Carrara marble

“ In the plaster-cast, from this clay model, the beauty of the statue strangely disappears, to shine forth again with pure white radiance, in the precious marble of Carrara. Works in all these stages of advancement, and some with the final touch upon them, might be found in Kenyon’s studio.
Here might be witnessed the process of actually chiselling the marble, with which (as it is not quite satisfactory to think) a sculptor in these days has very little to do. ”

“ The marble that comes from the quarries of Carrara may be very beautiful and white and flawless, but it does not shape itself into a work of art without the hand, the heart, and the intellect of the sculptor. ”

“ Miriam stopped an instant in an antechamber, to look at a half-finished bust, the features of which seemed to be struggling out of the stone; and, as it were, scattering and dissolving its hard substance by the glow of feeling and intelligence. As the skilful workman gave stroke after stroke of the chisel with apparent carelessness, but sure effect, it was impossible not to think that the outer marble was merely an extraneous environment; the human countenance within its embrace must have existed there since the limestone ledges of Carrara were first made. ”

“ Far down below, crossed and recrossed by splashing torrents, sprinkled with the spray of a hundred cataracts, stands Carrara itself,—a little marble city of art, every house a studio, every citizen a sculptor. Hither are sent all the marvellous conceptions of genius,—the models which mighty imaginations have begotten,—to be converted into imperishable stone. ”

“ The chief supply of pure white marble in Rome was derived from the quarries in the mountains at Luna, an old Etruscan town near the Bay of Spezia, which fell to decay under the later Roman emperors. This ancient Marmor Lunense is called by the Italians Marmo di Carrara, because it is identical with the famous modern Carrara marble, and belongs to the same range of strata; the ruins of the ancient Luna being only a few miles from the flourishing town of Carrara, the metropolis of the marble trade. ”

“ The old feudal castle of Sarzana, with its round tower, its moat and its later Renaissance gateway is the very ideal of mouldy mediævalism.
From Sarzana, it is, figuratively speaking, but a step to Carrara and Massa, the centres of the marble industry. Of all the materials the artist requires, none is so much sought after as the pure white marble of Carrara. The sculptured marble of Carrara goes out into the world from thousands of ateliers to thousands of resting places but it all comes from this great white mountainside in the Apennines which has made the region famous and rich. ”

“ The olive and the vine seem to love this richly coloured earth, and always flourish splendidly on it. Pizzato is finely situated at the foot of the great Carrara marble quarries. Thousands of hands are employed here. There were consignments of marble columns and blocks for building purposes at the station, ready to be despatched, probably to all parts of the world; for the hard and beautiful white marble dug out of these stupendous Alpine quarries is greatly in request for monuments, tombs, etc. ”

“ The numerous statues of Carrara marble are well executed, and other items are also of the best. But the effect of the whole is inharmonious, and the great lines are obscured by over-ornamentation. You are reminded of an over-dressed woman. ”

“ On the ground-floor of the building, which is composed of three stories, are thirteen statues by Spanish sculptors. In the centre of the hall is a marble figure representing Envy, and around the apartment are twenty busts of Carrara marble. Among the treasures of the palace are many Japanese vases and bronzes of great artistic value, marble busts of Minerva and Mars, a group representing a sacrifice in honour of Venus, and an enormous, beautifully carved mahogany fountain. ”

“ Stone from this district was employed in Rome for architectural purposes in the time of Augustus, but the finer varieties, adapted to the needs of the sculptor, were not discovered until some time later. It is in Carrara marble that the finest works of Michelangelo and of Canova are executed. The purest varieties of this stone are of snow-white colour and of fine saccharoidal texture. Silica is disseminated through some of the marble, becoming a source of annoyance to the workman; while occasionally it separates as beautifully pellucid crystals of quartz known as “Carrara diamonds.” ”

“ Limestone becomes granular and saccharoid—it is changed into marble. The [73] most remarkable instance of this metamorphism is the Carrara marble, a non-fossiliferous limestone of the Oolite series, which has been altered and the fossils destroyed; so that the marble of these celebrated quarries, once supposed to have been formed before the creation of organic beings, is now shown to be an altered limestone of the Oolitic period, and the underlying crystalline schists are sandstones and shales of secondary age modified by plutonic action. ”

“ The purest marbles generally contain some accessory minerals, and in many of these rocks they form a considerable proportion of the whole mass. The commonest are quartz in small rounded grains, scales of colourless or pale yellow mica (muscovite and phlogopite) , dark shining flakes of graphite and small crystals of pyrites or iron oxides. Even fine Carrara marble leaves a residue of this sort when dissolved in acid. Many marbles contain other minerals which are usually silicates of lime or magnesia. ”

“ Such are all those works in architectural decoration, in which absolute whiteness and uniformity of colour, are not only unnecessary, but from their dazzling effect even injurious. The subdued tone and slight air of antiquity given to this marble by its stained and unequal colour would in these works render it of the greatest use. Its durability for the purposes of interior architecture must also be equal to that of Carrara, although there is little doubt that when exposed to the action of the weather it would like the Pentelic be liable to corrosion in those parts which abound in mica. ”

“ In the town of Carrara numerous sculptors are constantly employed in rough-hewing the marble into various forms, such as capitals, friezes, busts, &c., &c., in order to diminish the cost of transport, or to discover faults in the stone before it is shipped. ”

“ The purity of its colour is seldom contaminated; its fracture is granular and splintery, and its texture fine, less fine than that of Iona, but more so than that of Assynt: its compactness, hardness, and gravity, are greater than those of the marble of Carrara, which it in fact resembles in little else than colour. It is apparently well fitted for all purposes of sculpture, as it can be wrought in any direction, and has sufficient transparency, while at the same time it assumes even a better polish than is required for statuary. ”

“ They are very much inclined, but not following any common direction. Only a few of these beds produce marble of such a grain and transparency as to be highly prized by the statuary; and from these beds, if they get one block in ten which preserves a good colour throughout, they are satisfied; higher up still, the marble becomes of a dull, dead colour, but of this much larger blocks may be obtained. The principal quarries of veined marble are in a parallel valley, which I did not visit.
There is a Cathedral at Carrara, which seems to have been begun in imitation of that at Pisa. ”

“ Such are the difficulties which oppose the introduction of the most perfect marble which has yet been found in Britain, difficulties which, slight as they are, ought, together with the prevalence of established habits and of a commercial routine, to check the extravagant hopes which have been entertained in this country of superseding by its own produce the importation of foreign statuary marble. But it will not be rendering justice to the marble of Sky if I do not add, that it possesses a property not found in that of Carrara, and one of considerable importance, at least in small sculptures. ”

“ Carrara, or statuary marble (146) , is a familiar instance of it. Whole mountains in Stiria, Carinthia, Carniola, and the Pyrenees, and three mountains in Switzerland, 10,000 feet in height, are of primitive limestone. The mountain of Filabres in Spain, is said to consist of one block of white granular marble, 2,000 feet high, and three miles in circuit; without intermixture of other earths or stones, and almost without a fissure.
Various mineral ores, in beds and veins, as lead, zinc (241) , and iron, are occasionally found in this kind of rock. ”

“ Many antique Roman statues are of marble from Carrara, anciently called Luni. The marble of which the Greek statues are made is from Paros, and from Mount Pentelicon, near Athens. Carrara is a healthy and busy town, not troubled in the least with mosquitoes in winter and spring. The great business of the town is the transporting and dressing of marble; and the principal establishments the studios of the artists, where statues, monuments, chimney-pieces, and ornaments are sculptured and exposed for sale. ”

“ Of marbles proper, there are quarries in the island of a statuary marble, of a pure and dazzling whiteness, said to be equal to the best Carrara. Blocks of it, [239] from five to eight feet thick, can be obtained from a single layer. Blueish-grey and pale yellow marbles are found near Corte and Bastia. But of metalliferous rocks and deposits the island cannot boast; a few iron mines, that of Olmeta in particular, one of copper, another of antimony, and one of manganese, form the scanty catalogue. It is to the island of Elba that we must look for mineral wealth. ”

“ But it is formed, as you all know, in the earth, not as a metal, but as a stone, as chalk or limestone, which is a carbonate of lime; that is, calcium combined with oxygen and carbonic-acid gases.
In that state it will make, if it is crystalline and hard, excellent building stone. The finest white marble, like that of Carrara in Italy, of which the most delicate statues are carved, is carbonate of lime altered and hardened by volcanic heat. But to make mortar of it, it must be softened and then brought into a state in which it can be hardened again ”

“ Some of the most noted of our foreign marbles are those of Carrara, Italy, which are ancient sediments thought to have been changed at the time of the uplifting which formed the Apennines. They are of white and blue-gray colors, sometimes beautifully veined. A beautiful, mellow yellow to drab variegated variety, very close in texture and almost waxy in appearance, is found near Siena, and is known as Siena marble. ”

“ The mortar has a red colour, and was evidently mixed with crushed brick; the joints are from one to two inches thick.
The marble of Proconnesus, which somewhat resembles the architectural marble of Carrara, is employed for the cornices, capitals, and bases of the columns, and for the windows.
In Salzenberg’s plans the materials are expressed by different depths of tint; the darkest being marble, slightly lighter is stone, and a still lighter brickwork; the additional [Pg 157] buildings are represented in the lightest tones, and the Turkish buildings with strokes and dots. ”

“ Many of the most skilful reside at Carrara; and, to save the expense of transporting large masses of marble, it is becoming very customary to transmit thither the model very carefully packed up, and to have it either accurately copied there, or roughed out for the sculptor to complete. Thorwaldsen, whose models are seldom remarkable for the delicacy of the finish, is so well satisfied with the general accuracy of the work done at Carrara, that statues which he is making for his native country, will be boxed up there and sent to Denmark, without being once seen by him. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The Travertine marble 159 (Marmor Tiburtinum) is a production of this kind; and it is of this species of stone that the Colosseum at Rome, and the cathedral of St. Peter, are built. It is likewise employed in the ancient temple of Pæstum, and it rivals in durability, if not in beauty, the primary marble of Paris and Carrara. ”

“ The celebrated Arundelian marbles at Oxford consist of Parian marble, as does also the Medicean Venus. More than twenty centuries have elapsed since the Parian quarries were abandoned in consequence of the decay of Grecian art; but in our enterprising days a company has been formed (1857) for working the beautiful marble which has been recently discovered near St. Minas, not far from the site of the ancient quarries, and is said to be superior not only to that of Carrara but even to the renowned Lychnites of the ancients. ”

“ Carrara, shut in by great hills, is very picturesque and bold. Few tourists stay there; and the people are nearly all connected, in one way or other, with the working of marble. There are also villages among the caves, where the workmen live. It contains a beautiful little Theatre, newly-built; and it is an interesting custom there, to form the chorus of labourers in the marble quarries, who are self-taught and sing by ear. ”