Gonzalo Sanchez
Rome, Nov 5 (EFE) .- Charles V’s sack of Rome in 1527 also marked the history of art. In those dramatic days many canvases perished, so the artists in the service of the pope opted for a technique that would protect their works from the crowd: painting on stone, a dream of eternity now explored at the Borghese Gallery.
“The painters of Rome, studying Antiquity, understood that marble resisted more than painting, that they had more examples of sculpture than classical painting”, the director of the museum, Francesca Cappelletti, explains to EFE.
The historic Galleria Borghese, home to some of Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s most famous masterpieces, hosts the “Timeless Wonders” exhibition until January 29, with rare pieces of stone painting obtained from its deposits or on loan from other museums.
The technique, as the name suggests, consisted of oil painting on smooth stone surfaces and, although it already appears in the sources of Pliny’s time, its use was rare in history, concentrating between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
THE LACK OF ROME
But its rebirth has a precise origin: the traumatic sack of Rome in May 1527 by the troops of Emperor Charles V, who destroyed the city and oppressed its sovereign, Pope Clement VII, then an ally of France.
The capital suffered one of the worst attacks in its long history and, in those days of fire at the hands of imperial mercenaries and lansquenets, not only were robberies and murders of all kinds perpetrated, but much art also perished.
One of the painters of the time, Sebastiano del Piombo, of Venetian origin, witnessed with amazement the destruction of paintings and altarpieces and, therefore, decided to perfect a technique that would give greater resistance to the works. And what’s better than the rock itself?
“The origin lies in Sebastiano’s intention to give painting the possibility to last, but also to experiment with new techniques. This actually happened in Rome, but it was a fashion that spread to other places”, says Cappelletti.
STONE AS CANVAS
Del Piombo left some of his stone painting proposals to posterity, such as the portrait he made of Clement VII with a beard (1530) on polished slate, which gives the image a chiaroscuro aspect that would soon elevate Caravaggio.
In the specimen there are many other examples of this unique technique, some of the most beautiful in lapis lazuli, such as an oval plate with the myths of Perseus and Andromeda and Venus and Adonis, but also in other stones such as amethyst.
You can also see an alabaster “Piedad” (1640), kept in the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo de El Escorial, and another slab of agate, a type of quartz, which has the “Annunciation” and “The Resurrection” on each side of Christ “, of the Monastery of La Encarnación.
In other cases the artist seems to propose a kind of game since he exploits the grain of the rock in such a way that it is not immediately clear whether it is painting or if a certain line responds to a whim of nature.
For example, Antonio Tempesta, a precise Mannerist engraver, drew “The Fall of Jerusalem” (1610-1620) on a limestone slab in which his tiny crusaders break through the walls of the Holy City formed by the lighter parts of the rock.
However, stone painting did not thrive as a recurring technique, too precious, expensive and tiny, inconvenient to carry, especially when everything in Europe was ready for the emergence of a grandiose style, the Baroque.
Its decadence is difficult to identify but Cappelletti points out that, in the drafting of the catalog, he noticed that from the third decade of the seventeenth there are “few significant examples” of this style.
A TRIUMPH IN TIME
However, many of these curious paintings have achieved their purpose, they have managed to survive the vicissitudes of history, thanks to collectors such as Cardinal Scipione Borghese, father of the Roman museum.
The cardinal, a member of one of the most influential dynasties of papal Rome, born in 1577, was the example of a total collector, always interested in all forms of art, innovations and also the flora and fauna that came from the New World .
So much so that on display is the portrait he commissioned, with stone inlays like a puzzle, of a bird – cardinal red – which he received from Central America.
The exotic specimen is known to die early – “it was hard to raise,” he said – but it remains immortalized nonetheless, defying time with its red stone feathers. EFE
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