Fantastic Landscape
The dimensions, material and fantastic design of this slab of alberese limestone indicate that it is the pendant of a similar Fantastic Landscape (inv. no. 504). First mentioned in connection with the Borghese Collection in 1693, it attests to the popularity of such unique products of nature in the 16th and 17th centuries. It seems to reproduce the profile of a city in flames, a design created naturally by the completely fortuitous combination of the manganese and iron present in the rock.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
late 16th century–early 17th century
Classification
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Late 18th-/19th-century frame, part of a polyptych, 14.5 x 109.3 x 2.3 cm
Provenance
Rome, Borghese Collection, 1693 (Inventory 1693, room XI, no. 631); Inventory 1790, room VII, no. 74; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 31. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1971 Roma, Galleria Borghese
Commentary
The provenance of this slab is unknown. It is first mentioned as forming part of the collection of the Casino di Porta Pinciana in 1693, described in the inventory of that year in these words: ‘a work in stone which creates natural landscapes, with a black frame with silver arabesques and gemstones in the middle of the corners, roughly one span high, at no. 425. Artist uncertain’ (Inv. 1693). While the 1790 inventory cited it as ‘a landscape in Neapolitan stone’, it does not appear in either Adolfo Venturi’s Catalogo (1893) or in Roberto Longhi’s studies (1928). For her part, Paola della Pergola (1959) labelled it a purely decorative oddity.
The piece is a slab of alberese limestone, which because of its many varieties is simply referred to as pietra paesina (‘local stone’), a material in great demand on the part of stone merchants for the chromatic contrasts of its elements; this characteristic was in fact sought by many artists, as it served a support on which to paint refined compositions. In this case, the slab was left as it was found naturally: it was only polished and embellished with a lavish frame, with precious gemstones on the corners, which have been lost.
As critics have stated (Della Pergola 1959; Staccioli 1971), this slab was processed by an anonymous Tuscan master active in one of the many workshops in Florence and Rome between the late 16th and early 17th centuries.
Similar artefacts – framed and without painted surfaces – are held today at the Opificio delle Pietre Dure in Florence (inv. nos. 1935, 1936, 1941; Baltrušatis 1957; Staccioli 1971).
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- X. Barbier de Montault, Les Musées et Galeries de Rome, Rome 1870, p. 357;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 220;
- P. della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, II, Roma 1959, pp. 32-33, n. 38;
- P. della Pergola, L’Inventario Borghese del 1693 (III), in “Arte Antica e Moderna”, XXX, 1965, p. 211;
- S. Staccioli, in Opere in mosaico, intarsi e pietra paesina, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Galleria Borghese, 1971), a cura di S. Staccioli, Roma 1971, p. 27, n. 13;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 164;
- A. Iommelli, 'Petrae volant, scripta manent': tracce di pietre in casa Borghese nel XVII secolo, in Meraviglie senza tempo. Pittura su pietra a Roma nel Seicento, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Galleria Borghese, 2022), a cura di F. Cappelletti, P. Cavazzini.
