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The bas-reliefs on the Lumachella marble of Trajan's Column were originally picked out with profuse gilding and vivid colours; the egg and arrow moulding of the capital being tinted green, red and yellow, the abacus blue and red, the spirals yellow, the prominent figures gilt against backgrounds of different hues, and the water of the various rivers blue.
Specimens of brocatello may be found in several churches and palaces, forming mouldings, sheathings, and pedestals. The most interesting of the Lumachella marbles is the bianca antica, the Marmor Megarense of the ancients, composed of shells so small as to be scarcely discernible, and so closely compacted that the substance takes a good polish.
But there is a class of ancient marbles in Rome of much more recent geological origin belonging indeed to the Miocene epoch which are called Lumachella, from the Italian word signifying snail, on account of the presence in all the species of fossil shells. They vary in colour from the palest straw to the deepest purple.
The most important specimens of Lumachella marbles are the pair of very fine large columns of L. rosea on the ground-floor of the Schiarra Palace, the balustrade of the high altar of St. Andrea della Valle, two columns in the garden of the Corsini Palace of L. d' Astracane, and a pair of large pillars which support one of the arches of the Vatican Library, formed of L. occhio di pavone.
Domenico e Sisto and Santa Pudenziana, where they appear among the marble sheathing of the walls. In the chapel of the Gaetani in the last-mentioned church, the wall is incrusted with the richest marbles, especially Lumachella and Brocatello, and large tablets of Hadrian's breccia setting off the splendid sarcophagus of Breccia nera e gialla dedicated to Cardinal Gaetani.
Their substance is formed of the shells of the common oyster in bluish gray and black particles on a white ground, as in the Lumachella d' Egitto; of the cardium or cockle, assuming a lighter or deeper shade of yellow, as in the Lumachella d' Astracane; of the ammonite, as in the L. Corno d' Ammone; of the Anomia ampulla in the L. occhio di Pavone, so called from the circular form of the fossils whichever way the section is made; of encrinites, belemnites, and starfish, showing white or red on a violet ground, as in the L. pavonazza; and "of broken shells, hardly discernible, together with very shining and saccharoid particles of carbonate of lime," as in the Marmor Schiston of the ancients the brocatello antico of the Italians, so named from its various shades of yellow and purple, resembling silk brocade.
The rooms were large, with low ceilings; and fire-places, originally wide and deep, had been recently filled and fitted up with handsome grates, while the heavy mantelpieces of carved cedar, that once matched the broad facings of the windows and the massive panels of the doors, were exchanged for costly verd antique and lumachella.
If I'd only known when I was in Sienna this spring that I was coming here, I should certainly have bought a superb reredos that was offered to me comparatively cheap. The columns were of malachite and porphyry, and the panels of rosso antico with scrolls of lumachella. They only asked 15,000 lire. It was absurdly cheap.
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