The Drill in Sculpture

The story of the use of the drill in European sculpture has not yet been written, although it should be ‘fascinating’, stated Rudolph Wittkower in 1970 in Cambridge, where he was invited to give a series of lectures on the processes and principles of sculpture as Slade Professor. Following Wittkower’s intuition, this volume presents case studies of the use of the drill, ranging from Ancient Egypt to the beginning of the twentieth century. Conceived as a catalogue to an ideal exhibition, it illustrates various objects for whose creation the use of this tool was particularly significant. Organized in chronological progression, these are not limited to statues and bas-reliefs, but also include architectural decorations, vases in precious stones as well as utilitarian objects, made in a range of materials such as marble, wood, clay or ivory.

This variety highlights the extraordinary challenge faced over millennia by the drill in its numerous forms (bow drills, gimlets, wheels, pump drills, to name but a few), which did not undergo any significant technological transformations until the advent of electricity. This tool directly confronted, more so than others, the sculptural materials in their hardness, penetrating them, splitting them and manipulating them beyond any apparent limitation set by nature. Nevertheless, in its tussle with the drill, the very agency of the material was threatened, defeated in the face of the expressive will of the sculptors, their visual cultures, their systems of normative references, and their notions of nature and art. It is to the exploration and understanding of this challenge that this volume is dedicated.

 Published with the support of the Henry Moore Foundation.

Editors’ Preface

Introductory Essays
Nicholas Penny, Traces of the Drill in Ancient and Modern Sculpture: A Survey
Lucia Simonato, The Ill-famed Drill. The Anti-hero of Sculpture from Winckelmann to Modernism

Atlas
Sante Guido and Lucia Simonato, The Rotational Drilling Instruments

Works and Tools
Enrico Ferraris, Notes on the Drill and Perforation in Ancient Egypt
Enrico Ferraris, In the Workshops of Egyptian Carpenters
Raphaël Jacob, The Drill in Archaic and Classical Marble Sculptures of the Acropolis
Carmela Capaldi, The Running Drill as a Signature Motif in Roman Art
Fabio Guidetti, Between Nature and Artifice: The Portraits of the Roman Imperial Period
Sarah M. Guerin and Francesca Pistone, A Late Antique Inheritance and Carolingian Taste
Martina Rugiadi, Notes on Absences: Towards Charting the Use of the Drill in Medieval Islamic Stonework and its Modern Investigation
Julien Chapuis, Expediency and Effect: The Drill in Medieval Sculpture North of the Alps
Laura Cavazzini, Tuscan Sculpture in the Mid Thirteenth Century, Between East and West
Marco Collareta, The Drill Serving the Chisel in a Fourteenth-century Monumental Sculpture Group in Pisa
Luca Palozzi, The Pump Drill in Late Medieval and Early Modern Tuscany: Metal Bits and Deer Leather Straps
Marco Scansani, The “Fictitious Drill” in Fictile Renaissance Sculpture
Francesca Maria Bacci, The Ornament Technique in Florentine Workshops of the Fifteenth Century
Matteo Ceriana, The “rosicante trepano” of the Venetian Renaissance
Luca Annibali, Drilling Marble to Restore the Antique
Grégoire Extermann, Porphyry in Cosimo I’s Florence: Carving Versus Abrading
Riccardo Gennaioli, The Secrets of Mannerist Wheels for Engraving Fine Semi-precious Stones
Sante Guido, From Father to Son: Pietro Bermini in Early Seventeenth-century Rome
Lucia Simonato, Gian Lorenzo Bermini and his Masters in the Art of Drilling
Jennifer Montagu, Of Grooves and Holes: Drilled Outlines in Roman Baroque Sculpture
Vittoria Brunetti, Late Seventeenth-Century Sculptural Practice Between Style and Fascination with the Antique
Milena Dean, Boxwood and Stone Pine in the Venetian Baroque
Valeria Rotili, Traces of Pointing and of Other Drill Uses in Eighteenth-century Sculpture, Between Rome, Paris and Turin
Elena Catra, “Finishing Touches”
Omar Cucciniello, The Bravura of the Milan School in the Nineteenth Century
Margherita d’Ayala Valva, Wildt’s “Great Virtue of Shadow”
Giovanni Casini, “My great adventure”: Epstein’s The Rock Drill

Bibliography
Index of Names and Places compiled by Chiara Pazzaglia