No stone unturned: Cosimo Castrucci and the union of art and nature
Castrucci was a master of commesso di pietre dure — the making of decorative objects inlaid with semi-precious stones. A rare work attributed to the artist, depicting a panorama of Prague in the years around 1600, is offered in Paris on 12 March
A pietra dura, rock crystal and fossilised wood marquetry plaque representing the city of Prague, attributed to Cosimo Castrucci, circa 1590-1619 (detail). 11 x 15½ in (28 x 39 cm). Estimate: €150,000-250,000. Offered in Collections on 12 March 2024 at Christie’s in Paris
In the final years of the 16th century, Cosimo Castrucci was an artist in demand. Based in Florence and favoured by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando I de’ Medici, he was a master of commesso di pietre dure. This was the making of decorative objects inlaid with semi-precious stones: objects that were ideal expressions of princely wealth and coveted by ruling elites as far afield as Mughal India.
Perhaps the greatest admirer of the art of stone inlay was the Holy Roman Emperor, Rudolf II (r. 1576-1612), and in the 1590s he made Castrucci an offer he couldn’t refuse: a handsome salary, long-term imperial favour, and access to all the stones he could possibly wish for, if he relocated to Prague.
The emperor had moved his court to that city from Vienna at the start of the previous decade, and now sought to found a commesso workshop to rival those in the great Italian centres of production, Milan and Florence. (The latter boasted an official Medici-established workshop, the Opificio delle Pietre Dure, which is still active to this day — though Castrucci seems to have been an independent master who operated outside it.)
By 1592, the emperor had got his man. A passport was issued for Castrucci that year, in which he was described as ‘His Majesty’s gem-cutter’.
Martino Rota (c. 1520-1583), Portrait of Rudolf II of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, 16th century. Oil on canvas. 112 x 98.5 cm. Private Collection. Photo: © Fine Art Images / Bridgeman Images
History tends to remember Rudolf as a cultivated individual, more interested in filling his palace’s Kunstkammer with wondrous objects than he was in overseeing his empire. It’s true that he would end up being ousted by his ambitious younger brother, Matthias, but his political record isn’t really of concern here.
What matters is the stunning array of artistic and scientific talent he attracted to Prague from abroad. This included the painter Arcimboldo, the sculptor Adriaen de Vries, the astronomer Tycho Brahe, and the mathematician Johannes Kepler — not to mention the magus from Queen Elizabeth I’s court in England, John Dee. (Kepler would famously draw upon Brahe’s research to produce the Rudolphine Tables, a groundbreaking set of calculations of the positions of the planets, duly named after the emperor.)
According to his aunt, Archduchess Maria of Styria, Rudolf II ‘loved only what is extraordinary and miraculous. What he knows, he feels obliged to have.’
From Castrucci’s workshop, the emperor would receive items ranging from tables and cabinets with intricate inlays, to plaques that were hung on walls. Typically, these plaques were framed and rather resembled paintings — however, instead of brushstrokes, they consisted of mosaics of colourful stones.
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A pietra dura, rock crystal and fossilised wood marquetry plaque representing the city of Prague, attributed to Cosimo Castrucci, circa 1590-1619. 11 x 15½ in (28 x 39 cm). Estimate: €150,000-250,000. Offered in Collections on 12 March 2024 at Christie’s in Paris
A fine example attributed to Castrucci is being offered in the Collections sale at Christie’s in Paris on 12 March 2024. It’s a depiction of Prague, with the castle district of Hradčany visible in the upper right. Charles Bridge, over the Vltava River, can be seen on the far left, connecting the city’s two banks. The fluvial scene below it suggests bustling port trade.
One imagines that part of the attraction of moving to Prague for Castrucci was the chance to work with rare local stones that weren’t readily available in Florence — jasper, agate and chalcedony notable among them. These three stones all feature, alongside Italian marble, in the plaque in question, offering a variety of colours and cuts the artist wouldn’t have encountered before.
Castrucci was a master of illusionism and the atmospheric rendering of space. In the Prague cityscape, the grouping of earthy greens and browns in the foreground gives way to hazier pastel colours around the horizon, this graduated placement of stones helping create a credible sense of spatial recession.
Cosimo Castrucci, Landscape with the Sacrifice of Isaac, circa 1600. Pietra dura. Agate and jasper. 43.3 x 57.7 cm. Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Kunstkammer
Similar placement can be seen in contemporaneous scenes by Castrucci, such as Landscape with a Chapel and a Bridge (1596) and Landscape with the Sacrifice of Isaac (circa 1600) — both of which today form part of the Kunsthistorisches Museum’s collection in Vienna.
Rudolf left behind few documents in his own hand, so there is a certain amount of conjecture when it comes to explaining his love for commesso di pietre dure. It seems safe to say, however, that it wasn’t purely down to aesthetic pleasure.
According to his biographer, Peter Marshall, writing in The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague (2007), ‘Rudolf amassed many important works of art and nature, both old and new, from all over… As a learned and cultured monarch, he saw the whole world as a precious cabinet of curiosities to collect and classify.’
The emperor’s collection included fossils, bronzes, ivories, books and manuscripts — as well as scientific instruments, such as a dazzling celestial globe with clockwork by the imperial clockmaker Gerhard Emmoser, now in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1526-1593), Vertumnus, 1591. Oil on panel. 70 x 58 cm. Skokloster Castle, Sweden. Photo: Bridgeman Images
Rudolf also acquired religious relics, such as a grain of earth from which it was believed God had created Adam, and two iron nails that had purportedly been part of Noah’s Ark. What’s more, he kept an aviary filled with rare birds, including a dodo (brought to Prague from Mauritius) and a cassowary (brought from the Banda Islands of Indonesia).
One of the most famous paintings in the emperor’s collection was a portrayal of him by Arcimboldo, called Vertumnus. It depicts Rudolf as the titular Roman god of plant growth and seasonal change — in the artist’s eye-catching trademark fashion. Which is to say, with the subject’s head and body concocted out of fruits, flowers and vegetables.
Vertumnus marked a union of art and nature which was at the core of Rudolf’s world view. The same was true, in a more literal manner, of Castrucci’s commesso work. Stunning stones, products of the earth millions of years in the making, were patterned together to make stunning objets d’art, products of the Italian’s ingenuity.
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‘Just as God had created the universe, so Rudolf’s artists… were refashioning and transmuting the Creation,’ wrote Peter Marshall about Castrucci and his workshop. Sadly, the glory days weren’t to last. Castrucci died in the early years of the 17th century, and was succeeded in his atelier by his son Giovanni — after whose own death, in 1615, the artistic heights of old were never again reached.
As for Rudolf, power ebbed inexorably away from him towards the end of his reign — as did his mental health. After he died, in 1612, his collections and court entourage were for the most part dispersed.
Over the course of three decades, however, he had turned Prague not just into the centre of an empire, but into an epicentre of Renaissance refinement. In his quest to achieve the latter, he left no stone unturned.
On view now, the Collections sale takes place at Christie’s in Paris on 12 March 2024. Offering ancient and modern art, decorative arts and design, it includes furniture created by Jacques-Martin Lopez for the Maison de Savoie, as well as collections from the Galerie Gismondi and an apartment on rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré. Featuring objects collected by Colin Peter Field for the legendary Bar Hemingway at the Ritz in Paris, Collections — The Online Sale runs until 13 March
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