Vatican museums reveal the Micromosaic collection

Paulo Ondarza – Vatican City

Very refined art, born under the dome of San Pedro. Small mosaics, or Micromosaic, flourished at the end of the eighteenth century in Rome. Soon spread throughout Europe as a creature in particular that travelers in Grand Tour who, who, brought out the beauty of the eternal city of the eternal city, at a time dominated by the new classic taste, from returning to their homeland with an intimate and intimate memory of what they liked; A memorial gift, we will say today.

For the wealthy youth who visited Rome in the eighteenth century, they surprised the splendor of the ruins of Pompei and Hercolano, or the high beauty of the Italian landscape, unique things were produced: tobacco (tobacco (tobacco (tobacco (tobacco) (tobacco (tobacco).NDD, the luxury things decorated with repeated materials often become a grouping assembly)Pisapapeles, pins, jewelry, dance cards that archaeological scenery, Roman landscape, symbol of Christian monuments, but also animals and flowers.

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

Permanent

As a testimony of this Roman tradition, since last Thursday, May 15 in the Pleepa Chamber in the lower exhibitions of the Vatican museums, the entire group is displayed – nearly five hundred pieces – permanent micromosome from light groups. The extraordinary group belonged to Dominico Petochi and obtained in the early 1990s thanks to the then director Carlo Petrangi. It was partially displayed in the 1986 large exposure in BracCio Di Carlo Magno, and is now presented to the public: it is located in the old tanks in the Vatican Library that was guarding the manuscripts one day, then transferred to the built hideouts under the institute’s garden.

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

The intimate relationship and the testimony of the age

“Perhaps one of the most important groups in the world of micromosai,” explains the Vatican News Director of the Vatican Museums, Barbara Gata.

“The issues are mainly, with a minority of the religious horse between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and at the same time tells the production of the wonderful Roman Vatican.”

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

A thousand pieces per square centimeter

The small mosaic was unified in 1795 as part of the mosaic study in the Vatican, which was created about seventy years ago by Benedict XIV as part of the San Pedro factory (NDR, the institution responsible for building, preserving, maintaining and managing Bazilica San Pedro). The workers of this institution, which was established to reproduce the great altar panels of the Vatican in the Cevsan in the mosaic and preserve its complex decorative devices, which created pieces of less than one millimeter, to replace the severed glass enamel technology, used in larger works, by spinning technique.

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

The intense and accurate care is characterized by the use of crucifixes and files by implementing these small masterpieces, whose decorations come to a thousand small pieces per square centimeter.

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

Nostalgia and invinción

“Nostalgia and invention” are the two words taken from the title of the collection of studies conducted by Alvar Gonzalez-Bassius, the maximum of the topic experts, was chosen to describe the new exhibition of the Vatican Museum.

“Nostalgia for the past, because these things talk about the past that no longer exists,” says Luka Bezantte, the decorative arts commissioner of the papal collections. “The invention, because it refers to this new artistic form that has its roots in classical art and was born in the study of the Vatican mosaic, which was officially established in 1727 and targeted 300 years old.”

Winkelman’s bias

Despite the great success he enjoyed between the two centuries, Winkelman was despised by the micromosome. “According to the avoidance of the great at the time, these small actions were not more than female whims and reduced the glorious old traditions of mosaics into a form of bracelets and tobacco companies.” To understand this art well, it is necessary to change the perspective and allow ourselves to be directed by Alvar Gonzalez Palacius, who confirms that “what is required in the things we refer to is not its material reality, but evoking a poetic example in the United States without fully realized.”

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

“He spent 14,000 Shields, an astronomical amount at that time!” Luka Bizanti notes. “Let’s believe that in those years, the normal expenses of the Vatican museums, which the Tolintino Treaty lost 10,000 shields.”

Photo: Vatican Museums. (© Musei Vaticani)

Kanova and Bio’s seventh gifts for Napoleon

The artistic recognition and high quality of these things, as well as the talent of those who, such as the mosaic of Giakomo Raville, have reached the paintings of Boutros, thanks to Antonio Kanova. In 1804, the sculptor, the inspector appointed for the fine arts of Rome and the papal state, had to choose a series of gifts that Pio VII would offer to Napoleon. The artist chose many boxes, bracelets and small paintings decorated with micromosai.

The face and the opposite of the Italian spirit

Among the many wonderful and small open things in the old cabinets of the Vatican Library, the appearance is attracted to a white face on a blue background. It is a micromoshi cloning Apollo BalfidereSculpture that symbolizes the ideal higher beauty according to Winckelmann. What unites Apollo with a Ammunition? “Luka Bizanti asks.” The answer gives us once again González-Palacios: it is respectively, respectively, and reverse the Italian spirit. “