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One is placed in the centre of the middle nave of Santa Sabina, on the Aventine, on the top of a short spirally-fluted column of white marble, which marks the spot where St. Dominic, the founder of the order of the Dominicans, used to kneel down and pray. It has received the name of Pietra di Paragone, or the Touchstone.
After the death of Julius, Leo X., in character the reverse of his fiery predecessor, and by temperament unsympathetic to the austere Michael Angelo, found nothing better for the sculptor's genius than to set him at work upon the façade of S. Lorenzo at Florence. The better part of the years between 1516 and 1520 was spent in quarrying marble at Carrara, Pietra Santa, and Seravezza.
In the same convent he made the design and laid the foundations of a very beautiful campanile of hewn stone, partly tufa and partly pietra viva, which was carried well forward by him, and is now being continued by the above-mentioned Bernardino, his nephew, who is employed in carrying it to completion.
On one sofa were a number of portfolios, some open, full of drawings of costumes; a table of pietra dura was covered with richly bound volumes that appeared to have been recently referred to; several ancient swords of extreme beauty were lying on a couch; in a corner of the room was a figure in complete armour, black and gold richly inlaid, and grasping in its gauntlet the ancient standard of England.
Six masters of the art of Pietra Dura came from Milan in 1580, to instruct the Florentines: and a portrait of Cosimo I. was the first important result of their labours. It was executed by Maestro Francesco Ferucci. The Medicean Mausoleum in Florence exhibits magnificent specimens of this craft.
The Pope wrote to Michelangelo, ordering him to repair to Pietra Santa, and see whether the information he had received from Florence was correct. He did so, and ascertained that the marbles were very hard to work, and ill-adapted to their purpose; even had they been of the proper kind, it would be difficult and costly to convey them to the sea.
Till we have done this we neither of us know the rules, so to speak, of the game that the other is playing, and cannot, therefore, play together; but the convention being once known and consented to, it does not matter whether we raise the idea of a stone by the words "lapis," or by "lithos," "pietra," "pierre," "stein," "stane" or "stone"; we may choose what symbols written or spoken we choose, and one set, unless they are of unwieldy length, will do as well as another, if we can get other people to choose the same and stick to them; it is the accepting and sticking to them that matters, not the symbols.
This being the case, some suspicion has arisen in our minds that you, for your own interests, are too partial to the quarries of Carrara, and want to depreciate those of Pietra Santa. This of a truth, would be wrong in you, considering the trust we have always reposed in your honesty.
Odo found his lordship seated in the cool tessellated saloon which contained his chiefest treasures marble busts ranged on pedestals between the windows, the bronze Venus Callipyge, and various tables of pietra commessa set out with vases and tazzas of antique pattern.
Moreover, we hear that they will cost less than those of Carrara; but, even should they cost more, his Holiness is firmly resolved to act as I have said, furthering the business of Pietra Santa for the public benefit of the city.
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