pes and the direction of their surfaces by
the varying degrees of their illumination. Of this art a sculptor in the
round need not necessarily know anything, and, in fact, many of them,
unfortunately, know altogether too little of it. The maker of a statue
need not think about foreshortenings: if he gives the correct form the
foreshortening will take care of itself. Sometimes it does so in a
disastrous manner! Theoretically he need not worry over light and shade,
although of course he does, in practice, think about it and rely upon
it, more or less. If he gives the true forms they will necessarily have
the true light and shade. But low relief, standing between sculpture and
drawing, is really more closely related to drawing than to sculpture--is
really a kind of drawing--and this is why so few sculptors succeed in
it.

It is a kind of drawing but an exceedingly difficult kind--the most
delicate and difficult of any of the arts that deal with form alone. As
to the contour, it stands on the same ground with drawing in any other
material. The linear part of it requires exactly the same degree and
the same kind of talent as linear design with a pen or with a burin. But
for all that stands within the contour, for the suggestion of interior
forms and the illusion of solidity, it depends on means of the utmost
subtlety. It exists, as all drawing does, by light and shade, but the
shadows are not produced by the mere darkening of the surface--they are
produced by projections and recessions, by the inclination of the planes
away from or toward the light. The lower the relief the more subtle and
tender must be the variation of the surface which produces them, and
therefore success in relief is one of the best attainable measures of a
sculptor's fineness of touch and perfection of craftsmanship. But as the
light and shade is produced by actual forms which are yet quite unlike
the true forms of nature, it follows that the artist in relief can never
imitate either the shape or the depth of the shadow he sees in nature.
His art becomes one of suggestions and equivalents--an art which can
give neither the literal truth of form nor the literal truth of
aspect--an art at the farthest remove from direct representation. And
success in it becomes, therefore, one of the best tests of a sculptor's
artistry--of his ability to produce essential beauty by the treatment of
his material, rather than to imitate successfully external fact.

As the