chapter XXV

of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. See Frontispiece, where A^1, compared with A, shows the effect of fire on the stone.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.’

Footnote 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—Mas_accio_ and Maso_lino_ will occur to everyone.

Footnote 31:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 34:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.’

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 40:

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

Footnote 41:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 45:

See Note 4, ante, p. 26.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 49:

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

Footnote 50:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 58:

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

Footnote 59:

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

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 63:

See Note, postea, p. 119 f.

Footnote 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.

Footnote 65:

Milanesi remarks, ad loc., that for ‘Pietrasanta’ Vasari should have written ‘Carrara,’ as the quarries at the latter place were actually exploited by the ancients, whereas the Pietrasanta workings were only opened up in the time of Michelangelo. See postea, p. 122. The Pietrasanta people however do claim that the Romans were at work among their hills.

Footnote 66:

There are abundant instances both from Greek and from Roman times of statues, heads, architectural members, columns, and the like, blocked out in the quarries, and still lying unfinished as they were left many hundreds of years ago.

Footnote 67:

Vasari gives a notice of Giovanni da Nola, whose surname was Merliano, in the _Lives_ of Alfonso Lombardi and other sculptors. See _Opere_, ed. Milanesi, V, 94 f. He there describes the tomb mentioned above, which was to have been transported to Spain, but owing to the death of the viceroy, Don Pietro, Marquis of Villafranca, it has remained in S. Giacomo at Naples.

Footnote 68:

Some of the tools of sculptors and masons referred to by Vasari are shown in Fig. 2, E-J, above.

Footnote 69:

A worker in stones at Settignano knew of drills of the weight of about twelve pounds each, and thought twenty pounds conceivable, for very large work.

Footnote 70:

Vasari seems to refer to the common greyish marble popularly called ‘Sicilian.’ There are finer kinds of veined marble called ‘fioriti,’ ‘flowered,’ including ‘marmi fioriti’ and ‘bardigli fioriti,’ the last in two shades of grey.

Footnote 71:

i.e., the breccias noticed in § 5.

Footnote 72:

‘Cipollino’ marble, a very familiar material, receives its name from ‘cipolla,’ an onion, but there is a curious divergence of opinion as to the reason of the appellation. (1) The onion colour the marble shows in many specimens; (2) the onion-like shape of the large bossy markings which occur in the marble; (3) the fact that it is disposed to scale away under the influence of the weather like the coats of an onion; and (4) the concentric curves in which the edges of these coats are seen to lie in a section across the grain, have all been adduced as explanatory of the name. Herrmann in his _Steinbruchindustrie_, Berlin, 1899, p. 68, pronounces for the third, and this is also the opinion of Corsi, who says, _Pietre Antiche_, p. 97, ‘gli scarpellini lo conoscono sotto il nome di cipollino, per la ragione che, trovandosi fra la sostanza calcare di tel marmo lunghi e spessi strati di mica, facilmente su tali strati si divide a somiglianza della cipolla.’ Zirkel however, in his _Lehrbuch der Petrographie_, Leipzig, 1894, III, 452, pronounces for the fourth, which seems on the whole the one to be preferred. There are two cipollino columns standing in the Roman Forum a little to the east of the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, famous for its monoliths of this same marble, that in the concentric wavy lines marking the alternate layers in the stone remind us curiously of an onion cut in half. See for a specimen H on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 73:

Vasari explains the name ‘saligno’ as ‘salt-like.’ The term is not recognized at Carrara, nor in the Florentine manufactory of Mosaics.

Footnote 74:

The term ‘campanino’ for a kind of marble is not known now in the Carrara district.

Footnote 75:

About 10 miles south east of Carrara.

Footnote 76:

Near Pietrasanta in the Apuan Alps.

Footnote 77:

On the promontory of Piombino, opposite Elba.

Footnote 78:

In the so-called Pisan Mountains between Pisa and Lucca. For these places and their quarries see Note on ‘Tuscan Marble Quarries,’ postea, p. 119 f.

Footnote 79:

See Note, as above, especially p. 126.

Footnote 80:

There are great quarries of this stone below Tivoli near the course of the ancient Anio, now Teverone. The station Bagni on the Roma-Tivoli railway is close to them. Those near the place called Barco were exploited by the ancient Romans, while Bernini derived the stone for the colonnades in front of St. Peter’s from the quarries called ‘Le Fosse,’ a little to the north of the former. Vitruvius, _De Arch._, II, vii, 2, writes of the ‘Tiburtina saxa’ as resisting all destructive agencies save that of fire, and the remark is repeated by Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXVI, 22. Vasari’s account of its origin is correct. It is a deposit of lime in water, and the cavities in it are

## partly caused by plants, moss, etc., round which the deposit has

formed itself and which of course have long ago decayed away. See O on the Frontispiece. The stone did not come into use at Rome until about the last century of the Republic, and it was not, like peperino, one of the old traditional building materials.

Footnote 81:

Vasari evidently refers to the remains of the Templum Sacrae Urbis behind the present church of Ss. Cosma e Damiano, to which was affixed the ancient ‘Capitoline’ plan of Rome.

Footnote 82:

See the remarks on Rusticated masonry in § 20, and Notes, postea, pp. 65 and 132.

Footnote 83:

On the ‘round temple,’ and its designer, ‘Maestro Gian,’ see Note on the subject, postea, p. 128 f.

Footnote 84:

S. Luigi dei Francesi is the national church of the French, and is situated close to the Palazzo Madama, the meeting place of the Italian Senate, near the Piazza Navona. The present edifice was built by Giacomo della Porta and consecrated in 1589. See Note, postea, p. 128 f.

Footnote 85:

For which it offers in the cavities above spoken of an excellent key.

Footnote 86:

Traces of these stucco decorations are still to be seen in the public entrance to the Colosseum next the Esquiline. They are said to have been taken as models by some of the plaster-workers of the Renaissance. See Vasari’s Life of Giovanni da Udine, _Opere_, VI, 553.

Footnote 87:

This is the so-called ‘Sala Regia’ which serves as a vestibule to the Sistine Chapel. Sixtus IV planned it and San Gallo enlarged it and began the adornment of the vault with plaster work, which was carried on afterwards by Perino del Vaga and Daniele da Volterra (Pistolesi, _Il Vaticano Descritto_, VIII, 89). It is the most richly decorated of all the Vatican apartments, but is florid and overladen. The stucco enrichment of the roof is heavy, and the figures in the same material by Daniele da Volterra that are sprawling on the tops of the doorways and on the cornices are of the extravagant later Renaissance type. The contrast between this showy hall and the exquisitely treated Appartamento Borgia of earlier date is very marked.

Footnote 88:

The Farnese Palace is in the main the work of Antonio da San Gallo, the younger, who at his death in 1546 had carried up the façade nearly to the cornice and completed the ground story and half the second story of the cortile. Michelangelo finished the second or middle story of the cortile, as far as the architecture went, according to San Gallo’s design, and added the third story from his own. His are also the enrichments of the frieze of the second order in the cortile, and he has the chief credit for the noble external cornice, of which Vasari writes in this section. It is now rather the fashion to criticize severely Michelangelo’s architectural forms, and G. Clausse, _Les San Gallo_, Paris, 1901, condemns his third story of the cortile and says of his frieze (p. 85), ‘Michelange fit ajouter dans la frise ces guirlandes et ces mascarons en stuc qui enlèvent à ce beau portique le caractère de grandeur simple et d’harmonieuse majesté dû à ses proportions mêmes.’ It will not escape notice that Vasari regards these ornaments as not in stucco but in the travertine itself. On the question thus raised Monseigneur Duchesne, the distinguished Director of the French School at Rome which is housed in the Farnese, has had the kindness in reply to our inquiry to say that so far as can be ascertained without the use of scaffolding the ornaments of the frieze are in stucco, with the exception of the Fleur-de-lys which occur in the position of key-stones above the centre of each window arch. These are in travertine, as are the ornaments (trophies of arms etc.) carved on the metopes of the frieze of the order of the ground story in the cortile. The point has some interest in connection with the travertine carvings by the French artist at S. Luigi dei Francesi (see postea, p. 131), and the suggestion of M. Marcel Reymond (loc. cit.) that the Italians of the first half of the fifteenth century were not accustomed, as the French were, to execute decorative carvings in soft stone.

Footnote 89:

The exterior of St. Peter’s is built of travertine, and a walk round it gives an opportunity for a study of the fine effect of the stone when used on a vast scale. The details of construction in the interior, which are lauded by Vasari, are now concealed under the decoration that covers all the interior surfaces.

Footnote 90:

Lavagna is on the coast about half way between Genoa and Spezzia. The slate of the district is pronounced by Mr Brindley to be of poor quality and liable to bleach to a dirty ochre colour like that of brown paper. In the Official Catalogue of the Italian section of the International Exhibition of 1862 it is stated that in modern times also ‘large jars or reservoirs for containing oil, made of this slate, are employed in Liguria, as well as in the principal maritime dépôts of the oil trade.’

Footnote 91:

Peperino is a volcanic product in origin quite distinct from travertine. It consists of ashes and fragments of different materials compacted together and is called ‘pepper stone’ from the black grains that occur in it. It was one of the two old traditional building stones at Rome before the introduction of travertine from the quarries by Tibur, the other being the coarser and commoner tufa of which the wall of Servius Tullius was built. The most interesting monument in the material is the sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus in the Vatican, dating from the third century B.C. A characteristic piece, with the black ‘pepper’ marks, is shown as Q on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 92:

Istrian stone is a fine-grained limestone of a warm yellowish grey tint; it is capable of taking a polish, and is obtainable in large pieces. It is broken at various points of the coast from Merlera near Pola to the island of Lesina off the coast by Spalato, and was largely used in the buildings of Venice, and generally in north-eastern Italy. A considerable amount has been recently employed in the monumental buildings of the Ring at Vienna. See L on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 93:

‘The Doric edifice of the Panattiera’ sounds a very curious description of Sansovino’s famous and magnificent Library of S. Marco, the finest late Renaissance building in Italy, but this seems to be what Vasari had in his mind. Dr Robertson of Venice has been kind enough to explain in a letter the history of the site which he has ascertained from the archives. The ground where the Library now stands was occupied up to 1537 by a government grain and bread store, the ‘Panattiera’ (or more properly ‘Panatteria’). The shops for the sale of bread were then removed and grouped round the base of the Campanile, where they were replaced a little later by Sansovino’s Loggetta. Vasari visited Venice in 1542, and at that time if the shops and store had themselves been removed their name would still cling to the place and explain his words. We should hardly call the Library a ‘Doric edifice,’ as only the lower Order is ‘Doric,’ but we must remember that it was only this lower Order that would be completed at the date of Vasari’s visit.

Footnote 94:

The Tuscan Zecca. The original Zecca or mint was at the Rialto, and it was afterwards transferred to the Piazzetta, where Sansovino in 1535 erected for it the present edifice, in the rusticated or Tuscan style. The situation of it is between the Library and the quay. The façade shows an arcaded lowest story in rusticated masonry, with two stories above, one in the Doric the other in the Ionic Order, and the columns in both cases are themselves rusticated; that is to say they have projecting horizontal courses of stone that appear to mark them with a series of bands or bars.

Footnote 95:

‘Macigno’ is a green grey sandstone of the lower tertiary formation in Italy.

Footnote 96:

Pietra Serena is a very fine sedimentary sandstone, and Vasari does not say too much in its praise. Baldinucci in his _Vocabolario_ repeats much of what Vasari has said, but mentions also a ‘pietra bigia’ or grey stone, which lies outside the ‘serena,’ and is inferior to it.

The quarries of pietra serena are abundant along the southern slopes of Monte Ceceri, to the south east of Fiesole, overhanging Majano. The blue colour Vasari ascribes to it is the cause of its name, the epithet ‘sereno’ being specially applicable to the clear blue sky. See G on the Frontispiece. Vasari’s account of the stones dealt with in §§ 16, 17, is not very clear, as he returns to the epithet ‘serena’ at the close of § 16 for a stone that he makes to differ essentially from the ‘serena’ of the beginning of the section in that it is weather-resisting. Cellini in his second Treatise, _Della Scultura_, ed. Milanesi, 1893, p. 201, is clearer. He distinguishes three kinds, (1) ‘pietra serena,’ azure in hue and only good for work in interiors; (2) a stone of a brownish hue (tanè) that he calls ‘pietra morta.’ The lexicographers fight shy of this term, but it seems to mean a stone without any lime in it and therefore unchangeable by the action of fire, while a limestone would be ‘pietra viva.’ See Cellini, loc. cit., p. 187. This is suitable for figure carving, and it resists ‘wind and rain and all violence of the weather.’ It is evidently the stone Vasari writes of as the material of Donatello’s ‘Dovizia.’ (3) The third kind is the pietra forte, also brownish in hue, and useful for decorative carvings on exteriors. Cellini notes as Vasari does that it is only found in small pieces.

Footnote 97:

Pietra del fossato. Signor Cellerini, of the Opera del Duomo, Florence, says that the name ‘pietra del fossataccio’ is still used among practical stone workers. It is stone gained by excavation.

Footnote 98:

The colour of the stone in the Library and New Sacristy of S. Lorenzo is a brownish grey rather than ‘bluish.’ It tells as warm in hue against the white walls, which are of marble in the Sacristy and in the Library of plaster.

Footnote 99:

Dr A. Gherardi, Director of the State Archives at Florence, has been so kind as to make researches in the documents under his charge for the purpose of discovering Vasari’s authority for this statement. These investigations have so far however proved without result. Among the ‘Leggi e Bandi’ of the sixteenth century in Tuscany collected by Cantini in the first volume of his _Legislazione Toscana_ there are various regulations about trades, prohibitions against cutting timber on the hills, measures facilitating the import of building materials into certain localities, and the like, which show that an edict such as Vasari refers to was quite possible in the early days of the Grand Ducal régime. The nearest approach to it that we have been able to discover are certain edicts of the end of the sixteenth century, published by Mariotti, _La Legislazione delle Belle Arti_, Roma, 1892, p. 246 f., that prohibit the exportation from the state of ‘pietre mischie dure’ (agates, jaspers, and the like) of which the Grand Duke had need for a certain chapel he was building, evidently the ‘Cappella dei Principi’ at S. Lorenzo.

Footnote 100:

This is of course the well known ‘Uffizi,’ erected by Vasari between 1560 and 1574 for the accommodation of various state departments. The expression ‘strada’ or ‘street’ has reference to the scheme of the building, which is erected along the two sides and one end of a very elongated, and indeed street-like, court, from which the various entrances into the building open. In documents relating to its construction it is sometimes referred to as ‘Via dei Magistrati.’ A little later Vasari gives an interesting note on the scheme of construction he employed in the lower order of the edifice. See postea, p. 72 f.

Footnote 101:

The Mercato Vecchio at Florence was an open square that occupied the northern portion of the site now covered by the new Piazza Vittorio Emmanuele. On the side next the Via Calimara a granite column was erected in 1431, and on this column was set up the statue by Donatello representing ‘Abundance’ (‘Dovizia’). This stood till October 20, 1721, when in consequence of damage due to time and exposure it fell to the ground and was dashed into pieces. In the following year, 1722, Giov. Batt. Foggini carved another figure representing the same allegorical personage, and this remained till our own time; and may be seen _in situ_ in one of Alinari’s photographs. It is now in the museum of S. Marco with other fragments from the demolitions in the ‘Centro.’ See Guido Carocci, _Il Mercato Vecchio di Firenze_, Firenze, 1884.

Footnote 102:

On ‘Pietra Forte,’ the Official Catalogue of the Italian Section of the International Exhibition of 1862 reports, p. 62, as follows. ‘The rock called _Pietraforte_ ... is very largely used in Florence; it is very durable, as may be seen in the older palaces of the city. In composition it is an arenaceous limestone, which is very hard and unalterable, as its name implies.’ It has been extensively quarried by Fiesole and to the north of Majano, and Monte Ripaldi, above the valley of the Ema to the south of Florence, furnishes large supplies of it. See M, N, on the Frontispiece.

Footnote 103:

The blocks used for the façade of the Pitti have been remarked on for their great size, one of them, an exceptional one it is true, measures 28 ft. in length.

Footnote 104:

On this use of the word ‘Goth’ or ‘Gothic’ in the sense of ‘mediaeval,’ see Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture,’ postea, p. 133 f.

Footnote 105:

Or San Michele, as every visitor to Florence knows, is the church occupying the lower story of a lofty building in the Via Calzaiuoli. Constructively speaking the upper part is supported on the ground story by piers between which are round headed arches, three on the north and south sides and two on the east and west. The heads of these are in every case filled with florid late Gothic tracery with intersecting arches and rich cusping, and on all sides but the west the openings below the heads are walled in. On the west the arches contain the doorways of entrance, and the tracery above the doors, about which Vasari is writing, is richer than on the other sides of the building. It is curious to find Vasari calling this work ‘truly admirable,’ whereas a page or two later we shall find him inveighing against the ‘Goths’ (the mediaeval builders) and all their works and ways.

Footnote 106:

Coats of arms. These ‘stemmi,’ as they are often called, are very familiar objects on the exterior of Tuscan palaces, and the arms of the Medici, six round balls or pellets, are constantly in evidence. In the view of the Fortress in Fig. 3 a ‘stemma’ of the Medici is to be seen displayed on the face of the wall. It is referred to by Vasari, _Opere_, ed. Milanesi, IV, 544. Mariotti, _La Legislazione delle Belle Arti_, Roma, 1892, p. 245, has printed an interesting edict of the year 1571, in Tuscany, designed to protect these memorials of the ancient Florentine families. The memory of those who built the houses, it says, ‘is preserved and perpetuated by their Arms, Insignia, Titles, Inscriptions, which are affixed or painted or carved or suspended over the doors, arches, windows, projecting angles or other places where they are conspicuously to be seen,’ and the edict, re-enacting older regulations, reminds the citizens that no one who purchases or becomes possessed of an old house on which there are insignia of the kind is allowed to remove or in any way deface them. No new owner is to presume to add his own arms or other memorial by the side of the old ones of the founder and constructor of the house. Only in cases where these are absent may the new owner put up his own insignia. This regulation shows a historical sense and a care for the tangible memorials of a city’s past which have been too often lacking in more modern times. No doubt it is due to its enforcement that so many of these ‘stemmi’ are left to add interest to the somewhat modernized streets of the Florence of to-day.

Footnote 107:

‘In the times of the Goths;’ ‘German work.’ See Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture,’ postea, p. 133 f.

Footnote 108:

It will be seen that in this section Vasari combines two quite distinct things, the so-called ‘Tuscan,’ or as he calls it, the ‘Rustic’ Order, and rusticated masonry, which has nothing to do with the Orders of Architecture, but is a method of treating wall-surfaces. On this see the Note on ‘Rusticated Masonry,’ postea, p. 132. The reason why the ‘Tuscan’ is called the ‘Rustic’ Order, is that, being the simplest and, so to say, rudest of the Orders, it is most suitably employed in connection with walling of a rough and bossy appearance. The shafts of columns are sometimes rusticated to correspond with the walling, as at the Venetian ‘Zecca,’ mentioned ante, p. 56, but the expedient is of doubtful advantage, as the clear upright appearance of the column is thereby sacrificed.

Footnote 109:

Vasari says here that the ‘Rustic’ or Tuscan column is six ‘heads’ high. What does he mean by this? There is evidently in his mind the familiar comparison of different columns to human figures of different proportions, a conceit found in Vitruvius (IV, i, 6 f.) and in writers of the Renaissance (see Alberti, _De Re Aedificatoria_, Lib. IX, c. 7), and so he measures by ‘heads,’ which would apply to a figure but not to a column. ‘Testa,’ ‘head,’ cannot, as the context shows, mean the height of the capital of the column. It really means here the lower diameter of the column. It is this lower diameter (or sometimes half the lower diameter) that is the normal unit of measurement for the proportions of a column. Thus the height of the Tuscan column is given by Vitruvius and by Palladio and other moderns as six times the lower diameter. Though ‘head’ may seem a very curious word with which to describe this, there is no doubt that such is the meaning of it. Alberti, in his tract on the Orders and their proportions, uses the lower diameter as his measure but applies to it this very term ‘testa.’ There is a certain letter from Vasari to Duke Cosimo that deals with the measurements of a column of granite presented to him by the Pope and afterwards conveyed from Rome and set up in the Piazza di S. Trinità, where it carries the porphyry statue by Francesco del Tadda (postea, p. 111). Vasari gives the diameter of the ‘head’ of this column, but notes afterwards that the shaft diminishes from the ‘head’ upwards towards the necking (collarino). Hence there is no doubt about the interpretation of the word in question. See the letter in _Opere_, ed. Milanesi, VIII, 352.

Footnote 110:

The Citadel of Florence. This is not the ‘Belvedere’ fortress on the hill behind the Palazzo Pitti, but the so-called ‘Fortezza da Basso’ to the north of the town, now used as barracks, which the railway skirts just before entering the station near S. Maria Novella. It dates from 1534, and was built by Alessandro dei Medici with the intention of overawing the citizens. It occupied the site of the Faenza gate, and was partly within and partly outside the enceinte of the city. The ‘principal façade’ of which Vasari writes, is still well preserved in the middle of the southern face, opposite the town, and a sketch of it is shown in Fig. 3, but nothing else of interest is said to remain from the Renaissance period.

The masonry of the façade is an excellent example of elaborate rustication, and is very carefully executed in pietra forte. The illustration, Fig. 4, bears out Vasari’s description, and exhibits in alternation round bosses 18 in. in diameter and 4 in. in salience, and oblong diamonds about 3 ft. by 1 ft. 6 in. There are worked borders about 1 in. in width round all the lines of juncture, and the scheme is worth noticing.

Footnote 111:

Vitruvius in his first book (I, ii, 5) gives directions as to the Orders suitable for temples to different deities. Thus Minerva, Mars, and Hercules are to have temples in the Doric style, etc.; while in the eighteenth century Sir William Chambers, transferring the same idea to modern times, says that Doric ‘may be employed in the houses of generals, or other martial men, in mausoleums erected to their memory, or in triumphal bridges and arches built to celebrate their victories.’ The modern architect is disposed to smile at these restrictions, but there underlies them a sound appreciation of the aesthetic significance of architectural forms.

Footnote 112:

The building referred to is the well-known Uffizi palace at Florence. See ante, p. 59.

Footnote 113:

The construction described by Vasari is evidently of the kind indicated in the accompanying drawing, Fig. 5. The pieces of the frieze are joggled one into the other so as to form a flat arch, but the construction is kept to the inner part and the face shows vertical joints between the pieces. As this passage in Vasari seems to have escaped the notice of those interested in Renaissance construction, the existence of the device he describes has remained unsuspected and nothing is known about it at the Uffizi itself. The fact is that Vasari’s system has succeeded in one way too perfectly for his purpose. Everything has remained ‘safe and sound,’ and no one of the architrave beams shows signs of failure, so that no technical examination of the fabric has been called for. On the other hand, neither the artificers nor the world at large seem to have benefitted by Vasari’s kindness, for the books do not notice his device. There is no mention of it even in the huge work on Tuscan Renaissance architecture now just completed under the editorship of Baron Henri de Geymüller, nor in Raschdorff’s _Palast-Architectur_, nor Durm’s _Baukunst der Renaissance_, though references to it may possibly occur in older books that have escaped our notice. Joggled lintels forming flat arches are of course common enough. The new Parliament Building at Stockholm shows them conspicuously with the actual joints appearing on the face of the building. Mediaeval and Renaissance fireplaces often have lintels of the kind, as in Coningsburgh Castle, Yorks, and Linlithgow Palace.

Footnote 114:

i.e. width on the soffit, or, as it might be expressed, in depth from the outer face inwards.

Footnote 115:

‘Sopra la colonna.’ This does not mean strictly the piece vertically above the column, which is the die (dado quadro) already mentioned. It is equivalent to the expression just below ‘sopra le colonne,’ and means simply ‘in the upper part.’ The piece referred to is A, A, in Fig. 5, the ‘pezzo del mezzo’ of the text as quoted below.

Footnote 116:

‘Cosi si faccia sopra la colonna, che il pezzo del mezzo di detto fregio stringa di dentro, e sia intaccato a quartabuono infino a mezzo; l’altra mezza sia squadrata e diritta e messa a cassetta, perchè stringa a uso d’arco mostrando di fuori essere murata diritta.’ The sense of this sentence seems to be indicated by the drawing Fig. 5. The centre pieces A, A, will slip down into their places and in a fashion key the flat arch. There is the same construction in the cornice, see below.

Footnote 117:

The dimension here implied is not the width on the face from right to left, but the soffit-width, or depth from the outer face inwards. The dies and the cornice-pieces are of the same soffit-width as the architrave, but the frieze pieces are so much narrower as to allow space behind them for a flat arch of brick abutting at each end on that part of the die that exceeds in soffit-width the frieze. See plan, Fig. 5 (4), and section, Fig. 5 (5). The plan is at the level x, y.

Footnote 118:

‘Sopra il dado del fregio’ see note on ‘Sopra la colonna.’ The middle piece which goes ‘a cassetta,’ i.e. spanning a void, is at the centre of the intercolumniation, not vertically over the die above the column.

Footnote 119:

Fig. 5 (4) and (5) show the nature of the construction across from the façade inwards. The corridor is spanned with a barrel vault that conceals the back of the entablature. It starts from the top of the architrave.

Footnote 120:

For this use of iron ties, which Vasari regards here as normal, see the illustration on p. 25 of Professor Durm’s _Baukunst der Renaissance in Italien_, in the _Handbuch der Architectur_, Stuttgart, 1903.

Footnote 121:

The expression is a little awkward, but the meaning evidently is that the pedestal is half as high again as it is wide. There is some doubt whether the clause ‘then above are placed’ to ‘as Vitruvius directs’ refers to the pedestal or the column itself. In the case of all the other Orders Vasari mentions the upper and lower mouldings of the pedestal, and it would be most natural to imagine him doing so here, but the ‘torus and two fillets (bastone e due piani) as Vitruvius directs’ sounds more like the ‘Attic’ base of the column, and the reference to Vitruvius should be conclusive that it is _not_ the pedestal of which there is question, for the good reason that Vitruvius knows nothing of the pedestal under the single column of any of the Orders. Such a feature does occur in classical work, as in the temple at Assisi, but it is not a normal classical form, and architectural purists in modern times reject it. Vitruvius is however again referred to by Vasari in this connection, in § 25, and Giorgio may have in his mind the sentence in Vitruvius, III, iv, 5, in which there is a reference to the mouldings on the continuous podium that serves as the substructure of the Roman temple, and forms one difference between it and the Greek temple. The single pedestal was often used in Renaissance work, and Vasari regards it as a matter of course.

Footnote 122:

The metopes; these are always set back a little behind the face of the triglyphs, which are here termed the projections. The metope offers a suitable field for carved ornaments.

Footnote 123:

Vasari merely has in mind the familiar difference in form between the Doric and Ionic flutes, the former being much shallower than the latter, and not showing the plain strip or fillet which in the Ionic column comes between every two of the flutes.

Footnote 124:

The reference probably is to the portion of the ancient Basilica Aemilia, which in Vasari’s time still stood erect where recent excavations have revealed the plan and part of the architectural members of this famous structure. We must bear in mind that what Vasari and his contemporaries called the ‘Forum Boarium’ was not the part between the Capitol and the Palatine, near the ‘Bocca della Verità’ which was the ancient Cattle Market and now has resumed its antique name, but the Forum proper, which used even in the memory of those now living to be called ‘Campo Vaccino.’ It seems to have derived the name ‘Forum Boarium’ from this very fragment of the Basilica Aemilia which Vasari has in his mind in this passage. The fragment was figured by Giuliano da San Gallo in a drawing in the Barberini Library, which is reproduced in _Monumenti dell’ Istituto_, XII, T. 11, 12, and from this, by the kind permission of the Imperial German Archaeological Institute, has been taken Fig. 6. The destruction of this most interesting fragment, which stood over against the arch of Septimius Severus, is one of the many almost inconceivable acts of vandalism of which the men of the later Renaissance period were guilty. The richness of which Vasari speaks can be seen in the illustration.

Footnote 125:

Here again Renaissance and modern topographical nomenclature do not agree. What Vasari knew as the ‘Tullianum’ was not the familiar ‘Carcer Mamertinus’ above the Forum on the way up to S. Maria in Araceli, but certain antique structures under the church of S. Nicola in Carcere, near the Piazza Montanara. These were the ‘favissae’ or cells within the structure of the podium or platform of one of several ancient Roman temples on this site, which was formerly the ‘Forum Olitorium.’ These substructures are now accessible, and the worthy sacristan of the church who shows them is still of opinion that he has in charge the prison of the Tullianum. One of the travertine columns of one of these temples is to be seen within the church, and this though Doric is extremely simple, even rude, in its outline. Dr Huelsen has however in a recent paper (_Mitteilungen d. k. deutschen Archaeologischen Instituts_, XXI, 169 f.) shown that this column was originally finished with stucco, in which somewhat elaborate mouldings were worked. It was drawn by several of the Renaissance architects, and Peruzzi notes it as being ‘in carcere Tulliano.’ Huelsen has drawn out a scheme of the mouldings in profile and this is reproduced by permission in Fig. 7. It will be seen that Vasari’s remark about its richness in membering is quite justified.

Footnote 126:

Vasari probably refers to the great Corinthian column which was still to be seen in his time in the interior of the Basilica of Constantine (formerly called the Temple of Peace). The column was placed early in the seventeenth century in the Piazza in front of S. Maria Maggiore, where it is still in evidence.

Footnote 127:

‘Largo’ is the word in the text, but it must be merely a clerical error for ‘alto.’

Footnote 128:

See Note 14, ante, p. 75.

Footnote 129:

See Note 86, ante, p. 53.

Footnote 130:

On Michelangelo’s use of architectural details M. Garnier had some rather severe remarks in the _Gazette des Beaux Arts_ for Jan. 1, 1876. He denied to him an understanding of the grammar of the use of such forms. It is generally admitted that for the details of the Farnese cornice, the fittings and decoration of the Library of S. Lorenzo, and other such works to which his name attaches, he was indebted to professional architects, such as Vignola, whom he employed. We must never forget however that we owe to Michelangelo the dome of St. Peter’s, one of the greatest architectural creations of its kind in the world. In mentioning the ‘siti storti’ (sites that were irregular or out of the straight), Vasari probably had in view the design for laying out the Capitol, which is another of Michelangelo’s acknowledged successes. Here the existing Palazzo dei Conservatori stood somewhat askew and the site was regularized to correspond with the line of its façade. All this about Michelangelo was added for the second edition, after Vasari had himself worked at his master’s staircase at S. Lorenzo.

Footnote 131:

See Note on ‘Vasari’s Opinion on Mediaeval Architecture’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 133 f. The phrase ‘this manner was the invention of the Goths,’ etc., is historically important as the first introduction into literature of the familiar architectural term ‘Gothic.’

Footnote 132:

Vasari makes no provision for binding together the vault in stucco and that in brick. Each is apparently independent of the other, though they are in contact, and no keys are formed in the upper surface of the stucco for the purpose of tieing it to the brickwork above.

Footnote 133:

This same subject is treated in the sixth chapter of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture and the thirteenth of that to Painting. In connection with it see Note on ‘Stucco Grotesques’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting, postea, p. 299.

Footnote 134:

The ‘Tuscan work’ referred to here is the same thing as the ‘lavoro chiamato rustico’ of which Vasari writes at the beginning of the third chapter (§ 20). The so-called Tuscan Order was the simplest and heaviest of all, and so most suited for work that partook of the rough and unpolished character of natural rock. For the same reason, as was seen above, ante, p. 65, the Tuscan Order lends itself best to association with bossy or ‘rusticated’ masonry.

Footnote 135:

Piè di Lupo. This is clearly a mistake for Piè di Lugo, for at the lake of that name above the great Cascade of Terni, there are appearances corresponding exactly with what Vasari says. It is remarked in Hare’s _Days near Rome_, II, p. 141, that the waters of the Vellino, which makes the fall, are ‘so strongly impregnated with carbonate of lime, that they constantly tend to form a deposit of travertine, and so to block up their own channel.’

Footnote 136:

The Elsa flows from the Apennines by Colle and Castelfiorentino to join the Arno by S. Miniato, halfway between Florence and Pisa. The valley was the birthplace of Cennino Cennini, the author of the _Trattato_.

Footnote 137:

Monte Morello, 3065 ft., is the conspicuous height to the north of Florence, which serves the populace for a weather-glass.

‘Quando Monte Morello Ha il cappello Prendi l’ombrello.’

Footnote 138:

A few miles to the north west of Florence.

Footnote 139:

These fanciful conceits have a significance for the history of ornament which they hardly seem to deserve. Artificial grottoes of the kind Vasari describes were very popular in the France of the eighteenth century, and pleased the taste of the sophisticated society of the time with an artificial ‘nature,’ that corresponded to the affected pastoral style in literature. From the shell and stalactite decoration of these grottoes was evolved the ornamental style characteristic of the age of Louis XV, the shell-like forms of which betray its origin. The name commonly given to this ornament, that consists in little but a graceful play of curved forms, is ‘rococo,’ and this word is connected with ‘rocaille,’ a regular French term for fantastic grotto-work of the kind here under notice.

Footnote 140:

The well-known ‘Villa Madama.’

Footnote 141:

One of the best existing examples of these ‘rustic’ grottoes and fountains is that constructed by Buontalenti in the Boboli Gardens near the eastern entrance. As part of its decoration there are built in four marble figures, supposed to have been sketched out by Michelangelo for the tomb of Julius. A view of the interior of this grotto is given on Plate IV. The statue in the corner is one of the four noticed above, while a little above it and to the left is one of the grotesque figures incrusted with odds and ends, which Vasari praises as so fascinating.

Footnote 142:

The ultimate derivation of the word ‘mosaic’ is a difficult problem. Its immediate parent is the late-Latin ‘musivum’ which is generally connected with the Greek μουσεῖον, meaning a ‘place of the Muses.’ With this significance, the Greek word in its Latinized form ‘museum’ is suitably applied to collections of works of art and similar objects of aesthetic interest and value. A ‘place of the Muses’ may however be of a different kind. The Muses, like other nymphs, were worshipped in grottoes as guardian genii of fountains, and Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXVI, 21, writes of ‘erosa saxa in aedificiis, quae musaea vocant, dependentia ad imaginem specus arte reddendam,’ where the suggestion is of a rustic grotto like that in the Boboli Gardens. Such grottoes, natural or artificial, might fittingly be decked with shells and coloured stones and any bright inlay that offered itself. If incrustations of the kind we call mosaic were actually met with in these haunts of the Muses, the work might readily be called by a name suggestive of these same nymphs, and this might be applied later on to tesselated work in general. There is however no proof, either in Pliny or elsewhere, that what we call mosaic was actually so used, and it has been questioned by more than one authority whether there is really any connection between the word ‘mosaic,’ in its various forms, and the Muses. An oriental derivation has even been suggested for the term.

Dr Albert Ilg, in an exceedingly learned paper on the subject in the _Wiener Quellenschriften_, Neue Folge, V, 158 f., offered an entirely new explanation of the word ‘mosaic,’ which he maintained had in its original sense nothing to do with inlaid work at all, but rather with gilding. He connected it with a root ‘mus’ or ‘mos,’ with a sense of ‘beating’ or ‘grinding,’ and instanced the mediaeval Latin term ‘mosnerium,’ which Ducange notices as equivalent to ‘molendinum,’ ‘mill.’ ‘Musivum opus’ would refer on this view to the gilding process in which the gold is ground to powder or beaten out; and Ilg affirmed ‘Musaicum im alten Sinne kann nur eigentlich Vergoldung, nicht das moderne Mosaik, bezeichnen.’ If the word at first meant ‘gilded work’ it would later on be extended to what we know as ‘mosaic,’ because of the use in mediaeval mosaics of the familiar gold background. The argument of Dr Ilg is not convincing, and the question must be considered still open. Theophilus, for example, Lib. II, c. 12, uses ‘musivum opus’ for inlaid work in which there is no question of gold.

Footnote 143:

Possibly what we call ‘mother of pearl.’

Footnote 144:

See Note on ‘The Sassi, della Valle, and other Collections,’ etc., postea, p. 102 f. The mosaic here noticed is unfortunately lost. Lanciani, _The Golden Days of the Renaissance in Rome_, 1906, p. 234, states that he has searched for it in vain.

Footnote 145:

See Note 5, ante, p. 27.

Footnote 146:

Mosaics made up of small cubes of coloured or gilded glass are abundant in early Christian and Byzantine times, but were also used, though sparingly, by the Romans from the time of Augustus downwards. See Pliny, _Hist. Nat._, XXXVI, 189, who fixes the time of their introduction.

Footnote 147:

Egg-shell mosaic. See Note, postea, p. 136.

Footnote 148:

See Chapters XV and XVI of the ‘Introduction’ to Painting. The pavement of the cathedral of Siena exhibits a large collection of such mosaics in black and white executed in different technical processes.

Footnote 149:

See Note on ‘Ideal Architecture’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Architecture, postea, p. 138.

Footnote 150:

That is, about 4½ inches.

Footnote 151:

About 15½ inches.

Footnote 152:

See note on ‘The Nature of Sculpture,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 179.

Footnote 153:

‘Working from manner.’ Vasari refers here to what artists call ‘treatment,’ which is a process of analysis and grouping, applied to appearances in nature where the eye sees at first little more than a confused medley of similar forms that are perhaps constantly changing. Under such an aspect the hair as well as the folds of drapery on the human figure presented themselves to the early Greek sculptor, and it was a long time before he learned to handle them aright. In the case of the hair he had no help in previous work, for in Egyptian statues it is often covered, or is replaced by a formal wig, and in Assyrian art the hair is very severely though finely conventionalized. It was not until the age of Pheidias that the Greeks learned how to suggest the soft and ample masses of the hair, and at the same time to subdivide these into the distinct curls or tresses, each one ‘solid,’ as Vasari requires, but individually rendered with the minuter markings which suggest the structure and ‘feel’ of the material. The Italians started of course with this treatment or ‘manner’ already an established tradition founded on antique practice. In the mediaeval sculpture of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France and England the hair is often very artistically rendered.

Footnote 154:

This paragraph opens up a subject of much artistic interest, on which see Note on ‘Sculpture Treated for Position,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 180 f.

Footnote 155:

For Vasari, a practical artist, to commit himself to the statement that figures are made nine heads high, is somewhat extraordinary, for eight heads, the proportion given by Vitruvius (III, 1) is the extreme limit for a normal adult, and very few Greek statues, let alone living persons, have heads so small. The recently discovered ‘Agias’ by Lysippus, at Delphi, is very nearly eight heads high. The ‘Doryphorus’ at Naples not much more than seven. The ‘Choisseul Gouffier Apollo’ about seven and a half, etc. Vasari seems to have derived his curious mode of reckoning from Filarete, who in Book 1 of his Treatise on Architecture measures a man as follows: Head = 1 head, neck = ½, breast = 1, body = 2, thighs = 2, legs = 2, foot = ½, total nine heads. Alberti, Leonardo, Albrecht Dürer, and indeed almost all the older writers on art, discourse on the proportions of the human figure.

Footnote 156:

See Note on ‘Waxen Effigies and Medallions,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 188.

Footnote 157:

One objection to an armature of wood is that the material may swell with the damp of the clay and cause fissures. Iron is objectionable because the rust discolours the clay. Modern sculptors often use gas-piping in the skeletons of their models, as this is flexible and will neither rust nor swell.

Footnote 158:

Baked flour used to be employed by plasterers to keep the plaster they were modelling from setting too rapidly. See the Introduction by G. F. Robinson to Millar’s _Plastering Plain and Decorative_, London, 1897. The former used rye dough with good effect for the above purpose.

Footnote 159:

The tow or hay tied round the wood affords a good hold for the clay, which is apt to slip on anything smooth.

Footnote 160:

This method of producing drapery is not very artistic.

Footnote 161:

See Note on ‘Proportionate Enlargement’ at close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 190.

Footnote 162:

See Note on ‘The Use of Full-sized Models’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 192.

Footnote 163:

The carvers’ tools described by Vasari are the same that appear to have been in use in ancient Greece (see the article by Professor E. Gardner already referred to), that are figured in the _Encyclopédie_ of the eighteenth century, and are now in use. Fig. 2, E to J, ante, p. 48, shows a set of them actually employed in a stone carver’s workshop at Settignano near Florence.

Footnote 164:

Actual polish of the surface of a marble figure is to be avoided, as the reflections from it where it catches the light destroy the delicacy of the effect of light and shade. Greek marbles were not polished, save in some cases where the aim seems to have been to imitate the appearance of shining bronze, but the Greeks finished their marbles more smoothly than the sculptors of to-day, most of whom prefer a ‘sensitive’ surface on which the marks of the last delicate chiselling can be discerned. Michelangelo’s Dead Christ in the ‘Pietà’ of St. Peter’s, his most finished piece of marble work, may almost be said to show polish, and Renaissance marbles generally are quite as smoothly finished as antiques. In the case of coloured marbles, used for surface decoration in plain panels, polish is of course necessary in order that the colour and veining may appear, but it does not follow from this that a self-coloured marble, carved into the similitude of a face or figure, should be polished.

Footnote 165:

English terminology for the different kinds of reliefs, and for sculpture generally, is very deficient, and many Italian terms are employed. It may be noted that Vasari’s ‘half relief’ (mezzo rilievo) is the highest kind he mentions, and would correspond to what is called in English ‘high relief.’

Footnote 166:

See Note on ‘Italian and Greek Reliefs,’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 196.

Footnote 167:

Donatello’s flat, or ‘stiacciati’ reliefs are deservedly famous. The difficulty here is to convey the impression of solid form of three dimensions with the slightest possible actual salience. The treatment of the torso of the Christ in the marble ‘Pietà’ of the Victoria and Albert Museum is a good example.

Footnote 168:

The antique vessels of so-called ‘Arezzo’ ware are called Aretine vases. Messer Giorgio was in duty bound to take some note of the ancient pottery of his native city for it was from this that the Vasari derived their family name. According to the family tree given in a note to the Life of an ancestor of the historian (_Opere_, ed. Milanesi, II, 561), the family came from Cortona, and the first who settled in Arezzo was the historian’s great-grandfather, one Lazzaro, an artist in ornamental saddlery. He had a son, Giorgio, who practised the craft of the potter, and was especially concerned with the old Roman Aretine vases the technique of which he tried to reproduce. Hence he was called ‘Vasajo,’ ‘the vase maker,’ from which came the family appellation Vasari.

This ancient Aretine ware ‘must be regarded as the Roman pottery par excellence’ (Waters, _History of Ancient Pottery_, Lond., 1905, II, 480). It is practically the same ware that is known by the popular but unscientific term ‘Samian,’ and consists in cups and bowls and dishes usually of a small size of a fine red clay, ornamented with designs in low relief, produced by the aid of stamps or moulds. It is these relief ornaments that Vasari had in his mind when he wrote the words in the text. Arezzo is noticed by Pliny and other ancient writers as a great centre for the fabrication of this sort of ware, and Vasari tells us how his grandfather, Giorgio the ‘vasajo,’ discovered near the city some kilns of the ancient potters and specimens of their work. Very good specimens of Aretine ware are to be seen in the Museum at Arezzo, and the fabrique is represented in all important collections of ancient pottery.

Footnote 169:

See Note on ‘The Processes of the Bronze Founder’ at the close of the ‘Introduction’ to Sculpture, postea, p. 199, which the reader who is unacquainted with the subject, will find it useful to read forthwith. The best commentary on Vasari’s and Cellini’s account of bronze casting is to be found in the French _Encyclopédie_, where there is a description, with numerous illustrations, of the casting in 1699 of Girardon’s great equestrian statue of Louis XIV, destined for the Place Vendôme. It was claimed at the time to be the largest known single casting in the world, and represents in their utmost elaboration the various processes described by Vasari. Some of the illustrations are here reproduced, and will help to render clearer the descriptions in the text.

Footnote 170:

Plate VII shows a section or two of a piece-mould round a portion of a figure. It will be noticed that the pieces are so planned that they will all come away easily from the model and not be held by any undercut projections. The small pieces are then all enclosed in an outer shell divided into two halves, and called in French ‘chape’ answering to the ‘cappa’ of Vasari’s text. Plate VIII, A, shows the model of the Louis XIV statue as piece-moulded.

Footnote 171:

In the case of a heavy casting such an armature is necessary, and must be carefully constructed to give support at all points. The armature within the core of the horse of Louis XIV is shown in Plate VIII, D.

Footnote 172:

Vasari here describes a method of constructing the indispensable shell of wax which is to be replaced by the bronze. The hollow piece-mould is lined section by section with wax and a core is then formed to fill the rest of the interior and touch the inner surface of the wax at every point. The plaster mould is then removed and the wax linings of each of its sections are applied, each in its proper place, to the core, and fixed thereon by skewers. There is then a complete figure in wax, but, as this is made up of very many pieces, it has to be gone over carefully to smooth over the joins and secure unity of surface. Cellini’s plan seems a better one. He lines his hollow mould with a sort of paste or dough, and then fills up with the core. The dough is then removed and wax is poured in in its place, thus forming a continuous skin and securing a more perfect unity in the waxen shell.

Footnote 173:

On Plate VIII at B we see the core covered with the skin of wax and carefully gone over and finished in every part. The system of pipes with which it is covered are the ‘vents’ that Vasari notices in § 62, and also the channels through which the melted wax is to escape and the molten bronze to enter, as noticed in §§ 63, 64.

Footnote 174:

Vasari actually says that it must be put ‘al fuoco’ ‘to the fire,’ but it is clear that he does not mean that heat is at once to be applied to it. If this were done the wax would all be melted off the core too soon, before it was covered by the outer skin. It is only when the wax has been securely enclosed between the core and the outer skin that heat is needed to melt it away and leave its place free for the molten metal.

Footnote 175:

Plate VIII, C, shows this outer armature, with the ends of the transverse rods holding core and envelope together.

Footnote 176:

‘Give passage to the metal.’ Their essential purpose is to allow for the escape of air which would be dangerous if driven by the metal into a confined space.

Footnote 177:

It should be understood that, in the process Vasari has in mind, the melted metal is introduced at the _bottom_ of the mould so as to rise in it and expel before it the air. It is not poured in at the top. Hence the metal enters at the same orifice at which the wax flows out.

Footnote 178:

Plate VIII, D, gives a section through the model in the casting-pit, when all is ready for the actual operation of introducing the molten metal. The wax has all been run out, and the outline of the figure and of the horse is marked by a double line with a narrow space between. It is this space that will be filled by the bronze which will be introduced through numerous channels so that it may be distributed rapidly and evenly over the whole surface it is to cover. When in the pit the mould is packed all round with broken bricks or similar material, so that ‘the bronze may not strain it,’ nor cause it to shift.

Footnote 179:

The wax has already been carefully weighed, and in order to estimate how much bronze will be required for the cast a rough calculation is made based on the amount of wax.

Footnote 180:

The subject of the composition of bronze and of other alloys of copper is a complicated one, for the mixtures specified or established by analysis are very varied. Normally speaking, bronze is a mixture of copper with about ten per cent. of tin, brass of copper with twenty to forty per cent. of zinc. Vasari’s proportions for bells and for cannon are pretty much what are given now. In the _Manuel de Fondeur_ (Manuels Roret) Paris, 1879, II, p. 94, eight to fifteen per cent. of tin are prescribed for cannon, fifteen to thirty per cent. for bell metal, the greater percentage of tin with the copper resulting in a less tough but harder and so sharper sounding metal. It will be noted however that for statuary metal Vasari specifies a mixture not of copper and tin but of copper and brass, that is, copper and zinc. Brass is composed of, say, twenty-five per cent. of zinc and seventy-five per cent. of copper, so that a mixture of two thirds, or sixty-six per cent., of copper with one third, or thirty-three per cent., of brass would work out to about ten parts of zinc to ninety of copper, and this agrees with classical proportions. The Greeks used tin for their bronzes, but various mysterious ingredients were supposed to be mingled in to produce special alloys. The Romans used zinc, or rather zinciferous ores such as calamine, with or in place of tin, and this is the tradition that Vasari follows.

A recent analysis of the composition of the bronze doors at Hildesheim, dating from 1015 A.D., gives about seventy-six parts copper, ten lead, eight tin, four zinc; and of the ‘Bernward’ pillar ascribed to about the same date, seventy copper, twenty-three tin, and five lead. These differences may surprise us, but metal casting in those days was a matter of rule of thumb, and we may recall Cellini’s account of his cramming all his household vessels of pewter into the melting pot to make the metal flow for casting his ‘Perseus.’

Footnote 181:

Vasari’s account of the making of dies for medals and of the process of striking these is clear, and agrees with the more elaborate directions contained in the seventh and following chapters of Cellini’s _Trattato dell’ Oreficeria_. Cellini however, unlike Vasari, was a practical medallist, and he goes more into detail. The process employed was not the direct cutting of the matrices or dies with chisels, nor, as gems are engraved, by the use of the wheel and emery (or diamond) powder, but the stamping into them of the design required by main force, by means of specially shaped hard steel punches on which different parts of the design had been worked in relief. The steel of the matrix or die had of course to be previously softened in the fire, or these punches would have made no impression on it. When finished it was again hardened by tempering. It may be noticed that the dies from which Greek coins were struck were to all appearance engraved as gems were engraved by the direct use of cutting tools or tools that, like the wheel, wore away the material with the aid of sand or emery.

The two matrices, or dies, for the obverse and reverse of the medal, being now prepared, the medal is not immediately struck. In the case of the Greek coin a bean-shaped piece, or a disk, of plain metal, usually of silver, called a ‘blank’ or ‘flan,’ was placed between the two dies and pressed into their hollows by a blow or blows of the hammer, so that all that was engraved on them in intaglio came out on the silver in relief. Vasari’s process is more elaborate. A sort of trial medal is first struck from the matrices in a soft material such as lead or wax, and this trial medal is reproduced by the ordinary process of casting in the gold or silver or bronze which is to be the material of the final medal. This cast medal has of course the general form required, but it is not sharp nor has it a fine surface. It is therefore placed between the matrices and forcibly compressed so as to acquire all the finish of detail and texture desired.

Footnote 182:

Plaster, or stucco, is sometimes regarded as an inferior material only to be used when nothing better can be obtained. It should not however be judged from the achievements of the domestic plasterer of to-day, who has to trust sometimes to the wall-paper to keep his stuff from crumbling away. Plaster as used by the ancients, and through a good part of the mediaeval and Renaissance periods up to the eighteenth century, is a fine material, susceptible of very varied and effective artistic treatment. It was made by the Greeks of so exquisite a quality that it was equivalent to an artificial marble. It could be polished, so Vitruvius tells us, till it would reflect the beholder’s face as in a mirror, and he describes how the Roman connoisseurs of his time would actually cut out plain panels of Greek stucco from old walls and frame them into the plaster work of their own rooms, just as if they were slabs of precious marble. (_De Architectura_, VII, iii, 10.) Vitruvius prescribes no fewer than six successive coats of plaster for a wall, each laid on before the last is dry, the last coat being of white lime and finely powdered marble.

By the Villa Farnesina at Rome some Roman, or more probably Greek, plaster decoration was discovered a few years ago that surpassed any work of the kind elsewhere known. We find there the moulded or stamped ornament Vasari describes, as well as figure compositions modelled by hand, while the plain surfaces are in themselves a delight to the artistic eye.

Among the best and best known stucco work, in figures and ornaments, of the later Italian Renaissance, may be ranked that at Fontainebleau by Primaticcio and other artists from the peninsula who were invited thither by François I, for the decoration of the ‘Galerie François I’ and the ‘Escalier du Roi.’

Footnote 183:

The composition of these two mucilages is given by Theophilus, in the _Schedula_, Book one,