[68]. Some of the tools of sculptors and masons referred to by Vasari are shown in Fig. 2, E-J, above.
[69]. A worker in stones at Settignano knew of drills of the weight of about twelve pounds each, and thought twenty pounds conceivable, for very large work.
[70]. Vasari seems to refer to the common greyish marble popularly called ‘Sicilian.’ There are finer kinds of veined marble called ‘fioriti,’ ‘flowered,’ including ‘marmi fioriti’ and ‘bardigli fioriti,’ the last in two shades of grey.
[71]. i.e., the breccias noticed in § 5.
[72]. ‘Cipollino’ marble, a very familiar material, receives its name from ‘cipolla,’ an onion, but there is a curious divergence of opinion as to the reason of the appellation. (1) The onion colour the marble shows in many specimens; (2) the onion-like shape of the large bossy markings which occur in the marble; (3) the fact that it is disposed to scale away under the influence of the weather like the coats of an onion; and (4) the concentric curves in which the edges of these coats are seen to lie in a section across the grain, have all been adduced as explanatory of the name. Herrmann in his Steinbruchindustrie, Berlin, 1899, p. 68, pronounces for the third, and this is also the opinion of Corsi, who says, Pietre Antiche, p. 97, ‘gli scarpellini lo conoscono sotto il nome di cipollino, per la ragione che, trovandosi fra la sostanza calcare di tel marmo lunghi e spessi strati di mica, facilmente su tali strati si divide a somiglianza della cipolla.’ Zirkel however, in his Lehrbuch der Petrographie, Leipzig, 1894, III, 452, pronounces for the fourth, which seems on the whole the one to be preferred. There are two cipollino columns standing in the Roman Forum a little to the east of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, famous for its monoliths of this same marble, that in the concentric wavy lines marking the alternate layers in the stone remind us curiously of an onion cut in half. See for a specimen H on the Frontispiece.
[73]. Vasari explains the name ‘saligno’ as ‘salt-like.’ The term is not recognized at Carrara, nor in the Florentine manufactory of Mosaics.
[74]. The term ‘campanino’ for a kind of marble is not known now in the Carrara district.
[75]. About 10 miles south east of Carrara.
[76]. Near Pietrasanta in the Apuan Alps.
[77]. On the promontory of Piombino, opposite Elba.