Art Imitates Art

Copies of the Louvre's masterpieces come to life in a pair of little-known ateliers just outside Paris. Elaine Sciolino pays a visit

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Inside L'Atelier de Moulage, which re-creates sculptures from the Louvre's collection for educational and preservation purposes

THE SECOND FLOOR of the Louvre's gift shop holds hidden treasures for art lovers in search of unique souvenirs. It is a repository of more than 600 prints (or, as the museum calls them, engravings) made from 14,000 copper plates in the permanent collection, all rendered on high-quality paper and guaranteed to last 100 years. The space also sells small casts of famous sculptures, like jewel-colored copies of the Venus de Milo and the Nike of Samothrace.

These souvenirs are fashioned by two ateliers that the public can visit once a month on Fridays, in the Paris suburb of La Plaine Saint-Denis. At La Chalcographie du Louvre, printmakers use traditional techniques to produce prints that look just as they did centuries earlier from the same copper plates; at L'Atelier de Moulage, another team of artisans creates molds that replicate marble statues in plaster or resin. Neither site is on the everyday tourist route; I've rarely found a Parisian who knows of their existence. But they are as exciting as they are offbeat, and worth a visit.