I present my restoration/reconstruction project of a sculpture: a
16th-century cerubin head: the marble surface is finely carved, but heavily obscured by the presence of dirt, dust, and treatment residues. 3D scanning allows all details, tool marks, and damage to the marble to be highlighted.
Scanning with Revopoint MIRACO Scanner
near mode, artificial lighting, size: 25 cm ca
As you can see the sculpture is damaged and part of the nose is missing.
One of the possibilities of 3D technologies in the field of cultural heritage restoration is precisely to record by 3D scanning the shape and from that use it to reconstruct missing parts.
In this case I proceeded by printing a portion of the scan:
The next step was to reconstruct on 3D printing the missing part (using plasticine):
After that I scanned (again with MIRACO):
The next step was to make a 3D model of the missing part of the nose by performing Bolean subtraction operations between the scan of the reconstructed model and the one with the missing part:
I checked the consistency by aligning the reconstructed part with the complete 3D model of the sculpture:
At this point having obtained the reconstructed part (a kind of fragment of the original), it was necessary to verify the design by making the physical prototype:
Finally, This is the final patinated (faux marble) prototype:
As you can see, the result simulates a detached fragment that is repositioned on the original.
Update
Test run on the original sculpture in the Basilica of San Crisogono in Rome: the 3D printed reconstruction fit perfectly the lacuna.
Below, the test print I made is 1:2 scale, placed near to the original. This shows that if you work with the right tools and in the correct way you can work with in scale without this affecting the result. Working in scale (for 3D printing) means significantly reducing time and costs.
