Bozzetti helped sculptor artists to make huge marble sculptures in the times of Michelangelo

Marble sculptures have a unique place inthe history of India, and if researched carefully it can be seen that Mughal period was the peak for marble as a material for art. Many important monuments used marble as a building material with intricate art work at various places including Taj Mahal. Seen commonly are frames of doors and windows with delicate inlay work in marble and sometimes floral patterns in different colours which look extremely pleasing to the eye.

It is not only India, but other countries especially Italy has seen rampant use of marble as material for sculptures. There are number of famous artists from Italy- Michelangelo being one of them. He was known for his art with Marble and there are number of sculptures to his credit. He worked primarily with marble and like any other material; it had its own challenges to deal with. Artists had to first of all deal with the logistics of huge chunks of stone used for sculpture which had a cost attached to it. Then to create a  huge sculpture, one had to have some help like assistants who could start draft work like cutting bigger stone into chunks as per design of the master sculptor. In the times of Michelangelo i.e. around early fifteen century, his assistants would transfer points from small sample model made by him to the huge block roughly which was then carved and detailed by the master himself. To make sure his assistants made the right blocks, master sculptor artists used to make small models of clay or wax which were referred to as Bozzetti. These three dimensional models was a great way for the artists to see how the bigger sculpture of marble will look like once finished as before this- it is in their imagination only that they saw those. Drawings were a way to depict their thoughts on how the model should look but three dimensional models went a step further and made the carving of marble sculptures relatively easier process.

Many times these bozzetti were created by the sculpture artists but were never eventually transferred to real marble sculptures due to some reason or the other but they itself attracted fascination of people later. They were not pieces of marble sculptures, but at least depicted thought process and creativity of the sculpture artists.

Thus we see that artists founded bozzetti as a process so that creating marble sculptures became a bit easy for them but it itself became an object of art and received appreciation till years later.