Abattis

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.