Domenico Brucciani and the Formatori of 19th-Century Britain

Born near the Tuscan province of Lucca in 1815, Domenico Brucciani became the most important and prolific maker of plaster casts in nineteenth-century Britain. This first substantive study shows how he and his business used public exhibitions, emerging museum culture and the nationalisation of art education to monopolise the market for reproductions of classical and contemporary sculpture.

Based in Covent Garden in London, Brucciani built a network of fellow Italian émigré formatori and col...