The renaissance of painting on stone
The renaissance of painting on stone
Cavaliere DArpino — Perseus Rescuing Andromeda — 1593–94Alessandro Turchi — Saint Peter and an Angel Appearing to Saint Agatha in Prison — 1640–1645
From 20 February to 15 May 2022, the Saint Louis Art Museum presents “Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800”, an exhibition examining the renaissance of painting on stone in the early 16th century.
Images: Cavaliere D’Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari, 1568–1640); “Perseus Rescuing Andromeda”, c.1593–94; oil on lapis lazuli; Saint Louis Art Museum ·· Alessandro Turchi, (1578–1649); “Saint Peter and an Angel Appearing to Saint Agatha in Prison”, c.1640–1645; oil on slate; The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.
One of the many technical contributions of the Renaissance to the art world was the popularisation of painting on canvas, which gradually displaced painting on panel, a practice almost hegemonic during the Gothic and early Renaissance. However, at the beginning of the 16th century, under the leadership of the Venetian painter Sebastiano del Piombo (1485–1547), another alternative to panel painting appeared, much less popular and therefore less known and studied: painting on stone surfaces.
Of course, to say that painting on stone was a Renaissance innovation is -taken literally- a historical aberration, since the first paintings created by humans were painted on stone during the Palaeolithic period, a practice that would be continued throughout antiquity by practically all the great known civilisations. However, the great Renaissance innovation in the revival of painting on stone was the awareness of the value that the materiality of stone could give to the work of art. This led to the use of stones which, far from being a “neutral” background for the painting, gave the work of art its own personality. Perseus rescuing Andromeda, a work by Cavaliere D’Arpino (Giuseppe Cesari) painted on lapis lazuli, is good proof of this.
It was precisely the acquisition of this painting by Cavaliere D’Arpino that led Judith Mann, curator at the Saint Louis Art Museum, to initiate what the museum defines as “the first systematic examination of the pan-European practice of this unusual and little-studied aspect of Renaissance and baroque art”. The museum recently acquired Lamentation by Candlelight, a stone painting by Jacopo Bassano, which -after having been restored in the museum’s laboratories- is being presented for the first time on the occasion of this exhibition, which, in the words of Judith Mann, “testifies to the boundless creativity artists brought to the use of stone as a painting support”. #2022 #SaintLouisArtMuseum #theartwolf
