Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment - Hardcover

Barry, Fabio

4.67 out of 5 stars

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780300248166: Painting in Stone: Architecture and the Poetics of Marble from Antiquity to the Enlightenment

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300248164 ISBN 13: 9780300248166

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2020

View all copies of this ISBN edition

0 Used

1 New

From US$ 114.64

A sweeping history of premodern architecture told through the material of stone

Spanning almost five millennia, Painting in Stone tells a new history of premodern architecture through the material of precious stone. Lavishly illustrated examples include the synthetic gems used to simulate Sumerian and Egyptian heavens; the marble temples and mansions of Greece and Rome; the painted palaces and polychrome marble chapels of early modern Italy; and the multimedia revival in 19th-century England. Poetry, the lens for understanding costly marbles as an artistic medium, summoned a spectrum of imaginative associations and responses, from princes and patriarchs to the populace. Three salient themes sustained this “lithic imagination”: marbles as images of their own elemental substance according to premodern concepts of matter and geology; the perceived indwelling of astral light in earthly stones; and the enduring belief that colored marbles exhibited a form of natural—or divine—painting, thanks to their vivacious veining, rainbow palette, and chance images.

"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.