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.

[Illustration:

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!

[Illustration:

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.

[Illustration:

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.

[Illustration:

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