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New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.

VASARI ON TECHNIQUE

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THE RARER KINDS OF STONE MENTIONED BY VASARI.
A, Egyptian Porphyry. A¹, Portion of the same piece that has passed through the fire. B, Dark green porphyritic stone, incorrectly called “Serpentine.” C, D, Two specimens of Breccias of Seravezza (Stazzema). E, “Verde di Prato,” a true Serpentine. F, F, Red Marble or Limestone from Monsummano, near Pistoja, as used on the Duomo and Campanile, Florence. G, Pietra Serena. H, Cipollino. I, True Touchstone or Basanite. J, White Statuary Marble from Monte Altissimo. K, Bardiglio, or Grey Marble, from La Cappella, near Seravezza. L, Istrian Stone. M, Pietra Forte. N, Do. from Fortezza, Florence. O, Travertine. P, So-called “Paragone,” a grey marble with lighter veins. Q, Peperino, from Rome.

VASARI ON TECHNIQUE
BEING THE INTRODUCTION TO THE THREE ARTS OF DESIGN, ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE AND PAINTING, PREFIXED TO THE LIVES OF THE MOST EXCELLENT PAINTERS, SCULPTORS AND ARCHITECTS

By GIORGIO VASARI

PAINTER & ARCHITECT OF AREZZO

NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME TRANSLATED INTO ENGLISH BY

LOUISA S. MACLEHOSE

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION & NOTES BY

PROFESSOR G. BALDWIN BROWN

AND PUBLISHED BY

J. M. DENT & COMPANY

29 & 30 BEDFORD STREET, LONDON

1907

GLASGOW: PRINTED AT THE UNIVERSITY PRESS

BY ROBERT MACLEHOSE AND CO. LTD.

TO THE MEMORY OF

A BROTHER AND DEAR FRIEND

ROBERT MACLEHOSE, M.A.

OBIIT APRIL 18, 1907

PREFATORY NOTE

The title page indicates the general responsibility for the different parts of the work now offered to the reader. It should be said however that the editor has revised the translation especially in those portions which deal with technical matters, while the translator has contributed to the matter incorporated in the Notes. The translation was in great part written during a sojourn near Florence, and opportunity was taken to elucidate some of the author’s expressions by conversation with Italian artificers and with scholars conversant with the Tuscan idiom.

The text has been translated without omissions, and the rendering has been made as literal as is consistent with clearness and with a reasonable regard for the English tongue. In the two editions issued in Vasari’s lifetime the chapters are numbered continuously from one to thirty-five through the three divisions of the work, but in more modern editions each division has its chapters separately numbered. The latter arrangement has been followed, but the continuous numbers of the chapters have been added in brackets. With the view of assisting the reader the text has also been broken up into numbered sections, each with its heading, though there is no arrangement of the kind in the original.

The shorter notes at the foot of the pages are intended to explain the author’s meaning, which is not always very clear, and to help to identify and localize buildings and objects mentioned in the text. A certain number of the notes, the longer of which have been placed at the ends of the three divisions, afford an opportunity for discussing more general questions of historical or aesthetic interest raised by Vasari.

A number of plates and figures in the text have been added, some of which are illustrative of Vasari’s descriptions, while others give representations of unpublished objects, and examples of the different kinds of artistic work included in the scope of the treatise. Our acknowledgements for permission to reproduce are due to the authorities of the Print-Room, British Museum, and the National Art Library; to Signor Giacomo Brogi at Florence; and to others to whom we have expressed our thanks in the text.

Vasari’s unit of measurement is the ‘braccio,’ and this term has been retained in place of the more familiar English equivalent ‘cubit.’ Vasari’s braccio seems to be equal to about twenty-three inches or fifty-eight centimetres. This equation is given by Aurelio Gotti, and agrees with various dimensions Vasari ascribes to monuments that can now be measured. A smaller unit is the ‘palmo,’ and this is not, as might be supposed, the breadth of a hand, but what we should rather call a ‘span,’ that is the space that can be covered by a hand trying to stretch an octave, and may be reckoned at about nine inches.

In the matter of proper names, Vasari’s own forms have in most cases been followed in the text, but not necessarily in the commentary.

There are some passages in which we suspect that the printed text does not exactly correspond with what Vasari originally wrote (see Index s.v. ‘Text’), but no help is to be obtained here from any known MS. sources. Vasari gives us to understand that the original edition of the Lives was printed, not from his own autograph, but from a transcript made for him by a monastic calligraphist, placed at his disposal by a friendly abbot who also corrected to some extent the text. Neither this transcript, nor any MS. of the additions made for the second edition of the work, is known to exist, and textual criticism has to be confined to a comparison of the printed texts of the two editions published in Vasari’s own lifetime.

The character of the subject matter and the multiplicity of the processes and materials passed in review have rendered it needful to invoke the aid of many Italian scholars and experts in historical and technical matters, who have met our applications with a courteous readiness to help for which we desire to express our sincere gratitude. Our obligations to each of these are expressed in the notes, but we cannot close this preface without a special word of thanks to Signor Agnoletti, of the University of Glasgow, and to the Rev. Don Vittorio Rossi, Priore of Settignano. Our acknowledgements are also due to Mr G. K. Fortescue, Keeper of Printed Books at the British Museum; Mr G. H. Palmer, of the National Art Library; Comm. Conte D. Gnoli, Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, Rome; Comm. Dottore Guido Biagi, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Florence; Dr Thomas Ashby, Director of the British School at Rome; and Mr John Kinross, R.S.A. To many artists and connoisseurs in this country whom we have consulted on technical points we are indebted for information not easily to be found in books, and to Mr W. Brindley a special tribute is due for the kindness with which he has opened to us his unique stores of practical knowledge of stones and quarries.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PORTRAIT OF VASARI, FROM THE EDITION OF 1568,
probably by a German artist, called in Italy ‘Cristoforo Coriolano’.

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

When Vasari published in 1550 his famous Lives of the Artists, he prefixed to the work an Introduction, divided into three parts headed respectively Architecture, Sculpture, and Painting. In the text of the Lives he refers more than once to this preliminary matter under the terms ‘parte teorica’ and ‘capitoli delle teoriche,’ but as a fact it only consists to a small extent in ‘theory,’ that is in aesthetic discussions on the general character of the arts and the principles that underlie them. The chief interest of the chapters is technical. They contain practical directions about materials and processes, intended in the first place to enlighten the general reader on subjects about which he is usually but little informed; and in the second, to assist those actually engaged in the operations of the arts.

To some of the readers of the original issue of Vasari’s work these technical chapters proved of special interest, for we find a Flemish correspondent writing to him to say that on the strength of the information therein contained he had made practical essays in art, not wholly without success. This same correspondent, as Vasari tells us in the chapter on Flemish artists at the end of the Lives, hearing that the work was to be reprinted, wrote in the name of many of his compatriots to urge Vasari to prefix to the new edition a more extended disquisition on sculpture, painting, and architecture, with illustrative designs, so as to enforce the rules of art after the fashion of Alberti, Albrecht Dürer, and other artists. This seemed however to Vasari to involve too great an alteration in the scheme of his work, and in the edition of 1568 he preserved the original form of the Introduction, though he incorporated with it considerable additions. It is worth noting that the increase is chiefly in the earlier part, as if Vasari began his revision with the intention of carrying out the suggestion of his correspondents, but gave up the idea of substantial enlargement as he went on. For example the first chapter in the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture is half as long again in the second as in the first edition, and Architecture generally is increased by a third part, while in Sculpture the additions are trifling. The total additions amount to nearly one seventh of the whole. The matter thus added is in general illustrative of the previous text, and adduces further examples of work under review. It is this extended Introduction of the second, or 1568, edition, which is now completely translated and issued with the needful commentary.

The reputation of the writer and the value of his world-renowned biographies naturally give importance to matter which he has deliberately prefixed to these, and it is somewhat surprising that though the text has been constantly printed it has not been annotated, and that it has never yet been rendered as a whole into English, nor, as far as can be ascertained, into any other European language.

Ernst Berger, in his learned and valuable Beiträge zur Entwicklungs-Geschichte der Maltechnik, vierte Folge, München, 1901, does justice to Vasari’s Treatise, of which, as he says, ‘the thirty-five chapters contain a complete survey of the manual activities of the time, in connection with which Vasari gives us very important information on the condition of technique in the sixteenth century,’ and he translates the chapters relating to painting with one or two useful notes. There was apparently an intention of editing Vasari’s Introduction in the Vienna series of Technical Treatises (Quellenschriften) but the project was not carried out. Anglo-Saxon readers will note that the chapters do not appear in the classic English translation by Mrs Jonathan Foster, nor in the American reprint of selected Lives lately edited with annotations by Blashfield and Hopkins; they are omitted also from the French translation by Leclanché, and from that into German by Ludwig Schorn. Mrs Foster explains that she only meant to translate the Lives and not Vasari’s ‘other works’; while the German editor, though he admits the value of the technical chapters to the artist, thinks that the latter ‘would have in any case to go to the original because many of the technical terms would not be intelligible in translation.’

On this it may be remarked that the chapters in question are not ‘other works’ in the sense in which we should use the term in connection with Vasari’s Letters, and the ‘Ragionamenti,’ or description of his own performances in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, that are all printed by Milanesi in the Sansoni edition of Vasari’s works. The chapters are distinctly a part, and a valuable part, of the main work of the author, and it is difficult to see any valid reason why they should ever have been dissociated from it. With regard to the reason for omission given by the German editor, surely the resources of the translator’s art are not so limited as he supposed! It may be claimed, at any rate, that in what follows a conscientious effort has been made to find technical terms in English equivalent to Vasari’s, and yet intelligible to the reader. Where such terms do not seem to be clear, a footnote has been added in explanation.

It is probable that the real reason of the neglect of Vasari’s Introduction by his translators has been the fact that when these translations were made, more than half-a-century ago, not much interest was taken by the reading public in the technical processes of the arts, and this part of Vasari’s work was passed over in order not to delay the reader anxious for the biographical details the author presents in so lively a fashion. At the present time, largely as a result of the inspiring influence of William Morris alike upon the craftsmen and the artistic public, people have been generally awakened to the interest and importance of these questions of technique, and a new translator of Vasari would certainly not be betrayed into this omission. The present translation and commentary may therefore claim to fill a gap that ought never to have been suffered to exist, and on this ground to need no explanation nor apology. Some English writers on the technique of the arts, such as Mrs Merrifield and the late G. T. Robinson, have made considerable use of the material that Vasari has placed before students in these Introductory Chapters, and the practical service that they have thus rendered is an additional reason why they should be brought as a whole in convenient form before English readers.

Readers familiar with Vasari’s Lives will miss in the technical Introduction much of the charm and liveliness of style in which they have been wont to delight. Vasari indeed had a natural gift for biographical writing. He had a sense of light and shade and of contrast in colouring that animates his literary pictures, and is the secret of the fascination of his work, while it explains at the same time some of its acknowledged defects. Above all things he will have variety. If one artist have been presented to the reader of the Lives as a man of the world in constant touch with his fellows, the next artist who comes forward on the stage is a recluse. If one be open and free, another is secretive and brooding; the artist jealous of his brother’s fame and envious of his secrets is contrasted with the genial companion ready to impart all he knows to his less fortunate compeer. In bringing out these picturesque comparisons, the writer sometimes forces the note, and is a little more regardful of effect than of strict biographical accuracy,[^[1]] and this accounts for some of the censure which in the modern critical age has fallen to the lot of the Aretine.

The technical disquisitions in the Introduction afford little opportunity for picturesque writing of this kind, and they must be judged from another standpoint. They have certain obvious defects that are however counterbalanced by qualities of much value. Vasari’s treatment in many parts lacks system and completeness, his statement is wanting in clearness, his aesthetic comments are often banal. On the other hand there are sections or chapters of great, even enthralling, interest, as when he discourses with all a Florentine’s enthusiasm on the virile and decided handling of a master in fresco painting; or lets us follow step by step from the small sketch to the finished casting the whole process of making a great bronze statue. Throughout the treatise moreover, we have the advantage of hearing a practical craftsman speaking about the processes and materials with which he is himself familiar, for Vasari, though he did not put his own hand to nearly all the kinds of work he describes, yet was all his life a professional, in intimate touch with craftsmen in every branch of artistic production. If he did not make painted glass windows, he at any rate designed for them. His mural work involved modelled and stamped plaster enrichment and wood carving, while his sections on different processes of decoration for temporary purposes derive a personal interest from the fact that the writer was a famous expert in the construction and adornment of showy fabrics for pageants and state entries, of which his own letters give us many details. If he be unavoidably tedious in his description of the Orders of Architecture, he enlivens this by a digression on his own devices in the masonry of the Uffizi palace. The august figure of Michelangelo sometimes crosses the page, and in the midst of the rather copious eulogies of which Vasari is lavish, we find here and there some record of a word or work of Buonarroti which reminds us of the author’s intimate personal relation to the master whom he calls in a letter ‘il mio rarissimo e divinissimo Vecchio.’

Vasari’s general intention in this Introduction he explains at the close of the ‘Proemio’ to the whole work that precedes the technical chapters. The Introduction is primarily to instruct ‘every gracious spirit in the most noble matters that appertain to the artistic professions’; and next in order, ‘for his delight and service, to give him to know in what qualities the various masters differed among themselves, and how they adorned and how they benefitted each in his own way their country’; and finally to enable any one that wills to gain advantage from the labour and cunning of those who in times past have excelled in the arts. Architecture will be shown to be the most universal, the most necessary, and the most useful of human arts, for whose service and adornment the other two arts exist; the different qualities of stones will be demonstrated, with the styles of building and their proper proportions, and the characteristics of good designs and good construction. Next in order comes Sculpture, and here will be shown the manner of working statues, in their correct forms and proportions, and the qualities that make sculpture good, ‘with all the directions for work that are most secret and most precious.’ Lastly, the treatment of Painting will include design; the methods of colouring and of carrying out a picture; the characteristics of painting and its subordinate branches, with mosaics of every sort, niello work, enamels, damascening, and finally engravings after pictures.

Vasari’s treatise does not stand alone but is only one among many technical and theoretical essays which have come down to us from various epochs both of the middle ages and of the Renaissance. The nature and the value of it will be best understood if we compare it with one or two representative publications of a similar kind, contemporary with it or of earlier date. The comparison will serve to show the spirit in which Vasari writes, and to exhibit the strong and the weak points in his work.

About the middle of the last century, a number of technical treatises and collections of recipes, from MSS. of the twelfth to the eighteenth centuries, were edited and published by Mrs Merrifield, and the acumen and accuracy with which she fulfilled her laborious task are warmly eulogized by Dr Albert Ilg, the learned editor of Theophilus and Cennini in the Vienna Quellenschriften. The most important of existing treatises of the kind are however not included in Mrs Merrifield’s work, though they have been translated and edited separately both by her and by other scholars. The recent publication by Ernst Berger noticed above gives the most complete account of all this technical literature. Those of the early treatises or tracts that consist in little more than collections of recipes need not detain us, and the only works of which we need here take account are the following: (1) The Schedula Diversarum Artium of Theophilus, a compendium of the decorative arts as they were practised in the mediaeval monastery, drawn up by a German monk of the eleventh or twelfth century; (2) Il Libro dell’ Arte, o Trattato della Pittura of the Florentine painter Cennino Cennini, written in the early part of the fifteenth century; (3) The De Re Aedificatoria and the tracts Della Pittura and Della Scultura, written rather later and in quite a different vein, by the famous Florentine humanist and artist Leon Battista Alberti; (4) Benvenuto Cellini’s treatises, Sopra l’ Oreficeria e la Scultura, that belong to the same period as Vasari’s own Introduction, and partly cover the same ground. There are later treatises, such as Borghini’s Il Riposo, 1584; Armenini’s Dei veri Precetti della Pittura, 1587; Pacheco’s Arte de la Pintura, 1649; Palomino’s El Museo Pictorico, etc., 1715–24, which all contain matter of interest, but need not be specially noticed in this place. Some of these later writers depend very largely on Vasari.

The fact just stated about the treatises of Cellini and Vasari suggests the question whether the two are independent, or, if borrowing existed, which treatise owes most to this adventitious aid. The dates of Vasari’s two editions have already been given. Cellini’s two Trattati first appeared in 1568 the same year as Vasari’s second edition, and there exists a second recension of his text which formed the basis of Milanesi’s edition of 1857, republished in 1893. It is worth noting that Vasari’s account of bronze casting, in which we should expect reliance on Cellini, appears in full in the first edition of 1550, and the same applies to the account of die-sinking. On the other hand Cellini’s notice of the Tuscan building stones, pietra serena, etc., seems like a clearer statement of what we find in Vasari’s edition of 1550. On the whole it was Cellini who used Vasari rather than Vasari Cellini, though the tracts can be regarded as practically independent. The Trattati of Cellini are really complementary to Vasari’s ‘Introductions.’

Vasari, as he says of himself, was painter and architect, while Cellini was sculptor and worker in metal. In matters like die-sinking, niello work, enamelling, and the making of medals, Cellini gives the fuller and more practical information, for these were not exactly in the province of the Aretine, while Vasari on his side gives us much information, especially on the processes of painting and on architectural subjects, for which we look in vain to Cellini.

Allowing for these differences, the two treatises agree in the general picture that they give of the artistic activity of their times, and they faithfully reflect the spirit of the High Renaissance, when the arts were made the instruments of a dazzling, even ostentatious, parade, in which decadence was unmistakeably prefigured. From this point of view, the point of view, that is, of the general artistic tone of an age, it is interesting to draw a comparison between the spirit of the treatises of Vasari and Cellini on the one side, and on the other the spirit of the earlier writings already referred to. If the former bring us into contact with the Renaissance in the heyday of its pride, the artistic tractates of Alberti, of a century before, show us the Renaissance movement in its strenuous youth, already self-conscious, but militant and disposed to work rather than to enjoy. Cennini’s Book of Art, though certainly written in the lifetime of Alberti, belongs in spirit to the previous, that is to the fourteenth, century. It reflects the life of the mediaeval guilds, when artist and craftsman were still one, and the practice of the arts proceeded on traditional lines in urban workshops where master and apprentices worked side by side on any commissions that their fellow citizens chose to bring. Lastly the Schedula of the monk Theophilus introduces us into quite a different atmosphere of art. Carrying us back for two hundred years, it shows us art cultivated in an ascetic community in independence of patrons or guilds or civic surroundings; on purely religious lines for the glory of the Almighty and the fitting adornment of His house.

This treatise by Theophilus is by far the most interesting and valuable of all those that have been named. No literary product of the middle ages is more precious, for it reflects a side of mediaeval life of which we should otherwise be imperfectly informed. Can it be possible, we ask ourselves, that men vowed to religion in its most ascetic form, who had turned their backs on the world’s vain shows and whose inward eye was to see only the mystic light of vision, could devote time and care to the minutiae of the craftsman’s technique? Such however was the fact. We cannot read the first few pages of Theophilus without recognizing that the religion of the writer was both sincere and fervent, and that such religion seemed to him to find a natural outcome in art. Art moreover with the German monk was essentially a matter of technique. From end to end of the treatise there is comparatively little about art as representative. Sculpture and painting indeed in the monastic period were not capable of embodying the ideal, so as to produce on the spectator the religious impression of a Madonna by Angelico or Raphael. The art of the eleventh and twelfth centuries was decorative, and aimed at an effect of beauty with an under suggestion of symbolism. Theophilus troubles himself little about symbolism but bases everything on a knowledge of materials and processes; and in the workshop, whose homely construction and fittings he describes, we are invited to see the gold and silver and bronze, the coloured earths, the glass stained with metallic oxides, all taking shape in dainty and beautiful forms, and coming together in discreet but opulent display, till, as he phrases it, the Abbey Church which they bedeck and furnish ‘shall shine like the garden of Paradise.’ For to the mind of the pious craftsman this church is a microcosm. Creative skill has made it all beautiful within, and this is the skill of man, but it is only his in so far as man shares the nature of the Divine Artist that fashioned the vast macrocosm of the universe. Artistic knowledge and craftsmanship are a part of the original heritage of man as he was made in the image of God the creator, and to win back this heritage by patient labour and contriving is a religious duty, in the fulfilment of which the Holy Spirit will Himself give constant aid. Theophilus enumerates from St. Paul the seven gifts of the Spirit, and shows how the knowledge, the wisdom, the counsel, and the might, thus imparted to men, all find a field of exercise in the monastic workshop.

Cennino Cennini da Colle di Val d’ Elsa was not a devotee nor a man of religion, but a city tradesman and employer of labour. Art in his time had taken up its abode in the towns that were the seat of the artistic activity of the Gothic period in France and the neighbouring countries. It was there practised by laymen in secular surroundings, but as the French Cathedrals and the work of Giotto and Simone Martini testify, on religious subjects and in a spirit of piety. Some gleams of the visionary light that irradiates the workshop of Theophilus fall across the panels which Cennini and his apprentices smooth and clamp, and prime with gesso, and paint with forms of the Madonna or the Crucified. In one of his chapters he demands for the artist a chaste and almost ascetic life, as of one who studies theology or philosophy, and again he bids him clothe himself for his art with love and obedience, with patience and godly fear. When beginning a delicate piece of manipulation Cennini bids the worker ‘Invoke the name of God,’ and it is characteristic too that he tells him that such work must not be executed in haste, but ‘with great affection and care.’ In the main however, Cennini’s treatise is occupied with a description of the processes of painting traditional in the school of Florence, that was dominated throughout the fourteenth century by the commanding figure of Giotto. We learn from the Trattato how walls were plastered and prepared for the mural painter, and can measure how far the technical practice of fresco had at the time been carried. Fresco painting, on which the reader will find a Note at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, was only the revival of an art familiar to the ancients, but the best form of the technique, called by the Italians ‘buon fresco,’ was only completely recovered in the course of the fifteenth century. In the school of Giotto, represented by Cennini, the practice was as yet imperfect, but his account of it is full of interest. Painting on panels and on the vellum of books he thoroughly understands, and his notices of pigments and media convey much valuable information. Amongst other things he seems quite au fait in the practice of oil painting, which Vasari has made many generations believe was an invention of the Flemish van Eyck.

The chief importance however of Cennini for the present purpose is to be found in his implicit reliance on authority and tradition, in which he contrasts most markedly, as we shall see, with his fellow-countryman and successor, Leon Battista Alberti. Cennini had himself worked for twelve years with Agnolo Gaddi the son of Taddeo Gaddi, for twenty-four years the pupil and assistant of Giotto, and he warns the student against changing his teacher, and so becoming, as he calls it, a ‘phantasist.’ To quote his own words, ‘do thou direct thy course by this rule according to which I will instruct thee in the painter’s art, for Giotto the great master himself followed it. Four and twenty years was Taddeo Gaddi, the Florentine, his scholar; Taddeo’s son was Agnolo; Agnolo kept me by him twelve years, during which he taught me to paint in this manner,’ and he points the moral from his own experience, ‘At the earliest moment you can, put yourself under the best master you can find, and stay with him as long as you are able.’

Cennini, who seems to have been born about 1372, probably wrote his Trattato towards the close of his life, and there is MS. authority for dating the tract Della Pittura of Leon Battista Alberti about 1435, so that the two works may have been composed within the same generation. The contrast between them is however most striking. Cennini’s ideas are wholly those of the fourteenth century, when guild traditions were supreme over artistic practice; whereas Alberti is possessed by the spirit of the Early Renaissance, of which he is indeed one of the most representative figures. In his view the artist should base his life and his work on the new humanistic culture of the age, and build up his art on science and the study of nature and on the example of the masters of antiquity. With regard to the last, the reader, who hears Alberti invoking the legendary shades of Pheidias and Zeuxis and Apelles, may suspect that a new authority is being set up in place of the old and that the promised freedom for the arts is to be only in the name. It is of course true that the reliance on classical models, which came into fashion with the Revival of Learning, was destined in future times to lie like an incubus on the arts, and to give an occasion for many famous revolts; but these times were not yet, and with Alberti the appeal to antiquity is little more than a fashion of speech. At other epochs, when men have suddenly broken loose from some old-established authoritative system, they have turned to the classical world for the support which its sane and rationally based intellectual and political systems seemed to offer. It was so at the time of the French Revolution, and so it was earlier when the men of the fifteenth century were passing out from under the shadow of mediaeval authority. Alberti seems to find satisfaction in the thought of the existence of unquestionable models of perfection in those classical masters whose names were current in humanistic circles, but he makes but little practical use of them. It is remarkable indeed how little direct influence in the essentials of art was exercised over the Italian painting and sculpture of the fifteenth century by the models of the past. Classical subjects come in by the side of the more familiar religious themes, and accessories in pictures are drawn largely from antique remains, but the influence does not penetrate very deep. How little there is that is classical in the spirit and even the form of the art of Donatello! How closely we have to scan the work or the utterances of Leonardo to find a trace of the study of Roman or Hellenic antiquity!

With Alberti, as with the humanists in art in general, the watchword was ‘Nature.’ As if with direct reference to what Cennini had said about adhering to a chosen master, Alberti in the third book of his Della Pittura, derides those who follow their predecessors so closely as to copy all their errors. Equally at fault are those who work out of their own head without proper models before them. The real mistress is nature. Now ever since the beginning of the Italian revival the study of nature had been set before the artist, and Cennini bids the craftsman never to pass a day without making some drawing from a natural object. The study of nature however, with Alberti and the masters of the Early Renaissance, meant something more. The outward aspect of things was to be narrowly observed, and he instances the effect of wind on the drapery of figures, but underneath this outward aspect the artist was to explore the inner structure upon which the external appearance depends. The nude figure must be understood under the drapery, the skeleton and muscular system beneath the integument. Then nature as a whole, that is to say, figures and objects in their mutual relations, must be investigated, and this on a basis of mathematical science. Alberti has a passion for geometry, and begins his treatise with a study from this point of view of visible surfaces. The relation of the eye to visual objects, and especially the changes which these are seen to undergo in their sizes and relations according as the eye is moved, lead on to the study of perspective, on which science, as is well known, depended so much of the advance in painting in the fifteenth century. Everything in a picture is to be studied from actual persons or objects. It will add life and actuality to a historical composition if some of the heads are copied from living people who are generally known, but at the same time a common sort of realism is to be avoided, for the aim of the artist should not be mere truth to nature but beauty and dignity.

It is in his conception of the artist’s character and life that Alberti is least mediaeval. Here, in the third book of Della Pittura, we see emerging for the first time the familiar modern figure of the artist, who, as scholar and gentleman, holds a place apart from and above the artizanception inspires the interesting chapter, the tenth in the ninth book, of Alberti’s more important treatise De Re Aedificatoria, where he draws out the character of the ideal architect, who should be ‘a man of fine genius, of a great application, of the best education, of thorough experience and especially of sound sense and firm judgement.’ The Renaissance artist was indeed to fulfil the idea of a perfectible human nature, the conception of which is the best gift of humanism to the modern world. As sketched in Della Pittura, he was to be learned in all the liberal arts, familiar with the creations of the poets, accustomed to converse with rhetoricians, ‘a man and a good man and versed in all good pursuits.’ He was to attract the admiring regard of his fellows by his character and bearing, and to be marked among all for grace and courtesy, for ‘it is the aim and end of the painter to seek to win for himself through his works praise and favour and good-will, rather than riches.’ Such a one, labouring with all diligence and penetration on the study of nature and of science, would win his way to the mastery possessed by the ancient painters, and would secure to himself that fame so dear to the Italian heart!

In the hundred years that intervened between the life-courses of Alberti and of Vasari, the Renaissance artist, whom the former describes in the making, had become a finished product, and the practice of the arts was a matter of easy routine. The artistic problems at which the men of the fifteenth century had laboured so earnestly were solved; the materials had become plastic to the craftsman’s will; the forms of nature were known so well that they ceased to excite the curiosity which had set Leonardo’s keenly sensitive nature on edge. At the time Vasari wrote, with the exception of the Venetians and of Michelangelo, all the men of genius who had created the art of the Renaissance had passed away, and the busy workers whose multitudinous operations he watched and chronicled were, like himself, only epigoni—successors of the great. We have only to read Vasari’s eulogy of Michelangelo’s frescoes on the vault of the Sistine, in his Life of that master, to see how far the tone of the age in regard to art had changed from the time when Alberti was exhorting the student to work out his own artistic salvation with fear and trembling. ‘No one,’ exclaims Vasari, ‘who is a painter cares now any more to look out for novelty in inventions or attitudes or drapery, for new modes of expression, and for sublimity in all the varied effects of art; seeing that all the perfection which it is possible to give in work done in this fashion has been imparted to these figures by Michelangelo.’ The cultivation of the Michelangelesque, instead of the severe and patient study of nature, that Leonardo had called ‘the mistress of all masters,’ marks the spirit of the Florentine and Roman schools after the middle of the sixteenth century, and Vasari’s own works in fresco and oil, hastily executed and on a vast scale, but devoid alike of originality and of charm, are the most effective exponents of the ideas of his time and school. At this epoch the artist himself was no longer the dominant figure in the world of art, nor was his struggle for self-perfection in the forefront of interest for the spectator. The stage was rather commanded by the patron, the Pope Leo, the Duke Cosimo or the Cardinal Farnese of the day, at whose bidding the artist must run hither and thither, and leave one task for another, till a delicate nature like Raphael’s or Perino del Vaga’s fails under the strain, and the sublime genius of Michelangelo is thwarted in its free expression. With the exception of the Venetians, most of the more accomplished Italian masters of the period were at work on commissions set them by these wealthy patrons, who lorded it over their kind and made the arts subservient to their temporal glory. For such Vasari himself was always contentedly busy on buildings or frescoes or pageants, and for work of the kind demanded nature had exactly equipped him. He was evidently embarrassed neither by ideals nor by nerves, but was essentially business-like. Galluzzi in his History of the Grand Dukes says of him that ‘to the qualities of his profession he united a certain sagacity and alertness of spirit which gave to Duke Cosimo considerable pleasure from his company.’ He was distinguished above his fellows for the characteristic, not too common among artists, of always working to time. He might scamp his work, but he would by one method or another get it finished in accordance with his contract. His powers of application must have been of a high order, for we should remember that his literary output was by no means inconsiderable, and with his busy life the wonder is not that he wrote rather carelessly but that he was able to do any serious literary work at all.

A favourable specimen of Vasari’s decorative painting is the fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, given on Plate I. It represents Leo X surrounded by his Cardinals, and introduces portraits of famous men of the day. For instance, on the left above the balustrade in the upper part of the fresco against the opening, will be observed four heads of personages outside the conclave. That on the right is of Leonardo da Vinci and the one on the left Michelangelo’s, while the two men with covered heads who intervene are Giuliano de’ Medici, Duc de Nemours, and his nephew Lorenzo de’ Medici, Duca d’ Urbino, the originals of Michelangelo’s world-famous statues on the Medici tombs, that are of course treated in a wholly ideal fashion. It will be observed that among the foreground figures the heads of the second from the left and the second from the right are rendered with much more force and character than the rest. They are of Cardinal Giulio de’ Medici afterwards Clement VII, and Cardinal de’ Rossi, and Vasari has saved himself trouble by boldly annexing them, and with them the bust of the Pope, from Raphael’s Portrait of Leo X, of which, as he tells us elsewhere, he had at one time made a copy.

It has been well said of him by the continuators of his autobiography that ‘to our Giorgio nature was very bountiful in her gifts; study and good will had largely improved his natural disposition, but the taste of the times, and the artistic education he received, corrupted the gifts of nature, and the fruit of his unwearied studies.’ Vasari was not an inspired artist, and he had neither the informing mind of a master nor the judgement of a discriminating critic, but he was, as we have already pointed out, above all things a thoroughly practical craftsman in intimate touch with all the manifold artistic life of the Italy of his time. He possessed moreover a most genial personality with which it is a pleasure to come into contact, and his good temper (which only fails him when he talks about Gothic art), though it may at times slightly provoke us, accounts for not a little of the deserved popularity of his writings.[^[2]]

Vasari has no doubt at all about the arts being in the most healthy condition in the best of all possible artistic worlds, but it is easy for us to see that this art of the High Renaissance was not of the very best; that the spirit had died out of it almost as soon as the form had attained to outward perfection. We cannot share the facile optimism of Vasari who will admire any work, or any at least in his own school and style, in which there is initiative and force and technical mastery, and in whose eyes to paint feigned architecture on a stucco façade, provided it be deftly done, is as much a ‘cosa bellissima’ as to carve the Marsuppini sarcophagus in S. Croce. We cannot however withhold our admiration when we consider the copious artistic output of the age, the manifold forms of aesthetic expression, the easy surrender of the most intractable materials to the artist’s will. As we read Vasari’s descriptions and recipes the air all about us seems full of the noise of the mason’s hammer, the splash of plaster on the wall, the tinkle of the carver’s chisel against the marble, the grating of the chaser’s rasp upon the bronze. We feel ourselves spectators of an organized activity on a vast scale, where processes are so well understood that they go on almost of themselves. In the present day, in so much that is written about art, the personal or biographical interest is uppermost, and the lives of Italian artists, with their troubles and triumphs, absorb so much attention that one wonders whether any is left for Italian art. Hence one of the chief values of Vasari’s Technical Introduction is its insistence on artistic practice in general, as distinct from the doings of individual artists, and in this it may serve as a useful supplement or corrective to the biographical writing now in vogue. In Vasari on Technique there are no attractive personal legends, like that of Giotto’s shepherding or Donatello’s adventure with the eggs, but we learn in exchange to follow step by step the building and plastering and painting of Giotto’s chapel at Padua, and can watch Donatello’s helpers as they anxiously adjust the mould and core for casting the statue of Gattamelata.

Plate I
LEO X WITH HIS CARDINALS
Mural Painting by Vasari, in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence

It may assist the reader if there be here subjoined a succinct resumé of the subjects treated by Vasari in the three ‘Introductions.’

The first of these, on Architecture, opens with a long chapter on stones used in building and decoration, which is important as the fullest notice of the subject that has come down to us from the Renaissance period. Into his somewhat loose disquisitions on porphyry, marbles, travertine, and other materials, Vasari introduces so many incidental notices of monuments and personages of interest, that a somewhat extended commentary has in this part been necessary. Next follows the inevitable chapter on the five Orders, at the close of which comes the notable passage in which Vasari adopts for late mediaeval architecture the term ‘Gothic’ that has ever since adhered to it. With Vasari the word ‘Gothic’ means ‘barbarian,’ and he holds that the style was invented by the Goths, after they had conquered the Romans and destroyed all the good antique structures. His description of what he terms the ‘abominations’ of slender shafts and niches and corbels and finials and doors that touch the roof is quite spirited, and might be learned by heart as a lesson in humility by some of our mediaeval enthusiasts. On the question whether Vasari was the first to use the term ‘Gothic’ in this sense a word will be said in the Note on the passage in Vasari’s text.

Next come chapters on the architectural use of enriched plaster; on the rustic fountains and grottoes, the taste for which was coming in in Vasari’s time, and which at a later period generated the so-called ‘rocaille’ or ‘rococo’ style in ornamentation; and on mosaic pavements. This ‘Introduction’ ends with a chapter on an interesting subject to which it does not quite do justice, the subject of ideal architecture, on which in that and the succeeding age a good deal was written.

Though Sculpture was not Vasari’s métier his account of the processes of that art is full and practical, though we miss the personal note that runs through the descriptions of the same procedure in the Trattato of Cellini. After an introductory chapter we have one on the technique of sculpture in marble, with an account first of the small, and then of the full-sized, model in clay or wax, the mechanical transfer of the general form of this to the marble block, and the completion of the statue by the use of tools and processes which he describes. Chapter three introduces the subject of reliefs, and there is here of course a good deal about the picturesque reliefs in which perspective effects are sought, that Ghiberti and Donatello had brought into vogue. The account of bronze casting in chapter four is one of the most interesting in the whole treatise, and the descriptions are in the main clear and consistent. Illustrations have been introduced here from the article on the subject in the French Encyclopédie of the eighteenth century, where is an account of the processes used in 1699 for casting in one piece Girardon’s colossal equestrian statue of Louis XIV for the Place Vendôme in Paris. A chapter on die-sinking for medals is followed by one on modelled plaster work, for this material is dealt with in all the three sections of the Introduction; while sculpture in wood forms the subject of the concluding chapter, in which there is a curious notice of an otherwise unknown French artist, who executed at Florence a statue of S. Rocco which may still be seen in the church of the Annunziata. In various places of this ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture questions of general aesthetic interest are brought forward, and some of these are discussed in the commentary at its close.

Of the three ‘Introductions’ that on Painting is the longest and deals with the greatest variety of topics. After a preliminary chapter in which Vasari shows that he regards the art with the eyes of a Florentine frescoist, he gives a practical account of different methods of executing drawings and cartoons, and of transferring the lines of the cartoon to the fresh plaster of the wall, on which the fresco painter is to work. A chapter on colouring in mural pictures leads on to the account of the fresco process. As Vasari was in this an expert, his description and appreciation of the process form one of the most valuable parts of the treatise. He is enthusiastic in his praise of the method, which he calls the most masterly and most beautiful of all, on account of its directness and rapidity. Tempera painting on panel or on dry plaster is next discussed, and then follows a notice of oil painting on panel or canvas. The statement here made by Vasari that oil painting was invented by van Eyck is the earliest enunciation of a dogma that has given rise in recent times to a large amount of controversial writing. He goes on next to treat of the right method of mural painting in the oil medium, and in this last connection Vasari gives us the recipe he had finally adopted after years of experiment, and employed for preparing walls for the application of oil paint in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence. The use of oil paint on a ground of slate or other kinds of stone furnishes matter for another chapter.

With chapter eleven begins what we may regard as a second division of this ‘Introduction,’ in which various processes of the decorative arts are grouped together under the head of Painting, on the ground of the pictorial effects produced by their means. Decorative painting, in the usual sense, is first described as executed in monochrome for permanence on the façades of buildings, or for temporary purposes on triumphal arches and similar structures; and then follows a chapter on what is known as ‘Sgraffito’ work, or decoration in plaster of two colours, especially valuable as the first statement of the method and aim of this process, which had been evolved from pâte-sur-pâte pottery not long before Vasari’s time. ‘Grotesques’ in modelled and stamped plaster are next described, and the uses of colour in various ways in connection with them are noticed, though with tantalizing brevity. Recipes for gilding follow, and then with a treatment of glass mosaic we pass on to a discussion of eight different kinds of decorative work, which interest Vasari chiefly because of their pictorial possibilities. Of glass mosaic, while he gives very good advice about the sort of design suitable for it, he says that it must be so executed as to look like painting and not like inlaid work. Some, he says, are so clever that they make it resemble fresco. Floor mosaics in coloured marbles are to appear exactly like a flat picture; works in tarsia, or wood inlays, are dismissed because they cannot do more than counterfeit painting without equalling it; stained glass windows, on the other hand, are lauded because they can be carried to the same perfection as fine pictures on panel. Enamel is noticed because it is of the nature of picture-work, and even damascening on metal ‘partakes of the nature both of sculpture and of painting.’ Lastly wood-engraving is only described under the form of the Chiaroscuri, or shaded prints, introduced early in the sixteenth century, though W. J. Linton in his work The Masters of Wood Engraving regards these as merely aping drawings, and hardly coming under the engraver’s art at all!

To return for a moment in concluding to a comparison already drawn, the contrast is very significant between Vasari’s attitude towards these decorative processes and that of the mediaeval writer Theophilus. Throughout his treatise Theophilus hardly says anything about design, or what is to be represented in the various materials. It is the materials themselves that are his concern, and the end before his eyes is the effect of beauty and sumptuousness in colour and texture that their skilful manipulation will secure. To Vasari these materials are chiefly of importance as producing something of the effect of painting, and though he deals with them and their manipulation from the technical point of view, the vision of the completed result as a picture hovers always before his eyes. In this Vasari was only following in his theoretical treatment the actual facts of artistic development in his times. Since the beginning of the Renaissance period all the forms of industrial art which he describes had been gradually losing the purely decorative character which belonged to them in the mediaeval epoch, and were being hurried along at the chariot wheels of the triumphant art of painting. This is one of the two dangers to which these forms of art are always subject. The naturalism in design, which is encouraged by the popularity of the painter’s art on its representative side, is as much opposed to their true genius as is the modern system of mechanical production, which deprives them of the charm they owe to the touch of the craftsman’s personality. History brought it about that in the century after Vasari these arts were in a measure rescued from the too great predominance of the pictorial element, though they were subjected at the same time to the other unfavourable influence just hinted at. Italy, from which the artistic Renaissance had spread to other lands, ceased in the seventeenth century to be the main centre of production or of inspiration for the decorative arts, which rather found their home in Paris, where they were organized and encouraged as part of the state system. The Manufacture des Meubles de la Couronne, a creation of Louis XIV’s minister Colbert, which had its headquarters at the Hotel des Gobelins and the Savonnerie, was a manufactory of decorative work of almost every kind and in the most varied materials. That this work, judged on an aesthetic standard, was cold and formal, and wanting in the breath of life which plays about all the productions of the mediaeval workshop, was an inevitable consequence of its systematized official character and of its environment. The lover of art will take more real pleasure in the output of the old-fashioned and more personal English craftsmanship of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, than in the artistic glories of the French state factories under the Ancien Régime. This native British craftsmanship was however struck into inanition a century ago by the apparition of machinery; and the result of half-a-century of the new industrial era was the Great Exhibition of 1851, wherein was displayed what was probably the greatest collection of artistic failures that the world has ever beheld. In consequence agencies were then set on foot, and engineered by the Science and Art Department, to improve the artistic quality of industrial products, but unfortunately these were based on principles not wholly sound. The shibboleths ‘Historic Ornament’ and ‘Applied Ornament’ covered the desponding view that the decorative arts were dead, and that enrichment must henceforth not be a living thing, the concomitant and even the product of the work itself, but a dead or ‘historic’ thing, that might be procured from books or museums and then ‘applied’ as an afterthought to whatever was to be made a ‘work of art.’ The results of this system were not encouraging, and led to the revival of mediaeval ideas, which, embodied in the magnetic personality of William Morris, have done much to effect a real, though as yet not far-reaching artistic revival.

The first principle here is to discourage undue naturalism in ornamental design by withdrawing the decorative arts from the influence of painting, and attaching them rather to the arts of construction, under the beneficent control of which they did so well in the middle ages. The next principle, which is equally important, is to foster the personal element in decorative work, but at the same time to prevent individuality from becoming self-assertive and running into vagaries, by insisting on the vital connection of ornament with material and technique. For the worker to ornament a thing properly he must either have made it or at any rate be in intimate touch with the processes of fabrication, out of which the decorative treatment should grow. The fact that the more advanced Schools of Art in our own country, such as that at Birmingham, regard as essential parts of their equipment the range of workshops where technical processes are explained and studied, is an encouraging sign, and this return from the drawing-board and the book to the bench and the tool gives an additional practical value to the older treatises on the technique of the arts, of which Vasari’s Introduction is one.

OF ARCHITECTURE

CHAPTER I.

Of the different kinds of Stone which are used by Architects for ornamental details, and in Sculpture for Statues; that is, Of Porphyry, Serpentine, Cipollaccio, Breccia, Granites, Paragon or Test-stone, Transparent Marbles, White Marbles and Veined Marbles, Cipollini, Saligni, Campanini, Travertine, Slate, Peperigno, Ischia Stone, Pietra Serena and Pietra Forte.

§ 1. The author’s object in the Discussion of Architecture.

How great is the utility of Architecture it does not fall to me to tell, since the subject has been treated at length and most carefully by many writers. For this reason, leaving on one side the limes, sands, wood, iron armatures, mode of preparing the foundations, as well as everything else that is used in a building; disregarding also the questions of water and localities and sites, already enlarged on by Vitruvius[^[3]] and by our own Leon Battista Alberti,[^[4]] I shall only discuss, for the use of our artificers and for whoever likes to know, the essential qualities of buildings, and in what proportions they should be put together and of what parts composed in order to obtain that graceful beauty that is desired. In short, I shall collect all that seems to me necessary for the purpose in view.

§ 2. Of the working of hard stones, and first of Porphyry.

In order that the great difficulty of working very hard and compact stones may be clearly understood, we shall treat distinctly but briefly of every variety which our workmen handle, and first of porphyry.[^[5]] This is a red stone, with minute white specks, brought into Italy from Egypt, where it is generally believed that the stone when quarried is softer than it is after it has been exposed to rain, frost and sunshine; because all these influences make it harder and more difficult to work.[^[6]] Of this stone numberless works are to be seen, some of them shaped with the chisel, some sawn into shape, and some again gradually worked up by means of wheels and emery. There are many different examples in divers places; for instance, square, round, and other pieces smoothed for pavements, statues for edifices, a great number of columns large and small, and fountains with various masks, all carved with the greatest care. There are also sarcophagi still extant, with figures in low and half relief, laboriously wrought, as at the temple of Bacchus,[^[7]] outside Rome, by Sant’ Agnese, where is said to be the sarcophagus of Santa Costanza, daughter of the Emperor Constantine, on which are carved many figures of children with grapes and vineleaves, that testify how great was his labour who worked them in a stone so hard. There is another example in an urn, near to the door known as the Porta Santa in San Giovanni in Laterano, which is decorated with scenes containing a great number of figures.[^[8]] There is also in the piazza della Ritonda a very beautiful urn made for sepulchral purposes[^[9]] that is worked with great care and diligence. It is of extremely graceful and beautiful form, and is very different from the others. In the house of Egizio and of Fabio Sasso[^[10]] there used to be a seated figure, measuring three and a half braccia, preserved to our days with the remains of the other statues in the Casa Farnese.[^[11]] In the courtyard also of the Casa la Valle,[^[12]] over a window, is a she-wolf most excellently sculptured,[^[13]] and, in the garden of the same house, the two prisoners bound, each four braccia in height,[^[14]] executed in this same porphyry by the ancients with extraordinary skill. These works are lavishly praised to-day by all skilled persons, knowing, as they do, the difficulty the workers had in executing them owing to the hardness of the stone.

In our day stone of this sort is never wrought to perfection,[^[15]] because our artificers have lost the art of tempering the chisels and other instruments for working them. It is true that they can still, with the help of emery, saw drums of columns into slices, and cut other pieces to be arranged in patterns for floors, and make various other ornaments for buildings. The porphyry is reduced little by little by means of a copper saw, without teeth, drawn backwards and forwards between two men, which, with the aid of emery reduced to powder, and kept constantly wet with water, finally cuts its way through the stone.[^[16]] Although at different times many ingenious attempts have been made to find out the method of working porphyry used by the ancients,[^[17]] all have been in vain, and Leon Battista Alberti, the first to make experiments therein not however in things of great moment, did not find, among the many tempering-baths that he put to the test, any that answered better than goats’ blood; because, though in the working it removed but little of that hardest of stones and was always striking sparks of fire, it served him nevertheless so far as to enable him to have carved, in the threshold of the principal door of Santa Maria Novella in Florence, the eighteen antique letters, very large and well proportioned, which are seen on the front of the step, in a piece of porphyry. These letters form the words Bernardo Oricellario.[^[18]] And because the edge of the chisel did not suit for squaring the corners, or giving the necessary polish and finish, he had a little revolving drill made, with a handle like a spit, which was easily worked by placing the said handle against the chest, and putting the hands into the crank in order to turn it.[^[19]] At the working end, instead of a chisel or bit, he fixed copper discs, larger or smaller according to need, and these, well sprinkled with emery, gradually reduced and smoothed the stone, producing a fine surface and finishing the corners, the drill all the while being dexterously twirled by the hand. But all this effort cost so much time, that Leon Battista lost heart, and did not put his hand to anything else, either in the way of statues, or vases, or other delicate work. Others, afterwards, who set themselves to smoothing stones and restoring columns by the same special process, have done it in this way. They make for the purpose large and heavy hammers, with the points of steel, keenly tempered with goats’ blood, and worked in the manner of diamond points; with these they carefully tap on the porphyry, and ‘scabbling’ it, or working it down, little by little the best way they can, finally reduce it, with much time and trouble, to the round or the flat, as the workman chooses,—not however to the form of statues, because of this we have lost the art—and they polish it with emery and leather, scouring it till there comes a lustre very clear and well finished.

Fig. 1.—Inscribed Porphyry Tablet at Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

Now although every day refinements are being made on human inventions, and new things enquired into, yet even the moderns, who from time to time have tried fresh methods of carving porphyry, various tempering-baths, and very carefully refined steels, have, as was said above, up till recent years laboured in vain. Thus in the year 1553 Pope Julius III, having been presented by Signor Ascanio Colonna[^[20]] with a very handsome antique porphyry basin, measuring seven braccia across, ordered it to be restored, for some pieces were missing, that it might adorn his vineyard: the work was undertaken, and many things tried by the advice of Michelagnolo Buonarroti and of other excellent masters, but after a great length of time the enterprise was despaired of, chiefly because it was found impossible to preserve some of the arrises, a matter essential to the undertaking: Michelagnolo, moreover, even though accustomed to the hardness of stones, gave up the attempt, as did all the others, and nothing more was done.

Plate II
PRINCIPAL DOORWAY AT S. MARIA NOVELLA, FLORENCE
Showing the position of the inscribed porphyry tablet on the riser or the step

At last, since no other thing in our days was lacking to the perfection of our arts, except the method of satisfactorily working porphyry, that not even this should still be to seek, it was rediscovered in the following manner. In the year 1555, Duke Cosimo, wishing to erect a fountain of remarkable beauty in the court of his principal palace in Florence, had excellent water led there from the Pitti Palace and Garden, and ordered a basin with its pedestal to be made for the said fountain from some large pieces of porphyry found among broken fragments. To make the working of it more easy to the master, he caused an extract to be distilled from an herb, the name of which is unknown to me, and this extract had such virtue, that red-hot tools when plunged into it acquired the hardest possible temper. With the aid of this process then, Francesco del Tadda, the carver of Fiesole,[^[21]] executed after my design the basin of the said fountain, which is two and a half braccia in diameter,[^[22]] together with its pedestal, just as it may be seen to-day in the above-named palace.[^[23]] Tadda, judging that the secret imparted to him by the duke was very precious, set himself to put it to the test by carving something, and he has succeeded so well that in a short time he has made, in three ovals, life-size portraits in half relief of Duke Cosimo and of the duchess Leonora, and a head of Christ, executed so perfectly that the hair and beard, most difficult to reproduce in carving, are finished in a manner equal to that of the ancients. The Duke was talking one day of these works with Michelagnolo[^[24]] when his Excellency was in Rome, and Buonarroti would not believe in them; therefore, by the Duke’s order, I sent the head of Christ to Rome where it was seen by Michelagnolo with great wonder, who praised it highly and rejoiced greatly to see the sculpture of our time enriched by this rare gift, which until our day had been searched for in vain. Tadda has recently finished the head of the elder Cosimo de’ Medici[^[25]] in an oval, like those mentioned above, and he has executed and continues to execute many other similar works.

All that remains to be said of porphyry is that, because the quarries are now lost to knowledge,[^[26]] it is necessary to make use of what is left of it in the form of ancient fragments, drums of columns and other pieces; and that in consequence he who works in porphyry must ascertain whether or not it has been subjected to the action of fire, because if it have, although it does not completely lose its colour, nor crumble away, it lacks much of its natural vividness and never takes so good a polish as when it has not been so subjected; and, what is worse, it easily fractures in the working. It is also worth knowing, as regards the nature of porphyry, that, if put into the furnace, it does not burn away (non si cuoce),[^[27]] nor allow other stones round it to be thoroughly burnt; indeed, as to itself, it grows raw (incrudelisce) as is shown in the two columns the men of Pisa gave to the Florentines in the year 1117 after the acquisition of Majorca. These columns now stand at the principal door of the church of San Giovanni; they are colourless and not very well polished in consequence of having passed through fire, as Giovanni Villani relates in his history.[^[28]]

Plate III
PORTRAIT IN PORPHYRY OF COSIMO ‘PATER PATRIAE’
BY FRANCESCO DEL TADDA

§ 3. Of Serpentine.

After porphyry we come to serpentine,[^[29]] which is a green stone, rather dark, with little crosses long and yellowish all through its texture. The artificers busy themselves with making columns and slabs for pavements in edifices from it, in the same way as from porphyry. It is never seen carved into figures, although it is very often used for the bases of columns, the pedestals of tables, and other works of a ruder kind. Though this sort of stone is liable to fracture, and is harder than porphyry, it is sweeter to work and involves less labour. Serpentine is quarried in Egypt and Greece and the sound pieces are not very large; consequently no work of greater dimensions than three braccia in any direction is ever seen of serpentine, and such works as exist are slabs and pieces of pavement. A few columns are found also but not very massive nor thick, as well as some masks and sculptured brackets, but figures never. This stone is worked in the same manner as porphyry.

§ 4. Of Cipollaccio.

Softer than serpentine is cipollaccio,[^[30]] a stone quarried in various places; it is of a crude yellowish green colour and has within it some square black marks, large and small, and also biggish white marks. Of this material one may see in various places columns both massive and slender, as well as doors and other ornaments, but not figures. There is a fountain of this stone in Rome in the Belvedere, that is to say a niche in a corner of the garden where are the statues of the Nile and of the Tiber;[^[31]] Pope Clement VII had this niche made, after a design by Michelagnolo,[^[32]] to adorn the statue of a river god that it might look very beautiful in this setting made in imitation of natural rocks, as indeed it actually does. Cipollaccio is also sawn into panels, round and oval, and into similar pieces which, when arranged with other stones in pavements and other flat surfaces, make lovely compositions. It takes a polish like porphyry and serpentine and is sawn in the same manner. Numberless pieces of it are found in Rome, buried under the ruins; these come to light daily and thus of ancient things modern works are made, such as doors and other ornamental details, which, wherever placed, are decorative and very beautiful.

§ 5. Of Breccia (‘Mischio,’ Conglomerate).

Here is now another stone, called ‘mischio’ (breccia),[^[33]] from the mixture of various stones coagulated together and made one by time and by the mordant action of water. It is found in abundance in several places, as in the mountains of Verona, in those of Carrara, and of Prato in Tuscany, and in the hills of the Impruneta in the neighbourhood of Florence.[^[34]] But the best and choicest breccias have been found, not long ago, at San Giusto at Monte Rantoli, five miles distant from Florence.[^[35]] In this material Duke Cosimo has commissioned me to decorate all the new rooms of the palace with doors and chimney pieces, and the effect is most beautiful. Also for the garden of the Pitti, very fine columns seven braccia high have been quarried from the same place, and I am astonished that in this stone such large pieces should be found free from flaws.[^[36]] Being of the nature of limestone, it takes a beautiful polish and in colour inclines to a reddish purple streaked with white and yellowish veins. But the finest examples of all are in Greece and Egypt,[^[37]] where the stone is much harder than ours in Italy, and it is found in as many different colours as mother nature has delighted and still delights to produce in all perfection. In the breccias formed in this way one sees at Rome at the present day both ancient and modern works, such as columns, vases, fountains, door ornaments, and various inlays on buildings, as well as many pieces in the pavements. There are various sorts, of many colours; some draw to yellow and red, others to white and black, others again to grey and white speckled with red and veined with numerous colours; then there are certain reds, greens, blacks and whites which are oriental: and of this sort of stone the Duke has an antique urn, four and a half braccia across, in his garden at the Pitti, a thing most precious, being as I said of oriental breccia very beautiful and extremely hard to work.[^[38]] Such stones are all very hard, and exquisite in colour and quality, as is shown by the two columns, twelve braccia high at the entrance of St. Peter’s in Rome, which support the first arcades of the aisles, one on each side.[^[39]] Of this stone, the kind which is found in the hills of Verona, is very much softer than the oriental; and in that place is quarried a sort which is reddish, and inclines towards a vetch colour.[^[40]] All these kinds are worked easily in our days with the tempering-baths and the tools used for our own local stones. Windows, columns, fountains, pavements, door posts and mouldings are made of them, as is seen in Lombardy and indeed throughout Italy.

§ 6. Of Granite.

There is another sort of extremely hard stone, much coarser and speckled with black and white and sometimes with red, which, on account of its grain and consistency, is commonly called granite.[^[41]] In Egypt it exists in solid masses of immense size that can be quarried in pieces incredibly long, such as are seen now-a-days in Rome in obelisks, needles, pyramids, columns, and in those enormous vessels for baths which we have at San Pietro in Vincola, at San Salvadore del Lauro and at San Marco.[^[42]] It is also seen in columns without number, which for hardness and compactness have had nothing to fear from fire or sword, so that time itself, that drives everything to ruin, not only has not destroyed them but has not even altered their colour. It was for this reason that the Egyptians made use of granite in the service of their dead, writing on these obelisks in their strange characters the lives of the great, to preserve the memory of their prowess and nobility.

From Egypt there used also to come another variety of grey granite, where the black and white specks draw rather towards green. It is certainly very hard, not so hard however, but that our stonecutters, in the building of St. Peter’s, have made use of the fragments they have found, in such a manner that by means of the temper of the tools at present adopted, they have reduced the columns and other pieces to the desired slenderness and have given them a polish equal to that of porphyry.

Many parts of Italy are enriched with this grey granite, but the largest blocks found are in the island of Elba, where the Romans kept men continually employed in quarrying countless pieces of this rock.[^[43]] Some of the columns of the portico of the Ritonda are made of it, and they are very beautiful and of extraordinary size.[^[44]] It is noticed that the stone when in the quarry is far softer and more easy to work than after it has lain exposed.[^[45]] It is true that for the most part it must be worked with picks that have a point, like those used for porphyry, and at the other end a sharp edge like a toothed chisel.[^[46]] From a piece of this granite which was detached from the mass, Duke Cosimo has hollowed out a round basin twelve braccia broad in every direction and a table of the same length for the palace and garden of the Pitti.[^[47]]

§ 7. Of Paragon (Touchstone).[^[48]]

A kind of black stone, called paragon, is likewise quarried in Egypt and also in some parts of Greece. It is so named because it forms a test for trying gold; the workman rubs the gold on this stone and discerns its colour, and on this account, used as it is for comparing or testing, it comes to be named paragon, or indexstone (a). Of this there is another variety, with a different grain and colour, for it has, almost but not quite, the tint of the mulberry, and does not lend itself readily to the tool. It was used by the ancients for some of those sphinxes and other animals seen in various places in Rome, and for a figure of greater size, a hermaphrodite in Parione,[^[49]] alongside of another most beautiful statue of porphyry.[^[50]] This stone is hard to carve, but is extraordinarily beautiful and takes a wonderful polish (b). The same sort is also to be found in Tuscany, in the hills of Prato, ten miles distant from Florence (c), and in the mountains of Carrara. On modern tombs many sarcophagi and repositories for the dead are to be seen of it; for example, in the principal chapel in the Carmine at Florence, where is the tomb of Piero Soderini (although he is not within it) made of this stone, and a canopy too of this same Prato touchstone, so well finished and so lustrous that it looks like a piece of satin rather than a cut and polished stone (d). Thus again, in the facing which covers the outside of the church of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence, all over the building, there is a different kind of black marble (e) and red marble (f), but all worked in the same manner.

§ 8. Of Transparent Marbles for filling window openings.

Some sorts of marble are found in Greece and in all parts of the East, which are white and yellowish, and very transparent. These were used by the ancients for baths and hot-air chambers and for all those places which need protection against wind, and in our own days there are still to be seen in the tribune of San Miniato a Monte, the abode of the monks of Monte Oliveto, above the gates of Florence, some windows of this marble, which admit light but not air.[^[51]] By means of this invention people gave light to their dwellings and kept out the cold.

§ 9. Of Statuary Marbles.

From the same quarries[^[52]] were taken other marbles free from veins, but of the same colour, out of which were carved the noblest statues. These marbles were of a very fine grain and consistency, and they were continually being made use of by all who carved capitals and other architectural ornaments. The blocks available for sculpture were of great size as appears in the Colossi of Montecavallo at Rome,[^[53]] in the Nile[^[54]] of the Belvedere and in all the most famous and noble statues. Apart from the question of the marble, one can recognize these to be Greek from the fashion of the head, the arrangement of the hair, and from the nose, which from its juncture with the eyebrows down to the nostril is somewhat square.[^[55]] This marble is worked with ordinary tools and with drills, and is polished with pumice stone, with chalk from Tripoli, and with leather and wisps of straw.

In the mountains of Carrara in the Carfagnana,[^[56]] near to the heights of Luni, there are many varieties of marble, some black,[^[57]] some verging towards grey, some mingled with red and others again with grey veins.[^[58]] These form an outer crust over the white marbles, and they take those colours, because they are not refined, but rather are smitten by time, water and the soil. Again, there are other sorts of marble, called ‘cipollini,’[^[59]] ‘saligni,’ ‘campanini’ and ‘mischiati.’[^[60]] The most abundant kind is pure white and milky in tone; it is easy to work and quite perfect for carving into figures. Enormous blocks lie there ready to be quarried, and in our own days, pieces measuring nine braccia have been hewn out for colossal statues. Two of these colossi have recently been sculptured, each from a single block. The one is Michelagnolo’s ‘David,’ which is at the entrance of the Ducal Palace in Florence;[^[61]] the other is the ‘Hercules and Cacus’ from the hand of Bandinello standing at the other side of the same entrance. Another block of nine braccia in length was taken out of the quarry a few years ago, in order that the same Baccio Bandinello should carve a figure of Neptune for the fountain which the Duke is having erected on the piazza. But, Bandinello being dead, it has since been given to Ammannato, an excellent sculptor, for him likewise to carve a Neptune out of it.[^[62]] But of all these marbles, that of the quarry named Polvaccio,[^[63]] in the place of that name, has the fewest blemishes and veins and is free from those knots and nuts which very often occur in an extended surface of marble—occasioning no little difficulty to the worker, and spoiling the statues even when they are finished. From the quarries of Seravezza, near to Pietrasanta, there have been taken out a set of columns, all of the same height, destined for the façade of San Lorenzo at Florence, which is now sketched out in front of the door of that church;[^[64]] one of these columns is to be seen there, the rest remain, some in the quarry, some at the seashore.

Fig. 2.—Tools mentioned by Vasari, etc.

A, B, Models of Tools used in Egypt at the present day for working hard stones. C, The pick referred to by Vasari, p. [41]. D, A burin or graver. E-J, Tools in actual use in a stone-cutter’s yard at Settignano:

E, Subbia, a point. F, Calcagnuolo, a toothed chisel. G, Gradina, a broader toothed chisel. H, Scarpello, a chisel. J, Trapano, a drill.

But returning to the quarries of Pietrasanta,[^[65]] I say that they were the quarries in which all the ancients worked, and no other marbles but these were used for their statues by those masters, who were so excellent. While the masses were being hewn out, they were always at work, blocking out figures in the rough on the stones while they were still in the quarry. The remains of many of these can be seen even yet in that place.[^[66]] This same marble, then, the moderns of to-day use for their statues, not only in Italy, but in France, England, Spain and Portugal, as can be seen to-day in the tomb executed in Naples by Giovanni da Nola, the excellent sculptor, for Don Pietro di Toledo, viceroy of that kingdom, to whom all the marbles were presented, and sent to Naples by Duke Cosimo de’ Medici.[^[67]] This kind of marble has in itself larger available pieces and is more yielding and softer to work and receives a finer polish than any other marble. It is true that occasionally the workman meets with flaws called by the sculptors ‘smerigli’ (emery veins) which usually cause the tools to break. The blocks are first roughed into shape, by a tool called ‘subbia’ (point)[^[68]] which is pointed like a stake in facets, and is heavier or lighter as the case may be. At the next stage are used chisels, named ‘calcagnuoli’ (toothed chisels), which have a notch in the middle of the edge of the blade; after that finer and finer tools with more teeth are used to score the marble, after which it is smoothed with another chisel called ‘gradina,’ (broader toothed chisel) used to reduce and refine the figures. The tooth marks left in the marble are removed with iron rasps straight and curved, and thus at last, by polishing gradually with pumice stone the surface aimed at is attained. In order not to fracture the marble, all the drill-holes are made with drills of different sizes weighing from twelve pounds each even to twenty, according to the size of the hole needed,[^[69]] and they serve to finish every sort of work and to bring it to perfection.

Of certain white marbles, streaked with grey,[^[70]] sculptors and architects make ornaments for doors and columns for houses and the same are used also for pavements and for facings of large buildings, and for all sorts of things. All the marbles called ‘mischiati’[^[71]] are used for the same purposes.

§ 10. Of Cipollino Marble.[^[72]]

The cipollini marbles are another kind, different in grain and colour, and found in other places besides Carrara. Most of them are greenish, and full of veins; they are useful for various things, but not for figures. Those which the sculptors call ‘saligni,’[^[73]] because they are partly transparent, and have that lustrous appearance seen in salt, have something of the nature of stalagmite, and are troublesome enough to make figures of; because the grain of the stone is rough and coarse, or because in damp weather water drops from it continually or else it sweats. The ‘campanini’ marbles are so named because they sound like a bell under the hammer and give out a sharper note than other marbles.[^[74]] These are hard and crack more easily than the kinds above mentioned. They are quarried at Pietrasanta.[^[75]] Again at Seravezza[^[76]] in many places and at Campiglia[^[77]] there are marbles excavated, which are for the most part excellent for ashlar work and even fairly good sometimes for statues.

§ 11. Of White Pisan Marble.

A kind of white marble, akin to limestone, is found likewise at Monte San Giuliano near Pisa.[^[78]] It has been used for covering the outside walls of the Duomo and the Camposanto of Pisa, as well as for many other ornaments to be seen in that city. Formerly the said marbles were brought to Pisa from the hill at San Giuliano with trouble and expense, but now it is different, because Duke Cosimo, in order to make the district more healthy and also to facilitate the carriage of the marbles and other stones taken from those mountains, has turned into a straight canal the river Osoli and many other streams, which used to rise in those plains and do damage to the country. By means of this canal, the marbles, either worked or rough, can be easily conveyed, at a trifling cost, and with the greatest advantage to the city which is now almost restored to its former magnificence, thanks to the said Duke, who has no object more dear to him than that of improving and restoring the city, which was falling into ruins, before His Excellency became its lord.[^[79]]

§ 12. Of Travertine.

There is another sort of stone called travertine, which is much used for building and also for carvings of various sorts. It is always being quarried in many places throughout Italy, as in the neighbourhood of Lucca, at Pisa, and round about Siena; but the largest blocks and the best, that is, those which are most easily worked, are taken from above the river Teverone at Tivoli.[^[80]] The stone is all a kind of coagulation of earth and of water, which by its hardness and coldness congeals and petrifies not only earth, but stumps and branches and leaves of trees. On account of the water that remains within the stones—which never can be dry so long as they lie under water—they are full of pores which give them a spongy and perforated appearance, both within and without.

Of travertine the ancients constructed their most wonderful buildings, for example, the Colosseum, and the Treasury by the church of Ss. Cosimo e Damiano[^[81]] and many other edifices. They used it without stint for the foundations of their public buildings, and in working these basements, they were not too fastidious in finishing them carefully, but left them rough, as in rustic work; and this they did perhaps because so treated they possess a certain grandeur and nobility of their own.[^[82]] But in our days there has been found one who has worked travertine most skilfully, as was formerly seen in that round temple, begun but never finished, save only the basement, on the piazza of San Luigi de’ Francesi in Rome.[^[83]] It was undertaken by a Frenchman named Maestro Gian, who studied the art of carving in Rome and became so proficient, that his work in the beginning of this temple could stand comparison with the best things, either ancient or modern, ever seen carved in travertine. He carved astrological globes, salamanders in the fire, royal emblems, devices of open books showing the leaves, and carefully finished trophies and masks. These, in their own place, bear witness to the excellence and quality of the stone which, although it is coarse, can be worked as freely as marble. It possesses a charm of its own, owing to the spongy appearance produced by the little cavities which cover the surface and look so well. This unfinished temple being left imperfect, was razed by the French, and the said stones and other pieces that formed part of its construction were placed in the façade of the church of San Luigi[^[84]] and in some of its chapels, where they are well arranged, and produce a beautiful effect.

Travertine is excellent for walls, because after it is built up in squared courses and worked into mouldings, it can be entirely covered with stucco[^[85]] and thereafter be impressed with any designs in relief that are desired, just as the ancients did in the public entrances to the Colosseum[^[86]] and in many other places; and as Antonio da San Gallo has done in the present day in the hall of the Pope’s palace, in front of the chapel,[^[87]] where he has faced the travertine with stucco bearing many excellent devices. More than any other master however has Michelagnolo Buonarroti ennobled this stone in the decoration of the court of the Casa Farnese.[^[88]] With marvellous judgement he has used it for windows, masks, brackets, and many other such fancies; all these are worked as marble is worked and no other similar ornament can be seen to excel this in beauty. And if these things are rare, more wonderful than all is the great cornice on the front façade of the same palace, than which nothing more magnificent or more beautiful can be sought for. Michelagnolo has also employed travertine for certain large chapels on the outside of the building of St. Peter’s, and in the interior, for the cornice that runs all round the tribune; so finished is this cornice that not one of the joints can be perceived, everyone therefore can well understand with what advantage to the work we employ this kind of stone. But that which surpasses every other marvel is the construction in this stone of the vault of one of the three tribunes in St. Peter’s; the pieces composing it are joined in such a manner that not only is the building well tied together with various sorts of bonds, but looked at from the ground it appears made out of a single piece.[^[89]]

§ 13. Of Slates.

We now come to a different order of stones, blackish in colour and used by the architects only for laying on roofs. These are thin flags produced by nature and time near the surface of the earth for the service of man. Some of these are made into receptacles, built up together in such a manner that the pieces dovetail one into the other. The vessels are filled with oil according to their holding capacity and they preserve it most thoroughly. These slates are a product of the sea coast of Genoa, in a place called Lavagna;[^[90]] they are excavated in pieces ten braccia long and are made use of by artists for their oil paintings, because pictures painted on slate last much longer than on any other material, as we shall discuss more appropriately in the chapters on painting.

§ 14. Of Peperino.[^[91]]

We shall also refer in a future chapter to a stone named piperno or more commonly peperigno, a blackish and spongy stone, resembling travertine, which is excavated in the Roman Campagna. It is used for the posts of windows and doors in various places, notably at Naples and in Rome; and it also serves artists for painting on in oil, as we shall relate in the proper place. This is a very thirsty stone and indeed more like cinder than anything else.

§ 15. Of the Stone from Istria.[^[92]]

There is moreover quarried in Istria a stone of a livid white, which very easily splits, and this is more frequently used than any other, not by the city of Venice alone, but by all the province of Romagna, for all works both of masonry and carving. It is worked with tools and instruments longer than those usually employed, and chiefly with certain little hammers that follow the cleavage of the stone, where it readily parts. A great quantity of this kind of stone was used by Messer Jacopo Sansovino, who built the Doric edifice of the Panattiera[^[93]] in Venice, and also that in the Tuscan style for the Zecca (mint) on the Piazza of San Marco.[^[94]] Thus they go on executing all their works for that city, doors, windows, chapels, and any other decorations that they find convenient to make, notwithstanding the fact that breccias and other kinds of stone could easily be conveyed from Verona, by means of the river Adige. Very few works made of these latter materials are to be seen, because of the general use of the Istrian stone, into which porphyry, serpentine and other sorts of breccias are often inlaid, resulting in compositions which are very ornamental. This stone is of the nature of the limestone called ‘alberese,’ not unlike that of our own districts, and as has been said it splits easily.

§ 16. Of Pietra Serena.

There only remains now the pietra serena and the grey stone called ‘macigno’[^[95]] and the pietra forte which is much used in the mountainous parts of Italy, especially in Tuscany, and most of all in Florence and her territory. The stone that they call pietra serena[^[96]] draws towards blue or rather towards a greyish tint. There are quarries of it in many places near Arezzo, at Cortona, at Volterra, and throughout the Apennines. The finest is in the hills of Fiesole, and it is obtained there in blocks of very great size, as we see in all the edifices constructed in Florence by Filippo di Ser Brunellesco, who had all the stones needed for the churches of San Lorenzo and of Santo Spirito quarried there, and also an unlimited quantity which are in every building throughout the city. It is a very beautiful stone to look at, but it wastes away and exfoliates where it is subjected to damp, rain, or frost. Under cover however it will last for ever. Much more durable than this and of finer colour is a sort of bluish stone, in our day called ‘pietra del fossato.’[^[97]] When quarried, the first layer is gravelly and coarse, the second is never free from knots and fissures, the third is admirable being much finer in grain. Michelagnolo used this, because of its yielding grain, in building the Library and Sacristy of San Lorenzo for Pope Clement, and he has had the mouldings, columns, and every part of the work executed with such great care that even if it were of silver it would not look so well.[^[98]] The stone takes on a very fine polish, so much so that nothing better in this kind of material could be wished for. On this account it was forbidden by law that the stone be used in Florence for other than public buildings, unless permission had been obtained from the governing authorities.[^[99]] The Duke Cosimo has had a great quantity of this stone put into use, as for example, in the columns and ornaments of the loggia of the Mercato Nuovo, and for the work begun by Bandinello in the great audience chamber of the palace and also in the other hall which is opposite to it; but the greatest amount, more than ever used elsewhere, has been taken by his Excellency for the Strada de’ Magistrati,[^[100]] now in construction, after the design and under the direction of Giorgio Vasari of Arezzo. This stone demands as much time for working it as marble. It is so hard that water does not affect it and it withstands all other attacks of time.

Besides this there is another sort called pietra serena, found all over the hill, which is coarser, harder, and not so much coloured, and contains certain knots in the stone. It resists the influence of water and frost, and is useful for figures and carved ornaments. Of this is carved La Dovizia (Abundance), a figure from the hand of Donatello on the column of the Mercato Vecchio in Florence;[^[101]] and it serves also for many other statues executed by excellent sculptors, not only in this city, but throughout the territory.

§ 17. Of Pietra Forte.[^[102]]

The pietra forte is quarried in many places; it resists rain, sun, frost, and every trial, and demands time to work it, but it behaves very well; it does not exist in very large blocks.[^[103]] Both by the Goths[^[104]] and by the moderns have been constructed of this stone the most beautiful buildings to be found in Tuscany, as can be seen in Florence in the filling of the two arches, which form the principal doors of the oratory of Orsanmichele,[^[105]] for these are truly admirable things and worked with the utmost care. Of this same stone there are throughout the city, as has been said, many statues and coats of arms,[^[106]] as for instance in the Fortress and various other places. It is yellowish in colour with fine white veins that add greatly to its attractiveness, and it is sometimes employed for statues where there are to be fountains, because it is not injured by water. The walls of the palace of the Signori, the Loggia, and Orsanmichele are built of it, also the whole interior of the fabric of Santa Maria del Fiore, as well as all the bridges of our city, the Palace of the Pitti and that of the Strozzi families. It has to be worked with picks because it is very compact. Similarly, the other stones mentioned above must be treated in the manner already explained for the working of marble and other sorts of stones.

§ 18. Conclusion of Chapter.

After all however, good stones and well tempered tools apart, the one thing essential is the art, the intelligence, and the judgement of those who use them, for there is the greatest difference between artists, although they may all use the same method, as to the measure of grace and beauty they impart to the works which they execute. This enables us to discern and to recognize the perfection of the work done by those who really understand, as opposed to that of others who know less. As, therefore, all the excellence and beauty of the things most highly praised consist in that supreme perfection given to them by those who understand and can judge, it is necessary to strive with all diligence always to make things beautiful and perfect—nay rather, most beautiful and most perfect.

CHAPTER II.

The Description of squared Ashlar-work (lavoro di quadro) and of carved Ashlar-work (lavoro di quadro intagliato).

§ 19. The work of the Mason.

Having thus considered all the varieties of stone, which our artificers use either for ornament or for sculpture, let us now go on to say, that when stone is used for actual building, all that is worked with square and compasses and that has corners is called squared ashlar work (lavoro di quadro). The term (quadro) is given, because of the squared faces and corners, for every order of moulding or anything which is straight, projecting, or rectangular is work which takes the name of ‘squared,’ and so is it commonly known among the artificers. But when the stone does not remain plain dressed, but is chiselled into mouldings, friezes, foliage, eggs, spindles, dentels and other sorts of carving, the work on the members chosen to be so treated is called by the mason carved ashlar work (opera di quadro intagliato or lavoro di intaglio). Of this sort of plain and carved ashlar are constructed all the different Orders, Rustic, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Composite, and so too, in the times of the Goths, the German work[^[107]] (lavoro tedesco): and no kind of ornament can be made that is not founded on both sorts of the work above described. It is the same with breccias and marbles and every sort of stone, and also with bricks, used as a foundation for moulded stucco work. The same applies to walnut, poplar, and every kind of wood. But, because many do not recognize the difference between one Order and another, let us discuss distinctly and as briefly as possible in the chapter which follows, every mode and manner of these.

CHAPTER III.

Concerning the five Orders of Architecture, Rustic, Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, Composite, and also German Work.

§ 20. Rusticated masonry and the Tuscan Order.

The work called Rustic[^[108]] is more stunted, and more massive than that of any other Order, it being the beginning and foundation of all. The profiles of the mouldings are simpler and in consequence more beautiful, as are the capitals and bases as well as every other member. The Rustic socles or pedestals, as we call them, on which rest the columns, are square in proportion, with a solid moulding at the foot and another above which binds it like a cornice. The height of the column measures six heads,[^[109]] in imitation of people who are dwarfed and adapted to sustain weights. Of this Order there are to be seen in Tuscany many colonnades both plain and rusticated, with and also without bosses and niches between the columns: and many porticoes which the ancients were accustomed to construct in their villas; and in the country one still sees many tombs of the kind as at Tivoli and at Pozzuolo. This Order served the ancients for doors, windows, bridges, aqueducts, treasuries, castles, towers, and strongholds for storing ammunition and artillery; also for harbours, prisons and fortresses; in these the stones project in an effective manner in points like a diamond, or with many facets. The projections are treated in various ways, either in bosses, flattened, so as not to act as a ladder on the walls—for it would be easy to climb up if the bosses jutted out too much—or in other ways, as one sees in many places, and above all in Florence, in the principal façade of the chief citadel, built by Alexander, first duke of Florence.[^[110]] This façade, out of respect to the Medici emblems, is made with ornaments of diamond points and flattened pellets, but both in low relief. The wall composed of pellets and diamonds side by side is very rich and varied and most beautiful to look at. There is abundance of this work at the villas of the Florentines, the gates and entrances, and at the houses and palaces where they pass the summer, which not only beautify and adorn that neighbourhood, but are also of the greatest use and convenience to the citizens. But much more is the city itself enriched with magnificent buildings, decorated with rusticated masonry, as for example the Casa Medici, the façade of the Pitti Palace, the palace of the Strozzi family and innumerable others. When well designed, the more solid and simple the building, the more skill and beauty do we perceive in it, and this kind of work is necessarily more lasting and durable than all others, seeing that the pieces of stone are bigger and the assemblage much better, all the building being in bond, one stone with another. Moreover, because the members are smooth and massive, the chances of fortune and of weather cannot injure them so severely as the stones that are carved and undercut, or, as we say here, ‘suspended in the air’ by the cleverness of the sculptors.

Fig. 3.—Fortezza da Basso at Florence.

§ 21. The Doric Order.

Fig. 4.—Rusticated masonry on the exterior of the Fortezza da Basso at Florence.

The Doric Order was the most massive known to the Greeks, more robust both as to strength and mass, and much less open than their other Orders. And not only the Greeks but the Romans also dedicated this sort of building to those who were warriors, such as generals of armies, consuls, praetors—and much more often to their gods, as Jove, Mars, Hercules and others. According to the rank and character of these the buildings were carefully distinguished—made plain or carved, simple or rich—so that all could recognize the grade and the position of the different dignitaries to whom they were dedicated,[^[111]] or of him who ordered them to be built. Consequently one sees that the ancients applied much art in the composition of their buildings, that the profiles of the Doric mouldings are very graceful, and the features harmonious and of a high degree of beauty; and also that the proportion of the shafts of the columns is very well understood, as they are neither too thick nor too thin. The form of the columns, as is commonly said, resembles that of Hercules; it shows a certain solidity capable of sustaining the weight of the architraves, friezes, cornices and the rest of the upper parts of the building. Because this Order, as more secure and stable than the others, has always much pleased Duke Cosimo, he desires that the building, which he has charged me to construct for thirteen civil magistrates of his city and dominion, should be of the Doric Order. This building is to have splendid decoration in stone, and is to be placed between his own palace and the river Arno.[^[112]] Therefore, in order to bring back into use the true mode of construction, which requires the architraves to lie level over the columns, and avoid the falsity of turning the arches of the arcades above the capital, I have followed in the principal façade the actual method of the ancients, as can be seen in the edifice. This fashion of building has been avoided by architects of the recent past, because stone architraves of every sort both ancient and modern are all, or the greater part of them, seen to be broken in the middle, notwithstanding that above the solid of the columns and of the architraves, frieze, and cornice, there are flat arches of brick that are not in contact with and do not load the work below. Now, after much consideration on the whole question, I have finally found an excellent way of putting into use the true mode of proceeding so as to give security to the said architraves, by which they are prevented from suffering in any part and everything remains as sound and safe as can be desired, as the result has proved. This then, is the method, that is stated here below for the benefit of the world at large and of the artificers.

Fig. 5.—Construction of the portico of the Uffizi at Florence, from Vasari’s description.

§ 22. A constructive device to avoid charging architraves.[^[113]]

Having set up the columns, and above the capitals the architraves, which are brought into contact the one with the other above the middle axis of the column, the builder proceeds to make a square block or die (D, D, Fig. 5). For example, if the column be a braccio thick and the architraves the same in width[^[114]] and height, let the die in the frieze be made equal to them; but in front let there remain an eighth in the face for the vertical joint, and let another eighth or more have a sinking into the die on each side, bevelled to an angle of 45°, Fig. 5 (1). Then since the frieze in each intercolumniation is in three pieces (B, A, B), let the two at the sides (B, B) have bevelled projections in the opposite sense to the sinkings, increasing from within outwards, Fig. 5 (2), so that each may be mortised in the die and be keyed after the manner of an arch, and in the front the amount of the eighth must bond vertically; while the part on the other side must do the same to the other die. And so above the column[^[115]] one must arrange that the piece in the middle of the said frieze closes within and is recessed in quarter-round form up to the middle, while the other half must be squared and straight and set with an empty space below, in order that it may hold as does an arch, the wall on the external face appearing worked with vertical joints.[^[116]] Do not let the stones of the said frieze rest on the architrave, but let a finger’s breadth be between them; in this way, making an arch, the frieze comes to support itself and does not burden the architrave. Afterwards make on the inside, for filling up the said frieze, a flat arch of bricks as high as the frieze, that stretches from die to die above the columns. Then make a piece of cornice as wide as the die[^[117]] above the columns, which has the joints in front like those of the frieze, and within let the said cornice be keyed like the blocks of the frieze, care being taken to make the cornice, as the frieze, in three pieces, of which the two at the sides hold from within the middle piece of the cornice above the die of the frieze,[^[118]] and mind that the middle piece of the cornice, C, C, slips down into the sinkings so as to span the void, and unites the two pieces at the sides so as to lock them in the form of an arch. In this fashion everyone can see that the frieze sustains itself, as does the cornice, which rests almost entirely on the arch of bricks.[^[119]] Thus one thing helping another, it comes about that the architrave does not sustain any but its own weight, nor is there danger of its ever being broken by too heavy a load. Because experience shows this method to be the most sure, I have wished to make particular mention of it, for the convenience and benefit of all; especially as I know that when the frieze and the cornice were put above the architrave as was the practice of the ancients, the latter broke in course of time, possibly on account of an earthquake or other accident, the arch of discharge which was introduced above the cornice not being sufficient to preserve it. But throwing the arches above the cornices made in this form, and linking them together with iron, as usual,[^[120]] secures the whole from every danger and makes the building endure eternally.

Returning to the matter in hand, let us explain then that this fashion of work may be used by itself alone, or can be employed in the second floor from the ground level, above the Rustic Order, or it can be put higher up above another variety of Order such as Ionic, Corinthian or Composite, in the manner shown by the ancients in the Colosseum in Rome, in which arrangement they used skill and judgement. The Romans, having triumphed not only over the Greeks but over the whole world, put the Composite Order at the top, of which Order the Tuscans have composed many varieties. They placed it above all, as superior in force, grace, and beauty, and as more striking than the others, to be a crown to the building; for to be adorned with beautiful members gives to the work an honourable completion and leaves nothing more to be desired.

§ 23. The proportions and parts of the Doric Order.

To return to the Doric Order, I may state that the column is made seven heads in height. Its pedestal must be a little less than a square and a half in height and a square in width,[^[121]] then above are placed its mouldings and beneath its base with torus and two fillets, as Vitruvius directs. The base and capital are of equal height, reckoning the capital from the astragal upwards. The cornice with the frieze and architrave attached projects over every column, with those grooved features, usually called triglyphs, which have square spaces[^[122]] interposed between the projections, within which are the skulls of oxen, or trophies, or masks, or shields, or other fancies. The architrave, jutting out, binds these projections with a fillet, and under the fillet are little strips square in section, at the foot of each of which are six drops, called by the ancients ‘guttae’ (goccie). If the column in the Doric order is to be seen fluted, there must be twenty hollow facets instead of flutes,[^[123]] and nothing between the flutes but the sharp arris. Of this sort of work there is an example in Rome at the Forum Boarium which is most rich;[^[124]] and of another sort are the mouldings and other members in the theatre of Marcellus, where to-day is the Piazza Montanara, in which work there are no bases (to the Doric columns) and those bases which are visible are Corinthian. It is thought that the ancients did not make bases, but instead placed there a pedestal of the same size as the base would have been. This is to be met with in Rome by the prison of the Tullianum where also are capitals richer in members than others which appear in the Doric Order.[^[125]] Of this same order Antonio da San Gallo has made the inner court of the Casa Farnese in the Campo di Fiore at Rome, which is highly decorated and beautiful; thus one sees continually ancient and modern temples and palaces in this style, which for stability and assemblage of the stones have held together better and lasted longer than all other edifices.

Fig. 6.—Drawing by Giuliano da San Gallo of a portion of the Basilica Aemilia in the Roman Forum, that survived to the time of Vasari.

§ 24. The Ionic Order.

Fig. 7.—Roman Doric cap, with stucco finish, at S. Nicola in Carcere, Rome.

The Ionic Order, more slender than the Doric, was made by the ancients in imitation of persons who stand mid-way between the fragile and the robust; a proof of this is its adoption in works dedicated to Apollo, Diana, and Bacchus, and sometimes to Venus. The pedestal which sustains the column is one and a half squares high and one wide, and the mouldings, above and below, are in accordance with this Order. Its column measures in height eight times the head, and its base is double with two tori, as described by Vitruvius in the third chapter of his third book. Its capital with its volutes or scrolls or spirals, as anyone may call them, should be well turned, as one sees in the theatre of Marcellus in Rome, above the Doric Order; and its cornice adorned with modillions and with dentils, and its frieze slightly convex (pulvinated). Should it be desired to flute the columns, there must be twenty-four flutes, but divided in such a manner as to leave between each two of them a flat piece that measures the fourth part of the flute. This order has in itself the most beautiful lightness and grace and is consequently adopted by modern architects.

§ 25. The Corinthian Order.

The Corinthian style was invariably a favourite among the Romans, who delighted in it so greatly that they chose this Order for their most elaborate and most prized buildings to remain as a memorial of themselves; as is seen in the Temple at Tivoli above the Teverone, in the remains of the temple of Peace,[^[126]] in the arch of Pola, and in that of the harbour of Ancona; but much more beautiful is the Pantheon, that is the Ritonda of Rome. This Order is the richest and most decorated of all the Orders spoken of above. The pedestal that supports the column is measured in the following way; a square and two thirds wide (high)[^[127]] and the mouldings above and below in proportion, according to Vitruvius[^[128]]: the height of the column nine heads with base and capital, which last shall be in height the diameter of the column at the foot, and its base half of the said thickness. This base the ancients used to carve in various ways. Let the ornament of the capital be fashioned with its tendrils and its leaves, as Vitruvius directs in the fourth book, where he records that this capital has been taken from the tomb of a Corinthian girl. Then follow its proper architrave, frieze and cornice measured as he describes, all carved with the modillions and ovolos and other sorts of carving under the drip. The friezes of this Order may be carved with leafage, or again they may be plain, or adorned with letters of bronze let into marble, as those on the portico of the Ritonda. There are twenty-six flutes in the Corinthian columns, although sometimes also there are fewer, and the fourth part of the width of each flute remains flat between every two, as is evident in many ancient works and in modern works copied from the ancients.

§ 26. The Composite Order.

The Composite Order, although Vitruvius has not made mention of it—having taken account of none others than the Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, and Tuscan, and holding those artists lawless, who, taking from all four Orders, constructed out of them bodies that represented to him monsters rather than men—the Composite Order has nevertheless been much used by the Romans and in imitation of them by the moderns. I shall therefore proceed, to the end that all may have notice of it, to explain and give the proportions of buildings in this Order also, for I am convinced of this, that if the Greeks and Romans created these first four Orders and reduced them to a general rule and measure, there may have been those who have done the same for the Composite Order, forming of it things much more graceful than ever did the ancients.

As an example of the truth of this I quote the works of Michelagnolo Buonarroti in the Sacristy and Library of San Lorenzo in Florence, where the doors, niches, bases, columns, capitals, mouldings, consoles and indeed all the details, have received from him something of the new and of the Composite Order, and nevertheless are wonderful, not to say beautiful. The same merit in even greater measure is exhibited by the said Michelagnolo in the second story of the Court of the Casa Farnese[^[129]] and again in the cornice which supports on the exterior the roof of that palace. He who wishes to see in this manner of work the proof of this man’s excellence—of truly celestial origin—in art and design of various kinds, let him consider that which he has accomplished in the fabric of St. Peter’s in compacting together the body of that edifice and in making so many sorts of various and novel ornaments, such beautiful profiles of mouldings, so many different niches and numerous other things, all invented by him and treated differently from the custom of the ancients. Therefore no one can deny that this new Composite Order, which through Michelagnolo has attained to such perfection, may be worthily compared with the others. In truth, the worth and capacity of this truly excellent sculptor, painter, and architect have worked miracles wherever he has put forth his hand. Besides all the other things that are clear as daylight, he has rectified sites which were out of the straight and reduced to perfection many buildings and other objects of the worst form, covering with lovely and fanciful decoration the defects of nature and art.[^[130]] In our days certain vulgar architects, not considering these things judiciously and not imitating them, have worked presumptuously and without design almost as if by chance, without observing ornament, art, or any order. All their things are monstrous and worse than the German.

Returning now to our subject, it has become usual for this manner of work to be called by some the ‘Composite,’ by others the ‘Latin,’ and by others again the ‘Italic’ Order. The measure of the height of this column must be ten heads, the base the half of the diameter of the column, measured in the same way as the Corinthian column, as we see in the arch of Titus Vespasianus in Rome. And he who wishes to make flutes in this column can do so, following the plan of the Ionian or Corinthian column—or in any way that pleases him who adopts this style of architecture, which is a mixture of all the Orders. The capitals may be made like those of the Corinthian except that the echinus moulding of the capital must be larger and the volutes or tendrils somewhat larger, as we see in the above mentioned arch. The architrave must be three quarters of the thickness of the column and the rest of the frieze supplied with modillions, and the cornice equal to the architrave, because the projection gives the cornice an increase of size, as one sees in the uppermost story of the Roman Colosseum; and in the said modillions grooves can be cut after the manner of triglyphs, and there can be other carving according to the taste of the architect; the pedestal on which the column rests must be two squares high, with the mouldings just as he pleases.

§ 27. Of Terminal Figures.

The ancients were accustomed to use for doors or sepulchres or other kinds of enrichment, various sorts of terminal figures instead of columns, here a figure which has a basket on the head for capital, there a figure down to the waist, the rest, towards the base, a cone or a tree trunk; in the same way they made virgins, chubby infants, satyrs, and other sorts of monsters or grotesque objects, just as it suited them, and according as the ideas occurred to them so the works were put into operation.

§ 28. German Work (the Gothic Style).

We come at last to another sort of work called German, which both in ornament and in proportion is very different from the ancient and the modern. Nor is it adopted now by the best architects but is avoided by them as monstrous and barbarous, and lacking everything that can be called order. Nay it should rather be called confusion and disorder. In their buildings, which are so numerous that they sickened the world, doorways are ornamented with columns which are slender and twisted like a screw, and cannot have the strength to sustain a weight, however light it may be. Also on all the façades, and wherever else there is enrichment, they built a malediction of little niches one above the other, with no end of pinnacles and points and leaves, so that, not to speak of the whole erection seeming insecure, it appears impossible that the parts should not topple over at any moment. Indeed they have more the appearance of being made of paper than of stone or marble. In these works they made endless projections and breaks and corbellings and flourishes that throw their works all out of proportion; and often, with one thing being put above another, they reach such a height that the top of a door touches the roof. This manner was the invention of the Goths, for, after they had ruined the ancient buildings, and killed the architects in the wars, those who were left constructed the buildings in this style.[^[131]] They turned the arches with pointed segments, and filled all Italy with these abominations of buildings, so in order not to have any more of them their style has been totally abandoned.

May God protect every country from such ideas and style of buildings! They are such deformities in comparison with the beauty of our buildings that they are not worthy that I should talk more about them, and therefore let us pass on to speak of the vaults.

CHAPTER IV.

On forming Vaults in Concrete, to be impressed with Enrichment: when the Centerings are to be removed, and how to mix the Plaster.

§ 29. The Construction of enriched Stucco Vaults.

When walls have reached the point where the arches of brick or light stone or tufa have to spring, it is necessary to turn a centering with planks in a close circle, over the framework of struts or boarding. The planks are fitted together according to the form of the vault, or in the shape of a boat, and this centering for the vaults must be fixed with strong props in whatever mode you wish, so that the material above does not strain it by its weight; and afterwards every crevice, in the middle, in the corners, and everywhere, must be firmly stopped up with clay so that when the concrete is spread the mixture shall not filter through. This finished, above that surface of boards they make caissons of wood, which are to be worked contrariwise, with projections where a hollow is wanted; in the same way let the mouldings and details that we wish to make be worked by opposites, so that when the material is cast, it may come, where (the mould is) hollow, in relief; where in relief, hollow, and thus similarly must all the members of the mouldings be arranged. Whether the vault is to be smooth or enriched, it is equally necessary to have shapes of wood, which mould the desired forms in clay; with this clay also are made the square panels for such decoration, and these are joined the one to the other on the flat or by mouldings or enriched bands, which can be made to follow the line of this centering. Having finished covering it all with enrichments of clay, formed in intaglio and fitted together, as was said above, one must then take lime, with pozzolana earth or sand riddled finely, mixed liquid and mostly lime, and of that lay evenly a coating over all, till every mould is full. Afterwards, above this coating make the vault with bricks, raising or lowering them according as the vault turns, and continually adding till the arch be closed. This done, it must all be left to set and get firm, till the work be dry and solid.[^[132]] Then when the props are removed and the vault is left free, the clay is easily taken away and all the work remains modelled and worked as if done in stucco, and those parts that have not come out well are gone over with stucco till they are complete. In this manner have been executed all the works in the ancient edifices, which had afterwards stucco enrichment upon them. This the moderns have done to-day in the vaults of St. Peter’s, and many other masters throughout Italy have done the same.

§ 30. Stucco made with Marble Dust.

Now let us show how the stucco is mixed.[^[133]] Chips of marble are pounded in a stone mortar; no other lime is used for this stucco save white lime made either of marble chips or of travertine; instead of sand the pounded marble is taken and is sifted finely and kneaded with the lime, in the proportion of two thirds lime to one third pounded marble. The stucco is made coarser or finer, according as one wishes to work coarsely or finely. Enough now of stuccoes because the rest will be said later, when I shall treat of them in connection with Sculpture. Before passing to this subject, we shall speak briefly of fountains which are made for walls and of their various ornaments.

CHAPTER V.

How Rustic Fountains are made with Stalactites and Incrustations from water, and how Cockle shells and Conglomerations of vitrified stone are built into the Stucco.

§ 31. Grottoes and Fountains of ‘Rocaille’ work.

The fountains which the ancients made for their palaces, gardens, and other places, were of different kinds; some stood alone, with basins and vases of different sorts, others were attached to the walls, and bore niches with masks, figures, or ornaments suggesting the sea; others again for use in hot baths, were simpler and plainer, and finally others resembled woodland springs that rise naturally in the groves; while those which the moderns have made and continue to make are also of different kinds. The moderns, always varying them, have added to the inventions of the ancients, compositions of Tuscan work,[^[134]] covered with stalactites from petrified waters, which hang down resembling roots, formed in the lapse of time of congelations of such waters as are hard and are charged with sediment. These exist not only at Tivoli, where the river Teverone petrifies the branches of trees, and all objects that come in contact with it, turning them into gum-like exudations and stalactites; but also at the lake Piè di Lupo,[^[135]] where the stalactites are very large; and in Tuscany at the river Elsa,[^[136]] whose water makes them clear so that they look like marble, glass, or artificial crystals. But the most beautiful and curious of all are found behind Monte Morello[^[137]] also in Tuscany, eight miles from Florence. Of this sort Duke Cosimo has had made in his garden at Olmo near Castello[^[138]] the rustic ornaments of the fountains executed by the sculptor Tribolo. These stalactites removed from where nature has produced them are introduced into work done by the artificer and fixed with iron bars, with branches soldered with lead or in some other way, or they are grafted into the stones so as to hang suspended. They are fixed on to the Tuscan work in such a way as to leave it here and there exposed to view. Then by adjusting leaden tubes hidden between these stalactites, and distributing holes among them, jets of water are made to pour out, when a key at the entrance of the conduit is turned; and thus are arranged pipes for water and various jets through which the water rains down among the incrustations of these stalactites, and in falling sounds sweet to the ear and is beautiful to the eye.

There is also another kind of grotto, of a more rustic fashion, imitating sylvan fountains in the following way. Some take sponge-like stones and joining them together sow grass over them, thus, with an order which appears disorder and wild, the grottoes are rendered very natural and real. Others make smoother and more polished grottoes of stucco, in which are mingled both stones and stucco, and while the stucco is fresh they insert, in bands and compartments, knobs or bosses, cockle shells, sea snails, tortoise shells, shells large and small, some showing the outside and some the reverse: and of these they make flower vases and festoons, in which the cockle shells represent the leaves, and other varieties of shells the fruit;[^[139]] and to these they add shells of turtles, as is seen in the vineyard at the foot of Monte Mario that Pope Clement VII, when still Cardinal, had made by the advice of Giovanni da Udine.[^[140]]

Again a rustic and very beautiful mosaic in many colours is made by using little bits of old bricks that have been too much baked, and pieces of glass which has run owing to the pans of glass bursting in an overheated furnace. The work is done by sticking these bits into the stucco on the wall as was said above, and arranging between them corals and other spoils from the sea, things in themselves full of grace and beauty. Thus are made animals and figures, covered with the shells already mentioned as well as with coloured pastes in various pieces arranged in rustic fashion, very quaint to look upon. There have been many fountains of this kind recently set up at Rome, which by their charm have incited the minds of countless persons to be lovers of such work. Another kind of ornament entirely rustic is also used now-a-days for fountains, and is applied in the following manner. First the skeleton of the figure or any other object desired is made and plastered over with mortar or stucco, then the exterior is covered in the fashion of mosaic, with pieces of white or coloured marble, according to the object designed, or else with certain little many coloured pebbles: and these when carefully worked have a long life. The stucco with which they build up and work these things is the same that we have before described, and when once set it holds them securely on the walls. To such fountains pavements are made of sling-stones, that is, round and flat river pebbles, set on edge and in ripples as water goes, with excellent effect. Others, for the finer fountains, make pavements with little tiles of terra cotta in various divisions and glazed in the fire, as in clay vases painted in various colours and with painted ornaments and leafage; but this sort of pavement is more suitable for hot-air chambers and baths than for fountains.[^[141]]

Plate IV
INTERIOR OF GROTTO IN BOBOLI GARDENS, FLORENCE
Showing an unfinished statue ascribed to Michelangelo

CHAPTER VI.

On the manner of making Pavements of Tesselated Work.

§ 32. Mosaic Pavements.

There are no possible devices in any department that the ancients did not find out or at any rate try very hard to discover,—devices I mean that bring delight and refreshment to the eyes of men. They invented then, among other beautiful things, stone pavements diversified with various blendings of porphyry, serpentine, and granite, with round and square or other divisions, whence they went on to conceive the fabrication of ornamental bands, leafage, and other sorts of designs and figures. Therefore to prepare the work the better to receive such treatment, they cut the marble into little pieces, so that these being small they could be turned about for the background and the field, in round schemes or lines straight or twisted, as came most conveniently. From the joining together of these pieces they called the work mosaic,[^[142]] and used it in the pavements of many of their buildings, as we still see in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome and in other places, where the mosaic is made with little squares of marble, that form leaves, masks, and other fancies, while the background for these is composed of squares of white marble and other small squares of black. The work was set about in the following manner. First was spread a layer of fresh stucco of lime and marble dust thick enough to hold firmly in itself the pieces fitting into each other, so that when set they could be polished smooth on the top; these in the drying make an admirably compacted concrete, which is not hurt by the wear of footsteps nor by water. Therefore this work having come into the highest estimation, clever people set themselves to study it further, as it is always easy to add something valuable to an invention already found out. So they made the marble mosaics finer, and of these, laid pavements both for baths and for hot rooms, and with the most subtle mastery and diligence they delicately fashioned various fishes in them, and imitated painting with many colours suitable for that work, and with many different sorts of marbles, introducing also among these some pieces cut into little mosaic squares of the bones of fishes which have a lustrous surface.[^[143]] And so life-like did they make the fishes, that water placed above them, veiling them a little, even though clear, made them appear actually alive in the pavements; as is seen in Parione in Rome, in the house of Messer Egidio and Fabio Sasso.[^[144]]

§ 33. Pictorial Mosaics for Walls, etc.

Therefore, this mosaic work appearing to them a picture, capable of resisting to all eternity water, wind, and sunshine, and because they considered such work much more effective far off than near, the ancients disposed it so as to decorate vaults and walls, where such things had to be seen at a distance, for at a distance one would not perceive the pieces of mosaic which when near are easily distinguished. Then because the mosaics were lustrous and withstood water and damp, it was thought that such work might be made of glass, and so it was done, and producing hereby the most beautiful effect they adorned their temples and other places with it, as we still see in our own days at Rome in the Temple of Bacchus[^[145]] and elsewhere.[^[146]] Just as from marble mosaics are derived those which we now call in our time glass mosaics, so from the mosaic of glass we have passed on to egg-shell mosaic,[^[147]] and from this to the mosaic in which figures and groups in light and shade are formed entirely of tesserae, though the effect is like painting; this we shall describe in its own place in the chapters on that art.[^[148]]

CHAPTER VII.

How one is to recognize if a Building have good Proportions, and of what Members it should generally be composed.

§ 34. The principles of Planning and Design.

But since talking of particular things would make me turn aside too much from my purpose, I leave this minute consideration to the writers on architecture, and shall only say in general how good buildings can be recognized, and what is requisite to their form to secure both utility and beauty. Suppose then one comes to an edifice and wishes to see whether it has been planned by an excellent architect and how much ability he has shown, also whether the architect has known how to accommodate himself to the site, as well as to the wishes of him who ordered the structure to be built, one must consider the following questions. First, whether he who has raised it from the foundation has thought if the spot were a suitable one and capable of receiving buildings of that style and extent, and (granted that the site is suitable) how the building should be divided into rooms, and how the enrichment on the walls be disposed in view of the nature of the site which may be extensive or confined, elevated or low-lying. One must consider also whether the edifice has been tastefully arranged and in convenient proportion, and whether there has been furnished and distributed the proper kind and number of columns, windows, doors, and junctions of wall-faces, both within and without, in the given height and thickness of the walls; in short whether every detail is suitable in and for its own place. It is necessary that there should be distributed throughout the building, rooms which have their proper arrangement of doors, windows, passages, secret staircases, anterooms, lavatories, cabinets, and that no mistakes be apparent therein. For example there should be a large hall, a small portico or lesser apartments, which being members of the edifice, must necessarily, even as members of the human body, be equally arranged and distributed according to the style and complexity of the buildings; just as there are temples round, or octagonal, or six sided, or square, or in the form of a cross, and also various Orders, according to the position and rank of the person who has the buildings constructed, for when designed by a skilful hand these exhibit very happily the excellence of the workman and the spirit of the author of the fabric.

§ 35. An ideal Palace.

To make the matter clearer, let us here imagine a palace,[^[149]] and this will give us light on other buildings, so that we may be able to recognize, when we see them, whether they are well fashioned or no. First, then, if we consider the principal front, we shall see it raised from the ground either above a range of outside stairs or basement walls, so that standing thus freely the building should seem to rise with grandeur from the ground, while the kitchens and cellars under ground are more clearly lighted and of greater elevation. This also greatly protects the edifice from earthquakes and other accidents of fortune. Then it must represent the body of a man in the whole and similarly in the parts; and as it has to fear wind, water, and other natural forces it should be drained with sewers, that must be all in connection with a central conduit that carries away all the filth and smells that might generate sickness. In its first aspect the façade demands beauty and grandeur, and should be divided as is the face of a man. The door must be low down and in the middle, as in the head the mouth of the man, through which passes every sort of food; the windows for the eyes, one on this side, one on that, observing always parity, that there be as much ornament, and as many arches, columns, pilasters, niches, jutting windows, or any other sort of enrichment, on this side as on that; regard being had to the proportions and Orders already explained, whether Doric, Ionic, Corinthian, or Tuscan. The cornice which supports the roof must be made proportionate to the façade according to its size, that rainwater may not drench the façade and him who is seated at the street front. The projection must be in proportion to the height and breadth of the façade. Entering within, let the first vestibule have a great amplitude, and let it be arranged to join fittingly with the entrance corridor, through which everything passes; let it be free and wide, so that the press of horses or of crowds on foot, that often congregate there, shall not do themselves any hurt in the entrance on fête days or on other brilliant occasions. The courtyard, representing the trunk, should be square and equal, or else a square and a half, like all the parts of the body, and within there should be doors and well-arranged apartments with beautiful decoration. The public staircase needs to be convenient and easy to ascend, of spacious width and ample height, but only in accordance with the proportion of the other parts. Besides all this, the staircases should be adorned or copiously furnished with lights, and, at least over every landing-place where there are turns, should have windows or other apertures. In short, the staircases demand an air of magnificence in every part, seeing that many people see the stairs and not the rest of the house. It may be said that they are the arms and legs of the body, therefore as the arms are at the sides of a man so ought the stairs to be in the wings of the edifice. Nor shall I omit to say that the height of the risers ought to be one fifth of a braccio at least,[^[150]] and every tread two thirds wide,[^[151]] that is, as has been said, in the stairs of public buildings and in others in proportion; because when they are steep neither children nor old people can go up them, and they make the legs ache. This feature is most difficult to place in buildings, and notwithstanding that it is the most frequented and most common, it often happens that in order to save the rooms the stairs are spoiled. It is also necessary that the reception rooms and other apartments downstairs should form one common hall for the summer, with chambers to accommodate many persons, while upstairs the parlours and saloons and the various apartments should all open into the largest one. In the same manner should be arranged the kitchens and other places, because if there were not this order and if the whole composition were broken up, one thing high, another low, this great and that small, it would represent lame men, halt, distorted, and maimed. Such works would merit only blame, and no praise whatever. When there are decorated wall-faces either external or internal, the compositions must follow the rules of the Orders in the matter of the columns, so that the shafts of the columns be not too long nor slender, not over thick nor short, but that the dignity of the several Orders be always observed. Nor should a heavy capital or base be connected with a slender column, but in proportion to the body must be the members, that they may have an elegant and beautiful appearance and design. All these things are best appreciated by a correct eye, which, if it have discrimination, can hold the true compasses and estimate exact measurements, because by it alone shall be awarded praise or blame. And this is enough to have said in a general sense of architecture, because to speak of it in any other way is not matter for this place.

NOTES ON ‘INTRODUCTION’ TO ARCHITECTURE

PORPHYRY AND PORPHYRY QUARRIES.

[See § 2, Of Porphyry, ante, p. [26].]

Porphyry, which is mineralogically described as consisting of crystals of plagioclase felspar in a purple felspathic paste, is a very hard stone of beautiful colour susceptible of a high polish. ‘No material,’ it has been said, ‘can approach it, either in colour, fineness of grain, hardness or toughness. When used alone its colour is always grand; and in combination with any other coloured material, although displaying its nature conspicuously, it is always harmonious’ (Transactions, Royal Institute of British Architects, 1887, p. 48). Though obtained, as Vasari knew, from Egypt, it was not known to the dynastic Egyptians, but was exploited with avidity by the Romans of the later imperial period. The earliest mention of it seems to be in Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 11, under the name ‘porphyrites’ and statues in the material were according to this author sent for the first time to Rome from Egypt in the reign of Claudius. The new material was however not approved of, and for some time was by no means in fashion. It was not indeed till the age of the Antonines that as Helbig remarks ‘the preference for costly and rare varieties of stone, without reference to their adaptability for sculpture, began to spread.’ After this epoch, the taste for porphyry and other such strongly marked or else intractable materials grew till it became a passion, and the Byzantine emperors carried on the tradition of its use inherited by them from the later days of paganism. The material was quarried in the mountains known as Djebel Duchan near the coast of the Red Sea, almost opposite the southern point of the peninsula of Sinai, and the Romans carried the blocks a distance of nearly 100 miles to Koptos on the Nile whence they were transported down stream to Alexandria, where Mr Brindley thinks there would be reserve dépôts where lapidaries and artists resided, a source of supply for the large quantities used by Constantine. The same authority estimates that there must be about 300 monolith porphyry pillars still extant in Europe, the finest being the eight great columns under the side apses in S. Sophia, Constantinople. The most important of all porphyry monuments is the column, 100 feet high, which Constantine erected at Constantinople where it still stands though somewhat mutilated and damaged by fire. It consisted in nine cylindrical drums each 11 feet long and 11 feet in diameter.

The quarries, as Vasari later on remarks, were in his time not known, and seem never to have been worked since the time of the Romans. The site of them was visited by Sir Gardner Wilkinson in 1823, and they were rediscovered by Mr Brindley in 1887. If they are again to be worked, the material will now be transferred to the Red Sea coast, distant only about 20 miles. Mr Brindley’s account of his expedition, with notes on the material, is contained in the Transactions of the Royal Institute of British Architects for 1888.

THE SASSI, DELLA VALLE, AND OTHER COLLECTIONS OF ANTIQUES OF THE EARLY PART OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

[See §§ 2, 32, ante, pp. [28], [93].]

In chapters I and VI of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture Vasari refers to the ‘casa di Egizio e di Fabio Sasso’ and the ‘casa di messer Egidio e Fabio Sasso’ ‘in Parione.’ Parione is that one of the 14 wards or ‘rioni’ of Rome that lies to the south of the Piazza Navona, and according to Gregorovius (Geschichte der Stadt Rom im Mittelalter, Stutt., 1886, etc., III, 537) the name is connected with the Latin ‘parietes,’ ‘walls,’ and was derived from the ruins of the Theatre of Pompeius, that bulked largely within its borders. There is now a ‘Via Parione’ to the west of the Piazza Navona, but older plans of near Vasari’s time show that the name was then applied to the more important thoroughfare south of the piazza, which is now called ‘Via del Governo Vecchio.’ The truth is that the present Via Parione should be called, as marked on older maps, ‘Via di S. Tommaso in Parione,’ beside which church it runs, and should not have been allowed to usurp the old historical name.

Among the families noted by Gregorovius as inhabiting this region were the Sassi, who, he says (VII, 708), possessed there ‘a great palace with many antiques.’ A notice of the Sassi, in the Archivio della R. Società Romana di Storia Patria, Roma, vol. XX, p. 479, tells us that they were among the most illustrious families of the ‘rione.’ In 1157 one Giovanni Sassi was a senator of Rome, and the family was especially flourishing in the fifteenth century, but later on declined. Branches of the Sassi stock still exist. When Vasari was in Rome in the service of the Cardinal Ippolito de’ Medici, about 1530, one branch at any rate of the family was represented by a certain Fabio Sasso and his brother, whom Vasari calls ‘Egidius’ but who appears in a document quoted by Lanciani (Storia degli Scavi di Roma, Roma, 1902, I, 177) as ‘Decidius,’ who possessed the family palace with its antiques, situated a little west of S. Tommaso in Parione. When Michaelis wrote the paper presently to be noticed, the exact situation of the palace was not identified, but the Conte Gnoli, the learned and courteous director of the Biblioteca Vittorio Emanuele, has pointed out the remains of the Sassi habitation at No. 48 in the present Via del Governo Vecchio, where an early Renaissance doorway bears above it the cognizance of the family, and below on one jamb the syllable ‘Dom’ and on the other ‘Sax’ (Domus Saxorum). The house in general, which is claimed by legend as the residence of Raphael’s Fornarina, has been reconstructed. The plan, Fig. 8, is taken from a large map of Rome dating 1748 and shows this particularly interesting portion of the city as it was before recent changes. The line of the present Corso Vittorio Emanuele is shown by dotted strokes.

By the middle of the sixteenth century the family fortunes had declined, and in his will made in 1556 Fabio records that he had let all his three houses in Parione. This may account for the fact that no Palazzo Sassi occurs in the lists of Roman palaces of the seventeenth century. Furthermore, in 1546 the two brothers effected a sale of their antiques to the Duke Ottavio Farnese, who transferred them to the then newly erected Farnese palace. See text of Vasari, ante p. [28], and Lanciani, l.c.

When Vasari first knew the Sassi collection it was one of the best in Rome, and Michaelis (Jahrbuch d. deutschen Archeologischen Instituts, 1891, p. 170) quotes two writers of the early part of the century who praise it. Moreover there exists a contemporary drawing of the antiques and the court in which they were kept, that Michaelis (l.c.) has published. The early notices just referred to, and the notes of Aldovrandi (Mauro, Le Antichità della Città di Roma, Venet. 1556, p. 147) who saw the works in the Farnese collection in 1550, give prominence to the two pieces that are specially mentioned by Vasari. The ‘figura a sedere di braccia tre e mezzo’ in porphyry (ante, p. [28]) is described by Aldovrandi (p. 147) as ‘un bellissimo simulacro di una Roma trionfante assisa,’ partly in porphyry and partly in bronze, and as having been formerly in the house of Messer Fabio Sasso. The statue has passed with the Farnese antiques to Naples, where it was numbered when Michaelis wrote, 212 b. It is now recognized as not a ‘Rome’ but a seated Apollo fully draped, and is numbered 6281.

The other one of the Sassi antiques mentioned by Vasari is referred to in the text § 7, ante, p. [42], as ‘una figura in Parione d’ uno ermafrodito’ in the stone called ‘paragone’ or ‘touchstone.’ This is also praised by the earlier writers, and is seen in the drawing which Michaelis has published. Aldovrandi calls it (p. 152) ‘uno Hermafrodito di paragone, maggiore del naturale’ and notes its provenance. It is the ‘Apollo’ at Naples, No. 6262, and Michaelis gives the material as basalt. It is noticed by Winckelmann as an Apollo.

The della Valle collection was more important than that of the Sassi, and was the finest of all those that were being formed in the early part of the sixteenth century. There is a full notice of it by Michaelis in the Jahrbuch, 1891, p. 218 f., who prints the inventory drawn up at the time of the sale of the collection in 1584 to Cardinal Ferdinando de’ Medici, by whom the antiques were removed to the Villa Medici, whence many of them, including most probably the ‘Medici Venus,’ found their way to Florence.

Fig. 8.—Portion of a Plan of Rome, from Nolli, Nuova Pianta di Roma, 1748.
607, Palazzo Pamphili Doria.
610, Torre Millina.
615, S. Tommaso in Parione.
620, Piazza Pasquino.
625, Palazzo Massimi.
653, Via di Parione.
783, Piazza della Valle.
794, Palazzo Capranica.
795, Teatro della Valle.
806, Palazzo Medici, or, Madama.
808, S. Luigi dei Francesi.
The dotted portion marks the line of the recent Corso Vittorio Emanuele. The site of the Sassi Palace, near S. Tommaso, is marked by a cross.

The della Valle were a family of high importance, counting many branches and numerous houses in that part of Rome, south-east of the Piazza Navona, where church and piazza and palace and theatre still keep alive their name. The most important member of the family was Cardinal Andrea della Valle, one of Leo X’s creations of 1517. Vasari introduced him into the fresco in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence representing Leo X with his Cardinals, that is given as a favourable specimen of Giorgio’s painting on Plate I. His is the uppermost figure on the extreme right of the picture. Referring to this fresco, Vasari describes him in his third ‘Ragionamento’ (Opere, VIII, 158) as ‘quel cardinale della Valle, che fece in Roma quello antiquario, e che fu il primo che mettessi insieme le cose antiche, e le faceva restaurare.’ About the last clause a word will be said later on.

Lanciani (l.c., I, 123) draws attention to the vast estates, urban and suburban, possessed by these wealthy proprietors, and the opportunities thus afforded of obtaining antique treasures for the mere trouble of digging for them. Nobles who had official charge of the streets and open places could turn the opportunities of their position to account for the same purpose, and in the first half of the century lovers of ancient art did not buy antiques but simply dug for them. Cardinal Andrea, Lanciani says, ‘era appassionato scavatore,’ and he made excavations in the Thermae of Agrippa near which his palace lay, and in the vineyards of the Lateran. Several writers of the early part of the century celebrate this collection. One (Fichard, in Frankfurtisches Archiv, Frankfurt, 1815, III, 68) writes, in 1536, that the Cardinal’s house was the real treasury of Roman antiquity, and he singles out for notice the same porphyry wolf about which Vasari writes, ante, p. [28]. There were so many statues there, he says, that you would have thought everything ever found in Rome had been brought together to that one place! The whole collections of the family however were divided among three or four palaces, but Andrea had the lion’s share. He built a new palace for his treasures early in the century and displayed the best pieces in a court. There were to be seen a Venus, that was probably the Medicean, and the Florentine Ganymede, both now in the Uffizi, Nos. 548 and 115, and close to these above a window the porphyry wolf of which we hear from Vasari. The present location of this piece is not known, but Michaelis suggests it might be looked for at the Villa Medici or at Florence. Vasari also mentions ‘two prisoners bound,’ also of porphyry, as being in the garden of the palace (ante, p. [29]). These are mentioned in the inventory referred to above (Jahrbuch, 229) as ‘two barbarians, draped, of porphyry, 11 palms high.’ They were transported from the Villa Medici at Rome to Florence in 1790, and are now very familiar to visitors in Florence, for they stand just within the Boboli Gardens, one on each side of the main walk that leads up towards the Amphitheatre. They are about eight feet high, of porphyry, with heads and hands of white marble. Two similar figures are to be seen in the Louvre, under the staircase at the top of which is the Niké from Samothrace.

Della Valle was not content with his fine house and museum, but desired another which he began to build about 1520. The work was directed by Lorenzo Lotti (Lorenzetto) a pupil and assistant of Raphael, and Vasari gives us an account of it in his life of the former artist (Opere, IV, 579). In connection with this we have from Vasari an interesting notice of the beginning of the practice of ‘restoring’ antiques, which from this period onwards was an established custom. When Lorenzetto, he tells us, was building for the Cardinal Andrea della Valle the upper garden of his palace, situated where is now the Teatro della Valle (see Fig. 8), he arranged niches and other places for the Cardinal’s antiques. ‘These were imperfect, some wanting a head and others arms, while others again were legless, and all were in some way mutilated. Nevertheless the artist managed everything excellently well, for he got good sculptors to make again everything that was wanting, and this led to other lords doing the same thing, and having many antique fragments restored. This was done for example by Cardinals Cesis, Ferrara, and Farnese, and in a word by all Rome. And in truth these antiques, restored in this fashion, have a much more pleasing effect than those mutilated torsos, and limbs without a head, and such-like fragments.’ On the restoration of the Papal antiques see Note, postea, p. 116.

THE PORPHYRY TAZZA OF THE SALA ROTONDA OF THE VATICAN.

[See § 2, Of Porphyry, ante, p. [32].]

Ascanio Colonna, who was brother to the famous Vittoria Colonna the friend of Michelangelo, was one of the chief representatives of the imperial interests in Italy, in the stormy times of the first half of the sixteenth century. Charles V made him in 1520 Grand Constable of Naples. With Pope Paul III he had a bitter feud, and the Pope seized on his possessions. On the election in 1550 of Julius III, the new Pope, in order to please the Emperor, reinstated Ascanio, and it was on the occasion of this reconciliation that Colonna presented to the Pope the famous basin of porphyry of which Vasari writes. The ‘vineyard’ for which the Pope destined it was connected with the casino and villa outside the Porta del Popolo which bear the name of the Pope and where is now installed the Villa Papa Giulio Museum. The tazza in question is the superb bowl that occupies the centre of the Sala Rotonda in the Vatican Museum. It is said to have been found temp. Julius II, in the Thermae of Titus (Pistolesi, Il Vaticano Descritto, V, 206), and after remaining for a time at the papal villa it was conveyed by Clement XI to the Vatican and placed in the court of the Belvedere, now the Cortile Ottagono. Francesco de’ Ficorini (Le Vestigia e Rarità di Roma, Roma, 1744, bk. II, ch. 2, p. 15) says that in this court was the ‘gran conca di porfido,’ and another of white oriental granite, both found in the Thermae of Titus. When Clement XIV (1769–75) added the octagonal colonnade in the interior of the Cortile, the tazza was apparently no longer needed there, for soon afterwards Pius VI, who with Clement was the creator of the Museo Pio-Clementino, placed it in his newly constructed Sala Rotonda, where it remains. Pasquale Massi in his Indicazione antiquaria del Ponteficio Museo Pio-Clementino, 1792, p. 118, speaks of ‘una vastissima tazza di porfido di palmi 62 di circonferenza tutta massiccia (all of one piece), la quale si trovava già in Vaticano trasportatavi dalla Villa di Giulio III, fuori di Porta del Popolo, ed ora squisitamente risarcita.’ This restoration was completed in 1792 and was no doubt carried out by the same artists whom Pius VI employed for the repair of the porphyry sarcophagi noticed ante, p. [27]. In this way the work, which Vasari says in the text had to be left unfinished, was finally accomplished. Cancellieri (Lettera ... intorno la maravigliosa Tazza di Porfido, etc., Roma, 1822) makes the surprising statement that at one time the tazza had been mended with pieces of white granite!

Fig. 9.—Sketch of shape of the large porphyry Tazza in the Sala Rotonda of the Vatican.

The tazza is the largest existing piece of the kind and measures 14 ft. in diameter. It is shallow and has in the interior the usual projecting central boss. Independently of this boss the tazza has only one arris, or in Vasari’s words ‘canto vivo,’ at A in the rough sketch, Fig. 9. A smaller but more artistically wrought porphyry tazza, beautifully restored, and measuring 8 ft. 6 in. in diameter, is in the Pitti at Florence close to the entrance to the passage to the Uffizi. It was a gift from Clement VII to the Medici, and was brought from Rome (Villa Medici) to Florence in 1790, where it was repaired in the Tuscan manufactory of mosaics (Zobi, Notizie Storiche sull’ Origine e Progressi dei Lavori di Commesso in Pietre Dure, Firenze, 1853, p. 118). Both these pieces are superb works, and display the magnificent qualities of the red Egyptian porphyry to full advantage.

The original purpose of these great basins is not very clear. The ‘conche’ mentioned in the footnote to p. 27, ante, though now used as sarcophagi, were certainly in their origin baths, but the shallow tazza would be unsuitable for such a purpose, and moreover the central ornament would have almost precluded such a use. There seems no sign of a central opening through which a water pipe could have been introduced, so that the tazza might serve as the basin of a fountain. Perhaps their employment was simply ornamental.

FRANCESCO DEL TADDA, AND THE REVIVAL OF SCULPTURE IN PORPHYRY.

[See § 2, Of Porphyry, ante, p. [29].]

Vasari does not give a biography of this artist among his Lives, though he more than once refers to him in connection with other sculptors. There is on the other hand a notice of him and of other artists of his family in Baldinucci’s Notizie de’ Professori del Disegno, published 1681–1728. Baldinucci knew personally the son of Francesco, but was so poorly informed about Francesco’s early life that he makes two persons of him and describes his early career as if it were that of another Francesco del Tadda. (It is true that there was an earlier Francesco Ferrucci but he was not called ‘del Tadda’ and he died before 1500). The commentators on Vasari previous to the Milanesi edition seem to have been misled by Baldinucci, but in this edition the mistake is corrected, and a genealogical tree of the whole Ferrucci family is given in vol. IV, p. 487.

Francesco derived his name ‘del Tadda’ from his grandfather Taddeo Ferrucci, who belonged to a family of sculptors in Fiesole. In early life he worked with other sculptors under the orders of Clement VII at the completion of the chapel of Our Lady of Loretto, and afterwards assisted Michelangelo in his work in the Sacristy of S. Lorenzo at Florence. In the Life of Giovanni Agnolo Montorsoli Vasari praises him as ‘intagliatore excellente’ (Opere, VI, 638). The works in porphyry mentioned in Vasari’s text, ante, p. [32] f., will be noticed presently, but it may be noted here that del Tadda’s chief work in this material, executed after Vasari published his Lives, was the figure of ‘Justice’ which stands on the granite column in the Piazza di S. Trinità at Florence. The column, which is 36 ft. high, came from the Baths of Caracalla at Rome and was presented by Pius IV to Duke Cosimo I.

Among the letters of Vasari published in the eighth volume of the Milanesi edition is one dated December 18, 1561, to Duke Cosimo, giving the measurements of this column which was then lying at Rome awaiting its transport to Florence. The system of measurement is instructive and has been referred to ante, p. [66] (see Opere, VIII, 352). The column was taken to Florence, occupying a year on its journey, and was erected in 1565 on the Piazza S. Trinità where it now stands. Cellini (Scultura, ch. 6) says that it is of Elban granite, but it is more likely to be from Egypt.

Francesco del Tadda received the commission for a porphyry figure to surmount it, and the work is said to have taken him and his son eleven years; it is in five or six pieces and about 11 ft. 6 in. high. The statue was placed in position on June 9, 1581, and the drapery of bronze was adjusted to it on July 21 (Francesco Settimanni quoted by Zobi, page 105). The figure has been adversely criticized but is a fairly successful piece of work, considering the difficulties of its execution. Francesco del Tadda died in 1585 and was buried in the church of S. Girolamo at Fiesole, where his epitaph signalizes his unique position as a worker in porphyry ‘cum statuariam in Porphyretico lapide mult. ann. unicus exerceret,’ and bears his portrait by his own hand in relief in porphyry on a field of green Prato serpentine.

On the whole subject of work in porphyry, after the early Byzantine period when the late Roman imperial tradition was still in force, the following may be noted.

Vasari does not say that the art of working the stone was ever wholly lost, and mentions, ante, p. [29], the cutting of the stone for use in inlaid pavements, Cosmati-work, and the like, as may be seen in St. Mark’s, Venice; at Ravello, and in numberless Roman churches. He also describes the ‘scabbling’ of the stone by heavy hammers with steel points to reduce it to even surfaces both rounded and flat (ante, p. [31]). Fine examples of the use of the material in mediaeval days, for purposes other than statuesque, can be seen in the Cathedral of Palermo. There are there four noble sarcophagi, with canopies supported by monolithic shafts all in the same stone, dating from the thirteenth century. They contain the bodies of the Emperor Frederick II, who died in 1250, and of earlier members of his house, and show that at that time the artificers of southern Italy and Sicily could deal successfully on a large scale with this intractable material. Anton Springer, die Mittelalterliche Kunst in Palermo, Bonn, 1869, remarks in this connection, p. 29, that the Sicilians are to this day specially expert in the working of hard stones. Porphyry was also used on the original façade of S. Maria del Fiore at Florence that was demolished in 1588. Vasari might too have mentioned the porphyry sarcophagus completed in 1472 by Andrea del Verrocchio for the monument of Piero and Giovanni de’ Medici in S. Lorenzo at Florence. The Verrocchio sarcophagus is however composed only of flat slabs of porphyry, like those round the pulpit in St. Mark’s, Venice, whereas Vasari is drawing a distinction between this architectural use of the stone and its employment in figure sculpture, of which he makes Francesco del Tadda the first restorer.

In regard to this use of porphyry it must not be forgotten that in the Cabinet of Gems in the Uffizi there is a beautifully executed porphyry statuette, or rather group, of Venus with Cupid, about ten inches high, signed in Greek characters with the name of ‘Pietro Maria.’ This was Pier Maria da Pescia, noticed by Vasari in his life of Valerio Vicentino and others, as a famous worker in hard stones of the days of Leo X (Opere, V, 370). This however was executed, so Zobi says (p. 97), with the wheel after the manner of gem engraving, whereas the works of Ferrucci, of later date, were on the scale of statuary proper.

In connection with the latter we have Vasari’s story of the invention of Duke Cosimo. This is explained by Galluzzi, (Istoria del Granducato di Toscana, Firenze, 1781, I, 157 f.) who says that Cosimo’s efforts to exploit the mineral wealth of Tuscany (see postea, p. 120 f.) gave him an interest in metals, and that he set up a laboratory in his palace, where he carried on experiments in chemistry and physics. Hence the discovery of which Vasari writes. Cosimo certainly in his own time had some personal association with this cutting of porphyry, for Galluzzi says he used to make presents to his friends of porphyry reliefs executed with tools tempered by the new process, and quotes (II, 229) a letter of thanks from a Cardinal to whom a gift of the kind had been forwarded. On the other hand Cellini, (Scultura, ch. 6) makes Tadda the inventor and ignores Cosimo altogether, while Baldinucci, though, like Vasari, he was devoted to the Medici, scouts the idea of Cosimo having had any personal share in the invention of the new tempering bath, which he ascribes to Tadda alone, and he adduces in support of this Tadda’s own testament, in which are the words Franciscus de Fesulis sculptor porfidi, et ipse inventor, seu renovator talis sculpturae, et artis porfidorum incidendi. Cosimo’s participation in the discovery, whatever it was, can hardly have been ascribed to him without some small foundation in fact, and Aurelio Gotti, Le Gallerie e I Musei di Firenze, 2nd Ed., Firenze, 1875, p. 45, gives credit for it to the Duke.

However this may be, Tadda appears to have used the new process for the first time in the production of the tazza for the fountain in the cortile of the Palazzo Vecchio, and to have advanced from this to the more artistic work Vasari goes on to describe. Endeavours to discover the present habitat of the oval portraits of the Medici and the Head of Christ, referred to by Vasari, ante, p. [33], have led to the following result. Signor Supino, the Director of the National Museum at Florence, courteously informed us that the portraits of Cosimo Pater Patriae, of Leo X, and of Clement VII, with one of Giovanni de’ Bicci, were preserved in the magazines of the Bargello, where he has kindly allowed one of us to photograph them. The head of Cosimo has on the chamfer of the bust the inscription OPA DI FRANC^O DA FIESOLE, which identifies it with certainty as the work of Tadda of which Vasari writes. The others are treated in the same fashion, and all are mounted on flat oval slabs of green serpentine of Prato. They are no doubt all by the same hand. They were formerly in the Uffizi but have been for many years in the Bargello, and their historical and artistic interest would certainly vindicate for them more honourable treatment than at present is their lot. Plates III and V give the Cosimo Pater Patriae portrait and that of Leo X. They measure about 19 in. by 14 in.

With regard to the other examples noticed by Vasari, Zobi, l.c., p. 108, informed his readers that the two ovals of Duke Cosimo I and his wife the Duchess Leonora were at that time (about 1850) in the Pitti ‘on the wall of the vestibule in the part called Meridiana,’ but he complicates matters by announcing the same about the head of the older Cosimo, which we have just found at the Bargello, and which Gotti says, l.c., p. 46, was originally in the Villa of Poggio Imperiale whence it was conveyed in 1862 to the Uffizi. Zobi’s words are subjoined in the original. ‘Ed i ritratti in profilo del duca Cosimo I, d’ Eleonora di Toledo sua moglie, e di Cosimo appellato il padre della patria, scolpiti a mezzo rilievo e rapportati sul fondo di serpentino, si trovano oggidì situati insieme con altri ritratti parimente porfiretici, sulle pareti del vestibolo al quartiere detto della Meridiana nel palazzo regale.’

The part of the Pitti referred to is on the second floor of the palace and receives its name from a meridian line in brass marked on the floor on which, at the psychological moment, the sun shines through a hole in the roof. Here, through the courtesy of Signor Cornish the Conservator of the Royal Palace, we have seen no fewer than seven oval portraits in porphyry mounted on serpentine that are built into the wall in situations which make their study rather difficult. Among them the marked features of Duke Cosimo are not apparent, but on one of them is the inscription, ‘Ferdinandus Magnus Dux Etr. 1609,’ and on another the name and date of Christina, Duchess of Tuscany, 1669. This all bears out what Baldinucci tells us, that the Ferrucci family in general put their hands to this particular class of work, which was their speciality, just as the glazed terra-cottas were specialities of the della Robbia, while they also adopted into the circle pupils from outside. Zobi, p. 109, quotes an old inventory of 1574, the date of the death of Duke Cosimo I, which mentions ten such portraits of members of the family as at that time existing, all mounted on serpentine. Later on, Baldinucci mentions three sons of Francesco, to one of whom, Romolo, he is supposed to have left his ‘secret.’ There was however also an Andrea Ferrucci, and a Mattias Ferrucci, who if they lacked the pretended ‘secret’ at any rate did the same work, and finally one Raffaello Curradi, a pupil of Andrea, who in 1636 abandoned sculpture and took the Franciscan habit. According to Zobi, p. 116, he was the last of the porphyry sculptors, and ‘dopo quest’ epoca affatto s’ ignora se furono prodotte altre opere porfiree.’ In view of the date 1669 on one of the ovals in the Pitti, this should not perhaps be taken too absolutely. That porphyry has been worked successfully at Florence at later dates, the admirable restoration of the porphyry tazza in the Pitti, mentioned ante, p. [109], and other more recent productions noted by Zobi, sufficiently show.

Plate V
PORTRAIT IN PORPHYRY OF LEO X
BY FRANCESCO DEL TADDA

If we add to the series of ovals the various porphyry busts of members of the Medici house, exhibited in the outer vestibule of the Uffizi and other places, there would be enough porphyry versions of the Medici to furnish material for a monograph.

With regard finally to the ‘Head of Christ’ which Vasari says was taken to Rome and much admired by Michelangelo, the original seems to be lost, but Zobi states, p. 95, that in his time a scion of the Ferrucci family, living at Lugo in the Province of Ravenna, possessed a head of Christ in porphyry signed Mathias Ferrucceus Civis Florentinus Fecit, and he thinks this may have been copied from the original by Francesco del Tadda, of which there is question in Vasari’s text.

THE CORTILE OF THE BELVEDERE IN THE VATICAN, IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

[See § 4, Of Cipollaccio, ante, p. [36].]

The history of this famous Cortile forms the subject of an elaborate paper by Professor Adolf Michaelis in the Jahrbuch of the German Archaeological Institute for 1890. It has been described as ‘the most noteworthy place of art in all Italy or rather in the world,’ as it was the first home of the nascent collection of antique statues formed by successive Popes from the beginning of the sixteenth century, that has grown into the Vatican museum of sculpture. It must be remembered that the octagonal portico which now surrounds the Cortile is a later addition of the last part of the eighteenth century, and when Vasari knew it, about 1530, in the pontificate of Clement VII, it was laid out as a garden of orange trees, with niches by Bramante in the four corners and in the middle of the sides. In these niches and on pedestals in the court were displayed notable antiques, such as the ‘Laocoon,’ the ‘Nile’ now in the Braccio Nuovo, the ‘Tiber’ now in the Louvre, the ‘Torso,’ the ‘Cleopatra,’ two Venuses, the ‘Apollo Belvedere,’ and others. This was a favourite resort of Clement, who used to walk here in the mornings reading his breviary, and listened in the evenings to music made for him by Benvenuto Cellini and others (Cellini, Autobiography, transl., Lond., 1878, p. 42). Here too he consulted with Michelangelo in 1532 on the question of the restoration of the antiques, and Michelangelo recommended to him for the purpose the youthful sculptor Fra Giovann’ Agnolo Montorsoli, whom the Pope installed in the Belvedere to carry out the work (see ante, p. [107]). Among the features of the court were fountains in some of the niches, on which were statues. The ‘Cleopatra’ of the Vatican was one of these, and Clement seems to have desired to make a second fountain corresponding to that of the Cleopatra, to be adorned by the river god Tigris. The ‘Tigris,’ which is now in the Sala a Croce Greca, is said to have been restored by the august hands of Michelangelo himself, and it was for the installation of the ‘Tigris’ that Buonarotti designed the fountain of which Vasari writes. Vasari’s account, which had escaped the notice of Michaelis, is our only authority for this work by Michelangelo, which is not, so far as the present writers can discover, mentioned in any of the numerous ‘Lives’ of the artist. There is a drawing of the fountain by Heemskerck, reproduced by Michaelis, but this only gives the figure, and not the decorative treatment of the niche, which is the point of interest as a parergon by Michelangelo. The situation of the ‘Tigris’ fountain was in the corner where is now the Cabinet of the Laocoon. (Michaelis l.c., and Plans and Drawings of the Vatican in the King’s Library at Bloomsbury. Of older writers Bonanni, Numismata Summorum Pontificum Templi Vaticani Fabricam Indicantia, Roma, 1696, is praised by Lanciani as the most useful and trustworthy).

PARAGON (TOUCHSTONE) AND OTHER STONES ASSOCIATED WITH IT BY VASARI.

[See § 7, Of Paragon, ante, p. [42].]

There are at least six different kinds of stone referred to in this section, and for convenience they are lettered in the text (a) (b) etc.

(a) There is a stone specially suited for the process of testing the precious metals in the way Vasari describes. It is called in various tongues ‘touchstone,’ ‘pierre de touche,’ ‘Probirstein,’ ‘pietra di paragone,’ ‘basanite’ from Greek βάσανος, a test, and in Latin ‘Lapis Lydius’ from the reason that it was found in Lydia. According to Theophrastus, Περὶ Λίθων, § 35, and Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXIII, 8, it was only found in small nodules, and this agrees with the character of the stone. It is described by Professor Bonney as a ‘silicified argillite,’ that is to say a clayey sedimentary stone largely impregnated with silica, and, as used by the modern jeweller and goldsmith, it is in appearance and texture an extremely hard stone of very fine grain and of a velvet blackness, the colour being due to the presence of carbonaceous elements. Small lumps of fine texture are found embedded in a coarser matrix. It has no mystic power of testing metals. The piece of metal to be essayed is simply rubbed on the stone and the mark scrutinized, or compared as regards colour with marks from similar rubbings of metal pins of known composition. A piece of the stone, showing some marks of the kind, is given as I on the Frontispiece. For the above purpose any hard, fine-grained, compact stone of a dark colour will serve, and black jasper Wedgewood-ware answers the demand as well as a natural stone. The small portion of the metal rubbed off as above may however be tested more searchingly by the application of acid, and for this to be practicable the stone must not be a limestone, which would be at once attacked by the acid and confuse the test.

(b) The ‘other variety with a different grain and colour,’ of which Egyptian sphinxes were made, must be basalt (or diorite) in which material the statue which Vasari calls the ‘hermaphrodite in Parione’ is actually cut. A fine-grained basalt would serve well enough as a touchstone, though it is not the true material.

(c) There appears to be a kind of granitic stone, which Mr Brindley calls ‘an augite variety of green granite found alongside the Prato serpentine’ (for which see below) found near Prato (Repetti, art. ‘Monte Ferrato,’ writes of a ‘granito di Prato’ or ‘granitone di Figline’), but the stone that Vasari goes on to describe (d) as used for sarcophagi, is of another composition altogether. This is a black or grey limestone that used to be abundantly employed as the setting for Florentine mosaics, and is still used for such purposes as inlaid letters, etc., in white marble. P, as above, shows a piece cut for such use. It is however liable to white or light-grey veins, and is now supplanted at the Florentine mosaic manufactory by a black marble or limestone imported from Belgium. The sarcophagus of Piero Soderini, behind the high altar in the church of the Carmine at Florence is in a grey limestone much traversed by lighter veins. Such a stone could not be suitably used as a touchstone, as in the first place it is not hard enough, and, in the second, would not admit of the use of the acid test. The name ‘paragone’ is however very commonly applied to it. The ‘canopy of Prato touchstone’ is mentioned by other writers beside Vasari, but is no more to be seen and may have perished in the Carmine fire.

(e) Here again we have a quite different stone, though one very well known and in common use. The dark stone which occurs in bands on Tuscan buildings in Florence and elsewhere is known as ‘Verde di Prato’ and is a species of (true) serpentine, very dark in hue and often seeming purplish or puce-coloured rather than green. It would be too soft to make a good touchstone, and is disposed to disintegrate when exposed to severe climatic conditions. Thus on the façade of S. Miniato a Monte on the hill facing the north it is far more weathered than on the Duomo or Campanile below. For the quarries of it and its use see the Note, postea, p. 127. E, as above, shows a characteristic piece kindly lent from his collection by Professor Bonney.

(f) Lastly there is the red marble used in bands on the Campanile and Duomo. For this also see the Note p. 128.

TUSCAN MARBLE QUARRIES.

[See §§ 5, 9, 97, 99, etc.]

The best work on the subject of Italian stones is that by Jervis, I Tesori Sotterranei dell’ Italia, Torino, 1889, and a considerable amount of information is contained in the local articles in E. Repetti’s Dizionario geographico, etc., della Toscana, Firenze, 1839, and also in the Official Catalogue of the Italian section in the London International Exhibition of 1862. In connection with investigations which we have had to make on all this subject of the stones, we have to acknowledge with all gratitude the expert aid kindly afforded by Professors Bonney of Cambridge and Geikie of Edinburgh, as well as the valuable local assistance and information kindly given to us by Professor Enrico Bonanni of Carrara and the representatives of the firm Henraux et Cie of Seravezza, the owners of the Monte Altissimo quarries presently to be mentioned. From both these sources we have obtained knowledge which we could not otherwise have compassed, and we desire again to express our obligations to Mr W. Brindley, who is as well known in the Carrara district as in London, and who gave us these introductions as well as much technical information.

The quarries mentioned by Vasari are named in the accompanying table, where there are also indications of the kinds of stone he signalizes as their products. It must of course be understood that extensive quarries generally produce more than one kind of stone, as Vasari notes in the case of the Carrara quarries in § 9, and again in ‘Painting’ § 97, where he speaks of variegated marbles alternating with the white.

The principal deposits of marble are those in the Carrara district, in the mountains called the Apuan Alps near the sea coast between Pisa and Spezia. The marbles of the district have been exploited since the time of the Romans, under the name of marbles of Luna or Luni. The site of the Etrusco-Roman town of Luni is a little south of the railway line, about half way between Avenza-Carrara and Sarzana, and traces of the Roman workings are observable in many of the present quarries. The industry received a notable impulse at the great artistic epoch of the Renaissance. Duke Cosimo de’ Medici gave considerable attention to the exploitation of this form of mineral wealth, as was also the case with the metal-producing mines (ante, p. [112]). He opened new quarries in the Pietrasanta district of the Apuan Alps, and also gave special attention to the quarries in the Pisan Mountains, between Pisa and Lucca, and to facilitating the transport of the material from the hills to the former town.

The special quarries of which the town of Carrara is the centre and dépôt are the oldest and the most prolific, and a useful local guide to Carrara gives a long list of the effective ones in their different groups, with their respective products. Of these, that which has furnished the finest statuary marble in the largest blocks is the quarry of Polvaccio, in the Ravaccione valley under Monte Sagro, one of the culminating points of the ridge of the Apuan Alps. See the sketch map, Fig. 10. Vasari (ante, p. [46]) specially praises the Polvaccio marbles, as being free from the veins and flaws so tiresome to the sculptor. There are now other localities in the district that furnish as good pieces as Polvaccio.

There is another important centre a little to the south-east, that is of more interest in the present connection. This is Pietrasanta, which is the emporium for the quarries of Seravezza several times mentioned by Vasari, and those of Stazzema, a little further up among the hills.

The Seravezza district is quite apart from that of Carrara, and the little town in question nestles in the folds of the ridges that descend from Monte Altissimo, the culminating point next to the south from Monte Sagro, both peaks being between 5 and 6,000 feet high. Both districts are rich in memories of Michelangelo. About his work at Carrara there is more than one published treatise, as for example Carlo Frediani’s Ragionamento Storico, 2nd Ed., Siena, 1875, while in connection with his proceedings at Seravezza, and especially the identification of localities mentioned in his correspondence and memoranda, MM. Henraux have furnished us with some first-hand information. Both at Carrara and at Pietrasanta inscriptions indicate houses where he lodged on his visits to the localities. Carrara was his first love, and when charged by Leo X in 1516 with the work at S. Lorenzo at Florence he betook himself thither for marbles. Vasari, in his Life of Michelangelo, Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII, 189, tells us how while he was there he received a letter from the Pope bidding him turn his attention rather to the Seravezza district, which was actually in Tuscan territory, whereas Carrara was in the principality of Massa-Carrara, and at the time under the rule of the Marchese Alberigo, who was Michelangelo’s friend.

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).

The exploitation of these marbles was rendered difficult at Pisa by the marshy nature of the ground at the foot of the hills which impeded transport, and Duke Cosimo set himself to find a remedy. He took up the question of drainage and regulation of watercourses in what is called the ‘pianura di Pisa,’ and among the forty medals struck to celebrate his various achievements were some for ‘Clima Pisano Risanato.’ In 1545 an ‘Uffizio dei fossi’ was constituted, and the modern hydraulic system which has done so much to benefit this region, dates from these measures of Cosimo. Vasari, § 11, ante, p. [50], speaks of a river ‘Osoli’ the course of which was straightened and confined. This is probably a mistake for ‘Oseri’ or ‘Osari,’ names applying to one of the small streams close to Pisa in the direction of the quarries. Targioni Tozzetti in his Viaggi in Toscana has a long discussion on this river, the Auser of the ancients, for which he gives the modern equivalents ‘Oseri,’ or ‘Osoli’ (the latter probably derived from this passage in Vasari). There is a ‘Fossa dell’ Oseretto’ to the west of the city. These straightened watercourses facilitated the transport of the stone in barges.

Continuing southwards along the coast we come to some marble quarries mentioned by Vasari on the promontory of Piombino, opposite the island of Elba. The locality Vasari names is Campiglia (§ 10, ante, p. [50]) but the whole of Monte Calvi above that town is marble-bearing, and the products were said to be as good in quality as those of the Carrara district (Torelli, l.c., p. xc). Vasari says that the Campiglia marbles are excellent for building purposes, and Repetti asserts that in the fifteenth century, for the cupola of S. Maria del Fiore, more marble was used from this region than from Carrara itself. The ancient reputation of the district is not however now maintained.

Hitherto all the marbles used for building purposes that Vasari has mentioned have been white or variegated, but everyone who has visited the Tuscan cities knows that the decorative effect of the buildings depends on the juxtaposition of bands of white and of black, or at any rate, dark marble, with occasional bands of red. The dark marbles come chiefly from the neighbourhood of Prato, and this introduces us to a group of inland quarries within a few miles of Florence to the north and also to the south and east. Vasari does not say much about this dark stone, which was however of the utmost importance in Tuscan architecture. It is commonly called Prato Serpentine, or ‘Verde di Prato,’ and the quarries at Monte Ferrato, by Figline, three miles north of Prato, produce it of the finest quality. The Figline quarries are reported on by Professor Bonney in a paper on ‘Ligurian and Tuscan Serpentines’ in the Geological Magazine for 1879. He has kindly lent us the specimen from the quarry figured as E on the Frontispiece. This stone is of a deep green colour, tending sometimes towards a purple or puce tint. Stone of much the same character is found, as Vasari states, near the Impruneta, six or seven miles east of Florence. It is this Prato Serpentine that has been so largely used from the twelfth century to the fifteenth in Tuscany for alternating with the white marbles in the incrustation of façades. There are deposits of the same stone in the Pisan mountains. The same stone was sometimes used for decorative stone work in connection with sepulchral monuments. According to Vasari however, ante, p. [42] f., it was the ‘paragone’ or dark limestone of Prato that was chiefly employed for this purpose.

If Vasari’s information about this important stone, and his interest in it, seem scanty, it must be borne in mind that it was a mediaeval material rather than a Renaissance one. We find it on the churches and bell towers and baptistries of the twelfth and following centuries, but not on the palaces of the fifteenth and sixteenth. Hence the stone was not so interesting in Vasari’s eyes as it is in ours.

Finally, the red stone seen in bands on the Duomo and the Campanile at Florence, that Vasari calls ‘marmo rosso’ (ante, p. [43]), is not fully crystalline and is rather a limestone than a marble. It is deep red when quarried, but on the buildings has bleached to a pinky hue from exposure to the air. It is apt to scale, but this is partly due to its not being laid on its proper bed. The specimens F F on the coloured plate show the smoothed external surface bleached light by exposure. We are informed by Signor Cellerini, the experienced capomaestro of the Opera del Duomo at Florence, that in old time this stone was quarried at Monsummano, at the northern extremity of the Monte Albano not far from Pistoja. A more modern source of supply is the Tuscan Maremma, where the stone, called ‘Porta Santa,’ is quarried between Pisa and Grosseto, near Gavorrano. From this place the stone has been brought for recent use on the new façade of the Duomo at Florence.

Other Tuscan marbles, such as those of Siena, that are not referred to by Vasari, are not noticed in this place.

THE ROUND TEMPLE ON THE PIAZZA S. LUIGI DEI FRANCESI, AND ‘MAESTRO GIAN.’

[See § 12, Of Travertine, ante, p. [51] f.]

It is surprising that practically nothing appears to be known, either about the French sculptor mentioned here, ‘Maestro Gian’ (or Jean), or about the French wood carver of the same name called by Vasari ‘Maestro Janni,’ who is referred to at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 174. Equally strange is it that their works, which Vasari describes in terms of high praise, and which are in public view in Rome and in Florence, do not seem to have attracted attention among students either of French art or of Italian. The standard older book on French artists abroad, Dussieux, Les Artistes Français à l’Étranger, Paris, 1856, takes no note of either of them, nor are they referred to in Bérard’s Dictionnaire Biographique des Artistes Français du XII au XVII Siècle, Paris, 1872. In the more recent Italian work however by A. Bertolotti, Artisti Francesi in Roma nei Secoli XV, XVI, e XVII, Mantova, 1886, there is a mention on p. 220 of ‘un Giovanni Chavenier, che forse disegno quel tempio tondo, attribuito dal Vasari all’ architetto Jean,’ and on p. 24 it is said that ‘Giovanni Chiavier, o Chavenier, di Rouen lavorò pel Governo pontificio e morì a Roma nel 1527.’ Bertolotti unfortunately gives no references to his authorities, while the work of Müntz, Les Arts à la Cour des Papes breaks off before the sixteenth century, and gives no help.

LIST OF TUSCAN MARBLE QUARRIES WITH THEIR PRODUCTS, AS FAR AS THESE ARE MENTIONED BY VASARI.

[§§. 5–11 and §§ 97–99.]

The reference to pages is to the present volume, the capital letters refer to the coloured drawing of the stones on the Frontispiece.

Names in square brackets do not actually occur in Vasari.

In the course of our inquiries we communicated with the Director of the Biblioteca Vittorio Emmanuele at Rome, Commendatore Conte Gnoli, who kindly gave attention to the subject, and contributed to the Giornale d’ Italia of Dec. 24, 1906, an interesting article, in which, though he could give no account of Maestro Gian, he described fully the extant works of which Vasari writes, and made some pertinent suggestions as to the ‘round temple.’ He thinks it unlikely that the building of a circular church from the foundations was contemplated by the French, and suggests that they were utilizing the foundations of a round chamber belonging to the Thermae of Nero which were in that neighbourhood, so that the ‘round temple’ would have been like the present S. Bernardo in the Thermae of Diocletian. M. Marcel Reymond has suggested that it was the sack of Rome in 1527 that led to the abandonment of the project—for the date of the undertaking can be fixed in the reign of François I of France, who came to the throne in 1515, from the fact that his cognizance, the salamander, occurs in the sculpture prepared for its embellishment. If the artist be really Bertolotti’s ‘Chavenier,’ as he died in 1527, this fact would also explain the abandonment.

The sculptures in question are in part incrusted in the façade of the present church of S. Luigi (see ante, p. [52]) and the fact that some of them are carved on curved surfaces shows at once that they were prepared for a building of cylindrical form. There are two large salamanders in round frames of which one is shown on Plate VI, and two panels higher up in the façade with the curious device of an eagle with the head of a woman and outspread wings from which depend by ribbons on each side small medallions. There are also some lions’ heads. The most curious piece of all is built into the wall of the Palazzo Madama close beside the church, and this contains the various devices that Vasari calls ‘astrological globes’ ‘open books showing the leaves,’ ‘trophies,’ etc. The panel is small and placed too high to be properly seen, but Sig. Gnoli, by the aid of the architect of the palace, was able to give a description of them in the article above mentioned. The work is very minute and elaborate, and there are inscriptions from which it appears that the devices signify that the seven liberal arts are nourished by the lilies of France. The sculpture is not only elaborate in design but most artistic as well as delicate in execution. The ‘Salamander’ it will be seen is excellent work. M. Marcel Reymond points out that at the early part of the sixteenth century the Italians were accustomed to use marble for decorative carvings, and that this French artist, whoever he was, having been accustomed to carve the limestones of his native country, took naturally to the manipulation of travertine, and that his success with the material attracted the attention and admiration of the Romans which Vasari’s commendations reflect. It has been noticed above that Michelangelo’s frieze in the cortile of the Palazzo Farnese was not carved but modelled in stucco. See ante, p. [53].

On the subject of the mysterious artist a word will be said in connection with the later passage indicated at the beginning of this Note. See postea, p. 175.

RUSTICATED MASONRY.

[See § 20, Rusticated Masonry and the Tuscan Order, ante, p. [65].]

In masonry of this kind the sides of the stones, where they come into contact with each other, are dressed smooth, but the face of each stone is left to project beyond the plane of the wall. The projections may be rough and irregular, in which case the appearance is that of natural stones, and a rugged rock-like aspect is given to the wall-face. The projections may however be wrought into bosses of regular form, or into the diamonds and facets of which Vasari goes on to speak, and of which a notable example is the so-called ‘Palazzo de’ Diamanti’ at Ferrara.

This method of treating stones, at least when they are left rough and irregular, saves time and labour, and hence it has been in use among many ancient peoples, but almost always for substructures and parts not meant to be seen. The Romans made a more extensive employment of it, and we find it not only on sustaining walls, such as those of the Hadrianic platform of the Olympeion at Athens, but on monumental wall-faces, as on the enclosing wall of the Forum of Augustus near the Arco dei Pantani at Rome, one of the finest extant specimens of Roman masonry but still utilitarian in character. The deliberate use of rustication, as an element of artistic effect, on the façade of a public building, is another matter, and it is doubtful if any instance of this occurs before the Italian Renaissance. There is a piece of Roman rusticated masonry behind the ancient theatre at Fiesole, the classical Faesolae, and Professor Durm thought at one time that the Florentine builders might have derived from this their idea of using the device as a means of expression in stonework. It may be questioned however whether this was visible at all in the fifteenth century, and it is much more likely that Renaissance rustication was a natural development from the treatment of the wall in many mediaeval Tuscan buildings, in which the surface of the stones is left to project in an irregular undesigned fashion. The Palazzo Vecchio and the Gothic Palazzo Alessandri at Florence are examples. In any case, in the hands of the architects of the Renaissance rustication became an important element in the architectural style of the period, and is one of the special contributions of this style to architecture at large.

Plate VI
SALAMANDER CARVED IN TRAVERTINE
On the façade of S. Luigi dei Francesi, Rome, by a French artist, ‘Maestro Gian’

Rustication has two artistic advantages. In the first place, it emphasizes the separate stones in an assemblage, and when these are of great size and boldly hewn, as at the Pitti Palace at Florence, the work gains in dignity through this individualizing of the distinct units of the structure. The bossed surface of some of the blocks at the Pitti stands out as much as three feet from the wall, and one of the stones is twenty eight feet in length. In the second place, this rustic treatment gives a look of rugged strength that is very effective, especially on the lower stages of monumental buildings, where indeed the treatment is most in place. The façade of Michelozzo’s Riccardi Palace, which Vasari refers to under its older name the ‘Casa Medici’ is epoch-making in its fine handling of rustication in degrees according to the stages of the elevation.

It needs hardly to be said that the elaborately cut facets which Vasari finds so beautiful, and of which we have seen an example in Fig. 4, ante, p. [69], are too artificial to be reckoned in good architectural style. It was a common practice, when the stones themselves were not all of the same size, to cut these diamonds and other geometrical forms in independence of the joints of the masonry, so that a facet might be half on one stone and half on another. As this ignores the individuality of the blocks, which the simpler rustication so effectually emphasizes, it is by no means to be commended. Vasari’s last sentences in § 20, about this treatment of stonework in general, are excellent. The rustication on the Fortezza, shown in Fig. 4 is sincere, in that the jointing corresponds with the design.

VASARI’S OPINION ON MEDIAEVAL ARCHITECTURE.

[See § 28, German Work (the Gothic Style), ante, p. [83].]

Vasari’s tirade against the iniquities of the mediaeval mason is of historical interest as reflecting the ideas of his age, but need not now be taken seriously. The reason why he writes of it as ‘German’ work is to be found in the close intercourse during the whole mediaeval period between Germany and Italy, that were nominally under the one imperial sceptre, and were only separated by the Brenner. ‘Tedesco’ stood to the mind of the Italian for everything north of the Alps, and though the pointed style in architecture was of French origin it appears to have found its way into Italy through the Tyrol. One of the first churches in this style in Italy, S. Francesco at Assisi, was designed by a German master from Meran. But not only does Vasari call the manner he detests ‘Tedesco,’ he expressly, in this passage and elsewhere, ascribes it to the Goths, who, after ruining the ancient buildings and killing off the classically trained architects, had set to work to build with pointed arches. It is clear from this phrase, as well as from the description he gives of the little niches and pinnacles and leaves and the extravagant height of doors, that he had in his mind the pointed style, that dates from about the middle of the twelfth century. The Goths had then passed out of existence for some six hundred years and Vasari’s chronology is hopelessly at fault. The name ‘Gothic’ however, which he was the first to apply in this sense, has adhered to the style ever since, and in spite of efforts which have been made to supplant it, will probably remain always in use, though no one will now or in the future make the mistake of connecting it ethnologically with the historical Goths of the fifth and sixth centuries.

The question who was actually the first to apply the term ‘Gothic’ in this sense has been a subject of controversy. Some have attributed the invention of the term to Raphael, or the author of the Report on the condition of Roman monuments which passes under his name; while others have claimed the dubious honour for Cesare Cesariano, the translator and commentator of Vitruvius. Neither of these writers however uses the word in the sense referred to. Raphael it is true writes of a ‘Gothic’ style in architecture which succeeded to the classic Roman, but he makes it, quite correctly, belong to the actual era of the Gothic conquest of Italy in the fifth century and to the succeeding hundred years. The later mediaeval architecture Raphael terms ‘architectura Tedesca,’ and when he writes of this he seems to have in his view what we should rather call Lombard Romanesque, for he blames in it the ‘strange animals and figures, and foliage out of all reason.’ In other words Raphael, or the author of the Report, distinctly does not commit the historical enormity of dragging the word ‘Gothic’ six centuries out of its proper location and use.

With regard to Cesare Cesariano, this personage was born in 1483 and studied architecture under Bramante. He was of good repute, Vasari tell us, (Opere, IV, 149) as a geometrician and architect, and at one time he was employed as director of the works on the cathedral of Milan, the interior of which he completed in its present form. In 1521 there was published at Como, at the charges of certain scholars and notables of Milan and Como, an edition of Vitruvius headed ‘Di Lucio Vitruvio Pollione a Caesare Augusto De Architectura Incomenza Il Primo Libro. Translato In Vulgare Sermone Commentato Et Affigurato Da Caesare Caesariano Citadino Mediolanense Professore Di Architectura Et C^a.’ Cesariano’s commentary is a fearsome work of appalling verbosity, but there is nothing in it about the Goths being the originators of the pointed style. He mentions the Goths on fol. cviii, b, but not in connection with architecture, whereas when he does refer to late mediaeval building he calls it not Gothic but German. On fol. xiii b and on the succeeding pages he gives some interesting plans and drawings of the cathedral of Milan, important in connection with the theory of the use in Gothic design of the equilateral triangle, but distinctly notes it as constructed by ‘Germanici architecti,’ ‘Germanico more,’ and ‘secundum Germanicam symmetriam’; while on fol. cx b he again says that the building was in the hands of a German architect. (See Mothes, Baukunst des Mittelalters in Italien, Jena, 1884, p. 502 ff.) It is clear therefore that Cesare Cesariano has nothing to do with the use of ‘Gothic’ as an architectural term, and his name need not be mentioned in this connection.