Chapter V How to Carve Statues or Intaglios, or Other Works, Such as Divers Beasts, in Marble or Other Stones
There are many kinds of white marble, & since those of Greece are the most desired, 273 and the loveliest, let us consider them first. And well may I speak, for I spent some twenty years in the wondrous city of Rome, and while there, though I gave my attention to the craft of the goldsmith, I always had a desire to do some great works in marble; & I worked along of some of the first sculptors that lived in those days; and among them that I knew best was our great Michaelangelo Buonaroti, the Florentine, the man that wrought better in marble than any other ever known. Of the reason of this I shall duly speak to you in its place.
Let us tell, then, in the same way as we did before in other matters, of the qualities of marbles. I have seen five or more different sorts of marble. The first of these has a very coarse grain,274 and in the grain appear certain bright points running close along side of each other. This marble is the most difficult of all to work, because it is the hardest; it is particularly difficult to fashion the more delicate forms in it without the chisel damaging or cracking them; if you do manage, though after much effort, to bring them off in this stone, they look lovely. I have found that the grain gradually softens through the five different sorts above-mentioned, & the softest of all I have found verging in colour to a delicate flesh tint rather than a white. This sort is the most cohesive, the most beautiful and the tenderest marble in the world to work in.
Footnotes
273 Piu orientali.
274 Grana grossissima.