Plaster cast of a relief depicting a veiled figure cut below the bust as a personification of the Synagogue from León Cathedral, possibly made by Antonio de Las Penas, León in about 1864.

Plaster cast of a relief depicting This relief of a veiled figure cut below the bust represents a personification of the Synagogue. She is represented as an aged woman as a symbol of the old religion, blindfolded to signify “her inability or unwillingness to appreciate the new revelation entrusted to the Church” (Kidd, J., 2014, p. 208). In this relief, her eyes are covered by a hybrid creature with a serpent’s body and a dog’s head coiling around her head: an asp or basilisk. Her right hand rests on the stone tablets of the law, while her left hand holds a broken spear. Two little figures that can be interpreted as ill-advising demons stand behind her shoulders, a fool wearing a donkey outfit and coming out of a barrel, and a hooded figure.

Cast of a relief depicting a veiled figure personifying the Synagogue, possibly made by Antnio de las Penas in 1864. The cast was bought by J.C. Robinson, the museum's first curator, during the first of three visits to Spain and Portugal to acquire works for the collection. The original was made in stone in the 15th century for Leon Cathedral.

Making plaster copies is a centuries-old tradition that reached the height of its popularity during the 19th century. The V&A's casts are of large-scale architectural and sculptural works as well as small scale, jewelled book covers and ivory plaques, these last known as fictile ivories.

The Museum commissioned casts directly from makers and acquired others in exchange. Oronzio Lelli, of Florence was a key overseas supplier while, in London, Giovanni Franchi and Domenico Brucciani upheld a strong Italian tradition as highly-skilled mould-makers, or formatori.

Some casts are highly accurate depictions of original works, whilst others are more selective, replicating the outer surface of the original work, rather than its whole structure. Like a photograph, they record the moment the cast was taken: alterations, repairs and the wear and tear of age are all reproduced in the copies. The plasters can also be re-worked, so that their appearance differs slightly from the original from which they were taken.

To make a plaster cast, a negative mould has to be taken of the original object. The initial mould could be made from one of several ways. A flexible mould could be made by mixing wax with gutta-percha, a rubbery latex product taken from tropical trees. These two substances formed a mould that had a slightly elastic quality, so that it could easily be removed from the original object. Moulds were also made from gelatine, plaster or clay, and could then be used to create a plaster mould to use for casting.
When mixed with water, plaster can be poured into a prepared mould, allowed to set, and can be removed to produce a finished solid form. The moulds are coated with a separating or paring agent to prevent the newly poured plaster sticking to them. The smooth liquid state and slight expansion while setting allowed the quick drying plaster to infill even the most intricate contours of a mould.
Flatter, smaller objects in low relief usually require only one mould to cast the object. For more complex objects, with a raised surface, the mould would have to be made from a number of sections, known as piece-moulds. These pieces are held together in the so-called mother-mould, in order to create a mould of the whole object. Once the object has been cast from this mother-mould, the piece-moulds can be easily removed one by one, to create a cast of the three-dimensional object.

19th-century plaster cast after 15th-century Spanish original

This relief from Léon Cathedral shows a sleeping figure holding a broken lance in his left hand. In the spandrils, there are two demons, one of whom is grabbing the lance. John Charles Robinson, the Secretary of the Science and Art Department at the South Kensington Museum, made three journeys to Spain and Portugal in 1863, 1865, and 1866. The present cast was purchased on Robinson's first trip, from 23 September 1863 to 18 January 1864. After his return, he wrote that his purpose had been 'to effect the purchase of objects of art, more especially of Spanish origin, suitable for the South Kensington Museum; and secondly to inspect the permanent monuments of art with a view to the procuring [of] such illustrations or reproductions of them as it might seem desirable to add to that collection'. He commented that the 'cathedrals…abound in varied and important details of a monumental nature'.

REPRO.1864-118