The drill in sculpture : from Ancient Egypt to modernism / edited by Paola D'Agostino and Lucia Simonato.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

D'Agostino, Paola, editor.

Simonato, Lucia, editor.

Series:

Materiality ; 3.

Materiality ; III

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Sculpture--Technique--History.

Sculpture.

Drilling and boring machinery--History.

Drilling and boring machinery.

Genre:

sculpture (visual works)

works of art.

Sculptures.

Art.

Illustrated works.

Physical Description:

341 pages : illustrations (chiefly color), facsimiles ; 28 cm.

Place of Publication:

Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, [2024]

Summary:

"This volume presents a series of case studies on the use of the drill ranging from ancient Egypt to the beginning of the twentieth century. Conceived as a catalogue for an ideal exhibition, the book illustrates, in chronological order, various works of art whose creation significantly depended on this tool: not only statues and bas-reliefs, but also architectural decoration, vases in precious stone and utilitarian objects, made in a range of materials including marble, wood, clay, ivory and more" -- Publisher's statement.

The story of the use of the drill in European sculpture has not yet been written, although it should be fascinating, stated Rudolph Wittkower in 1970 in Cambridge, where he was invited to give a series of lectures on the processes and principles of sculpture as Slade Professor. Following Wittkower's intuition, this volume presents case studies of the use of the drill, ranging from Ancient Egypt to the beginning of the twentieth century. Conceived as a catalogue to an ideal exhibition, it illustrates various objects for whose creation the use of this tool was particularly significant. Organized in chronological progression, these are not limited to statues and bas-reliefs, but also include architectural decorations, gems as well as utilitarian objects, made in a range of materials such as marble, wood, clay or ivory.00This variety highlights the extraordinary challenge faced over millennia by the drill in its numerous forms (bow drills, gimlets, wheels, violin drills, to name but a few), which did not undergo any sig-nificant technological transformations until the advent of electricity. This tool directly confronted, more so than others, the sculptural materials in their hardness, penetrating them, splitting them and manipulating them beyond any apparent limitation set by nature. Nevertheless, in its tussle with the drill, the very agency of the material was threatened, defeated in the face of the expressive will of the sculptors, their visual cultures, their systems of normative references, and their notions of nature and art. It is to the exploration and understanding of this challenge that this volume is dedicated.

Contents:

Traces of the drill in ancient and modern sculpture : a survey / Nicholas Penny

The ill-famed drill : the anti-hero of sculpture from Winckelmann to modernism / Lucia Simonato

Notes on the drill and perforation in Ancient Egypt / Enrico Ferraris

In the workshops of Egyptian carpenters / Enrico Ferraris

The drill in Archaic and Classical marble sculptures of the Acropolis / Raphaël Jacob

The running drill as a signature motif in Roman art / Carmela Capaldi

Between nature and artifice : the portraits of the Roman Imperial period / Fabio Guidetti

A Late Antique inheritance and Carolingian taste / Sarah Guérin, Francesca Pistone

Notes on absences : towards charting the use of the drill in medieval Islamic stonework and its modern investigation / Martina Rugiadi

Expediency and effect : the drill in medieval sculpture north of the Alps / Julien Chapuis

Tuscan sculpture in the mid-thirteenth century, between East and West / Laura Cavazzini

The drill serving the chisel in a fourteenth-century monumental sculpture group in Pisa / Marco Collareta

The pump drill in Late Medieval and Early Modern Tuscany : metal bits and deer leather straps / Luca Palozzi

The "fictitious drill" in fictile Renaissance sculpture / Marco Scansani

The ornament technique in Florentine workshops of the fifteenth century / Francesca Maria Bacci

The "rosicante trepano" of the Venetian Renaissance / Matteo Ceriana

Drilling marble to restore the antique / Luca Annibali

Porphyry in Cosimo I's Florence : carving versus abrading / Grégoire Extermann

The secrets of Mannerist wheels for engraving fine semi-precious stones / Riccardo Gennaioli

From father to son : Pietro Bernini in early seventeenth-century Rome / Sante Guido

Gian Lorenzo Bernini and his masters in the art of drilling / Lucia Simonato

Of grooves and holes : drilled outlines in Roman Baroque sculpture / Jennifer Montagu

Late seventeenth-century sculptural practice between style and fascination with the antique / Vittoria Brunetti

Boxwood and stone pine in the Venetian Baroque / Milena Maria Dean

Traces of pointing and other drill uses in eighteenth-century sculpture, between Rome, Paris and Turin / Valeria Rotili

Canova's "finishing touches" / Elena Catra

The bravura of the Milan School in the nineteenth century / Omar Cucciniello

Wildt's "great virtue of shadow" / Margherita d'Ayala Valva

"My great adventure" : Epstein's The rock drill / Giovanni Casini.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 309-335) and index.

ISBN:

9782503600253

2503600255

OCLC:

1544944731

Publisher Number:

9782503600253