Actually this is generally left in French, though there seems to be a slight typo in the first link

Neo-classicism was reconfigured in terms of an archaic Greek ideal (the Egyptianizing Kouros rather than the explosive movement of Hellenistic Greece). Bodies aligned themselves in military phalanxes (Francois Rude's Marseillaise, 1833), or arranged themselves in tepid erotic displays (Antonio Canova's Pauline Borghese as Venus, 1808). Only the pressures of a restless, industrializing modernity would threaten the long reign of these classical echoes. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, twin emphases on specularity and an inner-directed abstraction (its seeming obverse) rendered figural sculpture increasingly irrelevant. Bridged by the accomplishments of French Impressionist sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917), the tenure of the classical body ended, and the twentieth-century body emerged — fragmented, pocked by light, insistently unfinished, and usually cast in industrial scale foundries rather than carved ‘by hand’ (even if they had often been the hands of skilled practiciens).
http://www.answers.com/topic/sculpture

A problem of the period that was brought into focus by Rodin in his marbles was that of authenticity. The deputing of the final execution of carved works to assistants or professional praticiens had been practised before the 19th century, but as the technical aspects of sculpture became more developed and the entrepreneurial systems facilitating the division of tasks became more sophisticated, a reaction set in, exacerbated by the virtuosic appearance at the Salons of a number of marble showpieces depicting mythological subjects by such sculptors as Denys Puech and Laurent-Honoré Marqueste (1848-1920). The reaction had already been registered by the Ecole, where classes in stone- and marble-carving were instituted in 1883, but it was in the exhibitions of sculpture at the Salons of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts during the 1890s that a more fundamental revision made its appearance, such Symbolist sculptors as Jean Dampt, Jean Carriès, Jules Desbois and Pierre Roche preferring the dual identities of poet and craftsman to the grandiose conception of statuaire and finding alternatives to marble in wood, pewter, ceramic, wax, gypsum, ivory, lead and combinations of these.
http://www.harrisantiques.com/French_Sculpture.php

I write myself on architectural sculpture and I would leave it in French too.

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Note added at 54 mins (2009-06-26 09:43:55 GMT)
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You could say 'sculptor's assistant' but since that takes away from the technical ability of these men, I would stick with the French.
http://rodinweb.com/report_rom/1_02b.htm

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Note added at 4 hrs (2009-06-26 13:49:17 GMT)
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direct carving. The practice of producing sculpture (particularly stone sculpture) by cutting directly into the material, as opposed to having it reproduced from a plaster model using mechanical aids and assistants. Although this might seem a purely technical matter, in the 20th century it became associated with aesthetic, ethical, and even political issues, particularly in Britain (where it was related to the idea of truth to materials) and in France.

During the 19th century it was customary for sculpture to be exhibited in plaster; it was much more expensive and time-consuming to produce bronze casts or marble carvings, so these were usually made only when firmly commissioned. A device called a pointing machine enabled the sculptor to make an exact replica or enlargement of the plaster model by taking a series of measured points on it and transferring them to the copy. It was common for both bronzes and marbles to be produced from the same model and for smaller versions to be made for the domestic market (for an example see JOHN, SIR WILLIAM GOSCOMBE). This situation reflected economic realities (a sculptor would want to maximize earnings from a work in which much time and effort had been invested), but it also indicated a priority of idea and subject over material—the sculptor's artistry being located in the concept and form, rather than in the handicraft. A successful sculptor could thus become the administrator of a large studio producing numerous, almost identical versions of popular works (Rodin employed many assistants, including artists of the calibre of Bourdelle, Despiau, and Pompon, and he rarely touched hammer and chisel himself, only occasionally adding final touches to his works in marble). This kind of procedure had been attacked by John Ruskin (1819–1900), the most influential British art critic of the 19th century, in his Aratra Pentelici: Six Lectures on the Elements of Sculpture (1872), where he denounced the ‘modern system of modelling the work in clay, getting it into form by machinery, and by the hands of subordinates'. Ruskin argued that the sculptor of such works thinks in clay and not in marble and that ‘neither he nor the public recognize the touch of the chisel as expressive of personal feeling and that nothing is looked for except mechanical polish'. In embryonic form he was stating two fundamental tenets of the philosophy of direct carving as it later developed: that stone, as opposed to plaster, has particular qualities of its own; and that there is a special relationship between the hand of the artist and the material he uses.

In spite of Ruskin's influence and the force of his arguments, it was not until the early years of the 20th century—when his authority as a critic and prophet was waning—that his ideas on direct carving were put into practice by sculptors in Britain. Among the most important pioneers were Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, who collectively illustrate some of the range of issues involved in the practice. For Epstein, the activity of carving was linked to his interest in sculpture from outside the Graeco-Roman tradition, such as that of Assyria and Africa, and it reflected his contact in Paris with Brancusi and Modigliani, who had similar interests. For Gill, a return to carving was a return to a medieval practice, through which he hoped to overcome the iniquitous effect of industrialism in dividing the work of the thinker and maker. For Gaudier-Brzeska, carving was equated with a struggle that was both manual and creative, an aspect of a ‘virile’ art that contrasted with the ‘feminine’ modelling which had dominated the previous generation of New Sculptors; he wrote that in the sculpture he admired ‘every inch of the surface is won at the point of a chisel'. The difficult economic conditions in which Gaudier-Brzeska lived also had an influence on his working methods, for he was dependent on found or even stolen fragments of stone in odd shapes that would suggest forms and subjects.

After the First World War a number of British sculptors, including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, and John Skeaping, practised direct carving as a dogma, while others, such as Frank Dobson and Leon Underwood, worked as both carvers and modellers. Whereas academic sculptors favoured white marble because of the smooth and detailed finish it made possible, these direct carvers used a wider variety of stone, which they exploited for its range of texture and colour (see HOPTON WOOD STONE and HORNTON STONE). However, direct carving was not associated exclusively with avant-garde artists; it was advocated, for example, by the conservative critic Kineton Parkes (1865–1938) in articles in Architectural Review and in his book The Art of Carved Sculpture (2 vols, 1931).

In France there was a similar development, whereby direct carving (taille directe in French) moved from being chiefly an avant-garde concern before 1914 to wider acceptance in the 1920s. Brancusi and Derain made direct carvings as early as 1907, and they were almost certainly preceded by the more traditional Joseph Bernard (1866–1931). The issue of precedence is complicated by the existence of an artisanal tradition of stone carving in provincial France; one of the major exponents of taille directe, André Abbal (1876–1953), came from a family of stonecarvers working near Moissac in the south of the country.

The death of Rodin in 1917 had important consequences for public awareness of the issues involved in direct carving, for until then it had not been widely appreciated how much the most famous sculptor of the day had relied on assistants (praticiens) in the physical production of his work. In 1919 there was a scandal when a number of fakes of his work were revealed, leading to legal action, and the press coverage included accounts by some of Rodin's praticiens of the extent of their involvement. The critic Louis Vauxcelles took advantage of the situation to attack the ‘lie of modelling'—the mechanical transcription of one material into another. The scandal encouraged the acceptance of direct carving, which became such a vogue that by 1922 even the praticien Charles Jonchery (1873–1937), who had been implicated in the Rodin scandal, was exhibiting work described as taille directe.

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O5-directcarving.html

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Note added at 7 days (2009-07-03 12:48:33 GMT) Post-grading
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Thanks for the points, Ysabel812