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
cosmowenman.com
twitter.com/CosmoWenman

I've uploaded the following files:

v02 121101 AlexanderInopos.3dp

Rough, unedited scan file directly from the 123D Catch application

v03 121222 The Inopos rough scan export, cropped.stl

Rough, cropped scan of the Louvre's fragmented torso. This is unprintable - it is just a single, open surface.

v03 121222 The Inopos remixed.stl

Remixed with the nose from my scan of the British Museum's portrait of Alexander ( http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:32338 ) This is printable - it's a thin shell, but it has some depth; it is a closed, watertight manifold.

v03 121222 The Inopos remixed, with mounting bracket.stl

Remixed with the repaired nose, and with a bracket for mounting on a post for display. Printable - it is the same design as above, but with a bracket.

Inopos Replicator2 Printable Segments.zip

A .zip archive of the remixed-with-bracket version cut into 17 pieces that each fit in a Replicator2's build volume, at full scale, 1:1 with the Louvre's original. Combined, the finished sculpture is almost 1 meter tall. Of these pieces, only two or three need external supports -- all the rest are oriented either right-side-up or upside-down so as to eliminate the need for external supports. There are two pieces that have a support fin added to the back; otherwise they would require huge amounts of automated supports. (Un-finned versions are included too.)

v02 121101 AlexanderInopos CatchExport.obj

Unedited export from 123D Catch scan

v02 121101 AlexanderInopos CatchExport.mtl

Material/image map for unedited export from 123D Catch scan

Sorry for the huge sizes on the .stl files. When I pose the pieces in ReplicatorG and resave them, their file sizes always jump way up -- I don't know why.