| Summary: | From the sixteenth century, marble sculptors in Genoa formed a separate corporation that defended their interests and regulated activities. Until the end of the eighteenth century the members of this corporation, almost all from the Lombardy region (which corresponds to today’s Italian Switzerland), had a monopoly on the production of marble sculptures and decorations for churches and palaces. To this they added trade in raw and carved marble from the quarries of Carrara and the Republic of Genoa’s territory to the other Italian states, Spain and France. The workshop masters, with Orsolino, Carlone, Casella, Ferrandino among the best known, closely united by family ties, made up the most active companies in the realization of the most complex works. They did not, however, sever ties with their countries of origin, Bissone, Carona, Lugano, Scaria, Rovio in the Val d’Intelvi in southern Ticino. Indeed their Lombard origins, foreign in Genoa, allowed them to enjoy special privileges. Alongside the masons were entrepreneurs and merchants, exporters of Sicilian jasper, red mischio from Narbonne in France and red Arzo from Lombardy for Genoese commands: these represented the most important distributors of Carrara marble in Europe, as well as the coloured marble of Liguiria (the Portoro of Portovenere, the alabaster of Sestri, the green of Polcevera).
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