“Every block of stone has a statue
inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.” -Michelangelo
“I saw the angel in the marble and
carved until I set him free.”
-Michelangelo
I’ve spent the past year or so shaking my fist at God. In
that time, I left my well-paying job of almost four years, ended a year-long
romantic relationship, and have seen several friendships and associations
change or disappear from my life completely. In the past year, I’ve fallen and
picked myself up off the ground more times than I would like to count; and
certainly more times than even those closest to me would know. It has been
painful at times, but it has also taught me a lot about the nature of God and how he might see us, his creation.
In his book Drops Like
Stars, Rob Bell writes that the artist, Michelangelo, “said that his
[sculpture] David was in the stone
clamoring to be freed.” That statement is even more impactful if you know a
little more about the story of the sculpture. The statue had been started by
another artist in 1464. Only the legs, feet, and torso had been roughly shaped
by the first artist before he stopped. By
the time Michelangelo took over the task of completing the sculpture, a second
artist had been commissioned and failed as well. The unfinished, flawed marble
block sat in the yard of the cathedral workshop exposed to the elements for a
total of 35 years until Michelangelo began his work on David in 1501 and completed it in 1504.
35 years. I can’t
imagine the shape that marble block must have been in when Michelangelo finally
set out to free the David from the
stone. That’s the art of sculpture, though. In order to create a masterpiece,
you have to take away. You have to shape, mold, and polish. Sometimes the
hammer and chisel take out big chunks. Other times, they are used to give
definition and create the smallest of details.
I found this tutorial on how to carve a marble online:
The first part of the actual carving is to eliminate
those areas of the block that you won’t need—that have nothing to do with your
figure and are obviously in the way. If they are big areas, you can just start
whacking away at them with a hammer.
If a hammer doesn’t get you anywhere you can already
begin to use the pointed chisel—a big thick one.
Hold its point to the block and strike it with your
hammer. If you held the chisel at an angle to the block instead of straight
down, a little splinter or chip ought to fly up and sail across the yard. Isn’t
that a ridiculous mess after such a blow? And at this rate won’t it take
forever to eliminate all the fat around your statue?
Yes, depending on what you mean by forever.
And so you begin to “carve”—that is, to chip. Little
by little—a chip at a time—you get rid of all the stone on the outside of your
projected figure.
When all the unwanted marble is gone, you can put the
pointed chisel away and take up the second great tool—the fork-chisel or
claw-chisel. That is the real sculptor’s tool, the one that will give you the
feeling of “carving”. Your block is now roughly the same size and shape as your
model but its surface is very rugged. The claw-chisel levels that rough
surface, pushes down all the peaks or crests and leaves behind fine, shallow,
parallel grooves that give your figure a wonderful “work in progress” look.
The Master Michelangelo himself stopped here as far as
tools go. After the David he never again used the flat chisel, which leaves the
marble surface absolutely smooth. He thought the striations or little grooves
the claw chisel makes gave greater life to the surface of his figures.
Though so far we have been talking about only two
kinds of tools—the pointed and the claw chisel—understand that you will use
various sizes of each.
You might start out chipping with a pointed chisel as
big around as the neck of a wine bottle and finish chipping with one no thicker
than a pencil. The same goes for the claw chisels, which come in all sizes.
Michelangelo “finished” the details of his figures, such as the eyelids and the
wings of noses and fingernails and so on, with very fine claw chisels. Most
people—and he himself when he started out—would carve those with a fine flat
chisel.
The fourth kind of chisel has a curved tip, curved
like a fingernail. You use it in places where the flat chisel doesn’t fit
because of its squareness.
Your statue is now carved. Probably you will want to
polish it. Use files first, then take some rough sandpaper and start sanding.
That rough sandpaper will take out the big digs in your surface but also
scratch it all over. The next size sandpaper, a finer size, will take away the
scratches the first one made—but that too will leave scratches. To get the
surface faultlessly smooth—like glass or porcelain—you will need at least five
or six sizes of sandpaper. The last ones are used with water.
Isn’t that how God works in our lives?
About 4,000 years ago, there was a man named Job. The Bible
says that he was “blameless – a man of complete integrity.” (Job 1:1, NLT) He
had everything - people, possessions, prestige – until it was all stripped away
from him.
His possessions? Gone.
His family? Dead.
His health? Painful boils from head to toe.
The Lord allowed Satan to essentially destroy everything Job
had. What was Job’s first response to God? “The Lord gave and the Lord has
taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised.”(1:20) At the end of his
story, we see that God not only replaces all that Job has lost, but DOUBLES it.
Even someone who had everything had the potential to be so
much more at the Master’s hand.
My hope is in the Master who can sculpt a masterpiece out of
a used, weathered clump of marble. He sees us, the finished product waiting to
be set free, as He intended us to be. Once the big pieces are out of the way, He works on refining
the finished product. The promise He has
for each of us is so much bigger than anything we can begin to imagine. I pray
that even through the trials and chiseling away, God will give us the strength
to trust His mighty, yet steady and gentle hand and the eyes to see the beauty
He is creating not only in ourselves, but each other.
Be Blessed.
