Vasari on technique

by Giorgio Vasari

Fig. 10.—Sketch map of the marble-producing districts of the Apuan Alps.

Repetti has published documents of the year 1515, which show that at that date the Commune of Seravezza resolved to make a donation to the Florentine people of the right to quarry in the cliffs of Monte Altissimo, in which it is said, ‘there are supposed to be mines and quarries of marble’ (in quibus dicitur esse cava et mineria pro marmoribus cavendis), and also of the ground necessary for making a road for transport. This was the cause of the Pope’s orders to Michelangelo, which Vasari says he obeyed with great reluctance. In the invaluable ‘Contratti’ and ‘Ricordi,’ which G. Milanesi has printed in his volume of Michelangelo’s Lettere (Firenze, 1875), we find Buonarroti in 1516–7 at Carrara, getting material from the Polvaccio quarry, but at the beginning of 1518 he notes (Lettere, p. 566) ‘Andai a cavare a Pietra Santa e fecivi l’avviamento (the start) che oggi si vede fatto,’ and from this time his chief work was beneath the wild cliffs of Monte Altissimo (ibid., p. 573 f.). A memorandum of a later date (Lettere, p. 580) thus worded, ‘a dì circa venticinque di febraio nel mille cinquecento diciassette (our 1518) ... non mi possendo servire a Carrara di detti marmi, mi missi a fare cavare nelle montagnie di Seraveza, villa di Pietra Santa, dove inanzi non era mai più stato cavato,’ shows that this was pioneer work. The contract made at Pietrasanta on March 15, 1518, for the work of quarrying (Lettere, p. 673) indicates that the locality was the gorge of the Serra, which runs up northward from Seravezza to the heart of the mountains. Two localities are mentioned, one, ‘Finochiaia sive Transvaserra,’ and another opposite to this, ‘dirimpetto et riscontro,’ called ‘alla Cappella.’ The first place is now called ‘Trambiserra,’ and will be seen on the sketch map on the west of the gorge with ‘la Cappella’ over against it on the east. Another contract of April 14 in the same year mentions quarrying projected ‘a l’ Altissimo’ in a locality called ‘a la Piastra di verso Strettoia sive Antognia.’ There is a Strettoia on the lower hills west of Seravezza, but that the operations in question were really higher up the gorge among the very cliffs of Monte Altissimo is proved by a letter of later date from Vincenzio Danti to Duke Francesco de’ Medici (July 2, 1568; Gaye, Carteggio, III, 254), who reports that he examined the old workings and road of Michelangelo ‘al Altissimo,’ and mentions various localities, ‘la Polla,’ ‘Costa dei Cani,’ etc., the sites of which are at the head of the valley as shown on the map. ‘La Polla’ means the water-head. Moreover, in a letter from Seravezza dated August, 1518, Lettere, p. 394, Michelangelo speaks of the road for the transport of the marbles as being nearly finished, though in three places rocks had still to be cut away. The places are ‘a Rimagno,’ ‘poco passato Rimagno per andare a Seraveza,’ and ‘a l’ ultime case di Seravezza, andando verso la Corvara.’ The places are marked on the sketch map. Marbles from any part of the upper gorge of the Serra would have to be brought past Rimagno on their way down, and we therefore see that Michelangelo exploited to some extent the actual marbles of the Altissimo, which for the last half century have furnished the very finest and most costly statuary marble of the whole Apuan Alps, Mr Brindley says, of the whole world. The existing quarries are under the serrated peaks of Monte Altissimo, at an elevation of some 3 to 4,000 feet, and the marbles are now brought down in trolleys sliding along a rope stretched across the valley and mounting to the highest levels. It is believed locally that the workings called ‘Vincarella’ are some of the first opened by Michelangelo, and from somewhere at any rate among these cliffs, in the latter part of 1518, by the agency of some skilled workmen who had been sent from Settignano as well as local hands, and by means of ropes and windlasses and sledges, Michelangelo was letting down a column, which however fell and was broken.

A letter from Seravezza of April 20, 1519, Lettere, p. 403, gives details of the accident, which was due to the fracture of a defective ring of iron, and he says, ‘Siàno stati a un grandissimo pericolo della vita tutti che eravamo attorno: e èssi guasto una mirabil pietra.’ No wonder he records in a memorandum that he subsequently left Pietrasanta ill, and that he exclaims in a postscript to a letter of April 1518, Lettere, p. 138, ‘Oh, cursed a thousand times be the day and the hour when I quitted Carrara!’

The Monte Altissimo quarries are situated in a scene that to us to-day is sufficiently wild, though the modern lover of the mountains finds it full of an austere beauty. To Michelangelo, who was fretting at his enforced loss of time and in no mood to surrender himself to the influences of nature, it was a savage and inhospitable country. He writes from Seravezza to Florence in August 1518, (Lettere, p. 394), ‘The place where we have to quarry here is very rugged (molto aspro), and the men are very unskilled in such work: nevertheless we must have much patience for several months till the mountains are tamed and the men are instructed. Afterwards we shall go on more quickly: it is enough that what I have promised, that will I at all costs perform, and I will do the finest work that has ever yet been accomplished in Italy, if God be my aid!’ As a fact it was 1521 before the first column for the façade of S. Lorenzo arrived in Florence, the rest, as Vasari says, (ante, p. [47] and Opere, VII, p. 190) remained in the quarries or by the seashore, and the ‘finest work’ was never even begun. MM. Henraux state that they know of no traces of the columns said to have been left thus ‘on the sea shore’ (by Forte dei Marmi) but they possess a piece of a fractured column found near the site of Michelangelo’s supposed workings at ‘la Polla.’

At the death of Pope Leo nothing had been accomplished but the foundations of the façade, and the transport of a great column from Seravezza to the Piazza di S. Lorenzo! For nearly thirty years after this time the quarries of this district were almost deserted, and the roads which Michelangelo had begun were not completed.

At a later period however Duke Cosimo I paid special attention to the quarries of the Seravezza region, and had a casino or summer residence built here for himself by Ammanati, now termed ‘Il Palazzo,’ and the residence of the Mayor. A commissioner was established at Pietrasanta as the metropolis of the district, to supervise the workings. In the ‘Introduction’ to Painting at Chapter XVI, § 99, postea, p. 261, Vasari gives us an interesting notice of the opening of some new quarries in 1563 near the village of Stazzema, which lies behind the mountains which overhang Pietrasanta, and is approached from Seravezza up the Versiglia, or the gorge of the river Vezza. The road, of which he speaks in this place (p. 261) as in course of making, he mentions in some of his letters of 1564, and also in the Life of Michelangelo, but he gives no indication of its course. It was probably the road from Seravezza across the marsh-land to the sea, a more troublesome affair than roads along mountain valleys.

As regards the products of all these quarries of the Apuan Alps, statuary marble occurs as we have seen in many places, and it is found, where it occurs, in compact masses or nodules embedded in and flanked by marbles impure in colour and streaked and variegated in divers fashions. A vast amount of the marble quarried in the hills is what the quarrymen call ‘Ordinario,’ and is of a grey hue and often streaked with veins, which when well marked give it a new value as ‘fiorito,’ or ‘flowered.’ Of a more decided grey is the prized marble called ‘Bardiglio,’ which is the kind furnished by the ‘alla Cappella’ quarries. Bardiglio again may be ‘fiorito.’ These correspond to the ‘three sorts of marble that come from the mountains of Carrara’ of which Vasari writes in § 97, postea, p. 259, ‘one of which is of a pure and dazzling white, the other not white but of a livid hue, while the third is a grey marble (marmo bigio) of a silvery tint.’ The white and the grey are shown in the coloured drawing at J and K.

More decidedly variegated are the marbles known as ‘Mischi’ or ‘Breccias,’ and of these the Stazzema quarries yield the chief supply. The ‘Mischio di Seravezza’ of which Vasari writes in a letter, Gaye, III, 164, was from this locality, and so too the ‘Mischi’ mentioned in §§ 5, 9, ante, pp. [37], 45, of which some are ‘Mischiati di rosso.’ C and D as above show characteristic specimens of Breccias of Stazzema. Repetti, art. ‘Stazzema,’ says that the ‘Bardigli fioriti’ and Breccias of Stazzema are generally known as ‘Mischi da Seravezza.’

It should be mentioned that Massa, between Carrara and Pietrasanta, is also a quarry centre of importance.

Leaving the Apuan Alps, the next marble-producing locality we come to on descending the coast is that of the Monti Pisani, the range of hills separating the territories of Pisa and Lucca. Monte S. Giuliano is on the road between the two cities, and there are quarries near Bagni S. Giuliano about six kilometres from Pisa. It will be seen that Vasari (ante, p. [50]) speaks favourably of this marble, and Mr W. Brindley thinks this notice in Vasari is of special interest, as he reports of this marble that ‘for durability and delicate honey-tint it is superior to Carrara.’ The local term ‘ceroide’ ‘wax-like’ used for this stone conveys the same idea. It was used at Lucca as well as on Pisan buildings. From the same quarries come red and veined marbles and Breccias and ‘Mischi’ (Torelli, Statistica della Provincia di Pisa, Pisa, 1863).