ATTRIBUTED TO THE GRAND DUCAL WORKSHOPS, FLORENCE, CIRCA 1610-1620

This beautiful pietra dura panel, with its remarkable depiction of Jonah and the Whale in a sea of lustrous lapis lazuli and with mountains and trees in Bohemian and green jasper and petrified wood, embodies the miraculous Florentine art of ‘painting in stone’ of the early 17th century.
The art of inlaying in pietre dure was prized at all the courts of Europe, but it was at the Medici court of Florence that it reached its apogee, particularly under the patronage of Cosimo I (r. 1569-74), his son Francesco (r. 1574-87), and Cosimo's brother Ferdinand I (r. 1587-1609), who formally established the Grand Ducal workshop, the Galleria dei Lavori, in 1588.
Ferdinand had lived in Rome as Cardinal before succeeding as Grand Duke in 1587, and it was there, surrounded by the glorious ruins of ancient Rome, that he developed a passion for hardstones. One of the most important and consuming projects of his reign was the creation of the celebrated Capella dei Principi in S. Lorenzo, a spectacular mausoleum for the Medici rulers which was a dazzling display of hardstones and marbles and for which the foundation stone was laid in 1604.
A number of important painters and designers worked on the chapel, including Iacopo Ligozzi, Matteo Nigetti, Bernadino Poccetti and Ludovico Cigoli, whose nephew credited Ferdinand with inspiring the Florentine art of ‘pittura fatta non con colori e pennelli ma non composizione di varie pietre commesse’ [‘painting not done with colours and brushes but by fitting together various different stones’]. The altar of the Capella dei Principi was inset with a series of pictorial panels depicting scenes from the Old Testament, including Elias and the Angel, Jonah and the Whale (both executed in 1612 and designed by Emanuele Tedesco, the panel of Jonah is illustrated here) and Melchisedech, all of which used a similar range of hardstones, particularly lapis lazuli and green Bohemian jasper. The altar was dismantled in 1779 and these panels were moved to the Medici Villa Poggio Imperiale, and are now in the Museo dell’Opificio delle Pietre Dure, Florence (see A.M.Giusti, Pietre Dure: Hardstone in Furniture and Decorations, London, 1992, pp. 76-7 and plates 27-8 and A.M. Giusti ed.,Splendori di Pietre Dure, Florence, 1989, exh. cat., pp. 112-7). Other related panels designed by Bernadino Poccetti, pure landscapes without any narrative content, but again with a choice of hardstones closely related to the panel offered here, are illustrated in Giusti ed. op. cit., pp. 120-3
It is interesting to note that the designer Emanuele Tedesco must have been of German origin (‘Tedesco’ is German in Italian)- the prevalent use of green Bohemian jasper in these panels relates them to the celebrated hardstone workshop established in Prague for the Emperor Rudolf II by the Florentine Cosimo Castrucci, for whom the use of Bohemian jasper was a particular leitmotif, demonstrating the international appeal of these princely treasures.