Only a select few of the world's greatest sculptors have ventured to strike their statues direct from the marble, without recourse to a preliminary model. Such a one was Michelangelo, who, as though seized by a creative frenzy, would hew and hack a block so furiously that the chips flew off like a shower, continuing his attack for hours, yet never making the single false stroke that in the case of other masters has ruined the work of months. He truly was a genius, and must have possessed an almost supernatural faculty of knowing when he had reached the exact depth at any point in the great block of marble from which his design gradually emerged.
The formation of artistic _models_ will always require the master's hand; but the _reproduction_ of the cast in marble or stone can now be performed much more expeditiously than is possible with the pointing machine. We have already two successful mechanisms which in an almost incredibly short time will eat a statue out of a block in faithful obedience to the movement of a pointer over the surface of a finished design. They are the Wenzel Machine Sculptor and Signor Augusto Bontempi's _Meccaneglofo_.
In the basement of a large London business house we found, one dark November afternoon, two men at work with curious-looking frameworks, which they swayed backwards and forwards, up and down, to the accompaniment of a continuous clattering of metal upon stone. Approaching nearer, we saw, lying horizontally in the centre of the machine, a small marble statue, its feet clamped to a plate with deep notches in the circumference. On either side, at equal distances, were two horizontal blocks of marble similarly attached to similar plates. The workman had his eyes glued on a blunt-nosed pointer projecting from the middle of a balanced frame. This he passed slowly over the surface of the statue, and simultaneously two whirring drills also attached to the frame ate into the stone blocks just so far as the movement of the frame would permit. The drills were driven by electric power and made some thousands of revolutions per minute, throwing off the stone they bit away in the form of an exceedingly fine white dust.
It was most fascinating to watch the almost sentient performance of the drills. Just as a pencil in an artist's hands weaves line into line until they all suddenly spring into life and show their meaning, so did the drills chase apparently arbitrary grooves which united, spread, and finally revealed the rough-hewn limb.