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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from The Hidden Masterpiece by Honore de Balzac: iron, anything you please except flesh in shadow. We feel that if the
figures changed position the shady places would not be wiped off, and
would remain dark spots which never could be made luminous. I have
avoided that blunder, though many of our most illustrious painters
have fallen into it. In my work you will see whiteness beneath the
opacity of the broadest shadow. Unlike the crowd of ignoramuses, who
fancy they draw correctly because they can paint one good vanishing
line, I have not dryly outlined my figures, nor brought out
superstitiously minute anatomical details; for, let me tell you, the
human body does not end off with a line. In that respect sculptors get
nearer to the truth of nature than we do. Nature is all curves, each
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