Art in Stone From Antiquity to the Grand Tour

By the middle of the 18th century, Russian interest in geological exploration and mineralogy had developed into “a common disease,” in the words of Empress Catherine the Great. The history of stonecutting in Russia begins with one of Catherine’s predecessors, Peter the Great, who in 1721 founded the first Russian lapidary manufacture and hardstone grinding mill, in Peterhof, near Saint Petersburg.

From then on, the monarchs who ruled Russia encouraged the production of precious gems and rare hardstones sourced in the Russian Empire, namely from the Urals and the Altai mountains. A few years after Peterhof, two other manufactories were founded, Ekaterinbug in 1726 and Kolyvan in 1786. All three manufactories came under the administration of Aleksandr Stroganov (1733–1811) in 1800, as he was made director of the Imperial Academy of Fine Art.

The three lapidary centres reported to the Academy, which trained all their draftsmen and cameo carvers. Thanks to Stroganov, and the help of the prolific architect and designer Andrei N. Voronikhin (1759-1814), Russian stone carving was raised to a whole new level and saw its Golden Age in the first half of the 19th century.

The Russian taste for unconventional lapidary work, combining innovative forms and rare colours, and sponsored by the Imperial household, resulted in an array of spectacular works which can be seen at its best at the Hermitage. The lots offered in this sale embody the country’s pride in designing and executing exceptional hardstone objects carved out of the beauty sourced in their own soil.

“There does not exist a single slab, or column, or tiniest fragment of ancient marble in any church or gallery or workshop in Rome, which was not brought there expressly at fabulous expense, and at the cost of infinite labour, by the very same old Romans who built the Palaces of the Caesars and the Baths of Caracalla, and the Colloseum. Under the rule of the Emperors, Rome was a city of marble”.

These are some of the first words of Rev Henry W. Pullen in Handbook of Ancient Roman Marbles, (1894) which show how the Roman Empire, through these captivating materials, permeated the many layers of Roman life from classical times to this day.

These stones, brought from all over the Empire, embody the longevity of the Ancient Roman culture, and their use after the Renaissance, reclaiming the materials from ancient ruins, reaffirm the capital’s title as the Eternal city.

It was therefore appropriate that the sculptures and decorative objects fashioned from marbles and coloured stones inspired by, copying or emulating the Ancient past, were coveted by the great collectors and Grand Tourists of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, some being produced precisely as mementos of their passage through the city.

The technique of coloured marble and hardstone geometric inlay dates to ancient Rome, where it was called opus sectile, and it was in 16th century Rome where the art was revived to supply aristocratic and ecclesiastic patrons.

It involves cutting stones into small sections and inlaying them in pictorial creations, creating bewitching trompe l’oeil compositions of arresting colours. Its popularity quickly spread to other Italian centres, and in 1588 Grand Duke Ferdinand I de'Medici founded the Galleria dei Lavori in Pietre Dure in Florence as a rival to the Roman workshops, originally to supply the Medici family palaces and chapels, and later producing table tops and panels for a wider clientele.

Its influence spread out to the rest of Italy and Europe, with production centres established in Prague, Paris, Naples and Madrid, a testament to this art form which captivated European courtly patrons.

The virtuosity involved in its production and visually appealing results continue to fascinate collectors to this day.

No other stone in Western Civilization has attained the same prestigious status as that of porphyry: a stone which embodied the power of Emperors and rulers since antiquity, and from the end of the Roman Empire represented a means to legitimise and underline the power of any pretender to the throne.

Of a deep purple color with flecks of white, the bullet hard volcanic stone was, according to Pliny’s Naturalis Historia, discovered by legionary Caius Cominius in the year 18 AD at a location now called Mons Porphyrites (Porphyry Mountain), in the eastern desert of Egypt. Romans gave the stone a name: “porphyry”, deriving from the Latin word for purple, the color of nobility.

With exceptional strength and durability, its intrinsic qualities were perfectly suited to the message of power and authority but also made it extremely hard to work and carve, making objects in this hardstone both political and artistic statements.

After the 5th century, the quarries ceased to be mined and Mons Porphyrites was lost to oblivion. Thereafter, the sole source for porphyry of this type used in Western Europe were ruins from Ancient Rome, imbuing the new works created with a deep spiritual connection to antiquity.

Just like pietra dura, the art form of micromosaics is an extremely laborious and painstaking one. Italian mosaicists such as Michelangelo Barberi and Luigi A. Gallandt used tweezers to apply hundreds, sometimes thousands, of tiny tesserae (fragments of glass) to create incredibly detailed and beautiful scenes.

These mosaics could be fairly large panels such as the two monumental panels offered in STONE but they could also be smaller panels and plaques, inset on table tops or mounted on the wall.

It is believed that mosaics originated in the Far East as some of the earliest were found in Macedonia and were made out of pebbles and shells. Across the Byzantine Empire, Ancient Rome, the Renaissance and the 1840-70s, micromosaics were popular because they were durable and made any interior appear sumptuous and grand.

Demand especially grew in the 19th century thanks to Grand Tourists, who wished to soak in the Italian culture and expose themselves to as much art as possible. In this way, it became incredibly fashionable to pick up mementos or souvenirs from these trips.