Page:All the Year Round - Series 2 - Volume 1.djvu/285

Charles Dickens] hands in depair and feels his heart fail him. Canova is said to have been so discouraged by the result of his first attempt at modelling, as to have exclaimed that moulding pats of butter was all he should ever be fit for. But these qualms of despondency are easily combated with a little courage; a resolute man perseveres, for he knows that no really good thing is ever accomplished without trouble. When he has obtained a miniature that satisfies him, and has got the plaster cast of it, he sets to work again with his clay, and fashions another model of the exact size of his proposed statue. The limbs of this new clay figure are usually copied from nature. Sitting to artists is a regular profession, and those who follow it, like great doctors, great barristers, or great surgeons, raise their demands in proportion as their fame makes their services more valuable. A certain Moor, of wonderful beauty, who exists in Paris to this day, was so much in request among French painters and sculptors, some twenty years ago, that he would never consent to "pose," for less than forty francs. He was rarely to be met with except in the studios of very well-to-do artists, or in the pupil studios, where, perched on a platform, he was the "cynosure" of some fifty or sixty beginners, all of whom had clubbed together to pay him his couple of louis d'or. This personage wore kid gloves and smoked Havana cigars; but a great number of male sitters are stalwart cavalry soldiers, who spend their earnings as soon as they have got them, and have seldom foresight enough to make a fortune out of the exhibiting of thews and sinews.

When the process of modelling has been brought to a satisfactory conclusion, and a new plaster cast taken whilst the clay is still moist, as in the instance of the first miniature designs, the artist can judge of the effect of his future statue, for this plaster cast is the exact prototype of it. He can fold his arms, too, for the moment; for the next steps to be taken do not concern him, but are the business of another artist, known technically as the "statuary."

Some great sculptors, Michael Angelo among them, have occasionally, themselves, hewn their statues straight out of the block of marble, without going through the preliminary courses of modelling in clay, and casting in plaster; but this is very rarely done, for in the first place the work would be too long for any artist who has a regard for his time, and in the second the hewing of marble demands a special practical experience, which makes it an art apart. A sculptor would probably spoil a hundred blocks of marble, before making so much as a statuette a foot high, were he to trust himself only in the matter. Even Michael Angelo, when he tried to dispense with the "statuary," or "practitioner," succeeded only in makings of figures. Not being an adept in judging of the size of the block he needed, he was constantly finding that he had miscalculated, and that an arm, a leg, or a head, must remain unfinished in consequence.

The "statuary," who is often an artist of great merit, and possessed of as much talent in his way as the sculptor in his, sets the plaster model on a platform, measures it, and places it side by side with a block of marble of the requisite height and breadth. This done, he applies to the model an instrument of mathematical precision, by which he obtains the detailed measure of every part and angle of the statue. He then returns to the marble, and roughly sketches on the outside of it, by means of points, a sort of outline of the figure or group. Upon each of the spots where he has marked a point with his pencil, a workman bores a hole with an awl, taking great care, however, not to bore a fraction of an inch deeper than he is told. When the statuary has inspected all the sides of the block, and when the holes have all been bored according to his directions, the marble looks as though it had been riddled by bullets. A second workman now appears, with a chisel and hammer to hew away the fragments of marble between the different holes, and along the pencil lines drawn as guide marks. This work is more or less easy, according as the attitude of the statue is simple or fanciful. If the figure be one of a modern personage standing placidly with his arms by his sides, attired in the clothes of our day, and with nothing eccentric in the posture of his legs, the task offers no difficulties, and may be entrusted to a very ordinary workman; but if the subject be a group or a figure in an attitude—for instance, like that of Ajax defying the lightning—the chisel cannot be entrusted to any but a practised hand, and every blow of the hammer must be struck with the greatest caution. The appearance presented by the marble when the preparatory hewing has ended, is that of some person or persons thickly wrapped up in a shroud. The outlines of head and body can be vaguely detected under the white covering, but nothing more; and it is not until the statuary himself has set to work with his finer chisel and more delicate hand, that a tangible form begins to emerge from the hard mass. First the head, then the shoulders and trunk, then the legs, and then the arms and hands appear. The arms and hands, if outstretched, are reserved to the last; if detached first from the block, the oscillations caused by the chisel in hewing the other parts of the marble might shake and crack them. This is a very necessary precaution, and it is even usual to keep the arms, the fingers, and other projecting parts of marble statues continually supported by props of wood, until the moment when the work is set upon its pedestal, and uncovered.

When the statue is handed over again to the sculptor that he may give the final touches to it, there sometimes remains scarcely anything for him to do. This is the case when the "statuary" is himself a first-rate artist, and can trust himself to imitate to a nicety, the slightest details of form and expression in the plaster model. But such examples are rare: less because of the incapacity of statuaries,