Inaugurated in 2017, the Municipal Plaster Library permanently exhibits, in a philologically and historically researched arrangement, the plaster casts from the Napoleonic era, from the first decades of the 19th century onwards, which have served for centuries to introduce children to the forms, volumes and beauty of classical, Greek and Roman sculpture.
Among the various artefacts on display, there are plaster casts replicating not only famous masterpieces such as the Venus de Milo, Michelangelo’s Tondo Pitti, Donatello’s Dancing Putti, but also bas-reliefs by Jacopo della Quercia in the San Petronio church in Bologna, by Lorenzo Ghiberti in the Baptistery Door in Florence, by Giovanni Pisano in the ambo of the Pisa cathedral.
The works come from the collection of 247 pieces that in 1908 were donated to the Cascina School of Art, which at the time was a school of the Workers’ Society. The plaster casts remained in the school until the 1960s, when they began to be moved from one warehouse to another, also suffering various damages and restorations. Today about fifty remain, all of which are on display in the Gipsoteca.