We have a friend now staying from the Netherlands who is happy to accompany us on some of our day trails. Today we visited Carrara, just north of here.
Not all Carrara town is of marble. There is a spike at the end of via Santa Maria as it connects with the medieval piazza, that is of metal, not marble at all. From this were hung guilty sentences of recalcitrant locals, be they for mayhem or murder: idiomatically referred to as "hanging from Negroni's hook".
Though much in town is made of marble - footpaths and kerbing in the main. And very slippery on a damp day it is, too. Caryatids supporting arches are typically carved from marble, as are piazzas, bench seats and cobbles. A naked marble bas-relief, 'Modesty', was here to urge the locals to be restrained. Tales tell of adulteresses brought here for public shaming. This fine naked marble cherubic figure surely was not.
Juttings that were bedpans built into an external wall of one the residential buildings in a side street were reportedly made of marble, too. Though, they were a bit too high for us to check. Or to determine how on earth they might even be used as such. A very odd fad, this bedpan idea, even for Carrara. Though it was not at all an ordinary place.
The locals, here, have long been quarrymen, miners, draymen: stone labourers. They have long been among the poorest paid workers in all of Italy. Their plight at times has been dire; their revolts and political actions highly abrasive. They are remembered as anarchistic in temperament and in their politics; but their aggrievements very likely date back to Roman times when slaves were lashed to cut marble out of the mountains that rear up behind this town.
Long ago deposits of calcite and limestone under intense pressure and heat morphed into the marble here. Mountains of it. Solid with stone. Carving has been going on for over 2,000 years: shipped out once to decorate Roman villas needing precisely-cut tiny mosaic floor tiles all over the empire. These days the marble from here decorates glitzy hotels and spas from Dubai to Russia and on to the Americas. The mountains keep on giving.
But the most dedicated stone worker to come searching for the purest whitest Carrara marble was surely Michelangelo, for his David, for his Pieta. And for the palatial commissions that came his way given the sheer beauty of those stupendous works. He is known to have camped out on these mountains with the quarrymen for months at a time. And crawled all over them. Passionate. Committed. Unwashed, even. Single-minded in his search for the perfect stone.
He sometimes used a pink house in town as his Carrara abode from which to explore the stone for some of his projects. It must have felt luxurious in comparison.
Massive blocks would have been carefully rolled down the mountain by expert stone handlers and dragged along rough tracks by teams of white oxen pulling wagons through the streets of town, down to the Carrara port for shipping. Day after day, year after year. A never ending parade of creatures plodding through town.
I wonder if the oxen ever felt anarchic. If they occasionally kicked.
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| Guilty sentences of recalcitrant locals were hung from 'Negroni's hook' |
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| Marble even on footpaths in Carrara |
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| Caryatids carved from marble |
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| Piazzas in Carrara are paved in marble |
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| Bench seats made from marble |
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| Marble cobbles in Carrara |
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| Bas relief of Modesty statue encouraging locals to self restraint |
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| Marble nude is hardly modest |
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| Odd bedpans built into external wall are made of marble |
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| Marble mountains rise up to the rear of town |
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| Michelangelo selected his own Carrara marble for his masterpieces |
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| Pink house where Michelangelo stayed when selecting his marble |
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| White oxen once pulled wagonloads of marble through Carrara's streets |
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