The original solid marble masterpiece stands 5.16 meters (almost 17 ft) high and weighs in at a hefty 5,660 kg (12,478 lb). The miniature replica is hollow and made of copper, it's just 1 mm tall and tips the scales at 12 µg. It was 3D-printed by a team at ETH Zurich and Giorgio Ercolano of Exaddon using a method originally developed by ETH Professor Tomaso Zambelli a few years back.

Exaddon improved on the printing method that sees dissolved metals electrochemically deposited onto an electronically-conductive substrate through a micropipette coupled to a cantilever. High layer-by-layer printing precision is assured by monitoring the force at the point where the pipette touches the substrate.