Marble Sculpting Classes in Tuscany

skinning the stone pictureIf you have landed upon this page, you are unlikely to be one of those people who is a first time visitor to Italy looking for everyone’s “best places to go in Italy” post. You won’t find one here. We are degenerates; we believe everyone can have their own best place; our purpose is to help people find it. In any case, we’re now going to assume you’ve been to Rome, Venice and Florence and have eaten in enough of those dismal tourist restaurants that you’re wondering what all the hype is about. You are looking to do your thing, and eat decently. Well, we’d suggest you get out into the countryside. Even Michelangelo did it.

If you are like me, you shun Mediterranean beaches. You like to do things. You like exploring art and culture. You like the (real) food of Tuscany, the food grandmothers make.

In fact, if you are (still) reading this particular post, perhaps you’d like to wade into the stream below Italy’s famous marble quarries—a stream loaded with water-washed white river cobbles of the precious stone—and dip your big hands into the stream in order to wrestle the perfect one out of the flowing waters and heft it onto he grassy shore. Is it your stone, the one that calls out to you? Does it say in a gravelly voice, “deep within me is the stuff of greatness, the expression of your oneness with me, all you have to do is remove all the crap that isn’t that stuff?”

Then, under the watchful eye of your teacher, you’d begin to skin your stone. Yes, that’s what she’s doing up there with the fashionable eye protection and the big hammer thingy.

Soon your stone is ready for you. You may sculpt.

campo altissimo, peter rosenzweigYes, you can do this on your vacation! You can do it on the grounds of a little house on the edge of a steep ravine with a view overlooking the mountains. Below you, way below, is that little stream from which your modest cobble was plucked.

Now, as a special treat for marble workers, you can eat the quarry-man’s favorite, lardo, without giving a thought to the fat content. You are working hard. Your stone is turning into your vision. You can pig out.

Isn’t that better than laying around on a beach? After all, you can do that in El Lay if you want. Sand is sand.

But marble is a different thing.

The picture on the left shows Peter Rosenzweig, the Director of Campo dell’ Altissimo tucked away in the small village of Azzano. If you take sculpting or painting courses at Campo dell’Altissimo, you can live near this place for cheap, donning your work clothes every morning and tromping off to work your hand-picked stone, chopping away at all the stuff that is not to your stone’s liking.

The picture shows Peter with a student’s work. I don’t know what it is either.

Does this sound good to you? Well, hop on it! The school was happening in May, and classes continue through summer, some as short as one week (just to see if it’s for you). The school can arrange local lodging. You don’t have to eat lardo if you don’t want to.

Check them out: Campo dell’Altissimo

If you are a wimp, and cannot lift a stone, you can still tour the quarries: Carrara Marble Tour Map and Guide

(Discovered thanks to the Versilia Blog Tour)


Marble Sculpting Classes in Tuscany originally appeared on WanderingItaly.com , updated: Apr 19, 2022 © .

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