A rare pietra incarnata crucifixion - Lot 57

A rare pietra incarnata crucifixion A rare pietra incarnate crucifix Trapani, 18th century Attributed to the Tipa workshop H. 93 cm; L. 46 cm Comparative bibliography : L. Novara, "La pietra incarnata di Valderice nella scultura trapanese" in: Valderice 2009 Scuola e territorio, Valderice, 2009, pp. 16-20. The Christ is in carved pietra incarnata. His face looks up to heaven. He wears a perizonium held by a cord tied around his waist and falling in a wide drape down his left leg, all carved into the mass. The Cross is in blood jasper veneer, adorned at each end with gilded silver Rococo brackets decorated with garlands of flowers and shells. The gilded silver Titulus Crucis is applied to the upright of the Cross. It consists of a cartouche with the inscription I.N.R.I., surmounted by a winged angel's head. A skull and crossed tibias in gilded silver are applied to the bottom of the upright. The cross rests on a piece of jasper cut in the shape of a rock with a thick, contoured base in molded ormolu. Condition: good Pietra incarnata, used by Trapani sculptors in the 17th and 18th centuries, is a particular type of pinkish-beige alabaster limestone, characterized by veins ranging from gray to black to reddish-brown. It was quarried in a locality some 15 km from Trapani, in what is now the municipality of Valderice, near the Casalbianco district. Cordici (1586-1666) and Carvini (1644-1701) mention its existence in their manuscripts. They report that in the Casalbianco locality, there is "a quarry of flesh-colored marble... considered a very rare thing and seen for the first time" said Cordici, "and never known in the quarries of Sicily". The quarry belonged to a private owner who scrupulously guarded it from the top of a purpose-built tower. The architect Giovanni Biago Amico (1684-1754), in the second volume of his Architetto Prattico, published in 1750, in the chapter devoted to marbles, writes that there exists in the Trapani region "another similar flesh-colored stone dotted with bruises, excellent for crucifixion work". In the 17th and 18th centuries, in particular, sculptors with workshops in Via Degli Sculptori (now Via Torrearsa) produced large numbers of small statuettes of a sacred nature, with remarkable technical mastery, in materials such as marble, alabaster, coral or ivory. However, only a dozen or so sculptures in pietra incarnata are known, including several crucifixions, as in the Palazzo Vescovile in Trapani. Famous sculptors, such as members of the Tipa family, used pietra incarnata to create highly realistic sculptures of Christ at various stages of the Passion. Given the quality of execution of our crucifixion, it can be attributed to the Tipa workshop.