From the Bronze Age on, the ancient Greeks used bronze as a material for creating statues and votive offerings in the form of humans, animals and mythical creatures. The lost wax method, used by many societies around the world, was the process of creating a bronze sculpture from a clay model and mould.
Casting Bronze Sculpture with Lost Wax Method
First, a clay model is sculpted, then covered with wax. The wax covering will show what the finished sculpture should look like.
The model is then encased in a heat-resistant mould (mainly clay) and secured with metal rods that pierce through into the clay centre. Funnels are left in order to pour the heated wax out and the molten bronze in, as well as vents to allow steam to escape.
The model is now heated and the liquid wax poured out, leaving a gap in the mould into which the molten bronze is poured. The whole is now left to solidify.
When cooled enough, the mould is removed, revealing the bronze statue underneath. This statue will still have metal rods and funnels attached, which will need to be filed down before finally sharpening any details with a chisel and smoothing the whole statue to achieve a polished finish.
Finishing the Bronze Statues
Due to the size and complexity of many of the bronze sculptures produced, the statues were often created in a number of separate parts. These were then joined together when finished to create the complete statue. This also meant that a mistake or mishap with one piece would not ruin the entire sculpture. By the second half of the 6th century BC, the ancient Greeks had become so skilled with this method that they could produce larger-than-life bronze statues such as the Apollo found in the Piraeus in 1959.
Ancient bronze sculptures may not have been as brightly colourful as the painted marble statues gracing the temples and buildings of the ancient world, but they were given splashes of colour in various added details. Different copper alloys could be used to create various effects, from the flushed pink of lips and nipples to darker colours for hair and eyelashes. Eye-sockets would be left empty in the cast heads for coloured eyes to be added later. Other details such as metal weapons might be added to the finished bronze statue.
Advantages of Bronze Sculptures Over Marble
Bronze sculptures offered the artists of the late Archaic and early Classical periods a greater opportunity for experimentation and innovation than working with marble. Marble will easily crack and break under pressure; the statue cannot easily rest on thin ankles or one leg, or spread limbs too widely from the body without supports. Bronze is a much stronger medium, allowing the artist to explore truly innovative poses and compositions. As bronze sculptors became more skilled with their art, they began to move away from the rigidity and symmetry of older marble statues towards fresh, dynamic compositions such as the Zeus found at Artemisium, or Myron’s Discobolus.
It was also much easier to experiment and to correct mistakes when sculpting bronze statues with the lost wax method. As the first step requires the artist to sculpt his model using clay, he can test ideas, work and rework the clay, and even completely start again as many times as he needs to. Though it is possible to make small changes to marble sculptures, large corrections are impossible, and given the expense of the material, experimentation extremely risky.
Sources
- Woodford, Susan. (1986) An Introduction to Greek Art. London: Duckworth.
See Wikipedia’s page on Lost Wax Casting for an explanation of more advanced techniques, as well as information on how other societies around the world have used the lost wax process.
Victoria Hooper - Victoria Hooper is the acquisitions editor and acting editor for Polluto, a Spectrum Fantastic Arts award winning magazine published by ...
