Ombretta: Pietrasanta is full of marble workshops. A tour of Pietrasanta wouldn't be complete without visiting one. We went to the Studio di Scultura In Marmo di Cervietti Franco (Via San Agostino, 53 - walking distance from the center of the town). It is the best sculpting studio in Pietrasanta. Here they produce copies of classical sculptures or works for contemporary artists like Botero, Niki de Saint-Phalle, Folon, and Jeff Koons.
Douglas: Cervietti's marble workers make sculptures from drawings or photographs, though in most cases they work from models. If they are given a gesso (plaster) model they can use caliper-like measuring devices to transfer the correct proportions to a block of marble, resulting in a perfectly scaled reproduction of the original work.
Ombretta: It's amazing to watch and it takes a lot of time.
Douglas: A big piece could take as many as two hundred days of work.
Ombretta: I even tried it myself. I always knew marble must be hard, but it's more than you can imagine. People in my country have a saying (and it's what I always tell Douglas): "Your head is hard like the travertine marble." Now I really know what it means! The day we visited the studio they were working on the front facade of an American millionaire's mansion. He even had the stone shipped from America. Cervietti loves Americans and says they're always good clients.
Douglas: Probably the best surprise about Cervietti's workshop comes when you go above his studio. There's a huge room full of plaster models. Cervietti's family has been collecting plaster casts of famous works (including Michelangelo's Pieta and the David) for generations and he now has the largest privately held collection in the world. You can actually visit this dusty museum, find a work you like, and have them make a reproduction in marble.
Ombretta: You see body parts, portrait of popes, dictators, kings and queens, all sorts of animals, saints, and angels. It would be the perfect location for a scary movie.
Douglas: One of the oddest things we found here was a sculpture of George Bush Sr. It was commissioned by the White House in 1991. While I was photographing it I noticed another bust right behind it: Saddam Hussein's. Cervietti told us that his studio was doing sculptures of both Hussein and Bush at the same time. He delivered them only days before the Gulf War began.
Ombretta: So go visit Carrara and see the marble quarries. Afterwards, stop in Colonnata for their famous Lardo di Colonnata. Then make a stop in Pietrasanta to see real marble sculptors at work. What a perfect day!
We highly recommend it!!!
Resources
Sculpting in Tuscany
An excellent article about sculpture studios, with complete listings
www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag97/carra/sm-carra.htm
Franco Cervietti Studio
Via S. Agostino, 53
PO Box 116, Pietrasanta
Tel: 584-790454
Fax: 584-790925
Contact: Franco Cervietti
Spirito Artistico
Website of a consortium of Tuscan artisans with good information about Pietrasanta
www.artistic-spirit.com/index.htm
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