The nature of what has been termed the framework, from which all the measurements are taken, may vary. Cellini, on the occasion referred to, surrounded his model with a sort of skeleton of a cubical box, from the sides and corners of which he measured. In the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d’Alembert, of the middle of the eighteenth century, similar square frames, like those used as stretchers for canvases, are suspended horizontally over model and block, and plumb lines are hung from the corners, so that skeleton cubes are established, which would answer the same purpose as Cellini’s box. See Plate X, A. The arrangement contemplated by Vasari was somewhat simpler. He does not establish a complete hollow cube about his model and his block, but is apparently satisfied with erecting perpendiculars beside each, from which the measures would be led. The carpenter’s square (squadra) he has in mind consists of two straight legs joined together at right angles. If one leg be laid horizontally along the table the one at right angles to it will be vertical, and from this the measurements are taken. In the treatise on Sculpture by Leon Battista Alberti there is an elaborate description of a device he invented for the purpose in view, and one of his editors has illustrated this by a drawing reproduced here in Plate X, B. The device explains itself, and any number of similar contrivances could be employed.
THE USE OF FULL-SIZED MODELS.
[§ 49, Danger of Dispensing with the Full-sized Model, ante, p. [151].]
The question here is of the possibility of dispensing altogether with a full-sized clay model, and proceeding at once to attack the marble with the guidance only of the small original sketch. In modern times this is practically never done, but it was the universal practice of the Greek sculptors at any rate down to the later periods of Hellenic art. These remarks of Vasari come just at the time of the change from the ancient to the modern technique, for we shall see that Donatello in the fifteenth century worked according to the simpler ancient method, while Michelangelo in the sixteenth after beginning in the same fashion finally settled down to the use of the full model, which has ever since remained de rigeur.
Plate X
B
DIAGRAM to illustrate Alberti’s method of measurement
A
INTERIOR OF A SCULPTOR’S STUDIO IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
With illustrations of methods of measurement
Fig. 11.—Two views of unfinished Greek marble statue blocked out on the ancient system. In quarries on Mount Pentelicus, Athens.
The technique of the Greeks furnished the subject for an article by Professor Ernest Gardner in the 14th volume of the Journal of Hellenic Studies. He shows there by a comparison of unfinished works that the Greek sculptors attacked the marble directly, and proceeded apparently on the following method. Having obtained a block about the size and shape required they set it up before them as if in a front view, and then hewed away at the two sides till they had brought the contour of these to the exact lines required for the finished work. They then passed round through a right angle to the side, and treated in a similar fashion the front and back of the block, bringing these to the shape of the front and back of the desired figure. The block would then, when looked at from the front or back or from the sides, present the required outlines, but the section of it would still be square in every part—there would be no rounding off. The sketches, Fig. 11, show two views of a figure blocked out in this fashion by an ancient Attic sculptor. It was found in old marble workings on Mount Pentelicus, and is preserved at the modern marble quarry at the back of that mountain. We owe the use of the photographs employed to the courtesy of M. Georges Nicole, of Geneva. They were published in the volume entitled Mélanges Nicole, Geneva, 1905, in connection with an article on the figure by the archaeologist just named. The next process was to cut away these corners and with the guidance of the already established contours gradually bring the whole into the required shape. A small model may in every case be presupposed and there must have been some system of measurement. Indeed on some antiques, as on a crouching Venus in the gallery leading to the Venus of Milo in the Louvre, there are still to be seen the knobs (puntelli) to which measurements were taken during the progress of the work. Of the use of full-sized clay models there is in Greece no evidence at all, until the late period of the first century B.C., when we are told of Pasiteles, a very painstaking sculptor of a decadent epoch, that he never executed a work without first modelling it (nihil unquam fecit antequam finxit). This no doubt implies a full-sized model in clay, for a small sketch would not be mentioned as it is a matter of course.
The practice of the Italians is described by Cellini in words which are important enough to quote. They are from the fourth chapter of his treatise on Sculpture. ‘Now although many excellent masters of assured technique have boldly attacked the marble with their tools, as soon as they had carved the little model to completion, yet at the end they have found themselves but little satisfied with their work. For, to speak only of the best of the moderns, Donatello adopted this method in his works; and another example is Michelangelo, who had experience of both the methods, that is to say, of carving statues alike from the small model and the big, and at the end, convinced of their respective advantages and disadvantages, adopted the second method (of the full-sized model). And this I saw myself at Florence when he was working in the sacristy of S. Lorenzo (on the Medici tombs).’ As regards Michelangelo’s early practice, Vasari records in his Life that he carved the colossal marble ‘David’ with the sole aid of a small wax model, according to Vasari one of those now preserved in the Casa Buonarroti at Florence. This was in 1504. The Medici tombs date twenty years later.