From all these difficulties the sculptor has been relieved by the invention of the photographic process. He may thus take copies of statues in a few minutes, and take them in all their aspects, and as seen at various distances, and in this manner he will obtain drawings with the shadows as they existed at a particular instant, so that the lights and shades, upon every individual part of the statue, will be correctly related to each other. But valuable as these drawings are, compared with those executed by the pencil, their value becomes tenfold greater when they are taken with the binocular camera, and with small lenses, as already described. When combined in the stereoscope, he may reproduce the statue in relief, in all its aspects, and of different sizes, and derive from its study the same advantages which the statue itself would have furnished. In one respect the creations of the stereoscope surpass the original. While the artist is surveying and drawing instruction from the marble prototype, its lights and shadows, and consequently the delicate forms, convex and concave, by which they are produced, are constantly changing, whereas, in the stereoscopic statue, everything is fixed and invariable.[63] In taking busts and statues from the living subject, the sculptor will derive great advantage from the stereoscope. Double pictures of the whole, or of any portion of the subject, may be taken and raised into relief, and from such binocular pictures, executed on one side of the globe, an artist, on the other side, may complete an admirable statue. The dying and the dead may thus be modelled without the rude contact of a mask, and those noble forms perpetuated which affection or gratitude has endeared. [63] A French sculptor has actually modelled a statue from the stereoscopic relief of binocular pictures. We must warn the sculptor, however, against the employment of binocular pictures taken with large lenses. Not only will the individual picture be deformed, but a double deformity will be induced by their union; and whether he copies from a statue or from a living figure, his work must be defective, even to an ordinary eye.