If Michelangelo were alive today, he might well be sculpting, teaching and losing his notoriously short temper right here in ?Holy Stone?. This is Pietrasanta, the Tuscan town that is part artist?s colony, part sculpture workshop, part open-air museum, part gallery and part state of mind. The faithful in Pietrasanta, Italian for ?holy stone,? worship one god above all others ? marble.

?This whole area is set up for sculptors. It is a community set up for the artist and in that sense it is unique,? said Keara McMartin, director of Pietrasanta?s legendary Studio Sem. ?There is no other place in the world that has this amount of support structure,? she said as artisans worked away with power chisels.Walk through parts of Pietrasanta and your shoes will soon be covered with the fine white marble dust that blows under the Tuscan sun. Pietrasanta is dotted with numerous marble studios and bronze foundries where master artisans who have stone and sculpture in their bloodlines going back for centuries help artists ? famous and not ? realise their creations.Colombia?s Fernando Botero is just one artist who lives and works here part of the year.Other contemporary artists who have worked with the stone and bronze masters of Pietrasanta include American Jeff Koons, Knut Steen of Norway and Britain?s Marc Quinn.

Quinn?s huge work called ?Alison Lapper Pregnant,? a marble statue of a disabled mother which will be placed next year for about 15 months on the fourth plinth of London?s Trafalgar Square, is now being crafted in the Franco Cervietti studio.

<B>Lollobrigida?s first love</B>

Gina Lollobrigida, the actress who in her older years has returned to her first love ? sculpting ? also lives and works in Pietrasanta part of the year.?Here, I feel like a normal person. The people know who I am but they let me breathe and concentrate on my work,? she said. ?In the movies, I had to work under directors. But in sculpture, I am my own boss and I can express myself as I wish.? Botero, Quinn, Lollobrigida, Koons and other artists are following in

some rather big footsteps in Pietrasanta. In 1518, Michelangelo, under orders from Pope Leo X of the Medici family, scoured the quarries of nearby Monte Altissimo for marble for some of his masterpieces.?If he were alive today, he would probably have us all working for him and he?d probably be shuttling back and forth between here and Florence,? said McMartin, an American who moved here in 1980 and now heads the Sem studio.

Most people think artists do it all but in reality it is the artisans of Pietrasanta and other towns in Italy?s ?marble belt? who do most of the sculpting from models of plaster or wood.

?It?s a very romantic idea but only sculptors with no money do all the work,? she said. ?An artist is wasting his time doing it all. A large-scale work could take a year. During that time his mind is already 10 projects ahead and he would be blocked.? Pietrasanta?s artisans work with simple, centuries-old measuring instruments to calibrate depth and distance between points as they transfer the shape of the model to the stone using modern tools, most of them powered by air compressors.?No one should be shocked. Even Michelangelo and Bernini had helpers preparing the work for them,? said Cervietti.

Streeter, whose exuberance for all things marble is contagious, gives her students T-shirts bearing the slogan: ?Don?t Take Marble for Granite?.One is Rupert Pearson, a 33-year-old artist from London who is fond of referring to Michelangelo and other artists who have walked Pietrasanta?s streets before him as ?colleagues?.

?Being in the same climate and environment helps me feel close to those colleagues and try to understand how they felt, what they wanted to say and questions they were considering,? he said while guiding a power chisel over his sculpture. Pearson tells the story of how Michelangelo once destroyed a wax model by his contemporary, Giambologna, and reshaped it in front of his eyes to teach Giambologna that he could do better. So what would Michelangelo tell Pearson if he were alive and teaching in Pietrasanta today? ?If he came here, he might smash this and let me know that he wanted me to start all over again,? Pearson said. ?But that?s fine. That?s what I?m here for.?

<B>Philip PULLELLA</B>