Antique Marble History
URBEM LATERICIUM INVENIT, MARMOREAM RELIQUIT
The Roman conquest of the Mediterranean basin provided access to colored stones: yellow marble (giallo antico) from Tunisia, purple and white marble (pavonazzetto) from Turkey, and red, green, and black marbles from Greece. Egypt was the richest source of color, providing red, gray, and black granite, basalts and sedimentary stones, and even black volcanic glass (obsidian). Sardonyx was imported from as far as India. The Romans were the first to use marble in slabs (opus sectile), as a wall application (sectilia). This is because it was the Romans who invented cement, which was needed to hold the marble tiles in place. Henceforth, marble laboriously cut out of a quarry went much farther that when being used in solid blocks. The city of Rome was redone with marble, to become the most beautiful city in the known world. Most visitors to museums are used to seeing Roman sculpture in white marble. Since the Renaissance, white marble has been a preferred material for carving, and until recently ancient sculpture was often deliberately cleaned with dilute acid or the original painted decoration has been lost through natural processes. Surprisingly, however, the Romans were avid users of colored materials in sculpture. |
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 Trade routes of the Roman Empire in the 1st century a.C. |
 Antique marbles quarry sites |
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The widespread use of marble began in the 1st century BCE in Rome, and by the time of Augustus, buildings were going up everywhere in marble. By then, over fifty varieties were known and special receiving docks were set up along the Tiber for the importation from all over the Roman Empire. Cosmati work Architectural decoration in mosaic and marble inlay found in Roman church interiors dates from the 12th to the 14th c. The first name Cosmas was frequently given in two of the families who practised the technique, the style of the Cosmati which derives from a marble craftsman called "Cosmas" who presumably went to Rome from Byzantium. The Cosmati work is a type of mosaic technique in which tiny triangles and squares of coloured stone (red porphyry, green serpentine, and white and other coloured marbles) and glass paste were arranged in patterns and combined with large, stone disks and strips to produce geometric designs. Doubtlessy, the decorative repertoire of cosmatesque pavements draws inspiration from varoius sources, yet their style seems to be mainly influenced by the Montecassino basilica's pavement. Indeed, the first cosmatesque pavement was most likely made in the last quarter of the 11th century, precisely between 1066 and 1071, when the Montecassino Abbott Desiderius invited marble workers from Costantinople to lay a new pavement in the abbet's basilica. Now the cosmatesque pavement is covered by a eighteenth-century floor, in a hollow space under the new abbey, rebuil after the damages suffered during World War II. The antique marble used in the laying of the pavement usually were red and serpentine green porphyry as well as white, giallo antico, and pavonazzetto marble, which was interchangebly used one for the other so as to obtain tonal hues based on dark porphyry and light marble, layng the former in the centre of the composition. In this way, the pattern would be stressed by the contrast between dark and light colours, so as to give the surface a colourful and lively design. This typical Italian technique, famous throughout the world, was revived in sixteenth-century in Rome, and then especially in Florence, where mind-boggling examples are to be seen in the Medici Tombs and Opificio delle Pietre Dure. In the Metropolitan Museum of New York is the most famous antique marble inlaid table, originally situated in the Farnese's Palace in Rome.The stone and marble work did not undergo many variations fron the ancient times to today, keeping most of the antique tradition in the artistic production and in the specialized craftsmenship. You can read now some informations on the most famous antique marble types.
Resourceshttp://ancienthistory.about.com/cs/rome/ Index to pages on ancient Rome |
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"I found a city of brick and left it a city of marble", so said the Roman Emperor Cesar Augustus (64 b. C. - 14 a. C.)
