Florentine mosaic. Pietra dura.
painting in stone
Commesso, also called Florentine mosaic, technique of fashioning pictures with thin, cut-to-shape pieces of brightly coloured semiprecious stones, developed in Florence in the late 16th century. The stones most commonly used are agates, quartzes, chalcedonies, jaspers, granites, porphyries, petrified woods, and lapis lazuli; all of these, with the exception of lapis lazuli, are “hard stones,” or stones that fall between feldspar and diamond in hardness. Commesso pictures, used mainly for tabletops and small wall panels, range from emblematic and floral subjects to landscapes, and some are executed with such laborious care and such sensitivity to the pictorial possibilities of the colours and shadings of the stones that they rival paintings in their detailed realism.
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