LONDON—Renaissance architects once used ancient Roman art as building materials. You read that right. In Rome, workmen quarried ancient sites and turned ancient sculptures and decorative arts into mortar.
In a 1519 letter to Pope Leo X, Raphael and his friend the courtier and diplomat Baldassare Castiglione appealed to the pope to protect the city’s ancient art. Both men drafted the letter, but it’s written as if it were from Raphael.  
“I dare to say that all one can see today in Rome, no matter grand she might be, or beautiful, or adorned with palaces, churches and other edifices, all was built with the mortar of ancient marbles!” Raphael wrote….