[152]. See note on ‘The Nature of Sculpture,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 179.
[153]. ‘Working from manner.’ Vasari refers here to what artists call ‘treatment,’ which is a process of analysis and grouping, applied to appearances in nature where the eye sees at first little more than a confused medley of similar forms that are perhaps constantly changing. Under such an aspect the hair as well as the folds of drapery on the human figure presented themselves to the early Greek sculptor, and it was a long time before he learned to handle them aright. In the case of the hair he had no help in previous work, for in Egyptian statues it is often covered, or is replaced by a formal wig, and in Assyrian art the hair is very severely though finely conventionalized. It was not until the age of Pheidias that the Greeks learned how to suggest the soft and ample masses of the hair, and at the same time to subdivide these into the distinct curls or tresses, each one ‘solid,’ as Vasari requires, but individually rendered with the minuter markings which suggest the structure and ‘feel’ of the material. The Italians started of course with this treatment or ‘manner’ already an established tradition founded on antique practice. In the mediaeval sculpture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France and England the hair is often very artistically rendered.
[154]. This paragraph opens up a subject of much artistic interest, on which see Note on ‘Sculpture Treated for Position,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 180 f.
[155]. For Vasari, a practical artist, to commit himself to the statement that figures are made nine heads high, is somewhat extraordinary, for eight heads, the proportion given by Vitruvius (III, 1) is the extreme limit for a normal adult, and very few Greek statues, let alone living persons, have heads so small. The recently discovered ‘Agias’ by Lysippus, at Delphi, is very nearly eight heads high. The ‘Doryphorus’ at Naples not much more than seven. The ‘Choisseul Gouffier Apollo’ about seven and a half, etc. Vasari seems to have derived his curious mode of reckoning from Filarete, who in Book 1 of his Treatise on Architecture measures a man as follows: Head = 1 head, neck = ½, breast = 1, body = 2, thighs = 2, legs = 2, foot = ½, total nine heads. Alberti, Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, and indeed almost all the older writers on art, discourse on the proportions of the human figure.
[156]. See Note on ‘Waxen Effigies and Medallions,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 188.
[157]. One objection to an armature of wood is that the material may swell with the damp of the clay and cause fissures. Iron is objectionable because the rust discolours the clay. Modern sculptors often use gas-piping in the skeletons of their models, as this is flexible and will neither rust nor swell.
[158]. Baked flour used to be employed by plasterers to keep the plaster they were modelling from setting too rapidly. See the Introduction by G. F. Robinson to Millar’s Plastering Plain and Decorative, London, 1897. The former used rye dough with good effect for the above purpose.
[159]. The tow or hay tied round the wood affords a good hold for the clay, which is apt to slip on anything smooth.
[160]. This method of producing drapery is not very artistic.
[161]. See Note on ‘Proportionate Enlargement’ at close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 190.