If you think shipping a fragile package in today’s world is stressful, imagine having to move a 15,000-pound marble sculpture from Italy to Spain in the 16th century. In her recent book, Shipping Sculptures from Early Modern Italy: The Mechanics, Costs, Risks, and Rewards, Kelley Di Dio, Ph.D., Rush C. Hawkins Professor of Art History and Executive Director of the School of the Arts, gives us the fascinating inside story on what it took to transport sculptures during a time when they weren’t just art—they were also diplomatic tools, technological puzzles, and, often, very expensive headaches. 

College of Arts and Sciences: What inspired you to focus on the transportation of sculptures during this time period and from Italy to Spain in particular?

Kelley Di Dio: Sculpture from this period is my area of research expertise, and in particular I am a scholar of Italian and Spanish sculpture of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. Naturally, that has led me to dig deeper into thinking about practical issues involved in how they were able to move things around as they did. Some of the sculptures were 15,000 pounds, which is not an easy thing to move around even today! It required a lot of coordination and money, and there were concerns about fragility and other kinds of loss that could happen, such as sinking ships, pirates, etc.

I was a postdoc in the Medici archives in Florence, Italy for three years after I finished my dissertation. I was reading the Medici’s personal letters every day, eight hours a day, five days a week. And it made me understand the very practical issues that were front and center for them, much more than who the artist was going to be or even what the material was going to be. Their biggest concerns were how much was it going to cost, how long was it going to take, and how they were going to do it. And I knew that if these things were important in Florence, they were also important for people in Milan, Genoa, Naples, and Rome. And Spain was the most important point of rulership of all the Western world at that point, so everybody was working for Spain and sending gifts.

CAS: Did concerns about shipping sometimes have a big impact on what the sculptors were asked to make?

KD: Yes, absolutely. Usually in art history, we talk about bronze sculptures as being the most expensive kind of sculptures you could have. Marble is usually described as being less expensive, but what I discovered is that because of its fragility, when things were going to be shipped abroad, bronze ended up being cheaper because it required less insurance and meant less possibility of breakage along the way. So, bronze became the preferred medium.

But people still loved marble sculptures. And so, when new marble sculptures were being made, sculptors had to consider the form and how it would best resist potential damage during travel. So, arms and legs tended to not be so extended, for example. 

CAS: What was the primary purpose of shipping sculptures?

KD: These sculptures were often diplomatic gifts. So, when the Medici and other major rulers of Italy were trying to win favor from the Spanish crown, they sent works of art. There was usually a lot of negotiation about form, content, size, who the sculptor would be, and all of that. Gift giving for state relationships was really one of the primary functions of art in the Renaissance and Baroque periods.

CAS: What were the major challenges of shipping sculptures?

KD: The rulers had to think carefully about whether to ship by land or by sea. Shipping by land was generally deemed safer—there was less risk of thievery or breakage. But traveling by land required the roads to be in good enough shape that they could easily be traversed, so a lot of new passageways had to be created, especially over the Alps. But if something was really large or heavy, or there was a particular concern about sabotage on route, it might be sent by sea. 

One challenge with sending a large sculpture by sea was that the sculpture had to be loaded on the ship and the shippers sometimes had to create new technological devices to do the work. If there were storms along the route and the ship ran aground, the sculpture could go overboard. And, of course, pirates were a big part of the picture during this period. Another concern was that the destination might not be anywhere near the port. Say a sculpture was being sent to Milan. The closest port was Genoa, but it’s almost on the other side of the country. 

CAS: You mentioned technological devices. Can tell us more about those? 

KD: The shippers came up with all kinds of pulley systems and equipment that would allow for easier movement of things with great weight, so that's one part of it. But things also sometimes went overboard, and when you consider how much cost had already been invested, they certainly didn't want to lose the sculpture at that point. All kinds of drawings were published in this period illustrating ideas like diving suits made out of leather and intestines used to bring oxygen to the divers. One particular write-up I found in a scientific journal described how they had put a man down in a diving bell, thinking he could knock on the sides of the bell to be pulled up, but the people on the surface couldn’t hear him. So, there was a lot of experimentation at the expense of people’s lives during this period.

CAS: Who was doing all this important work?

KD: A lot of laborers whose names we don't have but without whom none of these sculptures would even have been made. In the book I really tried to dig into the mostly hidden labor that is behind all these big sculpture commissions—and shipping in general—in this period. There were some laborers who specialized in quarrying marble, for example, but there was also a lot of hiring of temp workers like farmers who were between crops and owned oxen that could pull a cart to move a sculpture. 

CAS: Were there political risks involved in sending sculptures?

KD: Absolutely. It was a real risk to send a sculpture to Spain, where so much depended on who the monarch was at the moment. A work might be finished and ready to ship, then the monarch would decide he didn’t want a secular subject. So then, what do you do? Do you send it anyway and risk accusations of corruption or do you try to come up with another gift to send? 

The equestrian monument of Philip III that was sent from Florence to Madrid is a great example of both the political and financial risks. It’s a huge sculpture, tens of thousands of pounds. Sculptures of a man on horseback had been used in Italy since the Roman period and were seen by them as a symbol of power, but they weren’t widely used in Spain. So, the Italians who sent it, the Medici, thought the monarch would put it in a place of honor in the middle of the city, but that's not what happened. It ended up in one of the king’s country villas and just sat in the gardens, and the Medici were very upset about it. Still, they got the outcome they were looking for—they’d wanted their titles of Grand Duke to be renewed by the new king—so it all worked out. That monument is now in the Plaza Mayor, the most important city square of Madrid.

CAS: What’s one thing you discovered that really surprised you?

KD: One of the most surprising things was that thousands and thousands of sculptures were sent from Italy to Spain in this period. We previously had no idea that so many were sent. But there were also very funny moments that I uncovered in my research, like attempts at smuggling works of art using false trap doors and times when someone decided to ship an entire case of glassware. (Not shockingly, it arrived all broken.)

The beauty of the archives to me is that you get such a full history of what people were concerned about and how they were thinking and responding. When an equestrian monument of Henry IV was sent from Florence to Paris, for example, the ship went aground and the sculpture went overboard. There was absolute chaos at the port of Savona as everyone tried to figure out how to get this huge sculpture out of the water and worried about whether it was damaged. Meanwhile, there was an agent in Paris waiting for the shipment to arrive because he was supposed to have the honor of presenting it to the Queen of France, Maria de’ Medici. He was writing practically every day asking about the delay and, back in Italy, they were doing the best they could just try to sort it out. And I was able to see this full story of a moment that expressed the kind of important political concerns they had.

CAS: What inspired you to include a poem written by UVM English professor Tony Magistrale in the book?

KD: Tony regularly sends me poems about art, often about paintings that inspire him. But this one, “Il marmo: The Marble,” which he wrote when he was a Fulbright scholar in Italy a couple of decades ago, is about sculpture, and he happened to send it to me just as I was getting ready to work on the last chapter of this book. It was super inspirational for me and a valuable example of how great it is to be at UVM where scholars and creative people can inspire and collaborate with each other.

To learn more, check out this New Books Network podcast interview with Kelley Di Dio and host Miranda Melcher.