean Vestal Virgins (Herculaneum Women) were added. With some delay, the Dresden Collection of Antiquities ___________ Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, passim, and pp. 206-9 (C. Kabitschke, M.

Becker and Ch. Schreiter: ‘Inventarisierte und erfaßte Gipse im Kunstgußmuseum Lauchhammer’). 62 Rost, Anzeige, p. 11: “Da ich schon über 8 Jahre eine ansehnliche Werkstatt für dieses Fach

errichtet habe, [...]”. 63 Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste, 27.2 (1782), p. 348-52; Rost,

Anzeige, p. 5. 64 Rost, Anzeige, p. 28; Rost, Abgüsse, p. 24, No. VII, pl. 7; Rau, Friedrich Wilhelm Doell, pp.

200-1. 65 Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen’, pp. 282-3, note 39; Neue Bibliothek der

schönen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste, 27.2 (1782), pp. 348-52 (advice on the ‘Verzeich-nis’ of 1782).

66 For the Dresden Collection see now: H. Boller, ‘Die Dresdner Antikensammlung’, in Savoy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst, pp. 117-44, pp. 128-31.




received a strong reception after its restructuring and installation in the Japa-nisches Palais and, as a substantial collection, it was extensively reviewed in Saxony and beyond. In the eyes of contemporaries, the Dresden collection was seen as comparable to those in Rome and in Italy in general.67

Rost’s casts of twenty-five selected pieces from this collection apparently earned positive feedback. His subsequent 1786 catalogue mentions the news of the moulding campaign in Dresden first; the standard repertoire from the Ferrari moulds and other unnamed sources, primarily from Italy, are listed only subsequently.68

The Ferrari had had a monopoly position and an exclusive circle of cus-tomers, compared with the increasingly competitive environment among mer-cantile traders local to the region, although in the beginning there seems to have been little space beside Rost for other dealers. Some court artists made casts from their respective collections of statues and busts and sold them; few, like the aforementioned Doell, had the opportunity to draw on their own first hand copies of antique originals. At the same time, however, he was dependent on the marketing of Rost, who was able to reach a wider circle of customers and only comparatively late, around 1795, was Doell able to establish his own profitable workshop.69

Competition had developed principally in Weimar. Gottlieb Martin Klauer settled there in 1777.70 On Goethe’s suggestion and by order of the Duchess Anna Amalia he travelled to Mannheim in 1777, to study the casts of ancient sculptures, since at that period knowledge of them was considered indispen-sable for the development of an artist’s taste. At the same time, after the Weimar Palace had burnt down in 1774, the question arose as to how the Residence should be redecorated.71

By order of the Weimar court, Klauer was able to acquire plaster casts in Mannheim, that had been cast from the original moulds. One of these casts was the very popular Fede Group, a group of Amor and Psyche at that time inter-preted by restoration as Caunus and Biblis. Thereafter, the Ildefonso Group was acquired, interpreted as Castor and Pollux, as well as several casts of heads.

___________ 67 Rost, Anzeige, p. 6 (=Rost, Abgüsse, p. 6). 68 Rost, Anzeige, pp. 19-25: “Antique Statuen. Aus der churfürstl. Antiquen Sammlung zu Dres-

den”; pp. 25-8: “Antique Statuen aus den Kunstsammlungen, meistens Italiens, über die Origi-nale geformt”.

69 Rau, Friedrich Wilhelm Doell, pp. 207-10; Rau, ‘“Unter diesen Göttern zu wandeln”’, pp. 71-3. 70 W. Geese, Gottlieb Martin Klauer. Der Bildhauer Goethes (Leipzig, 1935), pp. 17-23. 71 S. König, ‘Garten, Ofen, Treppenhaus. Die Aufstellung und Nutzung der Lauchhammer Eisen-

güsse’, in Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, pp. 129-52, at pp. 141-2, fig. 78; R. Bothe, Dichter, Fürst und Architekten. Das Weimarer Residenzschloß vom Mittelalter bis zum Anfang des 19. Jahrhunderts (Ostfildern-Ruit, 2000), p. 80.




Fig. 6. 5: Carl Christian Heinrich Rost, sales-catalogue, 1794: Abgüsse antiker und moderner Sta-tuen, Figuren, Büsten, Basreliefs über die besten Originale geformt in der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig, pl. 20.

It has been argued that Mannheim was also the source for several mouldings for other places. However, this seems to be disproved by the body of source material that suggests that the Mannheim court artist Peter Anton von Ver-schaffelt and the moulder Carl Zeller had been obliged to produce casts for the electoral court. We learn that Verschaffelt’s generous passing on of plaster busts to Johann Caspar Lavater in 1774 and the sale of casts to Weimar led to the ex-plicit instruction that the moulding activities were to be restricted to the court.72

Like the Ferrari brother’s limited, unchanging, yet widely distributed rep-ertoire, the Fede and the Ildefonso Groups also served as disseminators of antique form in various ways. Rost sold casts from them (Fig. 6. 5), and, in Weimar, Klauer himself used them as models for copies in local limestone (Fig. 6. 6) as well as in Toreutica73 – a clay-material invented by him that is ___________ 72 Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, pp. 336-7. 73 B. Werche, ‘Kräuters Skizze des Rokokosaales’, in H. T. Seemann (ed.), Anna Amalia, Carl

August und das Ereignis Weimar, Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar (Göttingen, 2007), pp. 244-71, at pp. 262-3, note 50, p. 265 fig. 9.




Fig. 6. 6: Caunus and Biblis (Fede Group). Martin Gottlieb Klauer, 1780. Local lime-stone, h: 1.42 m. Copy after the ancient grouponce in the possession of the Conte Fede (now lost). Klassik Stiftung, Anna-Amalia-Bibliothek, Weimar.

comparable to Coade stone. Klauer offered the groups as casts and as Toreutica sculptures,74 but his account books in Weimar show more sales of Toreutica than casts.75 In addition, the cast iron figures on top of two stoves, produced in ___________ 74 Plaster: GSA 06/5310, undated list (c. 1791): H. Klauers Gypse; Toreutica: M. G. Klauer (ed.),

Beschreibung und Verzeichnis der Toreutica-Waare der Klauerschen Kunst-Fabrik zu Weimar, 2 Hefte mit Kupfern (Weimar, 1792–1800), pl. 3.

75 GSA 96/1566 (2097) von 1796 und GSA 96/ 1567 (2096); Maaz et al., Antlitz des Schoenen, p. 270, cat. 86 and 87 (G. Oswald).




1791 by Lauchhammer iron foundry76 for the ballroom of Weimar castle, can be traced back to the two antique groups.

The marketing of Klauer’s products was taken over mainly by Friedrich Justin Bertuch, an editor and merchant in Weimar, who since 1786, had edited the popular Journal des Luxus und der Moden (Journal of Luxury and Fash-ion). Bertuch’s eclectic journal provided a means of influencing the market in consumer goods through the placing of advertisements and reviews.77 It was surely not a coincidence that the first issue contained a catalogue of the plaster casts available from Klauer. A little later, there is a reference to Rost’s new list.78 However, it is obvious that Klauer’s selection does not reach Rost’s wide-ranging assortment; Klauer’s list includes a few statues, the models of which possibly also came from Rost, as well as a conglomeration of heads – presumably from the old supply of the Ferrari brothers. Compared with this, Rost’s catalogue of 1786 was much more ambitious.

Considering what we know so far about this line of business, Rost was the unchallenged market leader. Naturally, this entailed competition and plagia-rism by smaller competitors. In fact, in his catalogue he gives a very detailed description of how many of his casts had been copied and offered relatively inexpensively.79 It was relatively easy for a skilled artist to acquire plaster casts and take moulds from them for the production of further copies. It is self-evident that the quality of details suffered from this procedure. No less than three times (in 1781, 1782 and 1786) Italian plaster moulders, who had come to the fair in Leipzig, seized the opportunity to compete with Rost. In every case he, as an old-established merchant in town, pursued the invaders adamantly and saw to it that they had to leave town.80 For Rost, the time be-tween 1786 und 1794 seems to have been characterized not only by a con-tinuous sale of his products, but also by stronger competition from other sup-pliers. Besides plaster casts, copies of antique works made of other materials like clay and iron entered the market (Pl. 6. C). They were promoted and dis-

___________ 76 See note 74; A letter by the Count of Einsiedel, owner of the Lauchhammer iron foundry to

Bertuch / Klauer of December 28, 1790 in the Goethe-Schiller-Archiv in Weimar reports on the transport of the plaster casts to Lauchhammer and their return: GSA 06/426 (letter 1), Bl. 1 v.

77 D. L. Purdy, The Tyranny of Elegance. Consumer Cosmopolitanism in the Era of Goethe (Bal-timore, Md., 1998); C. Macleod, ‘Skulptur als Ware. Gottlieb Martin Klauer und das ‘Journal des Luxus und der Moden’’, in A. Borchert and R. Dressel (eds), Das Journal des Luxus und der Moden: Kultur um 1800 (Heidelberg, 2004), pp. 272-8.

78 Journal der Moden, Intelligenzblatt, April 1786 (1786), pp. xxxi-xxxii. 79 Rost, Abgüsse, p. 6. 80 Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Tit. LXII G. 7a, fol. 1-8 (Stefan George from Como, 1781); Stadtarchiv

Leipzig, Tit. LXII G. 7a, fol. 7-10 (Antonio Pinelli from Florence); Stadtarchiv Leipzig, II. Sect. H (F) 1034 (Peter Heinrich from Lucca).




tributed by Bertuch and his now established trading company, the ‘Industrie-Comptoir’.81

The Lauchhammer cast iron copies of antique statues had been announced already in the first volume of the Journal des Luxus und der Moden.82 Rost himself had invented a “compact material” (Feste Masse) that was resistant to weather conditions. All these undertakings would have been unthinkable without Rost’s collection of moulds, particularly from the Dresden collec-tion,83 and initially he sold the iron castings as well as Toreutica on commis-sion. Subsequently however, the manufacturers became independent: Klauer published his first catalogue in 1792 and presumably Lauchhammer might have published something similar.84

At about this time, direct criticism of the quality of Rost’s plaster casts ac-cumulated and was published in journals. Critics cast doubt on the origin of the moulds of the best originals, accusing them of poor quality.85 It seems that the contrast between the casts taken from the Dresden originals and the older plaster casts was so noticable that Rost discredited himself. By producing these direct casts, exact plaster casts were circulating for the first time, clearly revealing the strong variation in quality. In 1794 Rost finally abandoned the

___________ 81 Rau, ‘“Unter diesen Göttern zu wandeln”’, pp. 59-89; M. Becker, ‘“[...] ohne Vergleich wohlfei-

ler und im Freyen dauerhafter [...]”. Die Kunstmanufakturen und das Material der Gartenplastiken am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts’, in Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, pp. 153–72; C. Schreiter, ‘Antike um jeden Preis. Die Rostische Kunsthandlung in Leipzig und Bertuchs In-dustrie-Comptoir in Weimar’, in K. Schade, D. Rößler and A. Schäfer (eds), Zentren und Wir-kungsräume der Antikerezeption. Zur Bedeutung von Raum und Kommunikation für die neuzeit-liche Transformation der griechisch-römischen Antike, Festschrift für Henning Wrede (Münster, 2007), pp. 159-64.

82 Friedrich Justin Bertuch, ‘Ueber die eisernen Guß=Arbeiten der Gräfl. Einsiedelschen Eisen= Fabrick zu Lauchhammer bey Mückenberg in Sachsen’, in Journal der Moden, October 1786 (1786), pp. 366–72; and (earlier) a short advertisement by the ‘Hütteninspector Christian Wil-helm Schmidt’, in Journal der Moden, Intelligenz=Blatt May 1786 (1986), pp. xlii-xliv. For the Lauchhammer Iron casts see also: C. Schreiter, ‘Lauchhammer und Berlin. Antikenkopien in Eisen und Bronze’, in C. Schreiter and A. Pyritz (eds), Berliner Eisen. Die Königliche Eisengie-ßerei Berlin – Zur Geschichte eines preußischen Unternehmens, Berliner Klassik, 9 (Laatzen, 2007), pp. 109-26.

83 C. Schreiter, ‘Antike, Kunst und das Machbare. Früher Eisenkunstguß aus Lauchhammer’, in Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, pp. 7-32, at pp. 15-16, note 33.

84 M. G. Klauer (ed.), Beschreibung und Verzeichnis der Toreutica-Waare der Klauerschen Kunst-Fabrik zu Weimar, 2 Hefte mit Kupfern (Weimar, 1792–1800); letter by the Count von Einsiedel to Bertuch from 28 December 1790: GSA 06/426 (Brief 1), fol. 1 v (mentions a collection of engravings of the statues in the collection of the Count von Einsiedel).

85 For example: C. C. H. Rost, ‘Antwort auf folgende Stelle über die Gipsabgüsse der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig’, in Neue Bibliothek der schönen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste, H. 50/2 (1793), pp. 387–94, (responding to an article in Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitschrift from 18 May 1793).




habit of listing antique statues from Dresden and elsewhere separately, and instead integrated them all into the same list. Even though he vehemently defended himself against criticism, both in journals as well as in the preface to the 1794 catalogue86 he must have been aware of the problematic origin of the moulds made by the Ferrari.

In the meantime, the famous collection of casts by the Saxon court painter Anton Raphael Mengs had been purchased for Dresden and made accessible to the public – at first provisionally in 1786 and eventually arranged in a rep-resentative manner in the Johanneum in 1794.87 For the first time since the opening of the Mannheim Antikensaal, these first-class casts of the best an-tique statues of Rome and Florence must have shown the high quality of an-tique sculptures to a large audience.

Heyne’s judgment of Rost’s illustrated catalogue of 1794 shows in detail how much Rost had come under fire:

[…] the casts of Mr. R. may be esteemed highly however in one respect, this is with regard to those casts, that by the exceptional grace of the Elector of Saxony, he received permission to have moulded directly; and we assume these are the ones H. Rost accords the name of Original Moulds, for most of the other main pieces – such as Laocoön, Apollo, The Gladiator, etc., cast originally in Germany 20 years ago by the Ferrari Brothers, and these in turn having been cast hastily and hurriedly from the Farsetti collection in Venice with no permission by the owner, only through special favour of the custodian of the moulds – may not well be named Original Moulds. One may only compare H. R. casts to those of the former Mengs collection in Dresden to notice this difference […].88

___________ 86 Rost, Abgüsse, p. 8. 87 M. Kiderlen, Die Sammlung der Gipsabgüsse von Anton Raphael Mengs in Dresden: Katalog

der Abgüsse, Rekonstruktionen, Nachbildungen und Modelle aus dem römischen Nachlaß des Malers in der Skulpturensammlung, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden (Munich, 2006), p. 23.

88 “[...] Herrn R. Abgüsse sind aber in einer Hinsicht vorzüglich schätzbar, nehmlich wegen der-jenigen Abgüsse die er durch besondere Gnade des Churfürsten von Sachsen die Erlaubniß er-hielt abformen zu lassen; und wir vermuthen daß es diese sind, welche H. Rost den Nahmen von Originalformen beylegt; denn die meisten übrigen Hauptstücke, als Laocoön, Apollo, Gladiator etc., die ursprünglich in Deutschland vor 20 Jahren durch die Gebrüder Ferrari, und diese wie-derum flüchtig und in der Eile aus der Farsettischen Sammlung in Venedig ohne Bewilligung des Besitzers auß besonderer Gefälligkeit des Aufsehers der Formen sind gegossen worden, können nicht gut Original Formen genannt werden. Man darf nur H.R. Abgüsse mit denjenigen in der ehemaligen mengsischen Sammlung in Dresden (zu) vergleichen, um diesen Unterschied zu bemerken. [...]” (english translation by Florian von Ehrenstein). Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlun-gen von Gipsabgüssen’, p. 281, note 35; Göttingen, Archäologisches Institut, Heyne C 20. Cf. V. Kockel: ‘“Dhieweilen wier die Antiquen nicht haben konnen [...]” – Abgüsse, Nachbildun-gen und Verkleinerungen antiker Kunst und Architektur im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert’, in H. von Hesberg and D. Boschung (eds), Antikensammlungen des europäischen Adels im 18. Jahrhun-dert (Mainz am Rhein, 2000), pp. 31-48, p. 48, appendix.




Heyne recognized only the moulds from the Dresden statues as original moulds, the other main pieces, originating from the Ferrari moulds, are unmasked as mould-replicas, carelessly produced in the Farsetti collection in Venice.89 In retrospect, the suspicions that increasingly accompanied the Ferrari brothers had been strengthened through Heyne’s claim that they had had access to the cast collection of the Farsetti. It is in fact hard to estimate how many intermediate stages the casts they sold in Germany had passed through. The reference to the high fidelity of the Mengs casts in Dresden establishes a standard.

Rost’s trade in casts was only partly sustainable. However, it was always just one part of his comprehensive and market-dominating enterprise,90 even if over a long period it must have produced a significant proportion of his earnings, as is testified by the estimated sums in his last will.91 There is every indication that he continued to offer the existing plaster casts for sale until his death in 1798. After his death, his heirs continued selling until 1803.92 In 1799, a description of the city of Leipzig mentions his collection of casts as one of the most important art collections in town.93 But it is evident that demand must have weakened after it had become clear that ‘good plaster casts’ looked different. The general downturn in the business and the death of all the persons originally involved seems to have signified the end for the copies after antique sculpture in other materials during those final years.94

With the transport of Italian antiquities to Paris under Napoleon and the establishment of the Atelier de Moulage in the French capital, the last incen-tives for further trading in these poor plaster casts might have been removed.95

___________ 89 On the collection of the Farsetti: S. Androsow, ‘Die Sammlung Farsetti’, in M. F. Santi (ed.),

Venezia, l’archeologia e l’Europa. Atti del Congresso Internazionale Venezia giugno 1994, Ri-vista di Archeologia, Suppl. 17 (Venice, 1996), pp. 312–22.

90 Cf. H. P. Thurn, Der Kunsthändler. Wandlungen eines Berufes (Munich, 1994), p. 93 and note 38; J. G. Krünitz, Ökonomisch-technologische Enzyklopädie (Berlin, 1791), LV, pp. 364-65, online-resource of the Universitätsbibliothek Trier <http://www.kruenitz1.uni-trier.de/> [accessed 16 July 2009] s.v. Kunst= Händler.

91 Stadtschreiberei Leipzig (1798), Rost, Verlassenschaft: Stadtarchiv Leipzig, Vormundschafts-stube: Rep. IV. no. 4523 No. 12, fol. 45 v.

92 ‘Herrn C.C.H. Rosts Tod und dessen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig’, in Neue Bibliothek der schö-nen Wissenschaften und freyen Künste, H. 61/1 (1798), pp. 166–73, esp. p. 173; F. J. Bertuch, ‘Der achte May auf der Leipziger Ostermesse 1798’, in Journal des Luxus und der Moden, Ju-nius 1798 (1798), p. 331; ‘Die Rostische Kunsthandlung in Leipzig’, in Journal des Luxus und der Moden, Jg. 18, Ausgabe Oktober, 1803 (1803), pp. 550–3.

93 F.-G. Leonhardi, Geschichte und Beschreibung der Kreis- und Handelsstadt Leipzig nebst der umliegenden Gegend, herausgegeben von F.G, Leonhardi, mit einem Plane und Titelkupfer (Leipzig, 1799), pp. 168-9.

94 C. Schreiter, ‘Antike, Kunst und das Machbare. Früher Eisenkunstguß aus Lauchhammer’, in Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare, pp. 7-32.

95 F. Rionnet, L’ Atelier de moulage du musée du Louvre (1794–1928) (Paris, 1996), pp. xviii-xxi;




Now however, the epoch of comprehensive academic collections of plaster casts had begun, and – at least in Berlin – moulding was centralized by insti-tuting the Berlin Gipsformerei, the royal plaster moulding workshop.

In retrospect, it seems surprising that the criticism that had already been voiced in other regions had not had any direct effect in Central Germany. 96 Looking at the overall picture, one can discern a dynamic development in the circulation of casts after antique sculptures in the region within a very short time frame. For more than twenty-five years, the wish to share in this business had evidently been much stronger than the wish to recognize the obvious. Affirming that the moulds had been taken from the originals had been enough to guarantee their perceived high quality. But, as fast as the distribution of these casts spread, as promptly had a countermovement begun. Questions had arisen as to who actually had taken moulds from antique statues and when and where this had been done. Although the increasing knowledge about antique art and the establishment of archaeology as a discipline may already have played a role, all in all, it was mostly economic interests that regulated supply and demand and that resulted in the wide distribution of casts.

The restriction to a small, always constant number of exemplary sculptures, that today would seem to be a disadvantage, as well as their reproduction in different materials, allowed direct points of reference; customers apparently wanted their sculptures to be recognizable examples of a ‘canon’ and did not try to distinguish themselves from one another by owning a particularly rare piece. Compared to an exclusive acquisition of original works of art, this can be considered symptomatic of a conventional middle-class art consumption, heralding developments in the nineteenth century.

Abbreviations

GSA: Goethe-Schiller-Archiv Weimar

Frequently cited literature

C. Boehringer, ‘Lehrsammlungen von Gipsabgüssen im 18. Jahrhundert am Beispiel der Göttinger Universitätssammlung’, in H. Beck, P.C. Bol,

___________ S. Einholz, ‘Enzyklopädie in Gips. Zur Sammlungsgeschichte der Berliner Museen’, in Der Bär

von Berlin. Jahrbuch des Vereins für die Geschichte Berlins, 41 (1992), pp. 75-92, at p. 78. 96 A report for the Academy in Berlin, commissioned in 1788, judged Rost’s casts as of low quality;

GSTA PK, I. HA Rep. 76 alt III No. 234, fol. 84-87 and 95-98; cf. Sedlarz in this volume pp. 199-200; p. 224 (for the archival source).




W. Prinz and H. von Steuben (eds), Antikensammlungen im 18. Jahrhun-dert, Frankfurter Forschungen zur Kunst, 9 (Berlin, 1981), pp. 273-91

E. Hofmann, Peter Anton von Verschaffelt. Hofbildhauer des Kurfürsten Carl Theodor in Mannheim (Mannheim, 1982)

B. Maaz et al., Antlitz des Schoenen. Klassizistische Bildhauerkunst im Um-kreis Goethes, exh. cat. Rudolstadt (Rudolstadt, 2003)

G. Oswald, ‘Die Anfänge klassizistischer Bildhauerkunst in Deutschland am Beispiel Weimar’, in: H. T. Seemann (ed.), Anna Amalia, Carl August und das Ereignis Weimar, Jahrbuch der Klassik Stiftung Weimar, 1 (Weimar, 2007), pp. 282-91

P. Rau, ‘“Unter diesen Göttern zu wandeln”. Kunsthandel, Kunstjournale und Kunstmanufakturen im 18. Jahrhundert’, in Maaz et al., Antlitz des Schoe-nen, pp. 59-89

P. Rau, Friedrich Wilhelm Doell (1750 – 1816). Leben und Werk (Cluj-Napoca, 2003)

[C. C. H. Rost], Anzeige aller Kunstwerke der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig, Zweyte Abtheilung (Leipzig, 1786)

[C. C. H. Rost], Abgüsse antiker und moderner Statuen, Figuren, Büsten, Bas-reliefs über die besten Originale geformt in der Rostischen Kunsthandlung zu Leipzig ([Leipzig], 1794)

B. Savoy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst. Die Geburt des öffentlichen Museums in Deutschland 1701 – 1815 (Mainz am Rhein, 2006)

W. Schiering, ‘Der Mannheimer Antikensaal’, in Beck et al. (eds), Antiken-sammlungen, pp. 257-72

C. Schreiter et al., Antike, Kunst und das Machbare. Früher Eisenkunstguss aus Lauchhammer, exh. cat. Berlin, Abguss-Sammlung Antiker Plastik, Pega-sus – Berliner Beiträge zum Nachleben der Antike, 5 (Berlin, 2004)

S. Socha, ‘Der Antikensaal in der Mannheimer Zeichnungsakademie’, in Sa-voy (ed.), Tempel der Kunst, pp. 243-57

T. Weiss and A. Dostert (eds), Von der Schönheit weissen Marmors (Mainz am Rhein, 1999)



Colour Plates 695

6. A: Cast collections and princely collections including casts, 1767.



http://www.reference-global.com/action/showImage?doi=10.1515/9783110216875.bm&iName=master.img-003.jpg&w=345&h=386

Colour Plates 696

6. B: Distribution of plaster casts in Central Germany between 1771 and 1778.




Colour Plates 697

6. C: Distribution of plaster casts and copies of antique statues in alternative materials between 1779 and 1800.




Documents

Moulded on the Best Originals of Rome. 18th Century Production of Plaster Casts of Antique Sculpture and their Trade in Germany, in: Eckart Marchand/Rune Frederiksen (Hrsg.), Plaster