Colored marble

In his manuscript treatise on the history of stones, Istoria delle pietre (1597), the Florentine friar Agostino del Riccio included a brief description of the so-called paragone d’Inghilterra, a black ‘touchstone’ that was used, as he explained, in the funerary monuments of the English kings, but was actually quarried in ‘Flanders’, that is: the Southern Low Countries. Del Riccio appreciated the qualities of this black stone and emphasized that it could be easily transported to Florence by water – a notable advantage over ‘oriental’ black marbles, which were only available in Rome as antique spolia since, according to del Riccio, their original quarries were lost.
That black marble or paragone was appreciated in sixteenth-century Florence is also confirmed by Giorgio Vasari who highly praised it in several passages in the second edition of The Lives (1568). Paragone had already attracted attention in Florence in the fifteenth century, as attested by Francesco Berlinghieri’s translation of Ptolemy’s Geographia (1482), and continued to do so throughout the sixteenth century, for example in the sculptor Vincenzio Danti’s Trattato delle perfette proporzioni (1567). That paragone di Fiandra was used as the black backing stone in the typically Florentine technique of the commesso di pietre dure (inlaid semi-precious stone mosaics) is well-known, but its use in Florentine architecture remains unstudied. Thus far only one case is well-documented: in 1604 Don Giovanni de’ Medici had 730 pieces of black marble shipped from Dinant via Amsterdam to Florence for use in the Cappella dei Principi at San Lorenzo. But there were likely earlier, 16th-century precedents. According to del Riccio, for example, the black marble used in the Cavalcanti chapel in Santo Spirito (1563) and the ‘beautiful piece of paragone’ displayed in the house of Giovanni Vittorio Soderini were also of Flemish provenance. And the Florentine fascination for paragone was already evident in a few earlier examples. Two works by Giuliano da Sangallo, for instance, employ black marble of hitherto unknown provenance: the sarcophagi in the Sassetti chapel at Santa Trinita (1480s) and the Doric column shafts and sarcophagi in the Gondi chapel at Santa Maria Novella (begun in 1503).
This contribution offers a first study of the use of black marble in Renaissance Florence, with a focus on its provenance, on the basis of mostly written sources. This illuminates how the intense commercial, cultural and artistic exchanges between Flanders and Florence in this period might also have influenced Florentine construction practices.

The head was the essential part of a Roman portrait, but the portrait's meaning was shaped by the body to which it was attached. After a presentation of portrait heads joined to ideal bodies, the article discusses the combination of different stones for different parts of a sculpted bust. To attract collectors, many antique works were later refashioned and updated, an ancient head being mounted on a new bust. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to tell whether a given work is ancient, partly ancient, or wholly modern. It is my contention that most extant portrait busts of coloured marbles are modern; indeed, some are still being manufactured in the twenty-first century. The aim of the article is to present various ways in which ancient sculptures have been subject to combination and recombination down through the centuries.

Saint John’s Baptistery in Florence (Italy), dating back to the XI century, represents one of the most outstanding historical buildings in the city, and has been under the UNESCO patronage as Cultural Heritage since 1982. In recent years, in the frame of a conservation project, detailed studies and mapping of all the tiles covering the Baptistery have been developed. Based on a laser-scan survey, a detailed wireframe model of all the external sides, reporting all the tiles and decor, has been developed. This model was implemented into a 2D-GIS, georeferenced in real scale and spatial position. An in situ survey of all the tiles, ashlars, inlays and columns, made in contradiction by experts in historical ornamental stones, allowed the recognition of several types of marble in place. All these marbles have been analyzed and characterized as geometric, geological and historical data, and the information implemented into a GIS for obtaining a spatial geodatabase representing a “box” to ...

Sepulchral commemoration was a major field of artistic expression in Renaissance Naples. Issues of memory and oblivion were charged hereto a greater degree than in other Italian centreswith deep pietistic sentiments and a chivalrous ethos. This essential aspect of Neapolitan Renaissance art has been generally disregarded by art historians, who referred to the local sepulchral monuments mainly in relation to works made by prominent Tuscan artists.' This article presents the story of the Rota family and its chapels in order to bring about a better understanding of the particular sense of commemoration that characterizes Renaissance society in Naples. Like many other households of the lesser nobility in Naples, the Rota favoured military and administrative careers, developed economic initiatives, and displayed an interest in learning. In the times of the Aragonese kingdom they were considered among the most distinguished families in the city, although they were never numbered among the noble houses of any of the local segigi.* In the second half of the seventeenth century their importance began to diminish. The slow but persistent decline of their position continued until the eighteenth century when, lacking a male heir, all their remaining possessions and rights passed to the Ligni family.' Since the commemorative endeavours of the Rotas during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were in part related to their ancestors, some details regarding the historical roots of the family are needed. Probably of Piedmontese origin, the Rotas arrived in the southern dominion together with king Charles I of Anjou. Although their primary base was in Sorrento, they '' The chapel's alrar was commissioned from Tommaso Malvito on 25 July 1504, G. Filangieri, Documenti, 111, 88; VI, 475. For the history of the Recca chapel see A. Filangieri di Candida, Lu ChieJa e il Monustm di Sun Giouunni u Curbonam (Naples, 1924), 95-7. For the attribution of the relief of the Risen Christ to Giovan Tommaso Mahito see Abbate, La sculum napoletana, 62.

In this contribution we offer a complete catalog of the shipwreck of Punta Scifo (Crotone) and other cargoes with marble elements found in the sea of ​​Crotone (Calabria).
In the cargo of Punta Scifo there are artefacts in Proconnesian marble and pavonazzetto. Since the majority of the pieces are in pavonazzetto we propose again, expanding it with respect to what I published in 2010, a review of the main sculptures in pavonazzetto and white marble of Synnada preserved in the Afyon Museum. In this museum there are sculptures from the region of Synnada in Phrygia (Asia Minor), which are carved in the marbles of the quarries of Dokimeion and Altintas, where they quarried the pavonazzetto and a quality of white marble, the synnadico, used for sarcophagi and valuable sculptures for export.

In questo contributo ​offriamo un catalogo completo del naufragio di Punta Scifo (Crotone) e di altri carichi con elementi marmorei  rinvenuti nel mare di Crotone.
Nel carico di Punta Scifo vi sono manufatti in marmo proconnesio e in pavonazzetto. Poichè la maggioranza dei pezzi è in pavonazzetto riproponiamo, ampliandolo rispetto a quanto pubblicato nel 2010, una rassegna delle principali sculture in pavonazzetto e marmo bianco di Synnada conservate nel Museo di Afyon. In questo museo sono raccolte sculture provenienti dalla regione di Synnada in Frigia (Asia Minore), che sono scolpite nei marmi delle cave di Dokimeion e di Altintas, dove si produceva il pavonazzetto e una qualità di marmo bianco, il synnadico, utilizzato per sarcofagi e sculture di pregio destinate all'esportazione

Between 1480 and 1520, a concentration of talented artists, including Melozzo da Forli, Bramante, Pinturicchio, Raphael, and Michelangelo, arrived in R o m e and produced some of the most enduring works of art ever created. This period, now called the High Renaissance, is generally considered to be one of the high points of Western civilization. H o w did it come about, and what were the forces that converged to spark such an explosion of creative activity? In this study, Ingrid Rowland examines the culture, society, and intellectual norms that generated the High R e naissance. Fueled by a volatile mix of economic development, scholarly longing for the glories of ancient civilization, and religious ferment, the High Renaissance, Rowland posits, was also a period in which artists, patrons, and scholars sought "new methods for doing new things." This interdisciplinary study assesses the intellectual paradigm shift that occurred at the turn of the fifteenth century. It also finds and explains the connections between ideas, people, and the art works they created by looking at economics, art, contemporary understanding of classical antiquity, and social conventions.

The standard proportions that we have been able to reconstruct place the construction  of
portico del Foro of Siracusa (Sicily) in the context of building activities that seem to invest in the second century AD many monuments of the eastern Mediterranean but also, obviously, of Sicily. Architectonical elements are used
prefabricated from specialized quarries precisely for a commission of the provincial elites. The use of Fior
of Pesco  for the shafts of the columns of the portico of Siracusa, which were not present, or rarely,  in the public monuments of Rome finds similar situations of use in shafts produced by specialized quarries  that
provide semi-finished architectural elements for the provincial evergetic activity. However, a whole investigation is lacking, in Syracuse, on the presence or absence of  columns from imperial quarries, that is, pavonazzetto, giallo antico or africano, so pending these data, we postpone more detailed observations.
Furthermore, the question posed by the porticoes of the Forum, as well as by the architectural elements of the
group preserved in the Gymnasium with a clearly micro-Asian imprint, poses the theme of when
a stylistic and formal change in the architectural decoration is verified in Syracuse

When Giorgio Vasari renovated the Florentine church of Santa Croce in the late sixteenth century, he obscured or displaced most of the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century works in its nave to make way for new altars decorated with scenes of Christ’s Passion. But Vasari was not insensitive to the works he replaced with his own, and the "Christ Carrying the Cross" (1568–1572) he made for the Buonarroti Chapel is deeply indebted to Franciscan visual traditions and Santa Croce’s early decorative programme. Vasari also embedded portraits of Michelangelo and Rosso Fiorentino in the panel and in doing so linked them and himself to an artistic genealogy and new academic tradition. The painting demonstrates that Vasari was as adept at using the content and compositions of his images to record, manipulate, and promote the artistic past and visual culture of his own age as he was in his "Lives of the Artists."

Colored marble column shafts must have been the single most costly item per unit in an ancient Roman building, and they would have been a special source of both beauty and prestige. In Roman times, prestigious materials were connected not only with wealth but also with high status. Furthermore, for audiences in the western Mediterranean especially, the Eastern provenances of most of elite marbles gave them added associations of Roman grandeur and conquest. Algeria, encompassing much of ancient Numidia and Mauretania, gives a vivid demonstration of the association of status and imported marble column shafts. Caesarea, modern Cherchel, outshines all other Algerian sites in its wealth of imported colored shafts. This superiority is clearly connected with its political status as capital, first of the Mauretanian kingdom and later of the Roman province of Mauretania Caesariensis. Imported shafts appear at other Algerian sites, but much more rarely, as will be seen. Local colored marble shafts also conferred status and beauty in some Algerian sites, but they seem to be extremely scarce at Cherchel, as if to confirm their secondary rank. Throughout Algeria colored limestone shafts were also used as supplements or substitutes for colored marble.
I fusti in marmo colorato devono essere stati l'articolo singolo più costoso per unità nell'ambito di un edificio romano e, in quanto tali, costituirebbero una fonte speciale di bellezza e prestigio. In epoca romana i materiali di prestigio non erano connessi solo sono con il benessere economico ma anche con un alto status sociale. Inoltre, soprattutto per il pubblico del Mediterraneo occidentale, la pro-venienza orientale di molti dei marmi più pregiati aggiungeva loro l'unione dei concetti di romana grandezza e conquista. L'Algeria, abbracciando molta parte dell'antica Numidia e Mauretania, da una viva dimostrazione dell'associazione tra status e fusti d'importazione in marmo colorato. Caesarea, l'odierna Cherchel, mette in ombra tutti gli altri centri algerini con tutta la sua ricchezza di marmi colorati importati. Questa superiorità è chiaramente connessa con il suo status politico di capitale, prima del regno di Mauretania e poi della provincia romana di Mauretania Caesariensis. I fusti importati appaiono anche in altre città algerine ma molto più raramente, come sembra di poter vedere. I fusti in marmo colorato locale conferiscono status e bellezza ad alcune città d'Algeria ma sembrano essere molto rari a Cherchel, come a voler confermare la loro importanza secondaria. In tutta l'Algeria i fusti in calcare colorato erano anche utilizzati come supplemento o sostituzione per quelli in marmo colorato.

The concept of a chapel or monument largely enriched with coloured marbles was first employed by Rafael in the Cappella Chigi in Rome. A next step was the Cappella Cavalcanti in the Florentine S. Spirito, here attributed to Giovanni Antonio Dosio. Less well known is S. Croce in Bosco Marengo, which houses the (eventually unused) mausoleum for pope Pius V and which may have been designed by Vasari.