DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.42779#0219
BRONZEWORK 157
I have examined these cuts closely and am convinced that
they are cuttings or parings made in the cold bronze, after
casting, by a bronze-worker’s gouge in order to reduce the
size of the head so that the helmet which was to be added
later might fit. In any case this evidence is capable of both
interpretations and so cannot strictly rank as proof.
The Charioteer of Delphi, on the other hand, is a much
more cogent case. Here Kluge shows that the bell-shaped
skirt below the waist as well as the main upper part of the
body and drapery are all from a wooden original while the
head, arms and feet are separately cast by the cire-perdue
process. Here the style of the drapery fully bears out his
view. It is certainly not ‘plastic’ drapery, but can be paralleled
from very many medieval wood-carvings where drapery tends
to fall into similar deep channels and grooves.
Kluge’s theory assumes a perfectly logical development
from plated wooden statues to bronzes cast on the cire-perdue
process and has the merit of giving us a logically developed
series of inventions which all culminated in the final intricate
and elaborate process which, in substance, has remained un-
altered and incapable of alteration down to to-day. That the
Greeks should have perfected the method is testimony to
their untiring and efficient handling of difficulties which even
to-day with perfected mechanical aids are universally ad-
mitted to be serious and risky. Only a people accustomed to
use their hands and wits in perfect combination and ac-
customed also to rapid adaptation to changing methods
could so early have mastered so complicated a process. It
must remain to the credit of Greek artists and craftsmen that
they were able to do what no oriental civilization had done
before them.
But it must be remembered that no large bronze statue in
antiquity either in the Greek or Roman period was ever cast
in one whole. It was composed of different pieces soldered
together. Heads, arms, and legs were almost always
separately made.
I have examined these cuts closely and am convinced that
they are cuttings or parings made in the cold bronze, after
casting, by a bronze-worker’s gouge in order to reduce the
size of the head so that the helmet which was to be added
later might fit. In any case this evidence is capable of both
interpretations and so cannot strictly rank as proof.
The Charioteer of Delphi, on the other hand, is a much
more cogent case. Here Kluge shows that the bell-shaped
skirt below the waist as well as the main upper part of the
body and drapery are all from a wooden original while the
head, arms and feet are separately cast by the cire-perdue
process. Here the style of the drapery fully bears out his
view. It is certainly not ‘plastic’ drapery, but can be paralleled
from very many medieval wood-carvings where drapery tends
to fall into similar deep channels and grooves.
Kluge’s theory assumes a perfectly logical development
from plated wooden statues to bronzes cast on the cire-perdue
process and has the merit of giving us a logically developed
series of inventions which all culminated in the final intricate
and elaborate process which, in substance, has remained un-
altered and incapable of alteration down to to-day. That the
Greeks should have perfected the method is testimony to
their untiring and efficient handling of difficulties which even
to-day with perfected mechanical aids are universally ad-
mitted to be serious and risky. Only a people accustomed to
use their hands and wits in perfect combination and ac-
customed also to rapid adaptation to changing methods
could so early have mastered so complicated a process. It
must remain to the credit of Greek artists and craftsmen that
they were able to do what no oriental civilization had done
before them.
But it must be remembered that no large bronze statue in
antiquity either in the Greek or Roman period was ever cast
in one whole. It was composed of different pieces soldered
together. Heads, arms, and legs were almost always
separately made.