Mineral show
FLORENTINE MOSAIC
"Few know that with rock, one can leave a trace of his own passage on earth, and paint beauty in the Heart of Eternity..." (BRUNO LASTRUCCI artist, author of Mr. Lizzadro portrait exposed in Lizzadro Museum - Helmhurst Chicago - USA)
Mosaic of hard or semiprecious stones, often so chosen and arranged that their natural colours represent leaves, flowers, and the like, inlaid in a background, usually of black or white marble is one of the most ancient arts which existed since the times far before Christ. According to the technology mosaics are divided into Alexandrian, Roman, Russian and Florentine. The most time consuming is the Florentine one.
More than four centuries ago, the art of shaping fragments of jasper, lapis lazuli and the like into stone "paintings" was nurtured in Florence by the Medici princes, the Pitti's owners. The city became the leading centre for the manufacture of pietre dure, and its elegant mosaic tabletops and wall panels decorated homes and churches throughout Europe . The most expensive piece of furniture ever sold in auction is a pietre dure cabinet made in Florence around 1730 for a British nobleman and sold for $15.2 million last year at Christie's in London .
Properly executed, the Florentine mosaic is extraordinary, an image made of hundreds or thousands of fragments of rock so carefully selected, cut and glued together that it presents an apparently unbroken surface, as though it had been painted. Subjects range from traditional bird-and-flower designs and still lives to portraits and landscapes. Materials include not only such hard stones as malachite but also softer rocks such as marble and alabaster.
The artisan starts with a detailed sketch, which then functions as a kind of jigsaw puzzle. He must find stones with the right colours and natural markings to reproduce his design, and then trim them to fit their particular niches in the puzzle.
As much as anything, the Florentine mosaic requires extraordinary patience. In the workshop, a few young men painstakingly cut and polish rocks. A piece may take them weeks to complete. They work with slices often less than an inch thick, looking for just the right shade or marking in the rock to fill in a section of the jigsaw puzzle -- a tiny flower petal here, a rosy cheek there. The greater the number of pieces, the more subtle the finished work can be.
No matter how skilled the cutter, though, the pieces of the puzzle require endless filing for the fragments to fit together so exactly that the seams between them all but vanish. The finished product is polished until it takes on a high gloss.
The price of a mosaic is determined not only by the level of workmanship but also by the materials. The softer stones such as marble are easier to work than hard stones like lapis, so mosaics made primarily of marble are apt to be less expensive.
Mosaic stone pictures possess one of the most valuable qualities - they are everlasting, as the colour of the stone doesn't fade, lose brightness or fall like paint. The Italian art historian of the Renaissance period Visari noted: "Good mosaic must be defined by its clear formation, gradual use of pale to dark tints. When looked upon at the distance it should look like a painting, not an incrustation".
In our display pieces collection we have several pictures made in the technique of the Florentine mosaic. They are the Ural landscapes: "The Chusovaya River ", "Winter village", "Bullfinch". Various stones were used when crafting these pictures: Tagil pink and brown marble, white and grey marble, serpentine, dolomite, ophicalcite, lapis-lazuli, rhodonite. |
