Sulle tarsie e specchiature marmoree della Cattedrale di Lucca e del Duomo di Pietrasanta

St. Martino Cathedral in Lucca hosts a late medieval floor with polychrome "marble" inlays. Even the panels in the choir floor, with plant motifs and perspective trompe l'oeil are assigned to Civitali and his workshop. However, a part of the presbytery floor has recently been attributed to Francesco Riccomanni and Matteo di Giovanni Cioli, according to a document dating back to 1475. The polychrome floors are located in several late medieval churches in Tuscany and often these panels are based on white, black (or dark green) and red "marble" inlays. The experimental analyses on the polychrome inlays of the St. Martino floor in Lucca gave us an interesting result: the white inlays have the typical characteristics of the waxy limestone of the Monte Pisano; the black inlays are a serpentinite probably coming from several ophiolitic outcrops in Tuscany; the red inlays are realized with a biomicritic limestone ("marna rossa del Sugame") coming from an unidentifiable area. These same materials are compared to the most traditional uses, reuse and replacement of "marble" in medieval works in Lucca. The first white lithotypes were extracted from the local waxy limestone, while the white marble of the Apuan Alps appeared in this town only later. The "black stone" (or dark green) was always made of the ophiolitic material, especially serpentinite. The most used red "marble" in Lucca was a nodular limestone (better known as "Rosso ammonitico") instead of the biomicritic limestone ("marna rossa del Sugame") of the late medieval polychrome floor in St. Martino Cathedral. Other masterpieces of Civitali in the same church (little temple of the Holy Face, marble fence of the choir, pulpit) used the first limestone and not the second one. The marble fence of St. Martino Church in Pietrasanta is similar to Lucca Cathedral's one. Here again you can see the alternation of red and black "marble" panels, with nodular limestone and serpentinite respectively. During the seventeenth century, an incorrect intervention of relocation and integration included in this artwork some panels of "Violet Breccia" or "Medicis Breccia".