Image

Italian, Rome

Micromosaic of St. Peter’s, mid-1800s

Description

Maker

Culture

Italian

Title

Micromosaic of St. Peter’s

Year

mid-1800s

Medium

Glass tesserae and black onyx

Materials/Techniques

Place

Rome

Type

Credit

Gift of Mrs. Gerard P. Herrick

Object Number

58.172.11A

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Pilgrims of Beauty

February 3 - July 8, 2012

The variety of Grand Tour souvenir objects, which were often decorated with views of Italy’s ancient ruins and distinctive buildings, increased in the 19th century. Large and elaborate micro-mosaics appeared on furniture, snuff-boxes, and plaques, while smaller ones, such as this group, could be inserted by a jeweler in gold settings to create brooches, buttons, bracelets, or necklaces. The mosaic workshop of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome trained generations of skilled Italian craftsmen in the construction of these tiny vignettes.

European Galleries

The Grand Tour—an educational and experiential venture taken by young European aristocrats in the 1700s and 1800s—provided ample opportunities for collecting. This small depiction of St. Peter’s Basilica is a micromosaic, and was produced for and purchased by travelers. Made of small pieces of glass, micromosaics in all sizes—from tabletops to jewelry—were prized for their colorful and intricate scenes, often of famous Roman sites.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Micromosaic of St. Peter’s with the accession number of 58.172.11A. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.