In traditional sculpture and molding, abattis are secondary or projecting parts of a figure that are modeled or molded separately, such as arms, hands, heads, or legs.
In traditional sculpture and molding, abattis are secondary or projecting parts of a figure that are modeled or molded separately, such as arms, hands, heads, or legs. Auguste Rodin also used the term for the stock of separately modeled and cast fragments he kept in the studio and recombined in new works.
Etymology
From the French abattis, derived from abattre, meaning “to strike down” or “to fell.”
Sculptor Notes
Abattis : In molding, secondary abutments molded apart . The sculptor Rodin thus designated his “pieces” which they did not want to separate, little arms, heads, legs, hands and feet, which he modeled in the ground before making them cast in plaster, in many copies. He thus obtained a repertoire of forms in which he did not hesitate to draw to complete his fragmentary figures, recomposing groups and assemblies in an unprecedented way.
By casting different parts of figures separately, he could rework the overall composition of a piece, without having to rework everything. Rodin joined his sculptural studies, or bozzetti (c.1890-1900), onto other figures through a process he called marcottage, generally leaving the joins visible in the finished sculpture, thus reviving the idea of non finito borrowed from Michelangelo.
References
https://www.pierres-info.fr/glossaire_sculpture/index.html
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