Lustrous Visions, Cut From Stone

Art Review
Lustrous Visions, Cut From Stone

By ROBERTA SMITH
Published: July 11, 2008
Despite signs to the contrary, conspicuous consumption is not what it used to be. Most exhibitions of decorative arts from the past, especially Europe’s monarchical age, drive that fact home in thrilling, and sometimes off-putting, fashion. But few shows do so with quite the dazzling vehemence of “Art of the Royal Court: Treasures in Pietre Dure From the Palaces of Europe,” a stealth blockbuster at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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A sumptuous sprawl of 170 objects borrowed from palaces and former palaces (that is, museums) all over Europe, it is the first in-depth survey of the arts and crafts of pietre dure. That Italian term, which translates as hard rock or hardstone, refers foremost to an intricate inlay of finely cut, highly polished slices of semiprecious stones: agate, lapis lazuli, jasper, carnelian, alabaster, rock crystal, amethyst.
Pietre dure could be flat. Fashioned into radiantly colored geometric patterns, floral designs, landscapes or mythological scenes, it was incorporated into tabletops, cabinets of all sizes, wall panels, portable altars, jewelry boxes and other furnishings. Such works could also be in the round: carved hardstone sculptural busts, statuettes, vases, snuff boxes, cameos, jewelry and miraculously thin-walled bowls.
Flat pietre dure was sometimes garnished with the sculptural kind: for example, garlands of perfect marzipanlike fruit. All these objects were, to say the least, nexuses of extraordinary allure, prestige and let-them-eat-cake presumption — just the thing for diplomatic overtures, royal dowries, peace offerings and plunder.
And yet pietre dure, which began its ascent in Renaissance Italy, had an almost self-effacing quality. Like Chinese scholars’ rocks or topiary, it is self-evidently a collaboration of human and natural ingenuity; it should appeal as much to rock hounds as to the art-fixated. Pietre dure was a quintessential art of the Renaissance, with its expansive attitude toward science and knowledge in general, and its optimistic view of human possibility. This art faced outward, exploring natural history while pushing manual craft to rarefied extremes.
The show traces pietre dure’s emergence in Italy in the late 16th century and then follows its spread, often with Italian master craftsmen lured northward, throughout Europe and Russia and into the early years of the 19th century. It was organized by a guest curator, Annamaria Giusti, director of the Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Florence, and, from the Met, Wolfram Koeppe, a curator in the department of European sculpture and decorative arts, and Ian Wardropper, the department’s chairman, aided by Florian Knothe, a research associate.
Ms. Giusti’s expertise comes from her years as director of the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, first established in Florence as the Galleria dei Lavori in 1588. It was set up by Grand Duke Ferdinand I de’ Medici in the Uffizi Palace primarily to produce pietre dure and other luxury objects that would broadcast the Medici glory. In the mid-19th century it changed its name, and its mission shifted from production to conservation.
The history of Lavori pietre dure is one of the subtexts of the exhibition, and you will find examples of it in nearly every gallery. Since great pietra dure in general and the Lavori variety in particular never lost value or went out of fashion among aristocrats or their cabinetmakers, the French and English recycled it into the designs of later periods. This is most evident in the final gallery, where there are four splendid neo-Classical pieces from the 18th century: three French commodes and an English cabinet designed by Robert Adam.
But stone had been treasured and constantly reused for millenniums, as suggested by the show’s small opening gallery devoted to “origins.” The displays reach back to ancient Egypt, in the form of a lion-size sphinx, and ancient Rome, in a tiny perfume bottle in swirling agate, and to 12th-century Italy, as a hefty jug in rock crystal from a Norman workshop attests. Closer to home is a small, house-shaped reliquary casket tiled and shingled in fiery shades of pietre dura. It comes from the workshop of the Florentine sculptor Andrea del Verrocchio, dating from around 1490.
The 16th-century Romans used stone tiles from the Baths of Caracalla for their monumental tables, whose scrolling, geometric designs sometimes evoke the ceilings of Baroque churches. A large vase and pedestal from Versailles, both in a brown-flecked stone with gilded bronze mounts, were cut from a single column of Egyptian porphyry that probably came from a building in ancient Rome. The Met owns a gobletlike cup that began life as a sardonyx bowl in medieval Byzantium (900-1100), but acquired a stem and gold-and-enamel trim in Paris in the 1650s.