Recording of the Al Ain Museum

In September 2018, a team from Factum Foundation travelled to the oasis city of Al Ain in the Abu Dhabi Emirate in order to record and digitise the exhibits of the Al Ain Museum. The museum, the oldest in the UAE, is being temporarily closed to allow its renovation and the construction of an additional museum building, with Factum commissioned by the Abu Dhabi Department for Culture and Tourism to document its variety of exhibits with photogrammetry and LiDAR laser scanning.
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Raphael's "Lo Spasimo"

The high-resolution colour recording of Raphael's "Lo Spasimo di Sicilia" ­was made possible by the Museo del Prado. This was the first step towards the creation of a reproduction of “Lo Spasimo” that will be displayed in the Palermitan monastery of Santa Maria dello Spasimo, where the painting hung until the middle of the 16th century. During its time in France in the 19th century, the painting was transferred from its wooden panel onto a canvas, a fact that Factum Foundation addresses with the ‘recreation’ of the painting on a rigid panel. Read more.

Facsimile of the Jamnitzer Bell at Strawberry Hill House

The extraordinary 'Cellini Bell' by Wenzel Jamnitzer (1507/1508 to 1585) was recorded in June 2018 at the British Museum in London. This highly intricate cast and chased silver bell was amongst the most difficult objects Factum Foundation has ever recorded. The exact facsimile will be included in the exhibition "Lost Treasure of Strawberry Hill" (20th October - 24th February 2019) in Twickenham.
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Columbia University's Studio trip, Seville

During a 3-day intensive trip in early October, students from Columbia University and Factum Foundation's scanning specialists carried out the recording of a selection of art and architecture elements of the great Casa de Pilatos in Seville. Adam Lowe and Carlos Bayod's Studio on Advanced Preservation Technology programme will ultimately accompany the students in the processing of the obtained data.

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Recording in Casa de Pilatos, Seville

In early October, a team from Factum Foundation spent three days in Seville for the recording of various elements of Casa de Pilatos. As part of our collaboration with the Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli, which started with the recording of Cardinal Tavera's tomb, this project aims at applying digital technology to the recording and preservation of one of Medinaceli's great treasures.

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Kamukuwaká:
vandalised indigenous rock art site

A team from Factum Foundation has returned from the Xingu region of the Amazon where they discovered the destruction of a uniquely important petroglyph site. Widely reported in the Brazilian media, the tragedy highlights the importance of preemptive 3D recording and will form the centrepiece of Factum’s upcoming project for the Venice Biennale in 2019.

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News from Dagestan

A team from Factum Foundation is in Dagestan to install a new portable manuscript scanner for the Institute of History, Archaeology and Ethnography in Makhachkala. The scanner will be taken on expeditions into Dagestan's mountains as part of a long-term campaign to digitise and study the thousands of Islamic manuscripts held by private collections in the region.

Read more about the project here.

Venice: Homo Faber, Veronese, workshop

During the exhibition Homo Faber (14-30 Sept. 2018) at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, two works by Italian Renaissance painter Paolo Veronese were digitised with the Lucida 3D scanner, in collaboration with Open Care (Milan). The data, gathered before and after the diptych's restoration, will be used to inform and document the cleaning of the paintings. As part of this initiative, a practical workshop on surface 3D scanning was carried out on September 21st - applications open here.

Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli

The recording of the tomb of Cardinal Tavera initiated a collaboration with the Fundación Casa Ducal de Medinaceli that is a great example of what is possible when different foundations work together to record, archive, analyse, preserve and communicate the importance of Cultural Heritage. The first stage of the work, the complete high-resolution recording of the tomb is now finalised. The captured data was processed using the photogrammetry software Reality Capture.
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Recording of 11 Shabti figurines from the tomb of Seti I

A team from Factum Foundation has started the photogrammetric recording of eleven shabti statuettes from the tomb of Seti I, part of the permanent collection of the Museo Civico Archeologico of Bologna (MCABo). Ten statuettes are made of wood and one of faïence. Highly artistic in quality and larger in size, the latter shows the sovereign with the regal nemes headdress, the usekh pectoral as well as wide bracelets on his wrists, dotted with cobalt blue on a ground lapis lazuli. Read more.

A FACSIMILE OF THE WEDDING AT CANA
BY PAOLO VERONESE

Over a decade later, the facsimile of the Wedding at Cana still looks as it did on the day it was installed in its original position, on the end wall of the Palladian refectory on the Island of San Giorgio Maggiore, Venice. The copy, commissioned by the Fondazione Giorgio Cini and made by Factum Arte, is an exact facsimile of the painting that was recorded in the Musée du Louvre. Learn more about the project here.

The Lucida Lab Milano recording J. B. Jackson's Chiaroscuro woodcuts

A team from the Lucida Lab Milano started the recording of J. B. Jackson's Chiaroscuro woodcuts, in Palazzo Sturm, Bassano del Grappa's Civic Museum. Palazzo Sturm is one of the few museums in Italy dedicated to showing every aspect of Remondini’s industrial process within the 16th and 17th centuries as well as the phases in the production of books, decorated papers, religious and popular print makings, games, optical views, etchings and woodcuts.
Read more on the Lucida Lab Milano.

RECORDING PARMIGIANINO'S SELF-PORTRAIT IN VIENNA

Factum Foundation's team went to the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna to record Parmigianino's self-portrait in a Convex Mirror (1524). This small painting, measuring just about 20 cm in diameter, is one of the masterpieces in the museum's Picture Gallery. The data collected from this project is currently being processed. Read more.

FACTUM ARTE'S PROFILE, BY PATEK PHILIPPE

In his interview by Patek Philippe Magazine, Adam Lowe talks about Factum Arte, Factum Foundation, the creative energy that animates the workshops and the contemporary artists, artisans and secular masterpieces that run them.

Click here to watch the video.