Displaying items by tag: busts

Think Victorian sculpture, and our minds immediately jump to Frederic Leighton’s athlete wrestling a python, one of the highlights of the Tate collection. It features in this exhibition and is a good benchmark for what Victorian sculpture was like — visually striking and with all the subtlety of a jewel encrusted pastoral staff, which happens to be another item on display in this show.

The show starts off slowly with medals, coins and busts of Queen Victoria made from different materials, but from then on in there is a selection of some breathtaking artifacts and sculpture.

The British Museum could soon be coming to your living room – if, that is, you have a 3D printer on hand.

Working in collaboration with Sketchfab, an online platform that lets users share and download 3D scans, the British Museum has created 14 3D models of busts, statues and sarcophagi from its collection for anyone to download and print at home.

The museum’s “first downloadable collection” includes a granite head of Egyptian pharaoh Amenemhat III from the 12th Dynasty (around 1800 BC).