BEST Pietra Dura plaque snow scene BEST Pietra Dura plaque snow scene

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Giovanni Montelatici (d. 1930) revitalised the skill the art of pietre dure, an art which had fallen into a steady decline since the mid-19th century. In 1898, Montelatici and Galileo Chini (d. 1857) exhibited jointly at the 1900 Paris Exposition Universelle, winning a gold medal.  Montelatici was joined by his two sons, Mario and Alfonso.  Montelatici's subjects include life-like religious, domestic, and rural scenes in pietra dura.

Spectacular artist signed pietra dura plaque with pastoral scene by Mario Montelatici, 1894-1974. Size  22 1/4" x 12 1/4". Artist's signature lower right, M Montelatici. The scene depicts a young girl with four sheep on a hilltop. She is sprinkling feed for them. Fabulous  hard stones with very vibrant colors.

Over a period of many years, 28,000 different shades of tesserae were created. These were composed of an opaque substance which was neither shiny nor brittle like former glass mosaics. While the exact formula has been kept a secret, the Vatican calls the substance “enamel”. “Persons who have never seen a mosaic made find it difficult to imagine how with small bits of colored enamel the most valuable paintings may be exactly copied.” [Begni, The Vatican, 1914, p. 501].  By 1770 most of the altar paintings by the great masters were successfully reproduced in mosaic; to this day, most visitors to Saint Peter’s do not realize they are looking at mosaics and not paintings. Around 1775, some artists at St. Peter’s began making miniature mosaics using exceptionally small tesserae. These were the first of  what   we now call “micromosaics”. Initially, as in larger pictures, the tesserae were all square or rectilinear in shape, but methods were eventually refined so that individual pieces could be shaped to appeared almost like brush strokes.

            By the early nineteenth century, a number of private mosaic workshops had sprung up in Rome near the Spanish Steps and a growing tourist market created a demand for micro-mosaic souvenirs. Commercial mosaics became available in a vast range of sizes and quality. Inexpensive mementos such as pill boxes and paperweights were available to the average tourist, while elaborate and costly tabletops, pictures and jewelry were made for the nobility of  Europe. Esamples of these can be seen at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg,  Russia, at the Vatican, and at the newly opened Gilbert Collection museum in London.