The ancient Roman colony, Carrara, has its shadows defined as a “Dantesque landscape”: and Dante Alighieri has dedicated to this place some of his verses in the Divine Comedy, XX Song of Hell: “Aron is what the belly of Luni falls to him, where Carrarese lies lurking under the marble / marble of the fork / dwelling, so the stars and the mar are crushed. “Testimony, these places in the Apuan Alps have allowed them to have continuous relationships between the ages artists, artisans and diggers.
Historically it is with the Roman era that Carrara marble begins its fortune by working for architecture and works of art. In fact, the same will be used in the residence of Ottaviano Augusto in Palatina in Rome and in various monuments such as the Forum and Trajan’s Column, the Arch of Constantine, the Temple of Apollo.
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, marble saw a period of decline in its use and then it was included as prestigious material of the year 1000 forward, for churches and religious works, from the Duomo to the Baptistery of Pisa, to the famous builds sacred places of Assisi and Orvieto.
But the marble of Carrara receives his consecration from the Renaissance. And artists choose the material: for example, Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpts the “Pietà ” in a single block of this precious marble, Bernini gets extraordinary effects with the “Apollo and Dafne” group and Canova succeeds in immortalizing the beauty of the extraordinary sculpture of Paolina Borghese candles, then advance over time and find other artists who will use and bring this ancient material of almost 190 million years between the world and among its most beautiful and suggestive works.
