Tuscan Landscape Set to Be Blown Up for Marble

The champions of two sorts of beauty are set to clash in Tuscany where a mining firm wants to destroy a mountain crest to get at some of the world's most prized marble.

The plan has pitted environmentalists against trade unions and local authorities, who argue the stone from Monte Altissimo in the Apuan Alps is needed to protect jobs. But the controversy also sets contemporary artists and designers against art historians who treasure the mountain, which served as one of Michelangelo's most celebrated, if frustrating, quarries.

For more than two years, he lived in the shadow of the peak in an ultimately pointless attempt to deliver its treasures to Pope Leo X. His sufferings there featured in Irving Stone's novel, The Agony and The Ecstasy, the basis of the 1965 film of the same name starring Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison.

Marble from the slopes of Monte Altissimo was used for Bartolomeo Ammannati's gigantic statue of Neptune in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. Others who worked with it included Giorgio Vasari and the influential Mannerist sculptor, Jean de Boulogne, or "Giambologna".

Despite its grandiose name, Monte Altissimo, the "very high mountain", is one of the lower peaks in the Apuan Alps at 1589 metres. Seen from the coast, though, it appears the most impressive, so its importance to the landscape is immense.

A spokesman for Henraux, the mining company, refused to comment on reports that it would remove an entire outcrop to the south of the summit. According to reports in the Italian media, the outcrop is 300 metres wide and up to 100 metres high.

The mountain falls within a protected area, the Apuan Alps Natural Park. The park's president, Giuseppe Nardini, told the Corriere della Sera: "The Altissimo is part of humanity's heritage and everything possible must be done to save that crest."

But Henraux is reported to have informed the union that if it was prevented from exploiting the top of the mountain it would have to make some 20 workers redundant. Andrea Antonioli of the local branch of the CGIL trades union federation said: "That outcrop has got to be cut to safeguard the jobs of lots of workers."

This is not the first time the marble of Monte Altissimo has been at the centre of an industrial dispute. In 1518, when Michelangelo arrived in the area, he had to contend with obstruction and hostility from the people of nearby Carrara who saw his mission as a threat to their livelihood.

But Leo X was apparently insistent that only the marble of Monte Altissimo was good enough to be used on the facade of the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. It was not until 1520 that he rescinded Michelangelo's commission.

By then, he is credited with having opened up two roads: one from the village of Seravezza up to the marble veins and another down to the coast at what is now Forte dei Marmi. In a letter to his brother, he bemoaned the pope's stubborn insistence on trying to obtain material from such a hostile environment.

Commercial exploitation of the seams began in the late 16th century.