Ancient statues from the Milan Cathedral offered for adoption

On the left the original, damaged by the ravages of time, on the right its perfect replica: with a gentle and meticulous gesture, the sculptor Giovanni Calderino breathes new life into the marble statues of the Duomo of Milan, thus perpetuating a centuries-old tradition. In a huge workshop on the northern outskirts of the city, around twenty stonemasons, marble workers and ornamentalists are busy, like him, restoring or copying gargoyles and other sculpted treasures from this majestic Gothic cathedral.

“A statue is for me like a child that I see grow up day after day, I witness its rebirth. It’s fascinating to see it born from a block of marble after months of work,” confides this 46-year-old sculptor, yellow helmet screwed on his head. He roughs up the marble with a chisel, sculpts it with a pneumatic hammer and delicately smooths it with an abrasive stone. The movements are rapid, with surgical precision. An old-fashioned pantograph allows him to take measurements.

Amputated of its right hand, the statue browned by time, dating from around 1800 and representing a bearded man dressed in a tunic, has been repaired, but remains too fragile to find its place again. Its faithful copy, but all in white, will soon replace it at the top of the Duomo, on one of its 135 spiers.

The cathedral dominates with its pink-veined marble silhouette the vast square where the large gatherings of the Milanese take place. The “Madonnina”, a golden sculpture of the Virgin perched on its summit, is the most famous of its 3,400 statues.

For more than six centuries, the Venerable has been manufacturing the Duomo of Milan, an institution founded by Gian Galeazzo Visconti, first Duke of Milan, scrupulously overseeing the maintenance of the building and managing the restoration workshops. Known for its dazzling whiteness, the marble of the cathedral and its statues comes from the Candoglia quarry, on the left bank of the Toce River in Piedmont, near Lake Maggiore.

“Candoglia marble is very beautiful, very special, but it is difficult to work,” because “it has very large grains of calcite that can break” and “it is therefore fragile,” explains Marco Scolari, geologist responsible for the Milanese marble workshop and quarry. “You have to have a lot of passion to face this challenge and that is the case with our marble workers,” he says with a big smile.

Renewing old statues, shaken over the centuries by bad weather, pollution, even the bombings of the Second World War, is incessant and costly work. Twice a year, the entire structure of the Duomo is subject to a general inspection aimed at guaranteeing the safety of its faithful and its 3 million annual visitors. The sculptures in poor condition are removed.

A hundred decapitated, disfigured or one-armed statues pile up in a small backyard of the marble workshop: it is the somewhat surreal “cemetery” reserved for those who have been deemed too fragile to return to the roof of the the cathedral. Some of them, in the hope of escaping this purgatory, wear a small white sign around their neck: “Adopt a statue!”

Among the survivors, an imposing statue representing the biblical hero Samson and a lion, created in the 17th^e century by Giovanni Battista Buzzi, was thus temporarily adopted by the research firm Deloitte. For an annual rent of 23,000 francs, companies can adopt a statue and benefit in exchange from a tax deduction for a maximum period of three years, thus financing its restoration.

As long as you don’t relegate it to the back of the CEO’s office: to revive these statues and give them maximum visibility, “we suggest exhibiting them in reception areas or entrance halls”, says Elisa Mantia, coordinator for culture and conservation of the Duomo. Very linked to the cathedral, these sponsors want to “bring a small piece of the Duomo into their company and are attached to the statue which they see leave with regret”.

Many restored statues have also found a final refuge at the Duomo Museum, where their splendor can be admired up close, while their replicas sit on the roof, out of sight.