Casson, Stanley: The technique of early Greek sculpture (Oxford, 1933)

PART II
THE TOOLS AND METHODS USED IN ANTIQUITY
VIII
FOR WORKS IN HARD AND SOFT STONE
PARADOXICALLY enough the processes of bronze-
casting are illustrated in ancient documents and works
of art with some degree of fullness while those of stone-
carving are hardly illustrated at all. The extraordinarily
difficult and complicated process of cire-perdue attracted
attention in ancient times as it does to-day and provided, at
any rate for vase-painters, a first-rate subject of interest.
No reader of Benvenuto Cellini can fail to be excited by his
account of the casting of the ‘Perseus’, and no amateur of art
and science in antiquity could fail to be attracted by the
same process. Greek curiosity was stirred by the one but
not by the other. In the same way the diverting process of
casting attracted more attention than the relatively dull
processes of finishing the work after casting. Nevertheless
both the Berlin kylix and the Ashmolean kylix tell us
something of these. From a technical point of view the haz-
ards involved in the casting of a bronze statue were consider-
able, those involved in the cutting of a stone or marble statue
few. Of the unfinished statues in stone or marble which
survive few indeed were abandoned owing to errors of judge-
ment on the part of the artist either in his choice of material
or in his treatment of it.1 Kurt Kluge’s monumental work
on the ancient processes of bronze statues has already covered
much of the ground and left but little to add. But for work
in stone there is no complete study. The preceding pages
form an attempt to fix the outlines for stonework and work
in softer materials that required to be cut as solids in much
1 The archaic Kriophoros from Thasos is thought by Blumel to have been
abandoned owing to faults in the marble (op. cit., p. 52).
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