cellini’s portrait of a girl

I carved this sculpture by hand out of marble taken from the quarries in Carrara, Italy, the same place Michelangelo took his stone . It is a copy (or, artistic reinterpretation) of Gaetano Cellini’s Portrait of a Girl. In order to learn the techniques of marble carving, I decided to make a copy of a great work of the past. I used a traditional, artisanal method called Pointing, whereby you transfer points in space using a special tool called a Pointing Machine (or, La Machinetta), allowing you to know exactly how deep to carve. I decided to leave some areas “Non-finito” (unfinished) as though the portrait is emerging from the block.