Film · directed by Andrey Konchalovsky · 2019

Il peccato.

For Konchalovsky's film on Michelangelo Buonarroti, a scenographic intervention inside the real Carrara marble quarry. We rebuilt a wall section the way it looked in the Sixteenth century.

Story

One act

Rebuilding Carrara
as Michelangelo saw it.

Andrey Konchalovsky — Russian director, born 1937, already co-screenwriter of Andrei Rublev with Tarkovsky — brings to the big screen in 2019 Sin — Michelangelo's Fury. The film tells the life of Michelangelo Buonarroti during the years he sculpted the Moses and the Tomb of Julius II.

For the scenes set in the Carrara quarries, the production shoots on the real location: the Apuan Alps, the Apuan marble walls, the very landscape Michelangelo crossed on horseback to choose his blocks. But a quarry active in the Twenty-first century no longer looks like one from the Sixteenth: the diamond-wire cuts leave surfaces too smooth, modern techniques have changed the geometry of the walls.

We are entrusted with the task of integrating the real quarry with a scenographic intervention in faux stone. On the quarry wall we apply large triangular and squared panels that simulate a section of freshly cut marble using Sixteenth-century techniques — uneven surfaces, wedge fissures, angular profiles typical of point-chisel quarrying. Through the camera lens the trompe-l'œil is seamless: the eye cannot tell the real rock from our panels.

The photographs in our archive document the May 2018 work on site: the scaffolding hooked to the real wall, the faux marble panels applied as cusps and sections, the yard at the foot of the quarry white with dust. Everything ready for Konchalovsky's shoot.

Technique: layered fibreglass printed on its surface with the grain of Apuan marble, lime base for the ivory tone, application on a metal scaffold anchored to the real quarry wall. Transport in pieces by crane and assembly at height.

The finished intervention on the quarry wall

Panoramic view of the worksite inside the Carrara quarry: the great white-grey wall of the active quarry, at the centre the scenographic intervention with triangular panels, lower left a green excavator, on the right a red industrial winch and a black drum winch used to lift the blocks — Panorama of the worksite — the whole quarry

Close-up detail of the faux-marble panels in place: three overlapping white-grey triangular cusps stacked like steps, anchored to the real quarry wall with tie-rods, below a metal scaffold and a work platform — The faux-stone panels, close-up

High-angle view of the worksite: metal scaffold hooked to the white quarry wall with applied panels, in the middle large real marble blocks resting on the yard, below black tarpaulins laid out for protection, on the right a narrow metal stair — The scaffolding and the real marble blocks

Documentation

May 2018,
in the quarry.

Four days of work on site, up in the Apuan Alps. Photographs from our archive during the assembly.

The scenographic intervention in its early phase: a white faux-marble triangular cusp applied onto the grey quarry wall, a scree of marble offcuts on the right, scaffolding lower right — Triangular cusp, early phase

Worksite at the foot of the Carrara quarry: set construction in progress on the grey-white wall, foreground a white wooden crate for equipment, marble fragments and metal scaffolding on the left, ground white with marble dust — The worksite at the base of the quarry

Behind the scenes

The real quarry
and the faux marble.

Working in a real location does not mean you stop sculpting: it means integrating your scenography into something that already exists, and doing it so well that Konchalovsky's camera cannot tell the line between real rock and our own surface.

The printed surface

The faux-marble panels are made of layered fibreglass with the surface printed from a cast of real Apuan marble. We first took a silicone cast of a Carrara block — fissures, veins, fractures — and then replicated its grain in fibreglass on a large panel. The result: a textured surface, not the smooth finish of industrial resin.

Sixteenth-century quarrying

The panels simulate the profile of point-chisel quarrying — the Sixteenth-century technique — not modern diamond-wire cutting. The surfaces are angular, with triangular cusps, wedge fissures, vertical breaks like those depicted in Renaissance quarrying treatises. It is a philological choice: the Michelangelo of history never saw these walls as they are today, and Konchalovsky knows it.

Assembly at height

The panels arrive in the quarry by crane and are fixed onto a metal scaffold anchored to the real wall. For our set technicians it is working at height, with scaffolds and harnesses, alongside the quarry workers who keep extracting blocks from the portion not affected by our intervention. Four days on site in the Apuan Alps.

Sixteenth

the philological era of the quarrying we rebuilt — not the Twenty-first century

4 days

of work on the wall of the Carrara quarry

Apuan

the same Alps Michelangelo crossed to choose his blocks

Tech sheet

All production data

Type: Scenographic intervention on location · active marble quarry
Film: Sin — Michelangelo's Fury · 2019
Director: Andrey Konchalovsky
Subject: The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti during the years of the Tomb of Julius II
Location: Marble quarries of Carrara · Apuan Alps · Tuscany
Work period: May 2018 · shooting summer 2018
Intervention: Scenographic panels in faux stone applied to the wall of the real quarry to recreate the look of a marble section quarried in the Sixteenth century using point-chisel techniques — uneven surfaces, wedge fissures, angular profiles
Techniques: Layered fibreglass with the surface printed from Apuan marble · lime base for the ivory tone · application on a metal scaffold anchored to the real quarry wall · transport in pieces by crane
Our role: Realisation of the scenographic intervention in the quarry — sculpting of the panels, finishing, assembly at height on the wall of the active quarry
Second life: Panels dismantled after shooting · the Apuan-marble casting technique stays in our repertoire for other period projects

Second life

The faux marble on the
real quarry.

The film opens in Russian and Italian cinemas in 2019 and receives mixed reviews — audiences love the cinematography by Aleksandr Simonov, critics less so the length. The scenes inside the Carrara quarry are among the most remembered: the blocks Michelangelo chooses on horseback, Buonarroti's face against the white wall, the hand touching our surface as if it were the real marble just hewn from the stone.

The Apuan marble casting techniques developed for this film have entered our repertoire: the same silicone print of the grain returns in Christ The Lord for the walls of the Temple of Jerusalem and in Gangs of New York for the façades of Five Points. Sculpted Apuan marble is an Italian scenographic signature that travels into cinema worldwide.