This collection of "casts" are copies of plaster molds taken from original sculptures and architectural ornaments of ancient Greece and Rome. In the absence of the originals, reproductions of plaster have been used along 500 years to the training of architects, sculptors, painters and engravers, influencing the visual arts from the fifteenth century.

Apart from its role in the classrooms for the study of proportions and the human figure as the classical canons, plaster reproductions became indispensable parts in cabinets and private collections, scholars, aristocrats and European royalty . However, since the advent of modernity and anti-academic unleashed in the early twentieth century, the use of these models were forgotten. Currently, the best reproductions of plaster are part of the collections of major museums, such as the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.