Why Make a Small Version First? Because the Big One Costs a Fortune

Making a large sculpture is expensive, slow and difficult to change once begun, so the decisions have to be right before the material is committed. A small model resolves the composition in three dimensions, which a drawing cannot do, since a sculpture is seen from every angle and a view that works from the front may collapse from the side. It tests whether the arrangement stands up, since a projecting limb that works at model scale may be impossible at full size because weight grows faster than strength. It allows the artist to try alternatives quickly. And it lets a client or a committee see and approve the proposal before anybody commits funds.

The model does several jobs through the process:

• •Working out the design, frequently through several successive versions
• •Presenting the proposal for approval or for a competition
• •Serving as the reference from which the full size work is scaled up
• •Being pointed mechanically, using a device that transfers measurements
• •Recording the artist's intention where assistants do the enlargement
• •Surviving as an object in its own right, frequently cast and sold

Scaling a model up faithfully is a technical problem with established solutions. The pointing machine, developed in the eighteenth century and used ever since, holds an adjustable arm that touches a chosen point on the model and then swings to indicate the corresponding point on the enlarged block or armature, with the whole apparatus scaled by a fixed ratio, allowing hundreds of points to be transferred exactly. Assistants do most of that work in any substantial workshop, which is a normal practice rather than a scandal and has been since antiquity. Modern practice scans the model digitally and mills or prints the enlargement, which is faster and produces the same result, and which some artists regard as removing something from the process.

The material is chosen for speed of working rather than for permanence, which is why so many were lost. Clay is the commonest, worked wet and reworked indefinitely, and it dries and cracks unless kept damp, so a model kept only in clay generally does not survive. Wax is workable at body temperature, holds fine detail and is soft enough to change with a thumb, and Renaissance examples survive in small numbers and are extremely valuable. Plaster casts taken from a clay original preserve it permanently and are the usual way a model survives. Plasticine, invented in the 1890s, never dries and has been standard since. Modern practice adds foam, card and printed plastic.

Small models are frequently valued above the completed sculptures they preceded, and the reasons are worth taking seriously. They are made entirely by the artist rather than by a workshop, so they carry the marks of the hand directly, with fingerprints, tool marks and rough surfaces that the finished work smooths away. They record decisions being made rather than a decision having been made, which several periods of criticism have valued highly. They are small, portable and collectable. And where the full-size work was never built, which is common, the model is all that exists of the idea, which gives it a documentary importance it was never intended to have.

A small model resolves a composition in three dimensions, tests whether the arrangement can stand at full size, and lets a client approve the work before funds are committed. The pointing machine transfers hundreds of measured points at a fixed ratio, and assistants have always done much of the enlargement. The models are frequently valued above the finished works because they carry the artist's hand directly.