It took 270 hours to copy a classic sculpture. Can robots replace Michelangelo?

© Through Eternity Tours

Leviathan Press:

Michelangelo achieved fame at an early age, sculpting his two most famous works, the Pietà and David, before the age of 30. His initial exploration of classical sculpture coincided with a period of extensive study of the human cadaver. Since Michelangelo had privileged access to nearby hospitals at the time, he acquired a parasurgical knowledge of human anatomy.

However, even if Michelangelo could "see the angel imprisoned in marble", carving marble is definitely a time-consuming and laborious physical job. Thanks to modern craftsmanship and technology, there is now a group of artists in Carrara, Italy, who are redefining this traditional carving craft.

**To understand the legend and mystery of Carrara marble, I was told to start by climbing the mountain. **So on a brisk afternoon last spring, I donned a blue crash helmet and an orange vest and climbed into a Land Rover with my local guide, Michael Bruni.

The single-lane, two-way road was poorly paved, and halfway up the mountain it became a bumpy, rocky path. The ascent was so steep, and the curves were so sharp that Bruni had to stop the car before we turned. The broken rocks under the wheels rocked the car like a toy made of building blocks.

Bruni told me that the mountain has experienced rock avalanches during heavy rains or when mountain goats climb it, gesticulating dramatically as he recounted past disasters.

"Put your hands back on the steering wheel..." I said.

The mountaintop quarries of Tuscany's Apuan Alps have served artists and architects since ancient Roman times, producing more marble than anywhere else on Earth. © Caleb Stein

Eventually, we reached a flat overlook. To our right, a base of water tanks, trucks, forklifts, and other heavy machinery had been chiseled out of the mountainside. Workers wielding electric saws were cutting ten-foot-deep blocks of rock out of the steep mountainside.

The only sound here is the piercing roar of machines drilling into the stone. Only when I look out at the jagged peaks of the Alpi Apuane and see that they are covered not in snow but in white marble, can I appreciate the vivid beauty of this precious stone that has defined this part of Italy for more than 2,000 years.

In ancient Rome, slaves, free men and prisoners used wedges and picks to quarry marble from these hills for use in Trajan’s Column and parts of the Pantheon, and in the centuries since, many great sculptors have been drawn to the area, from Bernini, Canova and Rodin to Jean Arp and Henry Moore.

However, the figure most closely associated with Carrara marble is Michelangelo, perhaps one of the greatest sculptors of all time.

Detail of Michelangelo's Pietà. © Marmomac/Through Eternity Tours

In 1497, when Michelangelo was just 22, he was searching for the ideal white stone for La Pietà, his first marble masterpiece of the Renaissance, now in St. Peter’s Basilica. Bruni explains that Michelangelo spent a long time in these hills searching for the perfect block of marble, especially the bright white Statuario, a marble that contains almost no silica and best captures the vitality and radiance of the human body.

Michelangelo maintained close relationships with the excavators, cutters, and carvers so that they could provide the best blocks of marble and precise instructions on the shape and size he wanted it in. He then worked with hammer and chisel until the figure emerged.

I saw an angel imprisoned in the marble, and only by carving could I set him free.

Michelangelo

Michelangelo's spirit still hovers over the quarries here. You can hear the Italian master's famous words: "Inside every block of stone there is a statue. It is the sculptor's task to discover it."

British-born, New York-based photographer Caleb Stein has long been fascinated by that moment of discovery, which he defines as “the moment when hints of a human form begin to emerge from the still discernible block of marble.”

Litix company website home page. © Litix

Earlier this year, Stein learned that an industrial estate outside Carrara was home to a group of up-and-coming marble sculptors, powerful automated robots belonging to a company called Litix (formerly Robotor).

Stan, whose photography often emphasizes the sculptural qualities of the human body, traveled to Carrara to document the robot’s process of creating a single sculpture from start to finish. “I was interested in making an intimate ‘portrait’ of the robot at work,” he says. “I hope to convey tenderness and sensuality in the process, just as I would when photographing a person.”

Blocks of marble await carving near Litix headquarters. Although the Statu deposits are thought to be exhausted, sculptors still rave about Carrara marble. © Caleb Stein

Litix’s founders are Filippo Tincolini and Giacomo Massari, both sculptors in their 40s. For decades, sculptors in Carrara had been using small machines like electric grinders, diamond-studded bandsaws and pneumatic chisels. Tincolini saw an opportunity to move the process forward.

Philip Ticolini with his sculptural robot at work. © Artistcloseup

“My father made electrical parts for assembly lines, and although I didn’t want to do his job, I learned from him,” he said. The young Tikrini bought an automotive assembly line robot and put it to work on the stone. “At first I didn’t know how to use it, but little by little I figured out how it worked and how to improve it.”

Today, Tikrini, Massari and their team of technicians and artisans create sculptures for artists, architects and designers, and they sell their technology, including three sizes of Litix robots and proprietary software that uses digital robotics, to clients around the world. The software scans the artist's 3D model, and the robot is automatically programmed to carve. They also use the technology for cultural preservation.

A few years ago, for example, they worked with the Institute for Digital Archaeology, a cultural heritage preservation organization based in Oxford, England, to create a one-third-scale model of the Palmyra Arch in Syria, an 1,800-year-old monument destroyed by Islamic State militants in 2015.

The Arch of Palmyra, Syria, destroyed by Islamic State militants in 2015. © CC BY-SA 2.5

London Mayor Boris Johnson displays a replica of the Arch of Palmyra in Trafalgar Square on April 19, 2016. © Tolga Akmen/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

The replica, made of Egyptian marble, is 20 feet tall and took five weeks to make. It has toured several cities around the world, including London and Washington, D.C., and is now being cleaned and maintained in Carrara. They hope its final destination will be near the original site of Palmyra.

“The message we want to convey is that you can destroy it, but we have the technology to revive it,” Tikrini told me.

While touring the area, I passed a warehouse and traditional workshop where shelves were filled with marble sculptures and crosses; hand-carved pieces from decades ago lined the edge of the floor, alongside works created by robots, such as a huge sculpture of a baby wearing an eyepatch, carved from black marble.

Massari has his best lines. “ What used to take months or even years can now be done in days ,” he said. “Machines run 24/7. They don’t get sick, they don’t sleep, they don’t take vacations.”

Canova's neoclassical sculpture Psyche and Eros. © Wikipedia

Robotic reproduction of Psyche and Eros. © Litix

One of his favorite stories is about Antonio Canova’s 1793 neoclassical masterpiece, Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss, now in the Louvre. “Canova took five years to make,” Massari said, while to make a replica, “our machine took only 270 hours”—less than 12 days.

When I asked Massari whether he thought Michelangelo, like other great sculptors, relied on apprentices to create his masterpieces, and whether he would have used robotics if it had been available, Massari seemed slightly annoyed.

“Of course he’ll use robots – 100 percent! I tell people who question what we do: How did you get here, on foot, on horseback or in a car? The car shortens your journey time. The same goes for the robot. The algorithm does exactly what the caliper did before. I have time to enjoy the beautiful sunset because the machine does all the hard work. ”

The original block of marble chosen for the sculpture, called "Flowered Slave," weighed over 770 pounds. When the robot was finished, the remaining sculpture weighed about 300 pounds. © Caleb Stein

The robot can perform large-scale milling and microscopic carving by selecting the tool attached to its "arm". © Caleb Stein

So far, Litix has created sculptures for artists including the late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid, American artist Jeff Koons and Italian “Arte Povera” movement icon Giuseppe Penone.

Massari opens the door to a massive carving studio. "We are working on a masterpiece - crazy and huge," he says, "a very special piece. The choice of the marble block was crazy because it's very difficult to find a pure white block. This is a famous sculptor. But we can't reveal too much."

The photographer attempted to capture the moment "where a human figure emerges from the cool, methodical lines carved by the robot." © Caleb Stein

Pressurized water sprays from a drill bit in the Litix studio to cool the marble and prevent excessive dust. © Caleb Stein

Here, Robotor One, the company's star robot, an 11-foot-long zinc alloy anthropomorphic arm was busy milling marble by moving back and forth in a methodical manner. The drill on the arm spun so fast that I could hardly tell it was moving, and pressurized water sprayed from the arm, cooling the intricate patterns on the marble woman's fluffy skirt it was polishing.

“The final sculpture will weigh about four tons,” Massari said, “and the machine time will be 18 months.”

**By then, the final details will be executed by human sculptors—even Litix’s technology evangelists wouldn’t dare claim that their machines can reach the finest subtleties of human craft. **In an adjacent studio, I spotted a group of such artists, covered in marble dust, applying the finishing touches to several sculptures by a famous British artist who wished to remain anonymous.

It took the robot four days to mill the "Slave of Bloom," which artist and Litix co-founder Tiklini calls "a way of liberating ourselves from excess material." © Caleb Stein

The craftsmen then spent another 20 days hand-finishing the piece—"giving life to the sculpture," Ticolini said. "You have to know when to stop." © Caleb Stein

“I come from the old traditional times when everything was made by hand,” said Romina del Sarto, who started working in her father’s sculpture workshop when she was 17, as she worked with hand tools. Her shoes and even her braids were covered in marble dust.

“Everyone here makes their living from marble, and I’m grateful for the job,” she said, “but sometimes it feels like Carrara is losing part of its history.”

One afternoon, I found a living link to that vanishing past in the nearby town of Pietrasanta, where Enzo Pasquini, now 83, has been working only with hand tools since his apprenticeship more than 70 years ago. In town, he is known as a master who can carve the finest details in stone.

His home is located on a small farm that grows olives, cherries, grapes, vegetables, and roses. On the wall of his studio is a yellowed photo of Michelangelo’s “Pietà,” which, he told me, has inspired him for much of his career.

“I’ve always worked from beginning to end, from huge blocks of marble to delicate sculptures,” he said. “Chiseling the stone – it’s very, very hard work. When I was young I was very strong so I didn’t care about that.”

Ticolini altered a digital scan of Michelangelo's The Dying Slave to decorate the bust with blooming flowers. © Caleb Stein

The technology used by Robot One creates a "topographical" surface that is then smoothed by craftsmen. © Caleb Stein

His tools include hammers, chisels, saws, files and curved stainless steel calipers of various sizes. There are also tools he made himself, such as a hand drill called "the violin" that requires two people to operate; one person holds the handle of the pointed drill while the other pulls a rope that drives the drill bit into the stone.

“Back when there were no electric drills, we used this!”

Pasquini used his skills primarily to help others create marble sculptures. Among his fellow sculptors was film star Gina Lollobrigida, who became a respected sculptor and photographer after her film career ended and died in January 2023.

**“I’m not an artist,” Pasquini said. “I’m just a craftsman.”** But he also made sculptures of his own, many of which he keeps in his house and studio — a tiny figure of a boy fishing; a baby with delicate fingers; a deck of playing cards.

He picked up a tool made of two pieces of wood and a vise held in place by nails. "This is my robot," he said. "I have to do it the old way. But you have to keep up with the times. Fewer and fewer young people are willing to do hard manual labor. But machines don't change the sensitivity of the work. You will always need sculptors."

By Laine Sciolino

Translation/Yuba and Thin Bamboo

Proofreading/tim

Original article/www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/can-robots-replace-michelangelo-180983240/

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