How to paint Renaissance and Baroque masterpieces on marble, agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli, amethyst, obsidian and other ores?
The Paper has learned that the "Painting on Stone: Science and The Sacred (1530-1800)" being held by the St. Louis Museum of Art in the United States has aroused the interest of art historians. The exhibition focuses on a number of renaissance and Baroque portraits, mythological and religious themes painted on ore, showing how artists incorporated the unique properties of polished ore into their paintings.
The Angel annunciation, 1594, an oil painting on agate
Until now, the practice of painting on polished stone during the Renaissance and Baroque periods is still little known, and art historians have paid little attention to and studied this field. Most art historians tend to focus on the painting itself, rather than the nature of the painting medium. These stones, which have been used to create slate, marble, agate, alabaster, lapis lazuli and amethyst, etc., artists have used the unique colors or patterns of these ores to create, so that the exposed natural texture and the picture are cleverly integrated, and some museums even mistakenly regard this kind of "stone painting" as a conventional painting on wooden boards.
Jacques Stella's Rest on the Way to Egypt is painted in landscape stones and jasper
The ongoing exhibition "Painting on Stone: Science and the Sacred (1530-1800)" at the St. Louis Art Museum in the United States focuses on this fascinating chapter in European visual culture. The exhibition showcases about 75 works by 50 artists from the 16th to the 17th centuries on 34 different types of stones. The exhibition was organized thanks to 15 years of research. As the study progressed, these paintings painted on stones were more and more abundantly presented to people, and also delved into the resonance of stones in mythology and Christian doctrine; the painter's concept of cooperation with God or nature (the ultimate artist); and related topics about the transportation of stones in distant quarries.
Giuseppe Cesari's Perseus Rescue Andromeda (circa 1593-1594) was painted on lapis lazuli in the collection of the St. Louis Museum of Art
The exhibition was conceived in 2000 when an avid patron sponsor of the St. Louis Art Museum purchased perseus Rescuing Andromeda (1593-1594), a mythical story depicted on lapis lazuli, small but highly skilled, by the Renaissance Italian painter Giuseppe Cesari.
Learning that the painting would be auctioned off in Christie's New York, and that Judith Mann, the museum's 19th-century European art curator, followed her to New York to see it, she was amazed by how the artists used lapis lazuli to render and show the blue sky and the blue-green sea. She wrote about her feelings about the work in an interview, "It doesn't seem like anything, should it be said that it is a painting, or a work of art?" ”
As they learned more about the work, the more researchers wondered how common it was for artists to paint on stones in 16th and 17th-century Europe. With the help of other researchers, Mann created a database that now contains about 1,400 images. "There is no doubt that this is only a small fraction of the works created in Rome, the Medici, Florence, Venice, Madrid, Antwerp, and rudolf II's Prague court and other art centers." In 2005, Judith Mann decided to curate an exhibition on this phenomenon of painting, which she eventually focused on the most resonant paintings and the frames of treasures studded with miniature samples.
Sea galleon of Filippo Napoletano (circa 1617-1621)
Painting on stone, though common in antiquity, seems to have largely faded since then, until the 1530s, when artists began experimenting with it in the melting pot of highly competitive Rome. Crucial to its introduction was the Venetian-born Sebastiano del Piombo, who invented a recipe that would ensure that oil paints attached to the slate. "His work still appears to be in very good condition today, with no obvious peeling off." Mann said. [As a careless innovator, Sebastiano de Piombo, when Michelangelo painted The Last Judgment (1536-1531), suggested that he paint the altar walls of the Sistine Chapel in oil, which infuriated Michelangelo and led the two to divergence.] Although in these works of the 1530s the paint completely covered the stone, the existence of the stone is still given a great significance, which carries the role of Christ as the cornerstone of the church and the meaning of his resurrection from a stone tomb sealed by a boulder.
Filippo Lauri's Baptist of Christ, painted in amethyst in the mid-to-late 17th century
Antonio Tempesta, The Bear Hunt (1607–1610)
Giuseppe Cesari's "Perseus Saves Andromeda" (partial)
By the 1590s, when more interesting stones appeared and offered the possibility of creation, artists incorporated the hues of stone and their natural textures such as swirls, concentric circles, and meandering lines into their work. In the painting Perseus Saving Andromeda, Giuseppe Cesarius, in addition to preserving and highlighting the blue color of Afghan lapis lazuli, paints and contrasts with the prominent crack in the stone with andromoda's right foot, represented by Andromeda, on the edge of the cliff corresponding to the large number of calcites that exist in this part.
The work also takes pleasure in a series of stone metaphors. Andromeda was tied to a reef, at which point Perseus swooped down on his horse, freeing her from a sea monster: she was so beautiful that the Greek hero initially thought she was an exquisite marble statue. He had earlier cut off Medusa's head and ran around with Medusa's head, and any man who saw Medusa's eyes would immediately turn to stone... This work contains a lot of intellectual games, which will be appreciated by Roman erudite circles.
Interior of antwerp church painted by William Schubert van Ehrenberg in marble (1668)
Antonio Tempesta Crossing the Red Sea (1610s) Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest
There are many examples of artists subtly incorporating the underlying stones into their work. Orazio Gentileschi painted alabaster glaze into fluffy clouds in Annunciation (1602-1605) and weaved its natural texture into background columns and Maria's prayer kneeling mats. Antonio Tempesta's The Crossing of the Red Sea (circa 1610) uses salmon-colored limestone markings to hint at water flow, cleverly using pigments that make it difficult to discern where the boundaries of natural stone are.
The Nativity (c. 1665–1670) was painted on obsidian
Alessandro Turch, "St. Peter's Healing of St. Agatha" (c. 1640–1645)
After a long period of silence, why did painting on stones in the past become a topic of interest? Mann argues that the proliferation of images of art on the Internet, and their two-dimensional flatness, has stirred up a greater appreciation of materiality.
(This article is compiled from the official website of the St. Louis Museum of Art and related reports from The art newspaper)