Human Statue

Although rare and expensive, it was used widely in both architecture and sculpture. Marble was prized for its translucency, durability and naturalistic physical properties. Renaissance Italian artists favoured marble for its allusion to the classical world – Hellenistic Greece and the Roman Empire. The most popular types of marble stone employed in sculpture are Pentelic, Parian and Carrara marble. During Classical Antiquity, the most famous type was the close-grained, golden-toned Pentelic variety, quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica.Marble is a pale, metamorphic rock derived from limestone, and though it has been used to make art since before written language, marble is most commonly associated with the heroic, idealized, beautiful sculptures of the human form created at the height of the Greek and Roman empires.