Travelogue 1189 – 20 June
The Road to Carrara
Part Three The first time Michelangelo visited Carrara, the world was young. It was young, but not so innocent. In the same year, the Venetian John Cabot landed in Newfoundland, and the Florentine Vespucci embarked on his first voyage. Columbus was between voyages, perhaps fretting over the end of the world. The Genovese-Spaniard believed he was personally shepherding along Biblical prophecy with his exploration and conquest. The world must be laid open to evangelism. Gold must be collected in order to reconquer Jerusalem. Once again, it is good if we remind ourselves of the deep weirdness at the inception of the European project in America.
The poor, sad French monarch, Charles VIII, who had upset the apple cart in Italy a few years earlier, was planning a second campaign to recapture all he had quickly won and quickly lost in southern Italy. He had had two sons and heirs die as babies within the past two years. He was twenty-seven. In the spring of 1498, his wife would die in childbirth, and he himself would die a month afterward after banging his head against a door lintel in a rush to watch a tennis match. His successor would be his cousin, who would pursue his own ambitions in Italy, becoming the Duke of Milan and King of Naples, (only to lose it quickly to the Spaniards once again.)
Meanwhile, Michelangelo contentedly rode his grey horse across the mountains between Lucca and Pietrasanta, through Monte Magno and Camaiore. It was November; we can assume it was cloudy and cold. The road along the base of the mountains, from Camiore through Pietrasanta to Massa and Carrara was probably fairly rough. The region was going to be made more accessible after the Medicis claimed it, some sixteen years later. And as noted earlier, Michelangelo himself would be delegated to take a lead in the development.
For the moment, he is sure to have been content with his lot. He was 22 years old, and he had received a major commission. He was preceded by a letter from the Cardinal of Saint-Denis, asking the Elders of Lucca to support the young “maestro buonarrotto” in his task. The coast was Lucca’s for the moment. And so he travelled as someone important.
He arrived in beautiful Carrara, a town trailing down the hill, and arrived among the quarries above the town, where bone-white stone stood bare to the weather, squared and sheer from the blocks that were cut away. Here was the raw resource of his first genius, the element that held inside it his vision. He would write about the design inside the stone in his famous sonnet series when he was older and had done his reading in Renaissance Neo-Platonism.
The sculptor was put up in a house owned by the quarryman Francesco Pelliccia. Francesco worked in the Polvaccio quarry, and that is where Michelangelo found his blocks to carve. One can only imagine with what joy and what curiosity the young sculptor explored the quarries, led by stonemason Matteo Cuccarelli. One can imagine his agile mind at work, learning the techniques of quarrying, how he identified the stone, how he studied it, with what care and curiosity the young man ran his fingers over the raw marble in the mountainside.
Michelangelo paid for the stone, and he arranged for the horse and cart for the stones to be transported down the hill and to the port. And he left for Rome, probably to be there for Christmas. The marble was delayed; there was some problem with delivery. By spring, the marble had still not arrived. The cardinal was forced to write to friends to intervene.
As he became older, Michelangelo was reluctant to handle the business of the marble himself. It was no doubt an exhausting process haggling with the canny masons and workmen and cart owners, and then cajoling them to follow through with what they said, negotiating with the various customs agents of the day, the taxmen, the toll collectors, and the trolls under the bridges. By 1515, he was asking his brother to arrange for mediators.