have been to dismember the model and take a casting of each part
separately. The several bronze pieces were then carefully united
by rivets or solder, and small defects were repaired by the
insertion of quadrangular patches of bronze. The eye-sockets were
always left hollow in the casting, and eyeballs of glass, metal,
or other materials, imitating cornea and iris, were inserted.
[Footnote: Marble statues also sometimes had inserted eyes]
Finally, the whole was gone over with appropriate tools, the hair,
for example, being furrowed with a sharp graver and thus receiving
a peculiar, metallic definiteness of texture.

A hollow bronze statue being much lighter than one in marble and
much less brittle, a sculptor could be much bolder in posing a
figure of the former material than one of the latter. Hence when a
Greek bronze statue was copied in marble in Roman times, a
disfiguring support, not present in the original, had often to be
added (cf. Figs, 101, 104, etc.). The existence of such a support
in a marble work is, then, one reason among others for assuming a
bronze original. Other indications pointing the same way are
afforded by a peculiar sharpness of edge, e.g., of the eyelids and
the eyebrows, and by the metallic treatment of the hair. These
points are well illustrated by Fig. 76. Notice especially the
curls, which in the original would have been made of separate
strips of bronze, twisted and attached after the casting of the
figure.

Bronze reliefs were not cast, but produced by hammering. This is
what is called repousse work. These bronze reliefs were of small
size, and were used for ornamenting helmets, cuirasses, mirrors,
and so on.