Thirty years after the death of St. Benedict (547), author of the famous Rule (the oldest manuscript codex of the Rule, dated 810, Abbey of St. Gall in Switzerland),

it was built in 576, between the woods at the foot of Assisi, an oratory of the Benedictine monks of the convent of Monte Subasio. In the ‘200 was a place of prayer and meditation for St. Francis, who restored it: it is the famous “Porziuncola”, where Francis also died in 1226.

Pope Pius V in 1569 began the construction of a large basilica, designed by architect Galeazzo Alessi, around the Porziuncola which constantly attracted crowds of faithful, both for San Francesco and for the indulgences that Pope Honorius III at the beginning of the ‘200 he had established to whom visited it.

Following heavy damage caused by the earthquake of 1832 the basilica was restored and was endowed with a new facade.

The façade seems to have had no peace: in the 20th century it was rebuilt according to a design by the architect Luigi Paoletti and completed in 1930.

On that occasion the monumental Golden Madonna, was placed on top of the façade commissioned at the sculptor Guglielmo Colasanti,

and cast in lost wax at the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in Florence.

On 31 July 1769 the Spanish adventurer Gaspar de Portola, together with Serra and Crespi, two Franciscan friars, discovered a river in Southern California, which baptized Rio de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola of Assisi, because the day after, the first of August, the Feast of the Forgiveness was celebrated in Assisi (the one established by Pope Honorius III). In 1781, Mexican colonists founded a village near the river, also called El Pueblo de Nuestra Seniora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncola, now closed in the Olvera Street district of the Los Angeles megalopolis. In 1847, California became American and in 1850 the village, with the shortened name of Los Angeles, became a Municipality, still remaining a small frontier country,

until, in 1892, the discovery of oil made it “explode” in a few decades.

In 1927 the competition for the design of the Palace of Nations in Geneva was announced, and the project

of the team of architects including Carlo Broggi and Jozsef Vago was chosen.

The Beaux Arts French neoclassical style was chosen. The works began in 1931 and ended in 1938. Subsequently, in the 1950s and 1960s it was enlarged.

Up until the 1930s, the management of the main members of the American Woodrow Wilson Foundation,

whose president was Franklin Delano Roosevelt,

thought about the possibility of donating a monument to be placed in the park of the building, which is the seat of the League Nations. The idea took shape in 1935, when the famous sculptor Paul Manship was contacted.

His first proposal was to model and then cast a monumental door for the assembly hall in bronze. The project was not successful. At that period Manship had fallen in love with the armillary spheres and was studying them, such as the very complex and gigantic armillary sphere built in 1593 by Antonio Santucci (cosmographer of the Grand Duke Ferdinando I dei Medici) at the Galileo Museum in Florence,

and then proposed a large Celestial Sphere in bronze with a steel frame, whose surface was made up of the sculptures of all the zodiacal constellations in lost wax bronze cast with and gilded; the sphere had to have an astronomical rotary movement like that of the earth’s axis.

The construction of the astronomical monument presented many problems, and was entrusted to the Vignali foundry in Florence, which began construction,

directed by the founder-restorer Bruno Bearzi.

For Manship too, the creation of the model had been no small feat.

The work was finished in 1939: in August of that year the Celestial Sphere left the foundry in Florence for Geneva. A tractor brought the railway wagon to the station.

The work was installed in the center of a pool with water in the part of the park near the Palace.

The rotation mechanism of the monument worked for a short time, and after a while the sphere was blocked. Weather conditions soon altered and abraded the gilding of the sculptures. The approximately 1,000 little stars applied to the sculptures have partly detached and lost.

In 2019 the management of the United Nations Palace had issued a tender for the restoration of the work, and had invited the various participants to visit the Celestial Sphere up close. Ferdinando Marinelli Jr., owner of the homonymous Artistic Foundry in Florence and the Galleria Pietro Bazzanti in Florence, together with the stainless steel construction specialist Carlo Lanaro,

analysed the state of deterioration of the work and began to study the best systems to restore the Sphere to its original beauty and functionality. The damage that a clumsy restoration of the year 1983 had added to those due to bad weather (oxidation, sulphating, loss of gilding and of the underlying bolus, rusting of the parts of the steel frame, improper welding, etc.) were also clearly seen, such as the concrete filling of the bronze base, etc. In 2003 two of the sculptures of the Sphere were regilded to begin the final restoration but the project was interrupted. Before the assignment of the work, the United Nations commission asked to see and analyse the previous restoration that the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry had carried out on the bronze sculptures of the Triton Fountain in Valletta, for the Malta Government

In 1984 I was very lucky enough to meet the Architect Dudi Berretti in Florence, on the occasion of the creation of the bronze sculpture “Fountain of the Two Oceans” for San Diego in California. A character of unique sympathy and delicacy.

We quickly became friends. The friendship was cemented when I went, with the sculptor friend Sergio Benvenuti, creator of the model of the fountain,

to assemble the two statues in San Diego, at the foot of a skyscraper built by one of the many companies of Patrick Bowlen , said Pat.

After the job, back in Florence, for a long time I didn’t hear from the friend Dudi.
During the frequent gargantuan dinners made with Sergio Benvenuti, a great eater, we wondered where Dudi had ended up.

The answer came sixteen years later: one morning in 2000 Dudi appeared in Galleria Bazzanti, with his usual radiant smile. Kisses and hugs, immediately for lunch together; “Also call Sergio Benvenuti” he told me. Dudi was born in Fiesole, just outside Florence, and he had studied in Florence. After a few libations he threw in an idea: as he was following the construction of a new stadium for the city of Denver in Colorado financed by Pat Bowlen, and since the football team of the city was owned by Bowlen, he would have liked to have a monument in Florence to be placed outside the stadium.
We were having lunch in a fifteenth-century palace in town, in the restaurant of a famous ancient family producing splendid wines, at our table the empty bottles rapidly increased. Dudi then began to talk about a bronze colossus like that of Rhodes, 40 meters high which, with legs apart, to be the entrance of the cars in the parking of the stadium. The dessert, a delicious trifle, had led to something more probable and achievable: a series of horses of the Broncos breed, which was the name of the Denver team, of which Pat Bowlen was president and owner. I went back to the foundry with Sergio, Dudi went to the hotel to sleep.
The following day, another lunch: Dudi, Sergio and me. We went to Monteriggioni, another big lunch, other wine.

At the café Sergio with his big hands removed everything from the table, and opened a folder with a handful of drawings he had made during the night: a series of seven Broncos horses that ran towards the stadium going up the course of a torrent. Dudi lit up with a beaming smile, made Sergio get up and hugged him. Then he looked at me and asked “can it be done?” and when I replied “certainly” he hugged me too and started laughing with happiness and exclaimed “the fountain of the Broncos horses!”
Two days later Dudi was back in Denver with Sergio’s drawings to propose the Broncos ‘fountain’.
After another two days Dudi called me around midnight, for him it was early afternoon, telling me to have a small model of the horses and the fountain made, and to call him as soon as it was ready. Sergio had an exceptional sculptural ability, and in half a day he had prepared the small clay model.

The following week Dudi was back in Florence with the landscape architect to examine with Sergio the enlarged sketches of the fountain in the foundry.

hey were enthusiastic;

and they were also enthusiastic about the lunches of those days.

Sergio Benvenuti began modeling one big horse after another in clay, whose waxes were made and retouched in the foundry, then castings and assemblies.

During the execution of Dudi’s frequent visits, each time accompanied by an increasing number of various technicians, happy to spend a few days in Tuscany, lunches and dinners were everyone’s favorite pastime.

When the bronze horses began to be packed, Pat Bowlen also visited us in Hawaiian shirt.

Then we all moved to Denver, me, my wife, Sergio Benvenuti and various technicians from the foundry, to assemble the horses bronze statues, one and a half times the size of the originals, at the stadium.
We were welcomed like heads of state: at the immigration office, when they knew that we were the “Broncos horses men” they let us pass immediately shanking our hands: some team manager had sent our data in advance to the competent offices
.

The assembling lasted about ten days

in which Dudi accompanied us on a visit to the town and, mainly, to visit the best restaurants in the city.

Finally the solemn inauguration.

Dudi was fascinated not only by Sergio Benvenuti’s ability to model large fountains with subjects requested by the client, but also by the creations that Benvenuti performed for himself: a series of dancers, often colored, in various dance poses. Sergio was fascinated by the world of dance, and had taken Dudi to his studio in Chianti, where the dancers were exhibited, cast in bronze by the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry.
In a few hours, by telephone, together with Pat Bowlen, Dudi organized an exhibition of Sergio’s dancers and other sculptures made by him in large and elegant tents in Denver near the Broncos Stadium. The exhibition was a great success, so much so that all the sculptures exhibited were sold in a few days.

Some models are exhibited at the Bazzanti Gallery.

“Under the Sun”

“Dancer with blouse”

“Dancer jumping the rope”

“Dancer on the stilts”

“Sitting dancer”

“The cat’s craddle”

“Resting dancer”

“Merry go Round”

“Relax”

“Summer waiting”

“Serenade”

The bronze casting with the lost wax technique was lost with the fall of the Roman Empire, so much so that in the Middle Ages the sculpture was made exclusively in marble and stone, and the rare bronze doors were cast in Constantinople, where the Byzantines had retained, in part, the knowledge of this technique.
They were the first Florentine Renaissance artists to re-experiment the lost wax casting technique, helped at the beginning by Byzantine and Venetian artisans. And the first castings, even if of small and bas-relief pieces, came out with various defects, as can be seen in the panels of the Ghiberti’s Gates of Paradise, in which recast was carried out to repair lacks and gaps

The church of Orsanmichele in Florence is dotted outside, in the lower part, with splendid niches in which large bronze and marble sculptures have been placed, each sponsored by one of the 14 Florentine “Arts”. Recently they have all been replaced by replicas and the originals are kept inside the second floor of the building, that is, in the Orsanmichele Museum

The “Art of Money Changers” of Florence commissioned to Lorenzo Ghiberti the one of its patron San Matthew in 1419: it had to be cast in bronze with the lost wax technique, 2.7 meters high, and cast in a single piece, that is with a single bronze pouring. Ghiberti, taking the gamble, accepted the challenge, but it went badly. It seems that the first cast was unsuccessful, and that Ghiberti had to carry out a second one at his own expense. However the story went, what is clear is that the statue that came to us was cast in two times: first the lower part, and then the upper part was poured back on top of the lower. That is, it was performed in two times and in two parts, but not by choice, but because the first cast was unable to complete the upper part of the large statue. Since the statue has arrived to us like this, it also means that it has been accepted by the client.

The St. Matthew cast by Ghiberti was removed from the niche of the church of Orsanmichele and was taken to the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence to proceed with its restoration.

The Galleria Bazzanti together with the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry offered to cast the replica of the large sculpture with lost wax technique at their own expense. It was precisely during the study phases, and then at the beginning of the execution of the negative mold, that it became clear that the statue was cast in two stages, with the upper part re-poured over the lower one

It started with the study of wich technique to use for the negative mould which obviously would have not damaged either the patina or the original bronze surface

) and immediately after with the execution of the negative mold in silicone and mother mould

From the negative molds thus made by the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry, waxes were obtained, transformed into bronze with the lost wax technique. The casting was made in 4 parts (two for the body, the head and the hand with the Gospel) assembled and welded with the same bronze alloy.

The replica thus replaced the original with an inauguration ceremony

The replica was appreciated also by the authorities. The subsequent defections of the pigeons contributed to “antiquing” the patina.

The realization of bronze sculptures during ancient times has always been more complex and expensive than that of marble or stone sculptures. Bronze is a metal alloy whose components have been difficult to find in the past, therefore expensive. The Romans considered bronze to be precious and noble, so much so that it was used to cast coins

and mint them.

And also the casting technique was complex, expensive and had high risks of bad success. Widely used in classical times (in ancient Greece there were foundries of semi-serial production), in the Middle Ages bronze sculpture became very rare. It was not until the early Renaissance that works of art through lost wax bronze casting began to be produced, a production that continued to this day.

Bronze is an alloy that is obtained by combining copper and tin in different percentages depending on the characteristics that the metal must have (the alloy obtained from copper and zinc is brass instead). While in the various eras the technique of lost wax casting has remained almost unchanged, for the alloy, that is for the percentages of copper and tin, many tests have been done, in some cases also with the addition in small quantities of other metals, to improve its smoothness during the casting or the mechanical characteristics: alloys for cannons (the bombarda alloy), the alloy for bells, and the statuary alloy used since the late Renaissance for sculptures and coin minting. Biringuccio, in the mid-sixteenth century,

recommends for casting figures a bronze with the percentage of tin variable from 7.4 to 10.7. In the Ferdinando Marinelli Artistic Foundry the bronze Bz 90/10 is used, in which the percentage of tin is 10%

For the lost wax technique a lot of experience is needed: especially in the past mistakes in the composition of the refractory material, in the cooking of the forms, in the temperature in which the bronze was poured, could compromise the casting.

In the technique of lost-wax casting, materials, tools and machinery, have remained the same since the Renaissance till the mid-1900s. Only after this date some materials and some equipment have changed slightly to make the work of the foundry artisans safer and less tiring. But the technique remained exactly the same, linked to the hands of the craftsman.
(The black and white images refer to the Ferdinando Marinelli Foundry in the 1950s). The first phase of this technique is the execution of a negative mould over the sculptural work to be reproduced in bronze, such as a clay sculpture.

Getting a negative mold for an all-round sculpture with many undercuts creates difficulties; in antiquity it was used the molding with dowels where the mould was made in many small pieces of plaster called dowels, each detachable and extractable from the sculpture, parts held together by an external counter-shell also in plaster called motherform.

From the Renaissance, it began to be used an elastic substance obtained from animal glue mixed with fat, melted in a bain-marie and applied with a brush on the surface of the sculpture; this glue, as it cools, becomes hard but remains rather elastic and flexible, allowing the detachment from the sculpture even in cases of undercuts.

Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi, known as Donatello, was born in Florence in 1386. He had a very long life, he died in Florence in 1466 at the age of 80 years.

He was educated in the house of the Martelli’s, very rich Renaissance lords who had made money as arms makers, then allied with the Medici family. He was noble and elegant, but this did not prohibit him in Pistoia from beating and seriously injuring the German Anichinus Pieri, for whom he was condemned.
It was probably in Pistoia that he worked as a goldsmith apprentice together with Brunelleschi for the great silver altar for the city’s cathedral.

The friendship with Brunelleschi was very important for Donatello; in fact they went together, from 1402 to 1040, to Rome to study and draw ancient Roman art. In 1404 he was back in Florence where until 1407 he worked as an aide to the first door (north) of the baptistery cast with lost wax by Ghiberti. From 1406 along with other sculptures for the city of Florence he worked at the Porta della Mandorla of the Florentin Cathedral and later with Jacopo della Quercia at the baptismal font of Siena. And in Orsanmichele with Nanni di Banco. He had the possibility to see the new typology of the type of classical Roman putto.
Between 1423 and 1425 he sculpted and cast the statue of Saint Louis of Toulouse commissioned by the Guelph Party for an external niche of Orsanmichele (Museum of the Opera of Santa Croce, Florence)

Donatello in the architecture of the marble niche sculpts two cherubs keeping a ribbon in his typical “stiacciato” bas-relief style, along with other cherub heads.

Donatello decorates the upper part of the pastoral stick of the saint with niches from which small putti stand out in the round and hold arms; although very small, they are the first bronze statuettes of the ‘400.

In the marble Madonna and Child in her arms sitting on the clouds, nine winged and half-naked putti-Eroti as angels (previously the angels were heavily dressed) are sculpted foreshortening with the “allo stiacciato” technique typical of Donatello, (Mus. Fine Arts Boston) performed between 1425 and 1428.

Even in another bas-relief in “stiacciato”, the Ascension and the handing over of the keys to St. Peter (Victoria & Albert Mus. London) which is believed to have been carved in the same period as the previous (1425-1428), there are small angels plump putti dressed in veil. Those at the top are classical,

The musician and dancing angels and the banquet of Herod are part of the baptismal font of the Baptistery of Siena, performed in collaboration between Ghiberti, Jacopo della Quercia, Turino di Sano, Giovanni Turini and Donatello. The Font was made between 1416 and 1427. In 1416 Ghiberti went to Siena, in 1417 he created a model on which to apply to the base bas-reliefs and all-round bronze figures. Two bas-reliefs were entrusted to Ghiberti (Baptism of Christ and Capture of the Baptist), two to Jacopo della Quercia (Expulsion of Zechariah from the Temple and the Banquet of Herod), two to Turino di Sano together with his son Giovanni Turini (The birth of the Baptist and the Baptist’s Prayer). In 1423 Jacopo had not yet begun to model of the Banquetof Erode, which was then given to Donatello, to whom two statues of the Virtues and two putti were also contracted. In 1427 Ghiberti and Donatello finished their bas-reliefs, and Jacopo began his own.
In 1428 the completion of the whole Font was allocated to Jacopo.
In his bas-relief of the Banquet of Herod Donatello he inserted the figures of two absolutely classic putti half naked with ancient clothes quite frightened and horrified by the spectacle of Giovanni’s head on the plate. It is the first time that putti are placed in the dramatic and horrible scene of the beheading of the Baptist.

The motif of the left leg of the putto in the ground is also of classical inspiration, probably from some ancient sculpture or an Etruscan cinerary urn, such as the one at the Vatican Museums of Thana Helusnei.

At the top of the Font there were originally 6 all-round bronze cherubs, only four remained, of which two by Donatello, executed in 1429, and two by Turini executed in 1431. Of the Donatello’s, one plays the horn, another one dances and plays the tambourine (Mus. Bode Berlin). Donatello has created here the dancing putto that derives from the angels (adults) musicians of the Middle Ages. They are the precursors of the cherubs of the choirs of Florence and Prato. They also have the characteristic of being autonomous, that is to say, once detached from the Font, small statues that do not require any background to exist, which anticipate the largest all-round sculptures of the Renaissance. They stand on a shell surrounded by a crown symbols of birth (baptism) and victory (on death).

The antipope Baldassarre Coscia Giovanni XXIII elected in 1410 died in Florence in 1419. Donatello together with Michelozzo designed and built his tomb inside the Baptistery of Florence.

On the base on which the sarcophagus rests, two naked winged putti holding a parchment with an inscription are carved in bas-relief. /p>

The use of pagan cherubs in the tomb of a pope makes us understand that at the beginning of the fifteenth century the figure of the putto-Erote had been serenely re-Christianized.
Below, three winged heads of cherubs hold wreaths.

Michelangelo, as he himself wrote in March 1520, at the request of the pope, in 1517-8 left from Rome for the Serravezza quarries: “I was sent from Rome to Seraveza, before I started to quarry, to see if there was marble”.

But he goes on to get them from the Carrara quarries .
Finally, however, he persuades himself to have the marble extracted in Serravezza as the Pope asked him, with the appreciation of Cardinal Giulio dei Medici, a family who owns the quarries of Pietrasanta and Serravezza, who wrote to him in this regard on 23 March 1518. Cosimo I dei Medici will then build the Medici villa of Serravezza in these lands in 1564, probably by Buontalenti architect .

From a letter also written in March 1920 to Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo, who has always been against the quarries of Searravezza, justifies this change by saying that he was no more satrisfied by the Carrara’s quarrie workes. So I went to get these marbles to be quarried in Seravezza owned by Florentine people.
And it certainly weighs on him having to open new virgin quarries, rather than using those very well-known of Carrara. Furthermore, the Carraresi boycotted the transport by sea of the blocks already purchased and quarried, so much so that Michelangelo was forced to resort to the recommendation of Jacopo Salviati to convince a ferryman from Pisa.
But Serravezza disappointed him: the marbles were not as he would had liked them, deliveries were very late, the road to reach them was not yet finished. Now Michelangelo was very angry, and on April 18, 1518 he wrote from Pietrasanta to his brother Buonarroto that he was desperate and that he would had ride on horseback and go to visit the Cardinal de ‘Medici and Pope telling them that he would leave return to Carrara, were the quarry workers where praying him to go back.
He actually returns to Carrara, but things have become enormously complicated there too: always higher prices for marble and infinite difficulties for transport. In Serravezza things where no better: the stonemasons, all from Settignano near Fiesole, had no experience in quarrying marble, they had continuously accidents in the quarry, one of which had been fatal, it was not possible to dig a healthy column without unexpected veins or without breaking it. He had to commission and pay some architectural pieces three times, he had to personally go and teach the inexperienced quarrymen the quality of the marble, as he wrote in the letter to Domenico di Boninsegni at the end of December 1518.
After a series of accidents also in the loading on ships, misunderstandings with the Marquis Alberico Malaspina,

Michelangelo commissioned blocks from the Carrara quarry workers, and communicated to Cardinal Giulio dei Medici that he had found these quarrymen more humble than they usually did. The pope temporarily renounced the plan to exploit the Serravezza quarries and accepted Carrara, as Michelangelo wished. Vasari, an artist at the service of the Medici, in his Dell ‘Architettura will be the only one who will praise the marbles of the Pietrasanta quarries, owned by the Medici.

Things continued to go slowly and Cardinal Giulio Della Rovere sended the papal secretary Pallavicino to Michelangelo’s studio in Florence, where he finded with satisfaction 4 statues sketched for the facade of San Lorenzo.
To check the supplies constantly delayed of the marble for the facade of San Lorenzo Michelangelo sended his disciple Pietro Urbano on horseback several times to the Carrara quarries together with an apprentice. Difficult task, because being able to identify microfractures in the blocks and even more to understand which direction they take within the block, was very difficult. So much so that even in the marble of the Pietà in Florence during the restoration one of these microfractures appeared, and in that of the Moses an evident small crack starts from the coat and crosses the right knee.
In his studio in via Mozza in Florence, Michelangelo, assisted by the Maestro Domenico di Giovanni di Bertino from Settignano called Topolino, continued the working of the marble for the facade. The foundations of the new facade where also carried out.
But in 1519-1520 the work on the facade was blocked: the pope no longer seemed interested, or perhaps also because of the lack of money (Vasari). Between February and March 1520 the contract was cancelled: Michelangelo was embittered, also because the real reason for the blocking of the works had not been told to him, and he writes that because of the infinite displacements for Carrara and Pietrasanta … I was on horseback eight months …
The marbles still in the quarries where purchased in part from Sansovino, in part they where sent to Naples for Vittorio Ghiberti (son of Lorenzo Ghiberti).
But soon Michelangelo was heartened: he received from Giulio dei Medici, the future Pope Clement VII, the task of designing the New Sacristy in San Lorenzo, to place the tombs of Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother Giuliano, of Lorenzo duke of Urbino (seventh son of Lorenzo the Magnificent), and Giuliano Duke of Nemours (grandson of Lorenzo the Magnificent).

In 1521 he received 200 ducats from Cardinal Giulio and on 9 April he returned to Carrara to order the marbles for the tombs of the New Sacristy. He stayed there for about 20 days making the measurements of the burials and drawing them. He returned to the house of the quarryman Francesco Pelliccia, as usual in Carrara, ordered 200 cartloads of marble specified on the notary contract which he stipulated on April 23 with the quarrymen Pollina, Leone and Bello. On April 2, he signed another contract for 100 cartloads of marble with the quarrymen Marcuccio and Francione del Ferraro.
Since 1520 Michelangelo had designed various plans for the tombs, which he discussed with Cardinal Giulio. In 1524 he had created the definitive models that he began to sculpt. In 1526 the first tomb was walled in the chapel, that of Lorenzo Duke of Urbino with the statue of Lorenzo posing as a thinker and allegories of Aurora and Twilight.

Subsequently he sculpted, with the help of Montorsoli, that of Giuliano Duke of Nemours with allegories of Night and Day.
The events relating to the supply of marble from Carrara become tangled and complex, Michelangelo returned several times to Carrara, but was too busy in Florence and leaved his seconds to manage the extractions. But the work on the New Sacristy went on.
In 1527 following the crisis between Pope Clement VII of the Medici family and Emperor Charles V of Habsburg, the Florentine people, fomented by the friar Girolamo Savonarola, expelled the Medici from Florence by establishing a republican government. Michelangelo collaborated with the new government taking care of the fortifications. In 1530 Florence was besieged and surrendered in 1532, the republican government was replaced by the Medici lordship of Alessandro dei Medici, illegitimate son of Pope Clement VII.

On the return of the Medici, Michelangelo resumed work on the New Sacristy which continued until 1534, the year in which he went to Rome to fresco the Sistine Chapel.

On the left side of the Cathedral of Florence (Santa Maria del Fiore) there is the Almond Gate, executed in three phases: 1391-1397, 1404 -1409, 1414 -1422. Without going into the list of the artists who worked on it, it is enough to note that in the side friezes there are classical cherubs, some more clumsy, others more evolved. They are among the first “germs” of the rediscovery of the Eros-Love putto.

The first real appearance of putti in ancient style is owed to Jacopo della Quercia (with the probable help of Francesco da Valdambrino) in the tomb that he executed in 1406 for Ilaria del Carretto, wife of Paolo Guinigi lord of Lucca, placed in the Cathedral of the city. It is a sarcophagus still of medieval flavor, with the deceased on the lid. But the sarcophagus is surrounded by a series of classic winged putti, each in a different pose, which hold the classic fruit garlands around their necks. Even if they have funerary meaning, Jacopo for the first time recreates, on a classical Roman model, the one that with Donatello will be the Renaissance putto.

It is very likely that Jacopo was inspired by the various Roman sarcophagi and fragments of sculpture found in Pisa, some of which are decorated with putti,

others with garlands like that of Caius Bellicus Natalis Tabanianus of the Pisa Monumental Cemetery.

Jacopo also sculpted, between 1425 and 1438, two winged putti of classical forms inserted in two shelves of the Porta Magna of the church of San Petronio in Bologna,

and likewise two cherubs of classical taste in the bas-relief of Adam and Eve, representing Cain and Abel.

Another interesting example is found in the predella of the four sculptures of one of the niches of the church of Orsanmichele in Florence: the Santi Quattro Coronati by Nanni di Banco executed from 1411 to 1413: a marble sculpture workshop is represented in bas-relief; on the right, one is curiously performing a classic but very large putto, when in reality the sculpture of a large nude had never been performed yet; it will be no earlier than about 1440, the year in which Donatello performs the Attis and his David.

In the sacristy of the church of Santa Trinita in Florence, the tomb of Onofrio Strozzi consists of an arch that overlooks the sarcophagus; the arch is decorated with putti that climb on a garland in a bas-relief, whose style is very similar to that of Donatello. On the sarcophagus there are two ungainly and ugly putti that support a coat of arms, in the ancient Roman style. Probably it is to these that the document that attributes to Piero di Niccolò Lamberti the work, executed in 1418, refers to, while the arc was probably executed later by the workshop of Donatello.

Between 1415 and 1421, the year of his death, Nanni di banco worked on the execution of the high-reliefs of the upper part of the Porta della Mandorla of the Florentine Cathedral. The Madonna contained in the “almond” is surrounded by 6 winged putti who are dressed as angels, three of them musicians; they are more grown up than classic cherubs. Inside the almond, on the sides of the Madonna, two others appear, younger, and a winged putto head (a Serafino) also appears under his feet. It is a hybrid: dressed angels, with the typology and shape of classical Roman putti that surely influenced Donatello who already knew the classic ones seen in his travels to Rome with Filippo Brunelleschi.

Michelangelo reached the marble quarries in Carrara twice, in 1497 and 1503, but Condivi, who wrote the biography published in 1553, does not mention it.

In November 1497 he went there to find marble for the Pietà, a monument contracted by the cardinal of San Dionigi (Jean de Bilheres de Lagraulas), who wrote to the Elders of Lucca to help him on his arrival at the quarries.

Even before signing the contract with the client, Michelangelo withdrawed a sum from his account at the Archispedale of Santa Maria Nuova in Florence

and on a grey horse he left for Carrara, where he rented a house owned by the quarryman Francesco Pelliccia who worked in the Polvaccio quarry, where Michelangelo bought the blocks, and which today is called Michelangelo’s Quarry.

But he stayed there only the time he needed to find and choose the marbles at the quarry by the stonemason Matteo Cuccarello and returned to Rome; in early February they were ready, Michelangelo payed the rental of a cart pulled by a horse for their transport to the port, but did not return to Carrara: an acquaintance of the client, the cardinal of San Dionigi, was interested in the operation.
At the beginning of March the marbles had not yet arrived, Michelangelo was waiting for them.The cardinal wrote to the Marquis of Massa Malaspina and to the Lordship of Florence to untangle the situation, finally, at the beginning of the summer, the blocks arrived in Rome. In August the contract was signed between the two in which Michelangelo undertaked for 450 golden ducats to sculpt the Pietà as the cardinal’s funeral monument, taking on all the costs.
In August 1498 the sculpture was not yet finished, the cardinal died and did not have time to see it.

Michelangelo returned to the quarry in 1503, when the Opera del Duomo in Florence commissioned him to perform the twelve apostles for the Cathedral, forcing him by contract to go to Carrara to choose the marbles. He found almost all of them, as he himself will write in December 1523 to Giovan Francesco Fattucci:… chondocti la maggior parte d’i marmi…, which arrived in Florence between 1504 and 1505. It began with the “sbozzo” of the San Matteo that did not finish (Accademia Gallery, Florence) but stopped because Pope Julius II della Rovere wanted it in Rome, and in December 1505 the contract for the apostles was dissolved.

Condivi, in Michelangelo’s biography, tells us that in the spring of the same year he returned to Carrara. This time the commitment was important: looking for the marble for the huge tomb that the Pope wanted to erect in St. Peter’s was not a joke. He had to find many perfect blocks, worth more than a thousand ducats. And this time in Carrara it remained eight months. The first contract we have left of this long period in the quarries is dated November 1505 and is related to the transport by sea of 34 cartloads of marble: the cartload is the quantity of marble that a cart with two oxen can tow on the plain, about 850 kg.

It was stipulated with two Ligurian of Lavagna boat owners, who in about ten days transported the cargo to Avenza with the boats at the cost of 62 golden ducats, where Michelangelo would have unloaded and transported by sea to Rome at his own expense; they were unloaded at the Ripa del Tevere with boats (today Ripa Grande).

The second contract reached to us, dated 10 December 1505, concerns the purchase of another 60 cartloads of marble by the stonemasons Matteo Cuccarello and Guido di Antonio di Biagio who should have brought to the port of Carrara for embarkation between May and the following September.
In the contract Michelangelo specified that the marbles had to be white, without defects, that is without internal cracks, without veins, they had to be “alive” and not “cooked”, they had to be extracted from the Polvaccio quarry, or from any other place where they were found, provided that they were clean white and some of the blocks were not yet established, and Matteo Cuccarello had to go to Florence where Michelangelo gave them precise drawing also the shape of each block, as was his habit.

The quantity of marbles ordered is such that the various quarrymen in 1506 created a Company, today we would say a Joint Venture to satisfy the sculptor and the Pope. When all the marbles arrived they fill half of St. Peter’s square, with great admiration of the people and satisfaction of the Pope. The gigantic pyramid-shaped tomb 10 meters long and 7 meters wide would have cost 10,000 ducats and would have engaged Michelangelo for 5 years.

If Michelangelo had a temper, Julius II was no less:

he was convinced by Bramante, envious, that having the tomb while he was still alive would have brought bad luck, and blocked the payments requested by Michelangelo to pay the cost of transporting the marble; the sculptor went several times and for several days to the Pope who did not receive him. On April 18 the angry Michelangelo fleed on horseback towards Florence, Julius II asked to 5 papal couriers to chase him; they reached him in Poggibonsi and tried to get him back to Rome. But the sculptor disagreed, and payed the cost of transport with a loan from Jacopo Gallo’s bank.
The marbles remained in St. Peter’s square until the death of Julius II and the election of the subsequent Florentine Pope Leo X in 1513.
The heirs of Julius II asked Michelangelo to resume the work of carving the tomb, but with a less ambitious project. But this project had not peace, it was increasingly reduced in 1516, then in 1526 and again in 1532, when the mausoleum had not longer to be placed in San Pietro Basilica but in the Church of San Pietro in Vincoli. A subsequent project still shrinked it, and only in 1545 Michelangelo finished it in the shape and size it still has today.

In 1513, when the work for the Papal mausoleum restarted, Michelangelo’s relations with the quarrymen of Carrara were exacerbated, both for the delay in deliveries of the new blocks that should replace those stolen in St. Peter’s square, and, perhaps, for the unsatisfactory quality of the latest marbles. Or perhaps also for the delays in paying the quarrymen for the marble delivered in 1508. And he no longer wanted to deal personally with the Carrarese quarrymen: on July 7, 1515 Michelangelo wrote to his brother Buonarroto to ask the stonemason of Pietrasanta Michele da Settignano if he could buy marble from there, but he said he could not go in person or send someone: A Carrara non voglio andare io, perché non posso, e non posso mandar nessuno che sia el bisognio, perché se e’ non sono pazi e’ son traditori e tristi…
He also asked his brother to put him in contact with other people who could mediate between him and the Carraresi. Michelangelo returned to Carrara in 1516, when the project for the tomb of Julius II started again. He obtained a letter of recommendation for Lorenzo Malaspina marquis of Fosdinovo, sent to the marquis by his sister Argentina Malaspina, wife of Pier Soderini, perhaps solicited by Michelangelo himself; Soderini was a friend and admirer of Michelangelo.

The letter had a good effect, and he was well received by the quarrymen represented by the Caldana (Jacopo d’Antonino di Maffiolo) who sent him a letter in Florence in which he wrote that he was willing to serve him heartily.
In November 1516 he ordered marbles to Francesco Pelliccia, in whose house he continued to live as a tenant, but in April 1517 the order was canceled by mutual agreement. However, he continued to order marbles at the Polvaccio quarry from the quarrymen Mancino, Iacopo di Piero di Torano, and Antonio di Iacopo di Pulica; but they did not comply with the agreed agreements, and Michelangelo sued them in the curia of Carrara. Michelangelo, who did not know Latin, demanded and obtained that notaries would have written in the vernacular.
Let’s take a step back: in December 1516 while he was in Carrara, Pope Leo X wanted him in Rome to make him design the unfinished facade of the Florentine church of San Lorenzo; between 1516 and 1517 Michelangelo executed some different designs for the facade

with the Pope’s request, through Buoninsegni, to place the statues of San Lorenzo, San Giovanni, San Pietro and San Paolo in the lower niches; highered up the sitting one of San Luca, San Giovanni, San Matteo, San Marco; even higher those of San Cosma and San Damiano in honor of the Medici.
He also designed as usual, for the marbles he chose and ordered at the quarries for San Lorenzo, shape and size.

However, the Pope told him the idea that he wanted the marble to be quarried in Pietrasanta which was in the Medici domain. Michelangelo lost time because did not want to detach himself from the Carrara quarries, but the Pope did not withdraw: the marbles for San Pietro, Santa Reparata and San Lorenzo had to be quarried in Pietrasanta. With the excuse that the road to get to the quarries of Pietrasanta was not finished, Michelangelo continued to choose the marbles for the facade of San Lorenzo in Carrara, buying for 4,000 ducats. But he was not calm, he had the task of purchasing the marbles, but not that of executing the facade, and from Carrara he wrote to Domenico Boninsegni, the Pope’s secretary, expressing his concern. Boninsegni reassured him, told him that the Pope would have already wanted to see a model for the facade, which he was willing to wait for, but advised him to make a wooden one as soon as possible to send to Rome. On 20 August 1517 he left Carrara for Florence to make the model for the Pope, on which he applied the models of the sculptures made in wax. In Florence he felt seriously ill, but once recovered he performed it and sent it to Rome on a mule through his pupil Pietro Urbano.

The pope was enthusiastic, called and entrusted him for the realization of the facade; he knew well how the sculptor left everything unfinished and therefore obliged him to use helpers. On January 19, 1518 the contract was signed with white and fine marbles that were from Carrara or Pietrasanta where better [Michelangelo] would have judged in this regard.