cherub on a tomb, cast courts, v&a museum, london.

the collection that is the cast courts at the victoria & albert museum in london is divided into casts of northern european and spanish sculpture and trajan's column in the east court and casts of italian monuments in the west. reproduction of all types - casts, electrotypes, photographs and copy drawings - formed a substantial and highly-regarded part of the museum's early collections. similar holdings were then being formed by other european museums but with a few exceptions, such as the trocadero in paris (confined to french examples) and the kongelige afstobningssamling in copenhagen, these have since been destroyed or dispersed so that the v&a's collection is a virtually unique example of a remarkable 19th century phenomenon. even in the 1870s it was apparently the largest and most comprehensive collection of casts of post-classical european sculpture and served as a model for others as widespread as edinburgh and pittsburgh. but as well as being notable for its ambitious aims, physical scale and the interiors in which it is placed, the collection is becoming increasingly valuable as a record of originals that have either suffered the over-zealous attentions of later restorers or severely deteriorated through the pollution of more than a century.