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.

Footnote 11:

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

Footnote 12:

See Note above mentioned.

Footnote 13:

Now lost.

Footnote 14:

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

Footnote 15:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 19:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.’

Footnote 22:

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

Footnote 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.’

Footnote 24:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 26:

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

Footnote 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 ‘_ex_coqui.’ 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