Florence Pietra Dura Artwork Workshop- See How It’s Made

Photographs – Pitti Mosaici

The artwork of Pietra Dura- inlays of semi valuable stones- flourished with the Medici household of Florence. Intricately hand carved semi-precious stones to attain painterly, vibrant artistic endeavors.

We had been fortunate to go to Pitti Mosaici – a workshop in Florence, Italy which nonetheless makes use of 500 yr previous methods to create these wonderful stone artwork works and see for ourselves how this artwork is made.

The official description of Pietra Dura is that it’s an inlay strategy of utilizing reduce and fitted, extremely polished coloured stones to create pictures. It’s thought of an ornamental artwork. The stonework, is glued stone-by-stone to a substrate after having beforehand been “sliced and reduce in numerous form sections; after which assembled collectively so exactly that the contact between every part was virtually invisible”. Stability was achieved by grooving the undersides of the stones in order that they interlocked, quite like a jigsaw puzzle, with every part held tautly in place by an encircling ‘body’. Many various coloured stones, significantly marble, had been used, together with semiprecious and even valuable stones .It first appeared in Rome within the 16th century, reaching its full maturity in Florence. Pietra dura objects are usually crafted on inexperienced, white or black marble base stones. Sometimes, the ensuing panel is totally flat, however some examples the place the picture is in low aid had been made, taking the work extra into the world of hardstone carving.