Bernini's Favorite Marble--Cottanello

Augustus made Rome into a city of marble, and much of it, like the prized cipollino and porphyry, came from Greece,Turkey and Egypt. Marmo di Cottanello, a striated red limestone from Monte Lacerone near Cottanello, though certainly stunning, was less favored; it wasn’t really a marble at all but argillaceous limestone that included clay.Because of the clay it was less solid and durable. The Romans used it, but only when they could not afford something more prized and expensive.

In the seventeenth century Cottanello enjoyed a rebirth.Marble from elsewhere was prohibitively expensive, and architects had already robbed all the precious marbles from the Roman buildings of antiquity. The master of the baroque, Gianlorenzo Bernini, it turns out, very much liked Cottanello.In his view the reddish showiness fit the ebullient baroque very well, and its price meant he could use more of it.

Bernini’s favorite church was his Sant’Andrea al Quirinale, and here he used the beautiful Cottanello more than liberally in the main altar of the Saint, where we find it in the columns and pilasters, and even framing the altarpiece of Andrew’s martyrdom.

One of Bernini’s last projects was the tomb of the Chigi Alexander VII at St. Peter’s.Here the striking Cottanello columns frame the tomb, and well compliment the drapery pall of Sicilian Jasper.