[Authors and titles are listed at the end of the review.]
The ten papers here are the results of a study day for curators, professors, philologists, and practicing artists held in 2016 at the Institut national d’histoire de l’art (INHA) under the direction of the Société française d’archéologie Classique (SFAC).[1] The editors describe the book as presenting a new clarification of the ancient plastic arts (3); essays range from workshops in the ancient Mediterranean world to Egypt to the modern world. Although the essays in this volume are disparate, the discussions of clay and wax in different contexts expand our understanding of the many uses of these malleable materials. Excellent cross-disciplinary bibliographies are additional attractions in most essays.
For Pliny the Elder, a plastes was a modeler, molder, potter, creator, or maker. Sophie Descamps-Lequime and Violainne Jeammet see κoρoπλάθoς as a modeler of both bronze statues and terracottas, and they convincingly decompartmentalize the practices of those artists. They trace artists who modeled clay and used bivalve molds for plastic vases in 7th-century Samos and Miletos. Removing the mouth of the vase resulted in a figurine, also cast in a bivalve mold. The authors have no evidence for the prototypes of such works, and, as they say, wooden models are known only from literary references, such as that for the Apollo Ismenios by Kanachos (Pausanias 9.10.2). Unbaked clay and wax are easier to model than wood, but they do not survive in Greece, and wax could well have been used for the initial model.[2]
What we do know is that a wax taken from a basic model served as the intermediary model (the working model) in producing a bronze. The authors suggest, logically, that Polykleitos worked on both the clay prototype and the wax intermediary model for a bronze statue. Athenian vases show artisans in different fields working closely together, sometimes in the presence of Athena Ergane; and excavations in Athens showed that they worked in close proximity. The clay modeler is for these authors the common denominator. Finally, they address overcasting (surmoulage), many clay figurines and some bronzes being molded from existing works.
The move from the classical world to second-millennium Egypt is startling, but materials and practices were the same, and Marc Étienne’s essay is equally broad in its coverage. He cites archaeological and textual sources which will be useful for classicists. At Luxor woodcarvers and metalworkers work together in paintings within the Tomb of Nebamon and Ipouky (ca. 1390–1352 B.C.). In the Tomb of Rekhmire (1479–1425 B.C.) gifts in various materials are being produced for Thoutmosis III to present to the god Amon.
Plaster casts from the well-known workshop of Thoutmosis at Tell-el-Amarna (1349–1333 B.C.) served as models for stone: Étienne shows that some plasters may be overcasts, others life casts; and some have mold lines. In the tomb of Houya, a sculptor is shown painting a statue, palette in hand; two smaller artisans paint miniature sculptures.
Étienne has the advantage of being able to include wax, owing to the dry climate of Egypt. Here he moves to Ptolemaic Egypt, where waxes that became mummy ornaments, figurines, and amulets were pressed into limestone molds. Osiris waxes might have faces colored green in reference to that god’s rebirth; red wax in molds recalls ritual texts about wax neutralizing the dangerous effects of fire. In one group of clay molds, the wax had run out but the molds were never used for casting bronze images of Osiris; another group had been baked but not cast; others were either failed castings or failures intended for reuse.
A second Egyptian essay is a narrowly focused case study. Florence Gombert-Meurice has studied hundreds of bronze Osiris figurines found in 1994 in two chapels of a temple in the Kharga oasis which collapsed during Persian rule (525–410). Four figurines were cast from the same mold and were attached to the same wooden base; thirty other groups of from two to eight were probably cast after one model. The groups are all consistent in size, technique, and iconography. The author discusses the relationship between priests and artisans in the cult of Osiris, a tantalizing subject to pursue further.
François Queyrel analyzes two passages that address clay and its relation to bronze. He discusses dates for Rhoikos and Theodoros, and Pliny’s use of plastice for the modeling of clay as preceding casting in bronze (NH 35.153). Recalling words attributed to Polykleitos in his Canon, Queyrel sees πλάσσω as working the model/prototype to the fingernails of both the sculpture and the sculptor, whereas most have chosen one nail or the other. Posidippus 63 is about finishing a model, but Queyrel notes that the text is about aesthetics: it does not describe how the statue was made. Queyrel also discusses the overlap between a clay image as the finished product and a clay model as the prototype for a bronze. Much rests on a restoration of μίγνυμι (combine), which Queyrel thinks refers to the casting and soldering together of the parts of a statue. He concludes, unsurprisingly, that Posidippus may have had limited technical knowledge of bronze casting.
Vase-painters occasionally depict the handling of clay and wax and the manufacture of ceramics, terracottas, and bronzes. Annie Verbanck-Piérard sees all the participants as artisans, not workmen, and she identifies the draped male figures standing at the sides of some of these scenes as masters/proprietors. Many of her examples are not illustrated or are in need of current photographs,[3] yet she illustrates the Berlin Foundry Cup, which has already been shown (p. 15 figs. 10-11 are larger, better images). This essay is not, however, about the Foundry Cup beyond reference to the apotropaia behind the furnace and the feet hanging in the background.
Akropolis 166 illustrates a potter and a bronzeworker, who the author thinks would not have shared an atelier, although, as Descamps-Lequime and Jeammet have pointed out, their studios were near one another in the artisanal quarters of Athens. Athena Ergane, seated with helmet and shield, oversees activities. Verbanck-Piérard identifies the horse that Athena models on Berlin F 2415 as the prototype for a bronze statue. The date of that oinochoe (470–460 B.C.) corresponds, she says, with the introduction of large-scale bronze statuary, which actually occurred several decades earlier. She argues that vase-painters chose to focus on a gesture, a pose, or a gaze, suggesting that paintings of artisans were all about innovation, and that their value was symbolic rather than literal.
A case study follows: Hélène Aurigny and Francis Croissant consider sixth-century figurines with modeled body and molded faces from the Archaic Aphrodision in Argos. They begin by suggesting that the stone statues of “Kleobis and Biton”[4] in Delphi were a monumental version of a prototype used in Argive workshops for small bronzes, and that they show a close collaboration between sculptors and founders in the creation of models. Traveling artisans might have been considered here, and the likelihood of traveling prototypes. The authors propose that three-dimensional works in all media produced one stylistic model, and that workshops could have cooperated in its creation. Their own study of the Argive terracotta “seated lady” with molded face and modeled ornament on the neck and chest revealed that faces, sometimes overcasts, were stuck onto the head, sometimes too small, atop an overly long neck. The authors write that hairstyle, paired with very different types of faces, cannot be used as a chronological indicator, because the same types of molded faces were used for up to five generations. There are no parallels for modeled bodies with molded faces outside of the Argolid.
In an overview of the role of clay in the production of sculpture, Aliki Moustaka maintains, like Descamps-Lequime and Jeammet, that molds for figurines appeared in the 7th century, but that large terracotta sculptures were not produced in multiples. Molds for pairs of wings appeared in the 7th century B.C., but terracotta statues had a surface of fine clay for modeling each figure individually.
Moustaka notes that the head of the bronze Poseidon from Livadhostra probably had a clay model and was an indirect lost wax casting; [5] and she compares snailshell curls on the bronze head of Zeus from Olympia with those on the terracotta Zeus and Ganymede from Olympia. She observes that the use of small clay prototypes for the pedimental figures of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia and for the Parthenon is not proven, though Phidias was praised for his work in clay. Moustaka says that sculptors in marble could have used clay or plaster models, although the term plasticus refers simply to a soft material. Decorative architectural rosettes must have been produced from waxes, as the use of κεροπλάστης (sic)[6] indicates, recalling the serial production of terracotta figurines. References to ancient sources in which terms relating to models would be helpful, the only citation here being to a recent work on building accounts at Epidauros.[7] A finished, uncolored, mid-5th-century terracotta horsehead from Taranto (L 14 cm), which Langlotz identified as a model, is the only object illustrated (3 color views) in this essay.
Molded Hellenistic bowls drive Natacha Massar’s well-illustrated and compelling argument that Hellenistic modelers, as the primary decorators of these vases, deserve the same attention as vase-painters in earlier periods. Using punches made it easy to modify and thus individualize combinations of motifs. Molds were circulated and exchanged among artisans, and they could be mixed and matched for the decoration of drinking vessels. Finding two identical ceramic molded bowls is unusual.
Sophie Descamps-Lequime, Louise Détrez, and Fabien Perronnet experimented with how a fourth-century B.C. situla with sunk-relief palmette at the base of each handle was cast. A preparatory design for the body of the vessel was molded in clay, turned on a wheel, and baked. From this clay model a plaster bivalve mold was made, a model was taken from that mold in soft wax, and the zones at the shoulders were hollowed out. Two waxes were stamped into plaques carrying the sunk-relief palmettes, and these were then added to the wax situla. A single core and mold were used for casting. Peronnet’s demonstration of the use of the bivalve mold and of the plaques with sunk-relief palmettes is well-illustrated and convincing. The essay is particularly important for addressing how much is yet to be learned about the uses of wax in modeling and molding ancient bronzes.
In his personal approach to modeling, the sculptor Patrice Alexandre describes the choice of cold clay or warm wax as his technical and thematic dialectic with inert but very different materials. In an appendix, Alexandre illustrates how he made a new version of a Tanagra figurine. There are abundant illustrations of Alexandre’s works and a lengthy description of his personal process. This essay has no bibliography.
The Glossary might benefit from a few additions: par le biais (indirectly); décirage (melting out the wax); esquisse (sketch); fonte en creux = procédé indirect; glaise (fine clay); terre crue (unbaked clay). Further explanation of tirage, which evidently can be used to mean cast, edition, or copy, would be welcome.
Authors and Titles
Sophie Descamps-Lequime and Violaine Jeammet, “Introduction”
Sophie Descamps-Lequime and Violaine Jeammet, “De l’argile au bronze: au commencement était le plastès”
Marc Étienne, “Positifs et négatifs, moules et matériaux dans l’Égypte pharaonique”
Florence Gombert-Meurice, “La reduplication des statuettes d’Osiris en bronze du temple d’Ayn Manawir (oasis de Kharga, Égypte): techniques et croyances”
François Queyrel, “Modelage de l’argile (Pliny l’Ancien, Histoire Naturelle, XXXV, 152) et fabrication des grands bronzes (Posidippe, 63 A-B)”
Annie Verbanck-Piérard, “Bronze et terre cuite: le regard du peintre”
Hélène Aurigny and Francis Croissant, “Observations sur la plastique argienne archaïque”
Aliki Moustaka, “La statuaire en terre cuite: entre bronze et marbre?”
Natacha Massar, “Bols tournés dans un moule: outils, artisans et pratiques d’ateliers”
Sophie Descamps-Lequime, Louise Détrez, and Fabien Perronnet, “Cire, terre et plâtre. Regards croisés (cross-examination) sur les situles de bronze”
Patrice Alexandre, “Donner la parole aux matériaux. Méthodologie empirique et morale pour bien travailler en atelier”
Notes
[1] Modeling was investigated further in a 2019 colloquium on the modeling of clay and wax: ‘Quand on a la terre sous l’ongle:’ Le modelage dans le monde grec antique, eds Hélène Aurigny and Laura Rohaut (Aix-en-Provence: Presses Universitaires de Provence, 2022), particularly the essay by Sophie Descamps-Lequime, “Polyclète était doublement modeleur…”
[2] W. Alexander Lumsden and Carol C. Mattusch, “Plaster Life Casting and the Production of Bronze Statuary in Ancient Greece: The Early Classical Revolution,” in Ancient Plaster, eds Emma Payne et al. (London: British Academy, 2025) 236–261.
[3] For illustrations, see Stefan Distler, Bauern und Banausen: Darstellungen des Handwerks und der Landwirtschaft in der griechischen Vasenmalerei (Wiesbaden: Reichert Verlag, 2022), for the fragments attributed to the Theseus Painter: p. 229 and pl. 27. Brief mention of the Penteskouphia plaques might now include reference to Eleni Hasaki, Potters at Work in Ancient Corinth: Industry, Religion, and the Penteskouphia Pinakes, Hesperia Suppl. 51 (Princeton: ASCSA, 2022).
[4] These are now usually identified as the Dioskouroi.
[5] For the same point, see Georgia Karamargiou, Gerasimos Makris, Panteles Pheleris, Georgios Kouros, and Georgianna Moraitou, “Έπουλωνοντας τις πλήγες ἔνος θέου – Ποσειδών Λιβαδόστρας.” Τεῦχος 131 (Dec. 2019): 36–55.
[6] Κηροπλάστης (wax modeler) must be intended.
[7] Sebastian Prignitz, Bauurkunden und Bauprogramm von Epidauros (400–350), Munich: C. H. Beck, 2014.