Pastiglia

Pastiglia [paˈstiʎʎa], an Italian term meaning "pastework", is low relief decoration, normally modelled in gesso or white lead, applied to build up a surface that may then be gilded or painted, or left plain. The technique was used in a variety of ways in Italy during the Renaissance. The term is mostly found in English applied to gilded work on picture frames or small pieces of furniture such as wooden caskets and cassoni, and also on areas of panel paintings, but there is some divergence as to the meaning of the term between these specialisms. On frames and furniture the technique is in origin a cheaper imitation of woodcarving, metalwork or ivory carving techniques. Within paintings, the technique gives areas with a three-dimensional effect, usually those representing inanimate objects, such as foliage decoration on architectural surrounds, halos and details of dress, rather than parts of figures. In white lead pastiglia on caskets, the subject matter is usually classical, with a special emphasis on stories from Ancient Roman history.

White lead pastiglia In reference to work on picture frames and paintings moulded and gilded gesso is still commonly described as pastiglia, but in recent decades writers on furniture and the decorative arts tend to distinguish between this and "true" pastiglia, or white lead pastiglia which is defined as being made from white lead powder, made by combining powdered lead and vinegar in an anaerobic environment, bound with egg white. White lead bound with oil or egg yolk was also the most common pigment for white paint. White lead pastiglia is very delicate and used for small areas only, but can produce very fine detail. It was mainly used on small caskets and boxes. Sections were typically pre-moulded, doubtless from metal matrices to judge from the crisp detail, and glued on when hard. This was usually left unpainted, when it looked like carved ivory, which had been widely used to decorate boxes in Italy, by the Embriachi and others, but was by now less used, partly because it was too rare and expensive. The wood from which the main box was made was normally alder. It seems the term pastiglia for this only dates to the 17th century, after the technique had largely fallen from use. A scented variant called pasta di muschio ("musk paste") mixed musk perfume with the white lead, and was thought to be "aphrodisiacal", and so used for caskets given at a marriage, and also other objects such as inkwells and frames for hand mirrors. White lead pastiglia was a north Italian speciality, produced between about 1450 and 1550. Six workshops were identified by Patrick M. De Winter, although their location remains uncertain; the Workshop of the Love and Moral Themes, whose products seem the most numerous, was possibly at Ferrara, where the painter Cosimo Tura began his career gilding caskets. Venice is also thought to have produced them. Other workshops identified by De Winter include the "Workshop of the main Berlin casket" and "Workshop of the Cleveland Casket". The subjects were typically classical, drawn from both mythology and Ancient Roman history (especially the early period covered by Livy), but biblical ones are also found. Compositions can often be shown to be borrowed from another medium, such as prints or bronze plaquettes, and sections from the same mould can be found repeated, and used on more than one piece. The Victoria and Albert Museum has an armorial casket which is the only example that can be fairly closely dated, using the career of its owner, Cardinal Bernardo Clesio, as it must date to between his elevation as cardinal in 1530 and his resignation as Prince-bishop of Trent in 1538. De Winter catalogued 115 white lead pastiglia caskets, only ten of which were over 20 cm high or deep. Another of this relatively large type was sold at auction in 2010. Despite usually having locks, their thin alderwood frame meant that the caskets were probably too fragile to be used for really valuable items like jewellery, and they are thought to have been used for a variety of small objects including cosmetics and collections of seals, coins and the like. In 2002, the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida held an exhibition of Pastiglia Boxes: Hidden Treasures of the Italian Renaissance from the collection of the Galleria Nazionale d'arte antica in Rome, and an 80-page exhibition catalogue was published in English and Italian.

Gesso pastiglia Gesso pastiglia is mostly found in Italy in the 14th to 16th centuries, where pastiglia on larger pieces of furniture such as cassoni, and on picture frames, was more likely to be gilded gesso than true white lead pastiglia. Both panel paintings and gilded frames had a thin flat layer of gesso as part of their preparation, to which the pastiglia decoration was added. On furniture and frames the gesso seems sometimes to have been carved from a thicker flat surface in a subtractive technique, and sometimes built up in an additive one, for smaller and larger areas respectively. Another additive technique was to simply pipe the gesso from a bag through a nozzle, like icing a cake, to give long round lines, often used as the tendrils in foliage designs. It was then always gilded or painted, usually the former. The technique was very widely used in painted panels while gold-ground paintings remained the norm for altarpieces, along with a range of other techniques for decorating plain gilded surfaces such as stamping, engraving or scratching lines, and stippling, punching or pricking dots. In Gothic architectural frames for polyptychs, pastiglia is very commonly used to decorate small flat areas such as spandrels and behind scalloped edges. The technique is described at the end of the technical handbook by Cennino Cennini, whose own paintings made use of it, although he does not use the term himself.

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