Almost eternal: painting on stone and material innovation in early modern Europe

Abstract

'Almost Eternal: Painting on Stone and Material Innovation in Early Modern Europe' gathers together an international group of ten scholars, who offer a novel account of the phenomenon of oil painting on stone surfaces in Northern and Southern Europe. This technique was devised in Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo in the early sixteenth century and was practiced until the late seventeenth century. This phenomenon has attracted little attention previously: the volume therefore makes a significant and timely contribution to the field in the light of recent studies of materiality and the rise of technical Art History.

Contents

Introduction / Piers Baker-Bates and Elena Calvillo -- PART 1. Sebastiano del Piombo's invention and its initial influence. 1. 'Uno nuovo modo di colorire in pietra': technical experimentation in the art of Sebastiano del Piombo / Piers Baker-Bates -- 2. Painted stone: idea and practice in Italian Renaissance / Ana González Mozo -- 3. 'Un paragone con oro su': material innovation, invention and Sebastiano del Piombo's papal portraiture / Elena Calvillo -- PART 2. Ars et Natura : the poetics and collecting of paintings on stone. 4. The matter of similitude: stone paintings and the limits of representation in Cavaliere d'Arpino's Perseus and Andromeda and Jacques Stella's Jacob's Dream / Christopher J. Nygren -- 5. Antonio Tempesta's paintings on stone and the development of a genre in 17th-century Italy / Johanna Beate Lohff -- 6. Glances into stone: Hans von Aachen's paintings on stone / Susanne Wegmann -- 7. Painting on stone and metal: material meaning and innovation in early modern northern European art / Nadia Baadj -- PART 3. Other materials, metaphors, and inventions. 8. 'Painting the eternal': micromosaic materiality and transubstantiation in an icon of Christ at Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, Rome / Anna Marazuela Kim -- 9. Invention, ambition and failure: Niccolò Tornioli (1606-51) and 'Il segreto di colorire il marmo' / Giulia Martina Weston -- 10. Salvator Rosa: a variety of surfaces / Helen Langdon.