HIDDEN CHAPEL OF THE PAINTERS

Artists in the renaissance didn’t have their own guild as what they did wasn’t a profession; it was considered a menial trade and was not an organised body in society. However, it was necessary that they belonged to some type of economic organisation in order to pay dues, taxes etc. The goldsmiths belonged to the silk guild - arte della seta (the connection being that the silk merchants used gold thread) and the painters belonged to the apothecaries and spice merchants guild - arte dei medici e speziali (the painter’s pigments and apothecary’s ingredients were sometimes the same) but the stoneworkers and carpenters did have a guild - arte di Maestri di Pietra e Legname. Because of this lack of any sort of real representation on the whole, the artists (artisans) created, in 1339, the Compagnia di san Luca, a confraternity dedicated to Saint Luke, as a sort of anti-guild, their own club or society where they could converse, pray and the talk shop. Their patron saint was Luke, chosen because he was a colleague. Saint Luke the Evangelist was supposedly a painter.

The Compagnia di san Luca was given new life when in 1562 a sculptor, Giovannangelo Montorsoli, obtained a space in the cloisters of the much loved Santissima Annunziata monastery, to make a chapel for the artists and reignite the confraternity.



The current position of the altar since the early 1800s with a fresco of Saint Luke painting the Madonna by Giorgio Vasari

Montorsoli was a servite friar in the Santissima Annunziata church, this order founded by seven wealthy Florentines in the thirteenth century who called themselves the servants of Mary. Montorsoli had been hired by Michelangelo to help on the Medici tomb commission in the new sacristy in San Lorenzo church (he had worked on saint Cosmas). He renovated the chapel for the artists inside the church, paying for the work himself. The chapel was inaugurated in 1562, on the day dedicated to the Holy Trinity, in the presence of forty-eight artists, amongst whom were Benvenuto Cellini, Bartolomeo Ammannati, Giorgio Vasari, Francesco da San Gallo and Michele Ghirlandaio.  On the day of inauguration they ceremonially brought the remains of Jacopo Pontormo to the chapel (he had previously been in the cloister of the Madonna close by) and laid him to rest in the crypt below.

The marble floor tomb cover leading to the crypt where the artists rest in peace.

 Pontormo, who had lived close by and had worked on the atrium of the church Santissima Annunziata on the chiostrino dei voti during the second decade of the fifteenth century, was greatly revered by the artists in Florence. Pontormo is not the only one who is here, Cellini, Franciabigio and Montorsoli also. Legend has it that they are placed seated as if in conversation with one other.

The current altar has a fresco by Giorgio Vasari above, of Saint Luke painting the Virgin Mary (who looks as though she is giving him a few pointers on how she would like to be represented!) depicted in the photo above. This however, wasn’t the original placement of the altar. Initially, the entrance of the chapel was from the left wall upon entering and the Bronzino/Allori fresco of theTrinity (now on the right wall from the altar upon entering) was above the altar. 

Fresco of the Holy Trinity by Bronzino/Allori on the right hand side wall upon entering, the position of the original altar and this was the original altarpiece.

This initial entrance however was walled up and the current one from the chiostro dei morti was opened, when the chapel was given for use to the Bishop of Nancy during the Napoleonic period in the early 1800s. There is now a fresco by Pontormo Madonna with saints, on the walled up original entrance. This fresco came from the now destroyed church of Saint Ruffillo.

The fourth fresco (opposite the current altar) is by Santi di Tito of either Constantine oversees the construction of the first Christian basilicas (or, also thought to be The building of the temple of Solomon).

The Accademia del disegno was created two years after chapel’s inauguration, in 1564. This was the first Accademia of the arts formed in modern times. The creation of the academy meant that artisans had now become artists and no longer was the apprenticeship/workshop the only way to learn the ‘trade’, now students were trained formally like when learning the liberal arts.

The chapel of the painters is not available to the public.

MICHELANGELO’S FUNERAL

Today in Florence, March 6, there will be a procession from the town hall to the Santa Croce Church in honour of the birth of Michelangelo Buonarroti who was born on this date in 1475. They will place a wreath on his tomb which is located on the inside of the Santa Croce church. This was his parish church as his family had their family home close by in via Bentaccordi.

Michelangelo died in Rome at the age of 89 on 18 February in 1564. He was first buried in the SS. Apostoli church after a very modest and small funeral organised by the compagnia di Giovanni decollato (the confraternity of the decapitated John) to which he had been a member for about fifty years. Many of the Florentine artists resident in Rome were members. His nephew, Leonardo, his heir, came to Rome some days after his death and stayed some weeks in order to organise his deceased uncle’s estate and belongings. He organised for Michelangelo’s body to be transported back to his hometown, Florence. The body was smuggled it out of the city of Rome hidden in a bale of merchandise. It arrived in Florence on March 10 and held in the campagnia dell’assunta and was then brought to Santa Croce church on March 12. Thirty two artists from the newly founded Accademia del Disegno along with Vincenzo Borghini (the judicial overseer of the Accademia) carried Michelangelo’s body to the church accompanied by torches. The body was placed in the sacristry of the church and the procession had attracted a huge crowd. Leonardo Buonarroti then began the organisaton of a tomb for the great artist. He had planned on the tomb being designed and planned by Michelangelo’s friend, Daniele da Volterra, who had been one of the few people who had been with Michelangelo when he died, and some of the Roman artists in his circle, however Vasari forced him to use Florentine artists from the newly founded Accademia del Disegno. The tomb was finished some years later.

Five months after Michelangelo’s body had been brought to Florence, there was a huge funeral staged for him in San Lorenzo. Never before had there been a funeral for an artist such as this, the next funeral that would be as big would be that of the Grand duke Cosimo I. The whole of the San Lorenzo church was decorated with huge paintings depicting episodes from the artist’s life with a fifty three foot long catafalque under the transept crossing. Michelangelo, who disliked pomp and ceremony, was given a funeral of a princely scale.

CHAPEL OF THE CARDINAL OF LUSITANIA

Tucked off to one side in the San Miniato al monte church of the Benedictine monastery which overlooks Florence, there is an exquisite renaissance funerary chapel which was added into the fabric of the Romanesque church in the 1400s (it was finished in 1473).

View of the chapel from the left side aisle of San Miniato al Monte church, Florence

Cardinal James of Lusitania was 25 years when he died in Florence in 1459.  He was the Portuguese ambassador to the Florentine republic. He had extremely blue blood as attested by the thirty coats of arms in the entablature running around the whole chapel. James of Lusitania (the name of the ancient Roman province which corresponds roughly to modern day Portugal and some areas of Spain) was the archbishop of Lisbon and the nephew to the King of Portugal. His uncle, the king, commissioned the funerary chapel for his nephew. Some of the most important artists of Florence participated in its decoration. The architecture and sculpture was first entrusted to Antonio Manetti, an associate of Brunelleschi, however, the commission was very quickly passed to the Rossellino brothers workshop, Antonio and Bernardo. The frescoed decoration was by Alessio Baldovinetti (the teacher of Ghirlandaio), the altarpiece painting by the workshop of the Pollaiolo brothers, Antonio and Piero, and finally the ceiling of stunning glazed terracotta by Luca della Robbia. These artisans are some of the most frequently cited from the fifteenth century Florentine renaissance period and they all had successful workshops. Their style was very modern, a la page, for the time. These artisans were part of the renaissance group who translated the humanist renaissance revival of the centrality of man into an artistic vocabulary. This was achieved through an attentive study of the world around them which lead to both the introduction of an acute realism into figurative representation, as well as the novel insertion of the natural world into the art. Both of these aspects had not previously, in the medieval world, been a priority as life on earth and the here and now had been overshadowed by the spiritual world.

 Consequently, as art reflects life, the images reflected the spiritual realm which had to be depicted differently to the earthly existence. When art began to resemble the world around us, it reflected the shift in consideration given to man’s actions independent of their relationship to the spiritual. Finally, these artisans were also using as a guide the classical world in a way that the medieval artisan had far from considered. All of these new factors can be clearly seen in the tomb sculpture of the cardinal.

Tomb of the cardinal of Lusitania, Antonio Rossellino, 1461-66, white marble and porphyry with traces of polychromy and gold

 It follows the renaissance tomb archetype, created by Bernardo Rossellino (the same workshop), of Leonardo Bruni in the Santa Croce church, begun in 1444. 

Tomb of Leonardo Bruni, Bernardo Rossellino, 1444-47, marble, Santa Croce church, Florence

Both tombs are set in an arch frame reminiscent of the triumphal arch from antiquity and although it could be argued that this is to be interpreted as expressing the desire of eternal salvation for the soul, the highly realistic rendering of the man, lying as if in state for people to come and pay homage, on his tomb leads us to believe the desired effect is for a lasting memory on earth of the man that he was, rather than being solely concerned with his soul. The wonderful stone curtains on the sides create the sense of a stage and add an element of warmth to the stone wall. The frescoes in the pendentives above the arch hint at the colour that the overall chapel would have once had when the frescoes were newly finished and the colouring on the marble was still evident. The porphyry background behind the tomb harks to the royal lineage using symbolism from antiquity when only the emperor and his family could use this most precious purple stone from Egypt.

The chapel structure was inspired by Brunelleschi’s architecture, most notably the Old sacristy in San Lorenzo church. It is the first Greek cross format of the renaissance. The altar piece painting, the original is in the Uffizi gallery, by the Pollaiuolo brothers depicts three standing saints, Vincent James and Eustace.

Altar piece painting of saints Vincent, James and Eustace, Antonio and Piero Pollaiuolo, 1468, tempura on wood, Uffizi gallery, Florence

Vincent (dressed in his deacon’s robes) because he is the patron saint of Lisbon and patron of the royal house of Portugal, James (depicted with his usual attribute of a pilgrim’s staff and hat) because he is the cardinal’s namesake and patron saint, and finally, Eustace because it was the cardinal’s titular church in Rome. The floor in the painting resembles the floor of the chapel. The different artistic mediums are all in harmony with one another and fit together like pieces of a puzzle, the painting with the carved marble surroundings and the overall architecture.

The floor is similar to the medieval Romanesque pavements, called cosmatesque, seen most often in religious structures (the same design can be seen in the Sistine chapel done at a similar time to this chapel and then shortly afterwards, in the Raphael rooms of the Vatican palace).

View of the floor in the chapel of the cardinal of Lusitania, cosmatesque style.

The name, cosmatesque, refers to the family workshop of mosaicists called Cosmati, active in Rome in the twelve and thirteenth century, who specialised in this inlay style. It is opus sectile mosaic which uses different size pieces of stone not opus tessile mosaic where the tessarae are of the same size. The stones used are semi precious such as porphyry and green serpentine with Carrera white marble and when not decorating floors (columns, pulpits of walls for example) coloured glass is often used, glazed terracotta or gold leaf glass.

Finally, the ceiling is a marvellous display of the della Robbia workshop production.

Ceilinng of the chapel depicting the four cardinal virtues, Luca della Robbia, 1460s, glazed terrracotta.

Luca della Robbia was the first artisan to take advantage of terracotta and perfect the coloured glazing which made highly pleasing objects for the decoration of domestic domains as well as churches without the cost of marble. The ceiling here is a testament to the skill in moulding and colouring that he produced in his most successful family workshop. The four cardinal virtues are shown in the tondos in the four corners; temperance mixing wine and water, fortitude with her sword and shield bearing the cardinal’s coat of arms, prudence with her mirror and snake and lastly, justice with her scales. In the middle is the dove of the holy spirit surrounded by seven candle stick holders. These could be symbolic of the seven branched candelabrum (menorah), the ancient symbol of Judaism. To Christians, the menorah symbolises divine wisdom and its seven branches stand for the seven planets, the seven virtues, the seven sacraments to name a few of the Christian groupings of seven to which it could be referring. The shades of blue glaze with the white make the scene seem celestial set against the strong geometric pattern of diamond interlay with yellow, green and black.

SEASON'S GREETINGS

GRAND DUKE OF TUSCANY COSIMO I... GIDDY-UP!

Giambologna, Equestrian monument of Cosimo I de' Medici, 1587-94, bronze, piazza della Signoria Florence.

There is only one bronze equestrian sculpture that has survived for us in the present day from antiquity. It is in the centre of capitol hill in Rome and it is of Marcus Aurelius (emperor of Rome 161-180AD). It would have succumbed to the fate of most the others, melted down to make weapons, bells etc. during the barbaric invasions and the subsequent Medieval Christian period, had this Roman emperor not been mistaken for another, the first Christian emperor, Constantine (emperor 306-337). Marcus Aurelius holds his hand out in pacification, maybe he is about to speak to his people, he wears sandals, a tunic and is bareheaded. The bronze was once completely gilded. Equestrian monuments, the horse and rider, were one of the ways for Roman emperors to immortalise themselves in art. It was thus an artistic form very much in the imperial rhetoric and had regal connotations. Its roots are in Greek art. The Greeks would make equestrian votive statues for the gods, in thanks for victories.



Equestrian monument to Marcus Aurelius, 173-76AD, bronze, Capitoline museums Rome

In the Middle Ages, from the 1300s, some equestrian sculptures were commissioned but none comparable to the Marcus Aurelius in grandiosity and monumentality, and they had also a different agenda. They were smaller than their ancient counterpart, in stone or wood and depicted the rider in armour. They were invariably linked to a tomb and most commonly placed above the sarcophagus and located inside a church.

The first two equestrian statues which recall very closely the ancient model where the classical influences outweigh the medieval ones, were by two Florentine sculptors. Only one of these survives today however. Donatello’s Gattamelata in Padua (1447-1453) is still in its original place, the lost work being by Niccolò Baroncelli made during the years 1444-51 of Niccolò d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara which was in Ferrara (destroyed during the revolution of 1796). They both broke from the medieval mould as they were made in bronze and they weren’t for a tomb but were made for outside and over life size. They did, however, still show their riders in armour.

Donatello, Equestrian munument of Gattamelata, 1447-53, bronze, Padua

The next big equestrian sculpture of a similar vein to Donatello’s, again by a Florentine, was by Andrea Verrocchio for one of the condottiere of the Venetian republic, Bartolomeo Colleoni. It is in the campo San Giovanni e Paolo in Venice. However, this still had some of the traces of the medieval influences as it is a funeral monument of sorts, considering his body is in the church in the square and he is dressed in armour.

Andrea del Verrocchio, Equestrian monument to Bartolomeo Colleoni, 1483-88, bronze, Venice

The equestrian monument to Cosimo I is the first of this type to be the most similar both visually and in significance, to the classical period. The monument was commissioned after his death by Cosimo’s son Ferdinando to the well known, revered and long standing Medici court sculptor and caster, Giambologna (Jean de Boulogne, Douai 1529-Florence 1608). Giambologna worked on it between the years 1587-1594. Cosimo I is dressed in armour but he is bare headed, as is Gattamelata by Donatello. However, Cosimo I is represented less as a military man and more of a leader of state - in his hand is the baton of command rather than a lance.

The bas-reliefs that decorate the base were completed in 1598 aided by his workshop assistants, and they show key moments in the establishment of the Medici's power: the Florentine Senate paying homage to the young Duke Cosimo, the Triumphal entry of Cosimo into Siena, and the Coronation as Grand Duke.

Giambolgona, The triumphal entry of Cosimo into Siena, bas-relief on the pedestal of the Equestrian monument to Cosimo I de' Medici , 1598, bronze, piazza della Signoria Florence.

Cosimo I made very deliberate connections with the ancient Roman emperors. He adopted the same zodiac sign as augustus, who, like him,  definitively ended the republic to start an authoritarian despotic rule, and he also adopted a similar personal symbol to the first emperor. He renovated the piazza Santa Maria Novella for the chariot race held there every June and this site was more or less the same site as the where the circus had been when Fiorenza was Florentia, the Roman colony. Cosimo I portrays himself as very much the ruler of state and the his mastery of the great horse refers implicitly to his mastery in controlling and organising the territory of which he is the sole ruler.

The equestrian monument was a huge success and Giambologna’s workshop was commissioned not long after a second one of Ferdinando I, which still stands today in the piazza Santissima Annunziata. It was finished after the death of Giambologna, by Pietra Tacca, who inherited his master’s workshop after his death.

Giambologna and Pietro Tacca, Equestrian monument to Ferdinando I de' Medici, 1602-08, bronze, piazza Santissima Annunziata Florence.

GUCCI: PRET-A-PORTER..... ET MANGER

Gucci cafe on the ground floor

The brand Gucci turned 90 last year. They celebrated by inaugurating the Gucci museum in Florence. The location -  The medieval fourteenth century palazzo della Mercanzia (the court house for business cases).

Palazzo della Mercanzia

This large splendid building is located in the piazza della Signoria behind the bronze equestrian sculpture of Grand duke Cosimo I. The building’s origins are eluded to by the series of terracotta coat of arms on the facade, they are of the city’s 21 guild corporations (the original stone coats of arms are on display inside the building on the ground floor).

Giglio ( the Florentine lily)  on shield located on the ground floor of  Palazzo Mercanzia

 The building was once where the elected 6 non Florentine judges, along with 6 local judges from the major guilds, would meet to adjudicate on cases related to business affairs in the mercantile republic of Florence. Inside the main room were seven fabulous large paintings by Piero del Pollaiuolo and Botticelli depicting the personifications of the seven virtues, currently housed in the Uffizi gallery. 

Botticelli, Fortitude, tempura on wood, 1970, Uffizi gallery.

Piero del Pollaiolo, Charity, tempura on wood, 1470s, Uffizi gallery

Gucci has taken over the whole building, three floors. They renovated the interior and created a museum which narrates the history of the brand. The museum is divided into thematic rooms inspired by the brand’s iconic motifs and symbols. Also, there is a contemporary art space on the first floor where an art piece on rotation from the Pinault foundation will be on display. Francois Pinault is one of the largest collectors of contemporary art in the world.  He is the head of the company PPR (Printemps-Pinault-Redoute), owner of the Gucci Group, amongst many other luxury goods companies such as Yves Saint Laurent. Adjacent, a room will feature video and film installations as well as landmark films that Gucci has helped to restore through its collaboration with Martin Scosese’s Film Foundation. On the ground floor, there is a bookshop (in collaboration with Rizzoli publishing house), a restaurant and cafe. The idea to create a museum and Gucci space was conceived by the current creative director of Gucci, Frida Giannini, originally from Rome. She has held the creative director position over the whole house of Gucci since 2006.

Frida Giannini

Headhunted from Fendi, Giannini arrived at Gucci and designed handbags under Tom Ford, the creative director at the time. In 2011 Giannini designed the Fiat 500 for Gucci in collaboration with Lapo Elkin (of the family Agnelli, owners of Fiat). 

As mentioned above, Gucci is a huge company owned by a corporation but it was started by Guccio Gucci and began very much as a family business. In 1921 Guccio opened the first shop in Florence selling leather goods and luxury luggage in via della vigna nuova. Prior to this he had worked at the Savoy in London and saw a need for sturdy but stylish luggage for the affluent international clientele. He returned to his native Florence and combined the sophistication of the English traditional with the unsurpassable the Florentine leather artisanal tradition. In 1938 he opened a shop in Rome and his sons, Aldo, Vasco, Ugo and Ridolfo and joined the business. During the second world war when confronting a leather shortage, he developed woven hemp printed with small interconnected brown diamonds, this the first Gucci signature.

 In 1951, the shop in Milan was inaugurated and it is around this time that the red-green-red web design became a hallmark of the company.

In 1953, Gucci went international with the opening of the Manhatten shop.  They rented a space in the Savoy-Plaza Hotel and it was managed by Aldo. He concocted a romantic tale that they had come from an illustrious line of noble saddle makers and began incorporating equestrian themes. The Gucci loafer was born with the metal horse bit.

  In the 1960s the GG logo on the hemp and on buckles on bags and luggage was used.

Jealousy and rivalry began to destroy the family and the company, and there was scandal after scandal from the 1970s onwards. Paolo, Aldo’s son, reported his father for tax evasion and his father went to prison in Florida. Paolo then tried to get rid of Maurizio, his cousin (Ridolfo’s son), who had come to work with Aldo in America and had taken control of the company. Maurizio, tired of his scheming family, found an investor for the family business and here begins the end of Gucci as a family run empire and the beginning of Gucci the brand and international company. In the 1980s Gucci went almost bankrupt and Maurizio, in debt, sold all of his shares and was, in the 1990s, shot in a plot organised by his ex-wife. In 1990 Tom Ford began to work at Gucci in Milan in women’s fashion when the brand was in hardship both monetarily and creatively. In 1994 he was promoted to creative director and revamped, modernised and sexed up the fashion and accessories. Gucci took off. From near bankruptcy when Ford joined. The company was valued at $4.3 billion in 1999 and $10 billion in 2004 when he left.

The other day I had a wonderful lunch at the Gucci caffe and loved the whole experience; the service, the meal and the location. The menu has a good selection of first, second and salad dishes. The table cloths are with classic diamond design and the sugar is in the shape of G (loved this touch). We had a mixed mushroom and pumpkin soup with barley, spaghettini alla botarga, maccheroni with black cabbage pesto and crispy bacon, and spelt pasta with mixed mushrooms, peeled tomatoes and marjorum herb. We sat outside and, being November, the piazza della Signoria seemed all ours with very few people walking around, it was perfect. As yet, there is no heating outside but there are plans to add it soon, I was told by the waitstaff.

Maccheroni with black cabbage pesto, crispy bacon and croutons

The museum is open daily 10am-8pm, the ticket is 6euro (half of the ticket proceedings go to the city of Florence to restore the major monuments). The caffe, restaurant and bookshop is open daily 10am-11pm.

RENAISSANCE BRONZES - HOW ARE THEY CAST?

Mercury, Benvenuto Cellini, bronze 1550s, Bargello Museum, Florence

During the renaissance, bronze sculptures cost a lot of money and few patrons could afford such expenditure in commissioning substantial bronze works for their private collections. Bronze cost about ten times as much as marble, and marble cost a lot. Bronze artefacts were associated particularly with antiquity. The Greeks had worked primarily in bronze, and elite renaissance society loved to emulate the ancients.

Athlete Crowning Himself, Greek, bronze, 300-100 BC, Getty Museum LA

In the high renaissance, small statuettes would be very much in vogue as collectors’ items. The ancient Romans made marble copies of the superb bronze Greek original statuary and then melted down the bronze statues, using the metal for weapons and other more practical things. This helps explain why there are very few original Greek statues and so many copies of them. Due to the high tensile strength of bronze, statues of this material don’t need as much support base as the same statue in marble or stone. Knowing this, you can often guess when an ancient marble statue was a copy of a bronze. The marble statue will often have a tree trunk next to the leg of the figure which is purely structural; without it, it wouldn’t stand. What bronze statues did survive were often melted down during the medieval period to make church bells and canons. 

The Discus Thrower, Roman copy of Greek bronze, Hellenistic period

Cosimo de Medici (known as Cosimo the Elder), in the first half of the 1400s, commissioned his favourite sculptor, Donatello, to cast a bronze David from the Old Testament. It was the first free standing nude bronze since antiquity.

David, Donatello, bronze, 1440s, Bargello museum, Florence

It is often referred to as the first renaissance statue as, in many ways, it shows that the Middle Ages were a thing of the past. But how is bronze cast? It is commonly known how marble is carved, with different shaped chisels and hand drills, but bronze casting is something of a mystery to many. Understanding how it is done renders the works of art even more fascinating. 

In the renaissance, as in Antiquity, the artists used the lost wax technique. In the Middle Ages this technique wasn’t entirely lost, but such artefacts were rarely commissioned due to expense and a lack of demand due to the lack of a sophisticated market. There is the direct method and the indirect method of the lost wax technique.

THE DIRECT LOST WAX TECHNIQUE: the sculptor first moulds the desired sculpture shape out of clay. This is called the core. He then covers the whole core with a thin layer of wax and makes all the small details of the sculpture on the wax. Then he attaches wax rods (called sprues) perpendicular to the wax surface covering the core.  These will be the chanels from which the air and gasses will escape during the casting process. Iron or bronze pins (chaplets) are also inserted into the wax and the core and remain sticking out. Another layer of clay is then placed over the entire wax covering. The whole structure is then baked and the wax melts. The chaplets are necessary to hold the two clay shells together when the wax melts. A mould has now been created. The whole structure is then banked up with earth or sand to hold it steady and help the mould resist the pressure created when the molten metal is poured in. The mould should also be hot when the metal is poured so that it won’t crack and that the metal won’t cool too quickly and not fill all the mould.

The molten bronze, an alloy of circa 90% copper and 10% tin, is poured into the mould where the wax was, explaining why the technique is called the lost wax technique. The gasses and air escape through the sprues and vents so as not to create air bubbles. The bronze is heated to about 800 degrees celsius (1350-1450 fahrenheit). When the bronze has cooled, the outside clay is chipped off revealing the bronze, which is of course as thick as the wax covering over the core was. Bronze alloy expands before it sets which means that it takes all of the details that were incised onto the wax and picked up by the inner part of the outer clay covering. The clay core is most often scraped out to avoid interior corrosion. The bronze is rough and needs to be finished, which is called chasing. Finally a patina is applied to the chased surface in order to achieve the desired colour. Small statues were directly sculptured in wax, so that when it is invested (covered) with clay and the wax melts, the interior is completely hollow, so the bronze statuette is solid. The limitation of the direct method is that the sculpture is a one off original. There is no possibility for multiple copies to be made as the core and the wax which made the actual detailed statue is ruined during the construction.

Indirect lost wax technique

THE INDIRECT LOST WAX TECHNIQUE: By the end of the 1400s, the indirect lost wax technique was developed. This enabled copies to be made of the bronze object or statue and it involves a few more steps than the direct method. A second model in wax is required, the so called intermodel, from the original model made by the sculptor. The sculptor takes the original bronze work, or the wax model (in the case of a small object or statuette) and divides the surface mentally into different parts. He then places plaster of Paris (gypsum plaster) or clay over the wax or bronze in the designated segmented areas. It is like a jigsaw puzzle around a 3D. This system is called piece moulding. When the pieces harden and are taken off the surface, the wax or bronze object is saved for further use. The pieces are reassembled and securely bound together and the now empty mould is filled with molten wax to cast the desired intermodel . The wax intermodel will not stick to the piece mould if the plaster is dampened before filling it. After the intermodel is freed from the piece mould, the wax rods which form the sprues are attached. From here, the process proceeds as the direct method. Another option is not to make the core out of solid wax but make the wax a line layer over the piece mould and then to fill the rest of space with clay to make the core. The result will be a hollow bronze object

This was an extremely dangerous process which the artisans performed without all the advanced equipment of today. It also required precision and a huge working knowledge of metals. Armed with the knowledge of the technical process it makes the bronze statues and artefacts all the more precious.