commesso

commesso, technique of fashioning pictures with thin, cut-to-shape pieces of brightly coloured semiprecious stones, developed in Florence in the late 16th century. The stones most commonly used are agates, quartzes, chalcedonies, jaspers, granites, porphyries, petrified woods, and lapis lazuli; all of these, with the exception of lapis lazuli, are “hard stones,” or stones that fall between feldspar and diamond in hardness. Commesso pictures, used mainly for tabletops and small wall panels, range from emblematic and floral subjects to landscapes, and some are executed with such laborious care and such sensitivity to the pictorial possibilities of the colours and shadings of the stones that they rival paintings in their detailed realism.

Although the first recorded instance of this technique was in the late 14th century in Florence, it was under the 16th-century Medici duke Francesco I, who employed several notable Italian Mannerist painters to design and execute commesso pieces, that the art began to be produced extensively. In 1588 Francesco’s successor, Ferdinando I, founded the Workshop for Hard Stone (Opificio delle Pietre Dure) as a permanent commesso workshop. The first group of artists employed there perfected the art of making commesso pictures in highly illusionistic perspective. The Workshop was primarily engaged throughout the 17th century in manufacturing decorations for the family funerary chapel begun by the Medici at the church of San Lorenzo in 1605.

By the beginning of the 18th century commesso work was in demand all over Europe, and Florentine craftsmen were soon employed at several European courts. The Florentine Workshop continued to operate as a state-supported institution into the 20th century, producing works of high technical and artistic quality as late as the 1920s.