Crucifix

17th century

Crucifix

Ivory and lapis lazuli, cm 28x16

The work is accompanied by a CITES Community Certificate

Lapis lazuli (or lapis lazzulo) is one of the precious stones known since ancient times. The etymology of the name comes from the Latin lapis, "stone" and from the medieval Latin lazulum, "blue". The first use of this gem dates back to the 5th millennium BC, at a time when it was widely used, for example, to make jewelry found in pharaonic tombs in Egypt.

The painters with lapis lazuli obtained, through grinding and other processes, the most valuable blue color for medieval frescoes: the shade was intense and extremely resistant over time. The cost of this raw material was comparable to that of gold, if you think that the only known mines were in Afghanistan. The richness of the material also had a devotional meaning: in sacred art, portraying the divinity with precious materials was a kind of offering made to it.

Even in the Babylonian era this material was particularly used. You can find the use of lapis lazuli in the famous Ishtar Gate that served as the main entrance to the great city of Babylon.

In the modern age, famous are the cups and vases in lapis lazuli that belonged to the Medici. Michelangelo made abundant use of it to fresco both the Sistine Chapel (especially in the Last Judgment) and the Pauline Chapel (Conversion of Saul and Crucifixion of Saint Peter). In Rome, at the top of the altar of Saint Ignatius of Loyola, there is a large sphere of lapis lazuli (the largest block known).

The author of this seventeenth-century crucifix refers to the strong symbolic gradient of lapis lazuli, which combines the material with another extremely rare and valuable element, ivory, which is finely carved here.