Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred, 1530–1800

In 2000 the Saint Louis Art Museum acquired Perseus Rescuing Andromeda by Cavaliere d’Arpino, a small, dazzling painting on lapis lazuli that now graces the cover of this book. The acquisition launched years of research and led to the first systematic study of a pan-European practice long overlooked by art historians: painting on stone.

The technique was perfected in Rome by Sebastiano del Piombo, who was painting on stone by 1530. Artists began with slate and marble and soon moved on to alabaster, lapis lazuli, onyx, jasper, agate and amethyst, creating portraits, mythological scenes and sacred images in which the stone itself carries meaning. The exhibition gathered more than 90 works by 58 artists on 34 different stones.

Edited by Judith W. Mann, curator of European art to 1800 at the museum, the catalog brings together an international team of scholars, among them Nadia Groeneveld-Baadj, Elena Cenalmor Bruquetas, Mario Casaburo, John Encarnacion, Laura D. Gelfand and Ivo Purš, with essays ranging from the import of stone to its links with alchemy. Some 200 color illustrations. The catalog is now out of print.

The standard reference on the subject, for collectors and scholars of Renaissance and Baroque painting and of the Kunstkammer.