Note 96 — Chapter I

Pietra Serena is a very fine sedimentary sandstone, and Vasari does not say too much in its praise. Baldinucci in his Vocabolario repeats much of what Vasari has said, but mentions also a ‘pietra bigia’ or grey stone, which lies outside the ‘serena,’ and is inferior to it.

The quarries of pietra serena are abundant along the southern slopes of Monte Ceceri, to the south east of Fiesole, overhanging Majano. The blue colour Vasari ascribes to it is the cause of its name, the epithet ‘sereno’ being specially applicable to the clear blue sky. See G on the Frontispiece. Vasari’s account of the stones dealt with in §§ 16, 17, is not very clear, as he returns to the epithet ‘serena’ at the close of § 16 for a stone that he makes to differ essentially from the ‘serena’ of the beginning of the section in that it is weather-resisting. Cellini in his second Treatise, Della Scultura, ed. Milanesi, 1893, p. 201, is clearer. He distinguishes three kinds, (1) ‘pietra serena,’ azure in hue and only good for work in interiors; (2) a stone of a brownish hue (tanè) that he calls ‘pietra morta.’ The lexicographers fight shy of this term, but it seems to mean a stone without any lime in it and therefore unchangeable by the action of fire, while a limestone would be ‘pietra viva.’ See Cellini, loc. cit., p. 187. This is suitable for figure carving, and it resists ‘wind and rain and all violence of the weather.’ It is evidently the stone Vasari writes of as the material of Donatello’s ‘Dovizia.’ (3) The third kind is the pietra forte, also brownish in hue, and useful for decorative carvings on exteriors. Cellini notes as Vasari does that it is only found in small pieces.