The bronze bust of Democritus (Abdera, ca 460 BC - ca 360 BC) was originally discovered at the Villa Papyri in Herculaneum, and is now in the Naples National Archaeology Museum (inv. no. 5602). An identical cast of this bust appears in the 1929 Chiurazzi Workshop Catalogue as model no. 10, identified as Democritus, and noting it is "a pendant to the bust of Heraclitus...Once supposed to be the portrait of Aristippus."

The Chiurazzi Foundry was established by engraver Gennaro Chiurazzi in 1870. The Fonderia Chiurazzi expanded rapidly, due in part to the high demand for copies of the ancient statues from Pompeii and Herculaneum, now the National Museum, Naples. In the 1860’s, the Italian government began permitting artisans to create copies of the artifacts in the museum. Widely known as a leading source for these reproductions, the Fonderia Chiurazzi, had a long history of providing works for important collectors including John Wanamaker, who purchased four hundred of Chiurazzi's bronze reproductions for the University of Pennsylvania Museum in 1904, John Ringling, who ordered several million lire worth of sculpture in 1925, which are now displayed at the Ringling Museum in Sarasota, Florida, and most recently, J. Paul Getty. In the early 1970's, Getty commissioned a large group of works from Chiurazzi for his museum of antiquities in Malibu, California