Resumen de "Painting in Stone": Early modern Experiments in a Metamedium
Although Pliny the Elder had only metaphorically described colored marbles as "painting in stone", early modern artist from Siena to Oxford sought chemical means to infuse images in marble. They reproduced the works of "Nature the Painter" as both cabinet curiosities and religious images whose programmed "eikonogenesis" could replicate the miraculous acheiropoieton. In the eighteenth century, the principe di Sansevero and comte de Caylus both claimed to have reinvented the technique; the former dabbled in alchemy, but the latter aimed to reconstruct ancient painting in substance, not simply in style, and complete with the authentic examples just unearthed in Herculaneum.
