Page:EB1911 - Volume 24.djvu/509

METHODS AND MATERIALS] exactly as happened to suit each portion of his design. Other differences from the modern mechanical rules can easily be seen by a careful examination of the Parthenon frieze and other Greek reliefs. Though the word “bas-relief” is now often applied to reliefs of all degrees of projection from the ground, it should, of course, only be used for those in which the projection is slight; “basso,” “mezzo” and “alto rilievo” express three different degrees of salience. Very low relief is but little used by modern sculptors, mainly because it is much easier to obtain striking effects with the help of more projection. Donatello and other 1 5th-century Italian artists showed the most wonderful skill in their treatment of very low relief. One not altogether legitimate method of gaining effect was practised by some medieval sculptors: the relief itself was kept very low, but was “stilted” or projected from the ground, and then undercut all round the outline. A 15th-century tabernacle for the host in the Brera at Milan is a very beautiful example of this method, which as a rule is not pleasing in effect, since it looks rather as if the figures were cut out in cardboard and then stuck on (see ).

The practice of most modern sculptors is to do very little to the marble with their own hands; some, in fact, have never really learnt how to carve, and thus the finished statue is often very dull and lifeless in comparison with the clay model. Most of the great sculptors of the middle ages left little or nothing to be done by an assistant; Michelangelo especially did the whole of the carving with his own hands, and when beginning on a block of marble attacked it with such vigorous strokes of the hammer that large pieces of marble flew about in every direction. But skill as a carver, though very desirable, is not absolutely necessary for a sculptor. If he casts in bronze by the cire perdue process he may produce the most perfect plastic works without touching anything harder than the modelling-wax. The sculptor in marble, however, must be able to carve a hard substance if he is to be master of his art. Unhappily some modern sculptors not only leave all manipulation of the marble to their workmen, but they also employ men to do their modelling, colloquially termed “ghosts,” the supposed sculptor supplying little or nothing but his sketch and his name to the work. The practice, however, is less common nowadays than formerly, owing mainly to one or two exposures which brought the matter sharply before the public. In some cases sculptors of ability who suffer under an excess of popularity are induced to employ aid of this kind on account of their undertaking more work than any one man could possibly accomplish—a state of things which is necessarily very hostile to the interests of true art. As a rule, however, the sculptor’s scarpellino, though he may and often does attain the highest skill as a Carver and can copy almost anything with wonderful fidelity, seldom develops into an original artist. The popular admiration for pieces of clever trickery in sculpture, such as the carving of the open meshes of a, fisherman’s net, or a chain with each link free and movable, or a veil over and half revealing the features of the face, would perhaps be diminished if it were known that such work as this is invariably done, not by the sculptor, but by the scarpellino. Unhappily at the present day there is, especially in England, little, appreciation of what is valuable in plastic art; there is probably no other civilized country where the State does so little to give practical support to the advancement of monumental and decorative sculpture on a large scale—the most important branch of the art—which it is hardly in the power of private persons to further.