In , Marco Borrini, a local landowner, teamed up with Frenchman Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux to start a new company and it has been active in the area ever since. The venture brought new life to the economically depressed area, employing hundreds of quarrymen, squarers, sled men, stone cutters and cart drivers, who guided oxen trains. In the 19th century, the tsars of Russia chose Altissimo marble for the construction of St. For a sense of scale, the small yellow blob just to the right of center is the cab of a large excavator.
The marble road of the Cervaiole quarry winds through Monte Altissimo, photographed on July 14, In the three centuries following Michelangelo's time, the Altissimo quarries went through cycles of abandonment and rediscovery. In , Marco Borrini, a local landowner, teamed up with Frenchman Jean Baptiste Alexandre Henraux to start a new company and it has been active in the area ever since.
The venture brought new life to the economically depressed area, employing hundreds of quarrymen, squarers, sled men, stonecutters, and cart drivers, who guided oxen trains. A German student sculpts a marble stone in front of La Cappella marble quarry in Tuscany, on July 18, A worker examines marble at the Cervaiole quarry on Monte Altissimo on July 18, A view of the Cervaiole marble quarry on July 15, For later works, please see: How to Appreciate Modern Sculpture.
How to Carve a Sculpture out of Marble? The creation of a large-scale marble statue, which on average took a Greek sculptor roughly 12 months to complete - involves a number of steps:. Step 1. First, the artist typically makes a small maquette in wax or clay, over an armature or frame. From this initial model, a full-size model is developed, into which tacks are inserted at key reference points. A measuring frame is then placed over the model which records the locations of the tacks.
Step 2. The locations of the tacks are then transferred to the raw marble block, in a process known as pointing. Step 3. Now begins the traditional "hammer and point work" - the basic technique used in all stone sculpture, since the time of Daedalic Greek sculpture , in BCE. This involves knocking off sizeable chunks of unwanted stone, using a mallet and either a long point chisel, or a wedge-shaped pitching chisel.
Step 4. Once the general shape of the statue has emerged from the block, the carver uses other tools to create the precise characteristics of the figure, including toothed or claw chisels, rasps, and rifflers. Of course 20th-century sculptors now have an armoury of power tools, including stone-cutters, drills and other instruments, at their disposal.
Step 5. After the carving is completed, the rough surface of the statue must be finished off. This can be done by abrading the surface with another stone called emery, or else sandpaper. Power tools can also be used to polish the marble. All this abrading and polishing brings out the colour of the stone, and adds a sheen known as a patina. Sometimes, tin and iron oxides or sealing compounds are applied to the surface to give it a highly reflective glowing exterior.
From the era of Early Classical Greek sculpture onwards , no statue was complete until it was painted and decorated. Such painting was a specialist task performed by expert painter. Colour schemes varied, but as a general rule, statues or reliefs that were located high up and whose details were less visible to observers - like the Parthenon frieze - were decorated with brighter, more non-naturalistic colour pigments : hair, for instance, might be painted orange.
Whereas those sculptures positioned nearer to the ground - like those on the Alexander Sarcophagus - were painted with more realistic colours. Sometimes the skin was painted, sometimes not; but eyes, eyebrows, eyelids, and eyelashes were invariably coloured, as was the hair.
In the case of important figurative sculptures, eyes might be inset with coloured enamel or glass, while copper might be applied to the nipples of the chest. For more details, see: Classical Colour Palette.
Problem of Copying Clay Models. Successful sculptors were rarely involved in all the 5 steps outlined above. Yet, the period had changed: Julius II died and the sepulchral monument was very far from being completed, as much as his heir, Francesco Maria Della Rovere, duke of Urbino, compelled the sculptor to conclude the work in seven years at maximum a deadline which was not met in the end.
But the artist did not want to leave Carrara, not only because on the Apuan coast he had created a long-time network of relationships, but also because Pietrasanta quarries had not been exploited yet, and starting that with all that entailed: finding the sites, training the workers, creating the transportation routes was rather a heavy task Michelangelo did not want to undertake. During his stay, started in September, the artist rented a house a sign he wanted to stop in the town for a long period , the one in the Cathedral square on which the bust and plaque can be found today, and he started to negotiate, as usual, with quarrymen.
But in December he received a letter from Rome in which he was accused of favouring Carrara marbles to the detriment of Versilia ones, although the Roman Curia expressly asked him to use the quarries of Seravezza. Yet, not only did Michelangelo not worry about the accusations from the papal state, but he kept on working promptly in Carrara where he stayed until August and he founded, together with a Carrara quarryman, Leonardo Cagione, a company which was destined to start the exploitation of a new quarry, with the double purpose of making the marble provision easier and earning money from the supplies: they would have shared both expenses and earnings.
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