I bet you never knew that there was a road made by/for/because Michelangelo needed one made.
He wrote that the marble there was “of compact grain, homogeneous, crystalline, reminiscent of sugar”. He deemed it perhaps even more precious than that from nearby Carrara, where he had obtained marble for some of his most famous statues.
With the blessing of Pope Leo X, Michelangelo designed a path that could get blocks of the white marble down from the mountain to be transported to Florence to be used to decorate the facade of the church of San Lorenzo.
In exchange for getting a quarry operation going, Florentine authorities granted Michelangelo the right to take as much marble as he wanted from Altissimo
After several years of work to carve out a road, Pope Leo, who was of Florence’s Medici family, relieved Michelangelo of his commission and the project was abandoned. The church of San Lorenzo still has no facade.
In moving stone, Michelangelo, and for that matter all movers of masses, had a simple goal, resist the pull of gravity. Any time gravity led a block astray catastrophe struck. A block could slide too quickly down a slope and maim or kill. A heavily laden cart could sink into a road built across a swamp. A block could drop from a hoist and turn a boat into driftwood.
To counter the adverse and untimely affects of gravity, Michelangelo relied on rope and men. Neither came easily. He wrote his brother that if the Carrarese “are not fools, they are knaves and rascals.”
A crew walked off the job taking the 100 ducats he had paid them and the ropes, one of which weighed 566 pounds for a 422-foot length.
Michelangelo’s detailed records show that rope accounted for 18 percent of the total transportation costs. He also had to borrow pulleys, buy wood for sleds, and order custom-made turnbuckles and iron rings.
https://geologywriter.com/blog/stories-in-stone-blog/michelangelo-moving-marble-part-1/
All that has come down to us of the proposed façade of San Lorenzo are a few faded drawings in black and red chalk, and a late model in wood kept at the Casa Buonarroti in Florence.
This façade reminds us of an antique scena wall whose triple doors admitted and swallowed up gods and heroes
It comprises three horizontal zones divided by a cornice: first, the lower world; above it, the noumenal world with delicate pilasters, pure circles and rectangles, niches and a remote window. On the summit rests the gentle tympanum of the Trinity, infusing the whole composition with spirituality.
The architectural forms are all of very ancient origin. Michelangelo, more than any of his contemporaries absorbed and made them his own, treating them in a way which was copied by many who came after him, as can still be seen on any fairly conventional building.
He amassed the parts and unified them in a style far removed from the architectural conceptions of the Renaissance which had treated windows, doors, traverses, sculptured details, storys, and so on as independent but coordinated units, whereas Michelangelo and his followers subordinated them to the whole.
https://www.wga.hu/html_m/m/michelan/5archite/early/1lorenzo.html
Yes, I really do geek out over stuff like this. Roads, highways, freeways, bridges, etc etc and history, and the geniuses like Michelangelo who were not only the legends that were artists in paint, but also in sculpture, architecture, and poetry. To learn today that he had a road made? Made it worth staying up an hour later than I ought to get to sleep, merely to post about it.
Nice story, thanks.
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