blocks of marble did not unfold the statues which lay hidden within.
As hewers of stone, Donatello and Mino cannot compare with Michael
Angelo. Jacopo della Quercia alone had something of his genius of
material. Nobody left more "unfinished" work than Michael Angelo. The
Victory, the bust of Brutus, the Madonna and Child,[60] to mention a
few out of many, show clearly what his system was. In the statue of
Victory we see the three stages of development or completion. The
statue is _in_ the stone, grows out of it. The marble seems to be as
soft as soap, and Michael Angelo simply peels off successive strata,
apparently extracting a statue without the smallest effort. The three
grades are respectively shown in the rough-hewn head of the crouching
figure, then in the head of the triumphant youth above him, finally in
his completed torso. But each stage is finished relatively. Completion
is relative to distance; the Brutus is finished or unfinished
according to our standpoint, physical or æsthetic. Moreover, the
treatment is not partial or piecemeal; the statue was in the marble
from the beginning, and is an entity from its initial stage: in many
ways each stage is equally fine. The paradox of Michael Angelo's
technique is that his _abozzo_ is really a finished study. The Victory
also shows how the deep folds of drapery are bored preparatory to
being carved, in order that the chisel might meet less resistance in
the narrow spaces; this is also the case in the Martelli David. As a
technical adjunct boring was very useful, but only as a process. When
employed as a mechanical device to represent the hair of the head, we
get the Roman Empress disguised as a sponge or a honeycomb. These
tricks reveal much more than pure technicalities of art.
Gainsborough's habit of using paint brushes four or five feet long
throws a flood of light upon theory and practice alike. There is,
however, another work, possibly by Donatello himself, which gives no
insight into anything but technical methods, but which is none the