Florentine Inlay

Florentine Inlay was born in the second half of the 16th century as a consequence of the fashion for inlaid marble resulting from the humanistic recovery of the old Roman technique of “opus sectile”.

This technique used coloured marble and semiprecious stones cut into the shape of the figure in order to achieve a representation as close as possible to that of a painting.

Whereas in Rome, marble inlay was used mainly as an architectural covering, in Florence it was used above all to create sumptuous furniture such as table tops, altar fronts, inlaid cabinets and other religious furniture.

Rather than the marble and abstract geometrical shapes of Roman inlay, in Florence the preference was semiprecious stones used to create marvellous compositions of natural subjects, imitating painting.

Very quickly this production became the preserve of the family of the Grand Duke.

In fact, in 1588, Ferdinando I de Medici officially sanctioned the transformation of the artistic workshops working for the Florentine court into State manufacturers, from among which the mosaic workers and semiprecious stone cutters emerged.

The consequence of this was that inlays could only be produced at the request of the Medici family.

Other workshops were left with imitation stone mosaic such as scagliola.

Commesso, from the latin “committere” (put together, unite) indicates a type of art where semiprecious stones are cut and shaped according to a certain design then put together to a form a picture composition wherein the joins cannot be seen.

The technique has remained substantially the same since the end of the 16th century until today.

The first step is to make an actual size watercolour, model on paper. The colour choice of the model should take into account the natural palette offered by the stones, without, however, being too bound by it. 

What was sought was not a simple translation of the image from one technique to another, but rather a free transposition, made possible by the huge palette of stones available to the artists and their imagination for interpreting the colours suggested by the model. 

This was entrusted to the master in charge of carrying out the inlay. 

The inlay work was sub-divided between a number of artists to reduce the working time to complete it, which nevertheless remained long for large-scale works (for example, eighteen artists and eleven years work for the table of the Tribuna degli Uffizi).

Using a pen or pencil, the master made a tracing from the model on which he marked the stone sections to be assembled for the whole image.

This division of the model into parts was very delicate work as the number and shape of the sections played an important role in the final quality of the inlay work.

More significant and more laborious was the next phase when the individual stone colours were chosen.

A choice was made from the many “slices” of semiprecious stones, for the backgrounds and the colour shades in order to enhance the composition and to suggest the effects of light, shadow, shading and plasticity that Florentine inlay aimed to achieve, it being no coincidence that it was exalted by the Grand Dukes as “painting in stone”.

For cutting the stones a simple tool was used, the skill being in the extraordinary manual dexterity of the artists. A vice clamped to a workbench held the slice firmly in position vertically while the worker proceeded to cut using a chestnut twig subtended by a soft iron wire like a saw.

Each movement of the bow coincided with the movement of a metal spatula held in the other hand of the worker, soaked in powdered glass or another wet abrasive material.

The combined action of the wire and the abrasive material cut the stone according to the shape established more or less quickly depending on the hardness of the stone.

The same system was used to cut the background sheet - the part that would be seen - profiling it in such a way as to make a perfect fit with the inlay image.

The cut of the profile had to be perfect so that when the inlay was assembled the junction lines would be practically invisible. When the sections had been put together perfectly, the joining of the pieces began in reverse, fixing them in their sections using sticks of wood or pieces of slate as a temporary measure.

To then be sure that all sections of the inlay have the same thickness, the inlay was turned over and fixed with plaster to a stone plate.

Then the back was flattened with coarse abrasive dragged by spatulas.

The inlay could then be lined by warming natural adhesive based on beeswax and rosin and pouring it on the back of the inlay, making sure the slate plate that would serve as the background was stuck well.

Once the support was stuck well, the inlay was reversed, releasing the slab that had temporarily obscured the surface that was presented perfectly polished and assembled, but opaque, because only the final polishing gave the stones the bright and durable radiance upon which so much of their appeal depended.

To this end, the surfaces were rubbed repeatedly with abrasive silica the grain size of which was gradually reduced.

Materials were researched by the same craftsmen: the green of the Arno, for example,was looked for on the banks of the Arno, as well as many other types of stone. And why on the riverbed? Because that is where the stones brought down by the currents are deposited. The skilled craftsman then proceeded to cut the rough stone.

The direction of the cut depends on whether the stone is porous or sandy and the master craftsman knows, just as he knows that each slice will be different.

The uniqueness of the work lies in the fact that nature provides different materials and only the wisdom of the master craftsman knows how to combine them.

Even the utensils, the “tools of the trade”, are all made by hand and every craftsman manufactures his along the lines of those made in the late nineteenth century.

Even the chestnut bows with which they cut the stones are made with chestnut branches collected in the woods when the chestnut trees are sprouting new shoots andthey must be smooth and free of knots.

Processing times are very long: the stones all have very different hardnesses and there is no machine that can process them, only the human eye and hand can manage the stone.