Domenico Brucciani was born in Lucca in 1815 and came to England in the 1830s. By 1837 he had set up his business in Covent Garden and in 1864 his ‘Galleria’ boasted ‘copies of all the finest statuary in existence. The Academy thought so highly of this establishment that during the First World War they raised sufficient funds to tide the firm over the war period and avoid the dispersion of its huge collection of casts; later corporate name D. Brucciani & Co, c 1880-