![Most don't truly comprehend Michelangelo's statue of David... It took him 2 years to carve at age 26 [800x1000 - 85KB]](https://pic8.co/sh/BGkUUJ.jpg){kind=link}
What I want to know is what happens when you fuck up? Can the art be salvaged or does the sculptor need to start over with a whole new slab of marbel?
I don’t think Mick fucked up too often, but for most sculptors they use wax to hide or fix imperfections. This practice is apparently the origin of the word sincere - in Latin sine means without and cere means wax, so sincere means without wax, referring to a perfect sculpture without imperfections that needed to be hidden.
I never new that word origin and it is absolutely awesome.
Cool story bro
sincere adj. 1533, honest, straightforward; borrowed from Middle French sincere, from Latin sincērus sound, whole, pure, genuine, perhaps originally “of one growth,” not hybrid, unmixed (dissimilated by loss of r after c in earlier *sincrēros), from sem-, sin- one (cognate with Greek heis, hén one; see SAME) + the root of crēscere to grow; see CRESCENT.
Fucking up a single piece of marble of that size would mean the end of the sculptor's career. Think about how many men it took just to quarry and move it, let alone the value of finding a piece of pure white stone that size.
Fortunately they have a lot of techniques to ensure woopsies aren't likely. For example, they'll typically start by sculpting a miniature of the piece in clay or wax, then gradually scale it up using pantographs.
There's quarrys full of this stuff, where the whole ground is marble
Yes, but cutting out a flawless piece of it that size and transporting it to a city intact is no mean feat. Keep in mind they didn't have low loaders back then. They had to do it with barges and carts.
You start over. That is why this is a masterpiece. He had to find a slab of marble that big without flaws. Internal flaws could not be detected at that time, so it was a huge gamble. His genius comes from his ability to "see" the finished product in his mind and also possess the skills to remove the marble so that only his vision remained. He did all this with a hammer and chisel. What you don't see in most photos is the amazing detail that he achieved in his works. (boredpanda.com)
Holy F! That level of detail is insane does anything modern even come close to comparison?
It was supposed to be 100 feet tall, but after several revisions and two years later, this was the outcome. ;)
The original block of marble was a fuck up from another sculptor.
Could you imagine like a year in and bam hit the wrong spot and fuck it up...
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