Vasari on Technique | Project Gutenberg

3. Before Vasari published his Lives, at least eight editions of Vitruvius had appeared. The Editio Princeps, ‘curante Jo. Sulpitio Verulano,’ is believed to have been issued at Rome about 1486, and in 1496 and 1497 reprints were published at Florence and at Venice. In 1511 appeared the important edition, with emendations and illustrations, by the famous architect Fra Giocondo of Verona, and this was reprinted in the Giunta edition at Florence in 1513. Other editions saw the light in 1522, 1523, 1543, and 1550. An Italian translation was published in 1521, a French one in 1547, and in 1548 one in German. The reverence of the architects of the Renaissance for Vitruvius was unbounded, and Michelangelo is said to have remarked that if a man could draw he would be able by the help of Vitruvius to become a good architect.

4. Leon Battista Alberti shares with Brunelleschi the distinction of representing in its highest form the artistic culture of the early age of Humanism. His principal work De Re Aedificatoria, or, as it is also called, De Architectura, was published after his death, in 1485. It is divided, like the work of Vitruvius, into ten books, and is an exceedingly comprehensive treatise on the architectural art both in theory and practice, and on the position of architecture in relation to civilization and to society at large. It is written in a noble and elevated style, and, as the title implies, in Latin. It was translated into Italian by Bartoli and into English by J. Leoni (three volumes, folio, 1726). Alberti also wrote shorter tracts on Sculpture and Painting, as well as other works of a less specially artistic order.

5. See Note on ‘Porphyry and Porphyry Quarries’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 101, and A on the Frontispiece, which gives representations in colour of the stones Vasari mentions in these sections, omitting those familiarly known.

6. If a stone be comparatively soft when quarried and become harder after exposure to the air, this is due to the elimination in the air of moisture that it held when in the earth. In a dry climate like that of Egypt there is little or no moisture for stones to hold, and the Egyptian porphyry, Mr W. Brindley reports, is quite as hard when freshly quarried as after exposure. Vasari repeats this remark when he is dealing with granite in § 6, postea, p. 41. He has derived it from Alberti, who in De Architectura, bk. II, ch. vii, notices perfectly correctly that the question is one of the comparative amount of moisture in the stone.

7. ‘Temple of Bacchus’ was the name given at the Renaissance to the memorial chapel containing the tomb of Constantia, daughter of Constantine the Great, on the Via Nomentana close to S. Agnese, and now known as S. Costanza. The name was suggested by the mosaics with vintage scenes on the barrel vault of the aisle, which are of great interest and beauty. In Vasari’s time this still contained the porphyry sarcophagus where Constantia was laid, and of this he goes on to speak. In 1788 Pius VI transferred it to his new Sala a Croce Greca in the Vatican, where it now stands.

8. This is the second of the two vast cubical porphyry sarcophagi in the Croce Greca, and it is believed that it served once to contain the mortal remains of Helena, mother of Constantine. It is much finer in execution than the other, and exhibits a large number of figures in high relief, though incoherently composed. The subject may be the victories of Constantine. It was originally in the monument called ‘Torre Pignattara,’ the supposed mausoleum of Helena on the Via Labicana, and was transported in the twelfth century by Anastatius IV to the Lateran, whence Pius VI had it transferred to the Vatican. The restoration of these huge sarcophagi cost an immense amount in money and time. Massi (Museo Pio-Clementino, Roma, 1846, p. 157) states that the second one absorbed the labour of twenty-five artificers, who worked at it day and night for the space of nine years. Strzygowski, Orient oder Rom, 1901, notices the sarcophagi.

9. Urns, or, as the Italians called them, ‘conche,’ of porphyry, basalt, granite and marble existed in great abundance in the Roman Thermae where they were used for bathing purposes. From the seventh century onwards the Christians adopted these for sepulchral use and placed them in the churches, where many of them are still to be seen (Lanciani, Storia degli Scavi, Roma, 1902, I, 3, and Marangoni, Delle Cose Gentilesche, etc., Roma, 1744). Hence Vasari speaks of the porphyry urn of the Piazza della Rotonda (the Pantheon) as of sepulchral origin, and it was indeed rumoured to have held the ashes of Agrippa, and to have stood once on the apex of the pediment of the Pantheon portico. It was however an ancient bath vessel, and was found when Eugenius IV, 1431–39, first excavated and paved the piazza in front of the Pantheon. It was placed with two Egyptian lions in front of the portico, where it may be seen in the view of the Piazza della Rotonda in G. F. Falda’s Vedute delle Fabbriche, etc., of 1665. Clement XII, 1730–40, who was a Corsini, had it transported for his own sepulchre to the Corsini chapel in the Lateran, where it now stands, with a modern cover. Vasari evidently admired this urn, and he mentions it again in the life of Antonio Rossellino, where he says of the sarcophagus of the monument of the Cardinal of Portugal in S. Miniato, ‘La cassa tiene il garbo di quella di porfido che è in Roma sulla piazza della Ritonda.’ (Opere, ed. Milanesi, III, 95.) See Lanciani, Il Pantheon, etc., Prima Relazione, Roma, 1882, p. 15, where the older authorities are quoted. Of all the bath vases of this kind now visible in Rome, the finest known to the writers is the urn of green porphyry, a rare and beautiful stone, behind the high altar of S. Nicola in Carcere. It is nearly six ft. long, and on each side has two Medusa heads in relief worked in the same piece, with the usual lion’s head on one side at the bottom for egress of water. The workmanship is superb. It may be noted that the existing baptismal font in St. Peter’s, in the first chapel on the left on entering, is the cover of the porphyry sarcophagus of Hadrian turned upside down. It measures 13 ft. in length by 6 ft. in width.

10. In chapter VI of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 93, Vasari writes of the ‘casa di Messer Egidio et Fabio Sasso’ as being ‘in Parione.’ See Note at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture on ‘The Sassi, della Valle, and other Collections of Antiques of the early part of the sixteenth century,’ postea, p. 102 f.

11. This is the ‘Apollo’ at Naples, No. 6281. See Note as above.

12. See Note above mentioned.

14. Now in the Boboli Gardens at Florence. See Note on the Sassi, etc., Collections.

15. See Note on ‘The Revival of Sculpture in Porphyry,’ postea, p. 110 f.

16. Reciprocating saws of the kind Vasari mentions, mostly of soft steel or iron, and also circular saws, are in use at the present day, the abrasives being emery, or a new material called ‘carborundum.’ This consists in minute crystals of intense hardness gained by fusing by an electric current a mixture of clay and similar substances. See The Times, Engineering Supplement, Oct. 31, 1906.

17. It needs hardly to be said that the ancients had no ‘secrets’ such as Vasari hints at. Mr W. Brindley believes that the antique methods of quarrying and working hard stones were ‘precisely the same as our own were until a few years ago,’ that is to say that the blocks were detached from the quarry and split with metal wedges, dressed roughly to shape with large and small picks, and ‘rubbed down with flat stone rubbers and sand, then polished with bronze or copper rubbers with emery powder’ (Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 25). At a very early date in Egyptian history, even before the dynastic period, the hardest stones (not excepting porphyry) were successfully manipulated, and vases and bowls of these materials cut with exquisite precision. Professor Flinders Petrie found evidence that at the epoch of the great pyramids tubular drills and bronze saws set with gem-stones (corundum) were employed by the Egyptians in hollowing basalt sarcophagi and cutting the harder stones (The Pyramids and Temples of Ghizeh, London, 1883, p. 173 f.). There is however no evidence of the use of these advanced appliances by the Greeks or Romans. It must not be forgotten that even before the age of metals the neolithic artificers of western Europe could not only cut and bore, but also ornament with patterns, stone hammer-heads of the most intractable materials, with the aid only of pieces of wood twirled or rubbed on the place and plentifully fed with sand and water. The stone axe- and hammer-heads so common in pre-historic collections were bored with tubular drills, made probably from reeds, which cut out a solid core. Such cores can still be seen in partly-pierced hammer-heads in the Museum at Stockholm, and elsewhere.

18. Fig. 1 shows the inscription of which Vasari writes and the situation of it on the riser of the step is seen on Plate II. The porphyry slab is 3 ft. 5 in. long and 5½ in. high. The tongues at the ends are in separate pieces. The letters, nineteen not eighteen in number, are close upon 2 in. in height and are cleanly cut with V-shaped incisions. The illustration shows the form of the letters which Vasari justly praises. The name ‘Oricellario’ or -us was derived by the distinguished Florentine family that bore it from the plant Oricello, orchil, which was employed for making a beautiful purple dye, from the importation of which from the Levant the family gained wealth and importance. The shortened popular form of the name ‘Rucellai’ is that by which the family is familiarly known. Giovanni Rucellai gave a commission to Alberti to complete the façade of S. Maria Novella, which was carried out by 1470. The Bernardo Rucellai of the inscription, the son of Giovanni, was known as a historian, and owned the gardens where the Platonic Academy had at one time its place of meeting. Fineschi, in his Forestiero Istruito in S. Maria Novella, Firenze, 1790, says that Bernardo desired to be buried in front of the church and had the inscription cut for sepulchral purposes. The existence of sepulchral ‘avelli’ of distinguished Florentine families at the front of the church makes this seem likely, and in this case the lettering would be after Alberti’s time, though as Fineschi believes, the earliest existing work of the kind in hard stone at Florence. See Rev. J. Wood Brown, S. Maria Novella, Edinburgh, 1902, p. 114.

19. After the fashion of an ordinary carpenter’s ‘brace.’

20. See Note on ‘The Porphyry Tazza of the Sala Rotonda of the Vatican,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 108.

21. See Note at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 110 f., on ‘Francesco del Tadda and, the Revival of Sculpture in Porphyry.’

22. About 4 ft. 9 in. In a letter of May 1557 in Gaye, Carteggio, II, 419, Vasari mentions the work as nearly finished.

23. The palace in question is the well-known Palazzo Vecchio at Florence, which was adapted for the Grand-ducal residence largely by Vasari himself under the Grand Dukes Cosimo and his successor Francesco. The fountain is the one at present in the courtyard of the palace, carrying the beautiful bronze figure of a boy with a dolphin, by Verrocchio. This ‘putto’ was brought in from the famous Medicean Villa at Careggi, the seat of the Platonic Academy, for the purpose of completing the fountain of which Vasari here gives an account. The porphyry work, both in design and execution, is worthy of the beautiful bronze that surmounts it. The basin rests on a well-turned dwarf pillar of porphyry and this on a square base of the same material. The surfaces are true and the arrises sharp, and the whole is carried out in a workmanlike manner, and by no means betrays a ‘prentice hand.’

24. See Vasari’s Life of Michelangelo, Opere, ed. Milanesi, VII, 260.

25. That is Cosimo ‘Pater Patriae,’ who died at Careggi in 1464. The portrait in question is shown on Plate III. For what is known about this and other works by Francesco del Tadda, see postea, p. 113 f.

26. See Note on ‘Porphyry and Porphyry Quarries,’ postea, p. 101.

27. This remark is evidently derived by Vasari from Leon Battista Alberti, who writes as follows in De Re Aedificatoria, Lib. II, ‘At nos de porphirite lapide compertum habemus non modo flammis non excoqui, verum et contigua quaeque circumhereant saxa intra fornacem reddere ut ignibus ne quidquam satis exquoquantur.’ The sense of ‘excoqui’ in this passage, and of Vasari’s ‘cuocer,’ is somewhat obscure, but can be interpreted by reference to old writings on stones, in which great importance is given to their comparative power of resistance to fire. See Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 22, etc., etc. Theophrastus, Περὶ Λίθων, § 4, has the following: ‘Stones have many special properties ... for some are consumed by fire and others resist it ... and in respect of the action of the fire and the burning they show many differences....’ The ‘excoqui’ of Alberti probably refers to the resistance of porphyry to the fire as compared with the submission to it of stones like limestone, which are ‘burnt out’ or calcined by the heat. Vasari’s ‘non si cuoce’ is not an adequate translation of Alberti’s word ‘excoqui.’ With a blast heat porphyry fuses to a sort of obsidian or slag, but a moderate heat only causes it to lose its fine purple hue and become grey. This is the ‘rawness’ implied in Vasari’s word ‘incrudelisce.’ To us rawness suggests raw meat which is redder in colour than cooked, but the Italians, who are not great meat eaters, would have in their minds the action of fire on cakes and similar comestibles that darken when baked, and an Italian artist would think too of the action of fire on clay, ‘che viene rossa quando ella è cotta’ as he says in chapter XXV of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. See Frontispiece, where A¹, compared with A, shows the effect of fire on the stone.

28. The two porphyry columns, that stand one on each side of Ghiberti’s Old Testament gates at the eastern door of the Baptistry of Florence, serve to point a moral about the untrustworthiness of popular sayings. When these apply to monuments it usually happens that the monument itself hopelessly discredits the saying. The porphyry columns in question are perfectly normal in colour and show no recognizable trace of the action of fire. Villani (Chronicle, bk. IV, ch. 31) says of these columns ‘The Pisani sent them to Florence covered with scarlet cloth, and some said that before they sent them they put them in the fire for envy.’ If we rationalize a little we can imagine that the scarlet cloth, the use of which by the Pisans in connection with porphyry shows a most lamentable absence of taste in colour, would at first sight seem to take the colour out of the porphyry and make it look grey through contrast. Hence may have arisen the impression which gave rise to the saying. Boccaccio, in his commentary on the passage in Dante (Inferno, XV, 67), in which the ‘blindness’ of the Florentines is referred to, notices this affair of the columns as one explanation of this accusation against his countrymen.

29. On the subject of serpentine some misapprehension exists. Mineralogists apply the term to a soft stone of a green hue with long curling markings through it, which in their form suggest lacertine creatures and account for the name of the stone. It derives its colour from the presence of a large percentage of manganese in union with silica, and contains twelve or so per cent. of water. A penknife scores it easily. The ‘Verde di Prato,’ a dark stone used in bands on Tuscan buildings, of which there is question in a subsequent section, postea, p. 43, is a species of true serpentine.

On the other hand the word ‘serpentine’ is in common use for a dark green stone of quite a different kind, that occurs very commonly in ancient Roman tesselated pavements, and it is this false serpentine that Vasari has in view. It is very hard indeed, and a penknife does not mark it. Professor Bonney describes it as ‘a somewhat altered porphyritic basalt,’ and it is full of scattered crystals of a paler green composed of plagioclasic felspar. These crystals average about the size of grains of maize and they sometimes cross each other, thus justifying Vasari’s description of them. A specimen is B, on the Frontispiece. This stone was found in Egypt, and it is probably the ‘Augustan’ and ‘Tiberian’ stone mentioned by Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 7. See Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 9. The chief quarry of it however was in the Peloponnesus to the south of Sparta, and the produce of this is called by Pliny, loc. cit., ‘Lacedaemonium viride.’ It should be noted that ‘Verde Antico,’ a green marble of which the chief quarries are in Thessaly, is distinct from both the true and the false ‘serpentine.’

30. Cipollaccio. It is not clear what is the difference, if any exist, between the stone thus called and the ‘Cipollino’ which Vasari discusses in a later section, postea, p. 49. The latter is a name in universal employment, but the term ‘Cipollaccio’ is not known to Cavaliere Marchionni, the courteous Director of the Florentine State Manufactory of Mosaics, nor is it recognized at Carrara. On the other hand it is given as the name of a marble in Tomaseo’s Dizionario (though probably only on the strength of this mention in Vasari) and a stone worker at Settignano claimed to know and use the word. On the material see the Note on ‘Cipollino,’ postea, p. 49. The terminations ‘-accio’ and ‘-ino’ are dear to the Florentines—Masaccio and Masolino will occur to everyone.

31. This is the ‘Cortile di Belvedere’ where the Laocoon and Apollo Belvedere are located. See Note 30.

32. On Michelangelo’s niche and fountain see the Note on ‘The Cortile of the Belvedere in the Vatican in the sixteenth century,’ at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 115. The ‘river god’ is the ‘Tigris’ of the Vatican.

33. Vasari’s description of the variegated stones called breccias is clear and good. Corsi, Delle Pietre Antiche, Roma, 1845, p. 139, defines breccias as ‘marbles formed of numerous fragments of other marbles either of one colour or of different colours, embedded in a calcareous cement.’ The mineralogist distinguishes breccias from conglomerates by the fact that in the former the fragments embedded are angular, in the latter round like pebbles. The fragments need not be of marble. These breccias were greatly used at the Renaissance, as Vasari indicates, for the framing of doorways and for chimney pieces, but it may be questioned whether they are really suitable for such architectural use. For door jambs and similar constructive members a self-coloured stone, with its greater severity of effect, would be preferable. On the other hand, for panels and inlays and decorative uses generally, the variegated stones are quite in place. See C, D on the Frontispiece.

34. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries’ postea, p. 119 f.

35. S. Giusto, commonly called S. Giusto a Monte Martiri, lies by Monte Rantoli, between the valleys of the Ema and Greve, to the south of Florence.

36. Breccia columns answering to this description are to be seen in the lower part of the Boboli Gardens to the west of the ‘island basin’ with John of Bologna’s ‘Oceanus.’

37. The Egyptian breccia is found at Hamamat to the east of Luxor. It consists, Mr Brindley writes, in rich-coloured silicious fragments cemented together, and is very difficult to work and to polish, ‘owing to the cementing matrix being frequently harder than the boulders.’ Its general colour is greenish and it is called sometimes ‘Breccia Verde.’ The most important known work executed in this breccia is the grand sarcophagus of Nectanebes I, about 378 B.C., now in the British Museum. It is on the left in the large Hall a little beyond the Rosetta stone. Transactions, R.I.B.A., 1888, p. 24 ff.

38. Signor Cornish, the courteous castellan of the Royal Palace, believes this to be the urn that now serves as the basin of the fountain surmounted with a figure of the Arno, near the Annalessa gate of the Boboli Gardens. It has two masks carved on the front, as is common in antique conche of the kind.

39. On entering the porch or narthex of St. Peter’s by the central archway, the visitor may note on each side of the external opening a column of breccia, or strictly speaking of ‘pavonazzetto brecciato,’ over twenty-five feet in height. They are worn, patched, and discoloured, and evidently come from some earlier building. It can be reasonably conjectured that these are the two columns to which Vasari refers, and that they were originally in the old basilica which was being replaced in Vasari’s time by the existing structure. Vasari would see them in their original position forming part of the colonnade between nave and aisles, for the entrance part of the old Constantinian basilica was still standing in the sixteenth century, and the columns were only removed to their present position when Paul V constructed the existing façade at the beginning of the century following.

40. The familiar red Verona marble is not a true breccia, but a fossil marble.

41. ‘Granite’ is from the Italian ‘granito,’ which means the ‘grained’ stone.

42. The ‘grandissimi vasi de’ bagni,’ to which Vasari here refers, are those vast granite bath-shaped urns, some twenty feet long, of which the best known is probably the specimen that stands by the obelisk in the centre of the amphitheatre of the Boboli Gardens at Florence. This, with a fellow urn, that stands not far off in the Piazzale della Meridiana, came from the Villa Medici at Rome, and they may have been seen in Rome by Vasari before they were placed in that collection. No such urns are now to be found in or about any of the three churches at Rome here mentioned by Vasari. Documents however, recently published in the first volume of Lanciani’s Storia degli Scavi, pp. 3–5, show that there stood formerly in the Piazza S. Salvatore in Lauro, north west from the Piazza Navona, a ‘conca maximae capacitatis,’ to which Vasari no doubt refers. Two other such conchae were found in the Thermae of Agrippa, and one was placed by Paul II, 1464–71, in the Piazza di S. Marco, which was then called ‘Piazza della Conca di S. Marco,’ while the other was located by Paul III (Farnese), 1534–49, in front of his palace. Cardinal Odoardo Farnese afterwards united the two and formed with them the two fountains now in the Piazza Farnese. Lanciani also mentions a ‘conca di bigio in S. Pietro in Vinculis.’ There is a fine specimen, which may be one of those Vasari has mentioned, in front of the little church of S. Stefano at the back of St. Peter’s. We wish cordially to thank Signor Cornish, of the Royal Palace, Florence, for information kindly given about the Boboli monuments.

43. The quarries opened by the Romans in Elba are now practically abandoned. The Catalogue to the Italian Section of the London International Exhibition of 1862 speaks of the granites of Elba as ‘but little used, although blocks and columns of almost any size may be had.’ In the late mediaeval and Renaissance period however, the quarries of Elba were worked, and the granite columns of the Baptistry of Pisa were cut there in the twelfth century, while Cosimo I extracted thence the granite block out of which he cut the tazza of the Boboli Gardens mentioned by Vasari a few sentences further on. Jervis, I Tesori Sotterranei dell’ Italia, Torino, 1889, p. 315, speaks of the remains of Roman quarrying works to be seen on the Island. He believes that the grey columns of the Pantheon (see Note infra) are Elban, and Cellini (Scultura, ch. vi) claims an Elban origin for the granite column of S. Trinità, Florence, which is certainly antique and of Roman provenance, see postea, p. 110 f.

44. The portico of the Pantheon is now supported by sixteen monoliths of granite nearly 40 ft. high. Seven of these in the foremost row are of grey granite, the eighth (that at the north-east angle) and all those behind are of red granite. The present portico is a reconstruction by Hadrian in octostyle form of the original decastyle portico built by Agrippa. Agrippa’s portico had columns of a grey granite called ‘granito del foro,’ because it is the same kind that is used for the columns of the Forum of Trajan (Basilica Ulpia). This according to Corsi, Delle Pietre Antiche, Roma, 1845, is Egyptian from Syene, the Lapis Psaronius of Pliny, and Professor Lanciani, who has kindly written in reply to our question on the subject, endorses this opinion, though Jervis, see above, thinks the grey Pantheon columns are Elban. When Hadrian reconstructed the portico, he added columns of red granite, which are admitted by all to be Egyptian. The two columns at the east of the present portico were brought in in the year 1666 to fill gaps caused by the fall of the two Hadrianic ones. They came from the Baths of Nero and were found near S. Luigi dei Francesi. See postea, p. 128 f.

45. See Note 4, ante, p. 26.

46. The form of the pick Vasari seems to have in his mind is given in the sketch, C, Fig. 2, postea, p. 48. Among other tools figured in the illustration, A and B are some that are employed at this day in Egypt for the working of hard stones.

47. This tazza is still in evidence and serves as the basin of the great fountain in the ‘island’ lake in the western part of the Boboli Gardens. It is said that Duke Cosimo extracted a second tazza larger than this one from the Elban quarry but it was unfortunately broken. Signor Cornish says the fragments are still to be seen. The sculptor Tribolo was sent to Elba to obtain the basins. Of the ‘tavola’ or table nothing is known.

48. In this apparently innocent section Vasari has mixed up notices of some half-dozen different kinds of stone, on most of which his ideas are somewhat vague. Hence a separate Note is required, and this will be found at the end of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 117 (‘Paragon and other Stones associated with it by Vasari’). The letters (a), (b), etc., are referred to in the Note.

49. The ‘Apollo’ at Naples, in basalt, no. 6262. See Note, postea, p. 104.

50. The porphyry ‘Apollo’ at Naples, no. 6281. See Note, as above.

51. The five eastern window openings of S. Miniato are filled with slabs of antique pavonazzetto with red-purple markings, nearly two inches thick and measuring in surface about 9 ft. by 3 ft. The windows are square headed. The slabs transmit the light unequally according to the darker or lighter patches in their markings, but the effect is pleasing. Similar window fillings are to be seen at Orvieto. ‘Almost any marble,’ it has been said, ‘with crystalline statuary ground, an inch thick, placed on the sunny side of a church in Italy would admit sufficient light for worship, but it would not do in our variable climate.’ The so-called Onyx marbles of Algeria and Mexico, as well as Oriental alabasters, are specially suitable for the purpose here in view. The ‘white and yellowish’ eastern marbles that Vasari writes of were probably of this kind.

52. By ‘the same quarries’ Vasari means, no doubt, those of Egypt and Greece, of Carrara, of Prato, etc., mentioned in § 7 in connection with ‘paragon.’ On the subject see the Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119f.

53. The reference is to the two so-called ‘Horse-Tamers’ opposite the Quirinal Palace at Rome, that probably once stood in front of the Thermae of Constantine, which occupied the slope of the Quirinal. The figures of the youths, perhaps representing the Dioscuri, are eighteen feet high, and the material was long ago pronounced Thasian marble (see Matz-Duhn, Antike Bildwerke in Rom, Leipzig, 1881, I, 268). The works are Roman copies of Greek originals. They have recently been overhauled, with very good result as regards their appearance. The sculptor, Professor Ettore Ferrari, who superintended this work, reports that the material is ‘marmo greco,’ which may be held to settle the question in favour of Greek as against Luna marble.

54. The ‘Nile’ is now in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican, the fellow-statue, the ‘Tiber,’ see ante, p. 36, in the Louvre at Paris. They are said to have been discovered at Rome early in the sixteenth century, near S. Maria Sopra Minerva where was the Temple of Isis and Serapis, and Pope Leo X had them placed in the Cortile di Belvedere of the Vatican. They were removed to Paris in ‘the year X’ by Napoleon, and in 1815 the ‘Nile’ was sent back to Rome, the ‘Tiber’ remaining in the Louvre. The ‘Nile’ is much the better work of art and is a copy or a study from an Alexandrian original, perhaps the ‘Nilus’ in basalt, which, according to Pliny, Hist. Nat., XXXVI, 7, Augustus dedicated in the Temple of Peace. Amelung, in his Sculpturen des Vaticanischen Museums, only states that the ‘Nile’ is in ‘großkörnigem Marmor.’ The material of the statue certainly differs from that of the restored parts, and we should guess it as Pentelic marble repaired with Carrara. About the ‘Tiber,’ Froener, in the Louvre Catalogue, states that it is of Pentelic marble, and it is so labelled. Our measurements show that both statues required blocks of the dimensions 10 ft. by 5 ft. by 5 ft. in height. It may be noted that the finest statuary marble known, that of the island of Paros, is not to be obtained in very large blocks. That out of which the Hermes of Praxiteles has been carved must have measured about 8 ft. by 5 ft. by 3 ft. 6 in. and is considered an exceptionally fine block. Pentelic and Carrara marble can be obtained in much larger pieces. We saw not long ago in the modern quarries behind Mount Pentelicus a block nearly 20 ft. in cube. One seventeen feet long has recently been cut in the Monte Altissimo quarries in the Carrara mountains for a copy of the ‘David’ of Michelangelo. A piece of Monte Altissimo marble of the best quality is shown as J on the Frontispiece.

55. This remark shows a just observation on the part of Vasari. The Greek nose is markedly different from the Florentine. The latter, as may be seen in the ‘St. George’ of Donatello, or the ‘David’ of Michelangelo, has more shape than the classical nose. There is more difference marked between the nasal bone and the cartilaginous prolongation towards the tip, and there is more modelling about the nostril, which the Italian sculptors make thinner and more sensitive.

56. The Carfagnana, or more properly Garfagnana, is the name applied to the upper part of the valley of the Serchio, between the Apennines and the Apuan Alps, on the western slopes of which the marble quarries are situated. See Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119 f., for the different marbles and their provenance.

57. Benvenuto Cellini, Scultura, ch. iv, mentions this black marble from Carrara, which he says is very hard and brittle and difficult to work. Black marble is still quarried in the Carrara district, but only to a small extent.

58. The grey marble is that known now as ‘Bardiglio’; the grey-veined ‘Marmo-’ or ‘Bardiglio-’ ‘fiorito’; the red, ‘Breccia.’

59. For ‘Cipollino’ see footnote 70 on p. 49, postea.

60. The ‘Mischiati’ are the variegated stones we know as ‘Breccias,’ already noticed in § 5. Vasari explains the names ‘Saligni’ and ‘Campanini’ in § 10. The terms are not now in use.

61. The ‘David’ stood formerly on the left hand side as one entered the gateway of the Ducal Palace, or Palazzo Vecchio. It is 15 feet high. In 1873 it was removed, and is now in the Academy, but Bandinello’s group still holds its original position to the right of the entrance, on the side towards the Uffizi.

62. The existing figure of Neptune is the work of Ammanati, to whom Florence owes the stately Ponte S. Trinità. The subsidiary figures of sea-deities on the fountain are by other hands.

63. See Note, postea, p. 119 f.

64. On the subject of the Seravezza quarries and their exploitation by Michelangelo see Note, as above. With regard to the Façade of S. Lorenzo much might be said, as the project for its completion has now again come forward into prominence. See articles by Sig. B. Supino in L’Arte, Anno IV, fasc. 7, and M. Marcel Reymond in the Revue Archéologique for 1906. It is well known that Brunelleschi, who reconstructed the basilica in the fifteenth century, left the façade incomplete and with no indication of his design for it. As it was the church of the Medici, the popes of this family, Leo X and Clement VII, furthered by means of a competition a grand project for its completion; and in this work Michelangelo was for many years involved. Drawings of his for the proposed façade are to be seen in the Casa Buonarroti, and he prepared marbles, as noticed in the Note, postea, p. 119 f., but the preparations proved abortive.

What Vasari says about Michelangelo’s façade that it ‘è oggi abbozzata fuor della porta di detta chiesa,’ and that there is one column on the spot, is interesting but not very easy to understand. Milanesi, in a note on this passage in his edition of Vasari, I, 119, going one better than the Lemonnier editors, gives a circumstantial account to the effect that ‘The preliminary work (abbozzata) which was outside the church in the days of Vasari, was buried in the first years of the seventeenth century, along with other architectural fragments, in a trench excavated on the piazza along the left side of the church.’ Unfortunately among the authorities at S. Lorenzo this statement is smiled at as a mere popular legend, but it is hoped that in connection with the long-delayed completion, which is now again on the tapis, the truth on this matter will come to light.