have become cold remove
the clay." The solid silver handles are found inside, one hardly
need say.

In casting in the "cire perdu" process, Benvenuto Cellini warns
you to beware lest you break your crucible--"just as you've got
your silver nicely molten," he says, "and are pouring it into the
mould, crack goes your crucible, and all your work and time and
pains are lost!" He advises wrapping it in stout cloths.

The process of repousse work is also much the same to-day as it
has always been. The metal is mounted on cement and the design
partly beaten in from the outside; then the cement is melted out,
and the design treated in more detail from the inside. Theophilus
tells us how to prepare a silver vessel to be beaten with a design.
After giving a recipe for a sort of pitch, he says, "Melt this
composition and fill the vial to the top. And when it has become
cold, portray... whatever you wish, and taking a slender ductile
instrument, and a small hammer, design that which you have portrayed
around it by striking lightly." This process is practically, on a
larger scale, what Cellini describes as that of "minuterie." Cellini
praises Caradosso beyond all others in this work, saying "it was just
in this very getting of the gold so equal all over, that I never knew
a man to beat Caradosso!" He tells how important this equality of
surface is, for if, in the working, the gold became thicker in one
place than in another, it was impossible to attain a perfect finish.
Caradosso made first a wax model of the object which he was to
make; this he cast in copper, and on that he laid his thin gold,
beating and modelling it to the form, until the small hollow bas-relief
was complete. The work was done with wooden and steel tools of
small proportions, sometimes pressed from the back and sometimes
from the front; "ever so much care is necessary," writes Cellini,
"...to prevent the gold from splitting." After the model was brought
to such a point of relief as was suitable for the design, great
care had to be exercised in extending the gold further, to fit
behind heads and arms in special relief. In those days the whole
film of gold was then put in the furnace, and fired until the gold
began to liquefy, at which exact moment it was necessary to remove
it. Cellini himself made a medal for Girolamo Maretta, representing
Hercules and the Lion; the figures were in such high relief that
they only touched the ground at a few points. Cellini re