antico

Updated: May 27, 2025

First he voted himself to gathering snail-shells, of which there are many sorts; afterwards he had a fever for marbles, pieces of which he found on the banks of the Tiber, just on the edge of its muddy waters, and in the Palace of the Caesars, the Baths of Caracalla, and indeed wherever else his fancy led him; verde antique, rosso antico, porphyry, giallo antico, serpentine, sometimes fragments of bas-reliefs and mouldings, bits of mosaic, still firmly stuck together, on which the foot of a Caesar had perhaps once trodden; pieces of Roman glass, with the iridescence glowing on them; and all such things, of which the soil of Rome is full.

Nathaniel Hawthorne - Passages from the French and Italian Notebooks, Volume 1.

In the Gabinetto of the Vatican, along with a large square tazza of rosso antico, is kept a most curious arm-chair of this marble, called sedia forata, found near the Church of St. John Lateran, upon which, in the middle ages, the Popes were obliged to sit at their installation in the presence of the Cardinals.

Hugh Macmillan - Roman Mosaics: Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood