Place of find, history

According to the experts, the statuette was rediscovered in 1728, by a fortunate accident, in a tomb of the necropolis of Volterra. After a number of sometimes adventurous detours it came into the possession of the passionate collector, Abbot Mario Guarnacci of Volterra, and it has demonstrably been in the possession of the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci in Volterra since 1750 at the latest.

Already in the antiquity, the Volterranean bronze casters were very famous for their astonishing manual skills and technological abilities in melting and realizing bronze alloys by using copper and tin minerals from their immediate vicinity, the “colline metallifere”. So affluent Romans and people aware of culture, even before Christ, used to adorn their homes with small bronze sculptures from Volterra.

Place of the museum

The contemporary observer of the very modernly appearing statuette with her extreme slenderness will be reminded of the sense of art of Giacometti's works and will be astonished first of all, that the exquisite artefact standing before himself has been created about 2300 years ago. So not at least due to it's modernly appearing elegance the famous statuette „Ombra Della“ Sera in our days has developed to an emblem of the Tuscan town Volterra.

Production method of nowadays

The copy of the “Evening shadow”, standing in front of you is an authorized cast of the original. It has been, exactly like the original, founded by using the process of “investment casting” out of a lost wax pattern, patinated and finished through a careful procedure, done by hand, giving it its noble ancient appearance. The matrix for the copy has been realized with the kind authorization of the Scientific Department of the Museo Etrusco Guarnacci in October 1999 in Volterra/Toscana. The assurance is given that the unique event of realizing the replica has been performed with a limited number of 300 copies, each of the bronzes being visibly numbered. In addition to this limited number of genuine replica, no further copies of the original statuette are existing on the market.

Those facts as well as the strict maintenance of the limitation on the number of copies will be attested by a notarially certified assurance together with the forwarding of each statuette.

Dating

The genesis of the original statuette “Evening shadow”, because of its discernible influence of the ancient Grecian portrait art, is reckoned today by the archeologists to be dated 3rd century BC.

The golden coloured stone-socle, individually made by hand, consists of a carefully chosen, archaically appearing granite-gneiss from the Mediterranean Sea coast, in the ancient days settled with Greeks, nowadays the Provence.

Precision

By using a special method of mould-generation the various occurrences of contraction, which inevitable happen at pouring the wax pattern, the ceramic mould and finally the bronze, could be widely compensated, so that the statuettes' heights only minimally differ from the originals' height of 573mm. Including the stone-socle the height of the statuette is circa 625mm.

Ordering

The last 10 of the 300 original casts of the Ombra della Sera are currently (as of September 2026) sold directly by the maker's family and can be handed over in person in Munich or in Überlingen on Lake Constance. Shipping is no longer offered.

Please contact: Jochen Leufen, Zum Gallerturm 14, 88662 Überlingen, Germany, phone +49 179 78 358 78.

Precious metals

On special demand the statuette was also cast in silver, gold or their common alloys instead of the usual bronze. In comparison to bronze this results in the following net weights of the figures without base: