The great Michelangelo chose marble to carve his most famous works of art. We, too, use only the finest marble quality - the white Carrara bianco puro - to create all kinds of artistic works.
MARBLE SCULPTURES
The Demetz Art Studio uses only the best quality marble from the quarries around Carrara, Tuscany: bianco puro or bianco duro. The same marble Michelangelo used. In 1517 Michelangelo found the “cava” di Seravezza on Mount Altissimo (1589 meters in altitude). From there he got the big blocks to create the front panels for the Church of St. Lorenzo in Florence or his famous sculpture of David, to mention only two of his masterpieces. This kind of marble is almost impervious to weather conditions.
The stone carving tools used nowadays have not changed much from Michelangelo’s times. First, the rough stone gets hammered with a pitching hammer, then sculptured with special pointing tools and files.
As in the old days, we first make a small model in scale, a so called “moquette” (ita. bozzetto), to study the proportions and the position of the figure. With its help our sculptor then creates the actual marble statue using a special pointing tool. This is a three-dimensional pantograph designed to make proportional calibrations by the means of fixed points.
Old Masters
During the Renaissance period (15th and 16th century), when the great Michelangelo Buonarroti created his masterpieces, marble was considered the most precious material for sculptures, because of its timeless beauty. Later, in the Baroque period (17th – 18th century) Gian Lorenzo Bernini left his imprint in the world of the ecclesiastical art with his wonderful creations in marble.
