Stone carvers world tour

The male beauties sculpted in stone and visible in today's museums, galleries, cathedrals, castles, churches, public monuments, parks and places, have a similar origin : a (large) block of marble or other stone, block that was extracted from the ground, in various quarries such as the famous Carrara, Volterra, and Pietrasanta in Italy, by famous or less known carvers and sculptors. And these cathedrals, palaces or public monuments as well were built using carved blocks of stone or marble.

Italy (detail - Architecture Allegorie -hard stone marqueterie - painting from Giuseppe Zocchi)

So here is a visual world tour of some of these carvers and sculptors, their tools, their workshops or studios and a selection of some marble and other stone quarries. Let start with some stone carvers, through photographs, old postcards, paintings, drawings, and even marqueterie with hard stone!

Italy (Architecture allegorie - this is an impressive hard stone marqueterie based on a painting from Giuseppe Zocchi - we will write more about him later on).

France - Bastia, in Corsica

Middle-age drawings:

Netherlands

 Netherlands

 Russia - Moscow

 France - Amiens

Dated 1425

Hungary

Turkey

USA - Queens - NYC

 USA - Indiana - Limestone blocks, 1929.

 USA - Manhattan NYC, 1905

 USa - Washington, 1854

 USA - Prisoners in the State Prison of Massachusetts

India - Assam, 1920

 China - Guangzou, 1790

 Japan

 Japan - artist Wada Sanzo, 1883-1967

 China

Mexico - Diego Rivera drawing

Mexico  - Carl Pappe 1936

Egypt

Sources :
Site de Pierres-Info  
Histoire des Arts et des Métiers

Male couple sculpture in Ancient Egypt (1)

For the coming St Valentine day, I suggest today the story of possibly the first male couple sculpture  in the history!

'Khnumhotep and Niankhkhnum were two ancient royal servants who shared the title of “Overseer of the Manicurists in the Palace of King Niuserre.” 

On their tomb, these two men are sculpted in a very intimate pose, reportedly the one allowed by Egyptian artistic conventions: face to face, with their noses touching. 

Niankhkhnum means “joined to life” and Khnumhotep means “joined to the blessed state of the dead;” together their names mean “joined in life and death.” 

Some archeologists describe them as the first same-sex couple in recorded history. The picture below shows a detail from their tomb dating to around 2350 BC.  '

Below is the stone engraving or 'bas-relief' of this couple.

Sources :
Wikipedia, and a very interesting article from the New York times, here :  nytimes

Painting inspired by this couple - Artist unknown