DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0130
CHAPTER VIII
SCULPTURE : MATERIAL, SPACE AND COLOURING
Relations to Material. — The modern sculptor works almost
entirely in clay, and thinks rather of the purpose and destina-
tion of his work than of the material. But in early Greek art
the distinction of the material is important. The sculptor in
marble was also a stone mason, and cut his statue out of the
solid block, as indeed did Michael Angelo. The sculptor in
bronze not only furnished a clay model to the caster, but went
carefully over the result of the fount, repairing flaws, chasing
with a tool, sometimes adding curls, or a wreath, or a sword-
belt, and the like. Works in bronze and in terra-cotta are alike
in being formed in moulds, as opposed to marble sculpture. But
between figures in bronze and figures in terra-cotta there is the
strongest contrast of character, the soft clay lacking all the
decisiveness and precision which is appropriate to work in
metal. In making moulds the artist must have had this dis-
tinction always before him. In fact, in regard to sharpness
and clearness of fabric, marble comes halfway between bronze
and terra-cotta.
Down to the middle of the sixth century the history of Greek
sculpture runs in three parallel lines which seldom cross one
another; each school had its own material or class of materials
to which it commonly confined itself.1
(1) Sculpture in wood with inlays. — The earliest Pelopon-
nesian artists of whom we gain any definite knowledge are
1 A most useful repertory of passages relating to the Greek sculptors is
published by Mr. H. Stuart Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 1895.
110
SCULPTURE : MATERIAL, SPACE AND COLOURING
Relations to Material. — The modern sculptor works almost
entirely in clay, and thinks rather of the purpose and destina-
tion of his work than of the material. But in early Greek art
the distinction of the material is important. The sculptor in
marble was also a stone mason, and cut his statue out of the
solid block, as indeed did Michael Angelo. The sculptor in
bronze not only furnished a clay model to the caster, but went
carefully over the result of the fount, repairing flaws, chasing
with a tool, sometimes adding curls, or a wreath, or a sword-
belt, and the like. Works in bronze and in terra-cotta are alike
in being formed in moulds, as opposed to marble sculpture. But
between figures in bronze and figures in terra-cotta there is the
strongest contrast of character, the soft clay lacking all the
decisiveness and precision which is appropriate to work in
metal. In making moulds the artist must have had this dis-
tinction always before him. In fact, in regard to sharpness
and clearness of fabric, marble comes halfway between bronze
and terra-cotta.
Down to the middle of the sixth century the history of Greek
sculpture runs in three parallel lines which seldom cross one
another; each school had its own material or class of materials
to which it commonly confined itself.1
(1) Sculpture in wood with inlays. — The earliest Pelopon-
nesian artists of whom we gain any definite knowledge are
1 A most useful repertory of passages relating to the Greek sculptors is
published by Mr. H. Stuart Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 1895.
110