The Inopos

Collossal Bust of Alexander the Great, known as "The Inopos", circa 100 B.C.

Scanned from the original in the Louvre by Cosmo Wenman. Part of my series "3D Printed Portraiture: Past, Present, and Future," www.cosmowenman.com/3DPPPPF.html, shown at the MakerBot exhibit at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, 2013.

From "Faces of Power: Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics" by Andrew Stewart:

"It is clear that in antiquity Alexander was a chameleonlike figure indeed, more a paradigm than a person. For not only was his own character multifaceted and contradictory, but his achievements evoked wildly divergent and contradictory responses from those whom it touched. So he swiftly became a cliché or rather a set of clichés or topoi to be evoked in images that are wildly divergent in character, quality, type, provenance, date, and, apparently, purpose.

All this points less to a Hellenistic and Roman "portrait" of Alexander than to a complex and multifarious use of his image and its attendant connotations that extended over many centuries. His face was the most influential in history."

Originally thought to represent the Cycladic river god Inopos, the nearly one meter tall fragmented bust known as The Inopos is now accepted as a portrait of Alexander the Great. If the full figure had survived intact, it would stand at well over eight feet tall--god scale. At the Louvre, the imposing, larger-than-life figure hides in plain sight, largely unnoticed, staring down at the crowds that flock to see the Venus de Milo just twenty feet away (compare the photos from the Louvre and CES).

I scanned the original in the Louvre in October 2012 using Autodesk 123D Catch. Using Blender, I digitally restored its damaged nose using a nose I scanned from a portrait of Alexander at the British Museum. I printed the piece full-scale in PLA on a MakerBot Replicator2 and reinvented the print in weathered bronze with Alternate Reality Patinas ( http://AlternateRealityPatinas.com coming soon!).

The Louvre's entry for this piece: http://louvre.fr/en/oeuvre-notices/bust-alexander-great-known-inopos

--Cosmo Wenman
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