The very touch of the struggling hand was upon the work; but
with the interest, the half-repressed animation of a great promise,
fulfilled, as we now see, in the magnificent growth of Greek
sculpture in the succeeding age; which, however, for those earlier
workmen, meant the loins girt and the half-folded wings not yet quite
at home in the air, with a gravity, a discretion and reserve, the
charm of which, if felt in quiet, is hardly less than that of the
wealth and fulness of final mastery.
NOTES
228. *Chrysoun is the word Pausanias uses, of the cup in the hand of
Dionysus--the wood was plated with gold. Liddell and Scott definition
of the adjective chryseos: "golden, of gold, inlaid with gold."
233. *Pausanias, in recording the invention of casting, uses the word
echoneusanto, but does not tell us whether the model was of wax, as in
the later process; which, however, is believed to have been the
case. For an animated account of the modern process:--the core of
plaister roughly presenting the designed form; the modelling of the
waxen surface thereon, like the skin upon the muscles, with all its
delicate touches--vein and eyebrow; the hardening of the plaister
envelope, layer over layer, upon this delicately finished model; the
melting of the way by heat, leaving behind it in its place the
finished design in vacuo, which the molten stream of metal
subsequently fills; released finally, after cooling, from core and
envelope--see Fortnum's Handbook of Bronzes, Chapter II.
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