Marble Quarrying and Transport

It was a big problem, tricky and very expensive. Hence Brunelleschi's ill-fated Badalone attempt (ref. Brunelleschi's Dome) and many other efforts by others to reduce the effort in procuring and transporting large blocks of marble. Michelangelo and other artists would often personally go to the quarry and oversee the extraction of favored pieces of marble. Why did they do this? There is some interesting technology to learn about also. How were the large blocks of marble cut? How are they cut today? Perhaps a field trip to Carrara?

---

(RebeccaSawyer? , MackenzieCooper? ) - See bottom of this page for final writeup with a few comments from mrc.

Transporting a momentual sculpture - The David

From Michelangelo and Pope's Ceiling" by Ross King.

Question: Who was Giuliano da Sangallo? -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuliano_da_Sangallo

• Part of family of Sangallo artist/architect/engineers

• The Museo di Marmo at Carrara -- about 2 hours from Firenze (best train connections are about 1:54 travel time). Then it's a cab or bus to the museum itself.
  • There are some useful videos and pictures on the website too.
  • http://giove.cnuce.cnr.it/museo/video2/italiano/LavCavTrisIT.html -- this is a good one.

The quarries at Carrara and Masa are still active and are impressive sights:

• Old stone bridge and view of quarry from below
  • higher resolution version of same
• Quarry face and equipment
  • higher resolution of same
• The water runs milky white with all the marble dust when it rains
• View over quarry toward the ocean
• Tunnel in the rock face
• view down valley toward Carrara
  • higher resolution version
• Another view down valley
  • higher resolution version

-- MarkCutkosky - 17 May 2005