In a workshop in the Milan suburbs, sculptor Giovanni Calderino completes his latest project -- a battered statue from the top of the Italian city's gothic cathedral, and its gleaming white replacement. Depicting a bearded man wearing a tunic, the marble statue has adorned one of the Duomo's 135 spires for two centuries.

But decades of harsh weather, pollution and the bombings of the Second World War have taken their toll, leaving it discoloured and missing its right hand. The damage to the statue was spotted during the twice-yearly inspections of the cathedral, by the institution that has managed the building for 600 years, the Veneranda Fabbrica del Duomo di Milano.