DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1755#0037
r
12 ORIGIN OF MODELLING.
von Stackelberg in Attica, exhibit similar instances of enrichment. In the
Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xiii., 11—14, and chapter xv., 8, will be found
a curious description of the manufacture of wooden and clay images,—" laying
it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every
spot therein."
It may have seemed easy to represent the shadow of a profile face; but more
than this was required. The eye and ear must be added. The latter could be
tolerably represented : but with the eye greater difficulties present themselves,—
difficulties which those only who have undergone the trial can appreciate. To
represent the eye in side viewr requires a complicated know-
ledge of foreshortening, such as the Greeks of that period had
not acquired; they therefore began by inserting the shape of
a full eye; thus giving a bird-like character to the profile. A
curious method of representing the eye, on painted vases of
FiR.2o.-PBorn.nr.TH. an early period, was to draw a circle and
carry a line through it. In some instances a ball was
placed within the circle, and the corner lines somewhat
shortened, as in fig. 21, from a vase in the Museum
Disneyanum.
Pliny traces the origin of drawing and modelling
Fig, 21.—From Dis.ney Vasb.
portraits to Dibutades, a potter of Corinth, whose
daughter, seeing the shadow of her lover's profile cast upon the wall by a
strong light, traced the outline. The father's attention being called to this
sketch, he pressed clay into it, and placed it in the furnace to harden. In
all probability some such event first originated the &as-relief, which has
alwavs been regulated by shadows; and it will be found that those bas-
reliefs are most perfect which are still intelligible upon being reduced to
mere shadows, as sciagraphs or ombres chinois. Dibutades, according to
the same author, was the first to decorate architecture with sculptured orna-
ments made of clay. He is said to have placed figures in the gable-ends,
and ornaments along the ridge-tiles of the temples—an application of his
art very natural after the discovery just attributed to him. In the same
passage we are told that the sculptor found the means of colouring the
ornaments in red.
In sculpture of this period figures were generally represented with the
limbs close together. Very frequently neither the hands nor the arms were
indicated, the whole being supposed to he wrapped up in a tight, painted
garment, and with the feet alone projecting. Figures of this kind had little to
distinguish them from the columnar Hermes already described; but a slight
advance on this is seen in the curious statue of white marble, found at Polle-
•;-v
§i^
12 ORIGIN OF MODELLING.
von Stackelberg in Attica, exhibit similar instances of enrichment. In the
Wisdom of Solomon, chapter xiii., 11—14, and chapter xv., 8, will be found
a curious description of the manufacture of wooden and clay images,—" laying
it over with vermilion, and with paint colouring it red, and covering every
spot therein."
It may have seemed easy to represent the shadow of a profile face; but more
than this was required. The eye and ear must be added. The latter could be
tolerably represented : but with the eye greater difficulties present themselves,—
difficulties which those only who have undergone the trial can appreciate. To
represent the eye in side viewr requires a complicated know-
ledge of foreshortening, such as the Greeks of that period had
not acquired; they therefore began by inserting the shape of
a full eye; thus giving a bird-like character to the profile. A
curious method of representing the eye, on painted vases of
FiR.2o.-PBorn.nr.TH. an early period, was to draw a circle and
carry a line through it. In some instances a ball was
placed within the circle, and the corner lines somewhat
shortened, as in fig. 21, from a vase in the Museum
Disneyanum.
Pliny traces the origin of drawing and modelling
Fig, 21.—From Dis.ney Vasb.
portraits to Dibutades, a potter of Corinth, whose
daughter, seeing the shadow of her lover's profile cast upon the wall by a
strong light, traced the outline. The father's attention being called to this
sketch, he pressed clay into it, and placed it in the furnace to harden. In
all probability some such event first originated the &as-relief, which has
alwavs been regulated by shadows; and it will be found that those bas-
reliefs are most perfect which are still intelligible upon being reduced to
mere shadows, as sciagraphs or ombres chinois. Dibutades, according to
the same author, was the first to decorate architecture with sculptured orna-
ments made of clay. He is said to have placed figures in the gable-ends,
and ornaments along the ridge-tiles of the temples—an application of his
art very natural after the discovery just attributed to him. In the same
passage we are told that the sculptor found the means of colouring the
ornaments in red.
In sculpture of this period figures were generally represented with the
limbs close together. Very frequently neither the hands nor the arms were
indicated, the whole being supposed to he wrapped up in a tight, painted
garment, and with the feet alone projecting. Figures of this kind had little to
distinguish them from the columnar Hermes already described; but a slight
advance on this is seen in the curious statue of white marble, found at Polle-
•;-v
§i^