United States or Kyrgyzstan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
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.
There is a fertile and populous valley near Pietrasanta, called Seravezza, whose inhabitants, on learning the arrival of the commissary, presented themselves before him and begged he would receive them as faithful subjects of the Florentine republic.
Quarries of crystalline marbles, admirably adapted for the purposes of the sculptor and architect, were opened in the range of the Apennines overlooking the beautiful Bay of Spezia, in the vicinity of Carrara, Massa, and Seravezza, and largely worked in the time of Augustus. This emperor could boast that he had found Rome of brick, and left it of marble.
The inhabitants of Seravezza appeal to the Signory Complaints against Rinaldo degli Albizzi The commissaries changed Filippo Brunelleschi proposes to submerge the country about Lucca Pagolo Guinigi asks assistance of the duke of Milan The duke sends Francesco Sforza Pagolo Guinigi expelled The Florentines routed by the forces of the duke The acquisitions of the Lucchese after the victory Conclusion of the war.
Then the road winds through a gorge beside a river, and at last between delicious woods of olives full of silver and golden shade most pleasant in the heat, past Seravezza in the hills, you come to the little pink and white town of Pietrasanta under the woods, at noon. Pietrasanta is set at the foot of the Hills of Paradise, littered with marble, planted with figs and oleanders, full of the sun.
A few of the inhabitants of the valley of Seravezza, having escaped the hands of the commissary, came to Florence and acquainted every one in the streets with their miserable situation; and by the advice of those who, either through indignation at his wickedness or from being of the opposite party, wished to punish the commissary, they went to the Council of Ten, and requested an audience.
Already I saw myself exploring those regions, interviewing directors as to methods of work and output, poking my nose into municipal archives and libraries to learn the history of those various quarries of marble, plain and coloured; tracking the footsteps of Michael Angelo at Seravezza and Pietrasanta and re-discovering that old road of his and the inscription he left on the rock; speculating why the Romans, who ransacked the furthermost corners of the earth for tinted stones, knew so little of the treasures here buried; why the Florentines were long content to use that grey bigio, when the lordly black portovenere, with its golden streaks, was lying at their very doors....
They sought the goods of the inhabitants of Seravezza; all that could be recovered was restored to them, and as time and circumstance gave opportunity, they were compensated for the rest.
Word Of The Day