Dr. Judy Mann, Senior Curator or European Art to 1800 for the St. Louis Art Museum, stopped by to talk to Nancy about the exhibition, Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800.

About the Exhibition: In 2000 the Saint Louis Art Museum purchased Cavaliere d’Arpino’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda, an exceptional painting on lapis lazuli. The acquisition of the small, stunning work of art spurred extensive research that culminates in Paintings on Stone: Science and the Sacred 1530–1800, the first systematic examination of the pan-European practice of this unusual and little-studied artistic tradition. ———

By 1530 Italian artists had begun to paint portraits and sacred images on stone. At first artists used slate and marble. By the last decades of the 16th century, the repertoire expanded, eventually including alabaster, lapis lazuli, onyx, jasper, agate, and amethyst. In addition to demonstrating the beauty of these works, Paintings on Stone explains why artists began using stone supports and the role that stone played in the meaning of these endeavors. ———

Bringing together more than 70 examples by 58 artists, Paintings on Stone represents major centers of stone painting and features 21 different stones. ———

Judith W. Mann, the senior curator of European art to 1800. Since joining the museum in 1988, she has reinstalled the collections of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, and 18th-century European painting and sculpture three times, and organized two major international exhibitions. In 2022, the museum will organize a major, international exhibition curated by Mann that examines the art of painting on stone, a practice that flourished in Europe—particularly Italy—in the 16th and 17th centuries. In 2015, the Association of Art Museum Curators and the American Academy in Rome awarded Mann the Samuel H. Kress Foundation AAMC Affiliated Fellowship in order to allow her to continue her research into painting on stone in Rome.——-

Mann curated “Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi: Father and Daughter Painters in Baroque Italy,” which opened at Rome’s Palazzo Venezia and later was seen at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Saint Louis Art Museum, as well as the 2012 exhibition “Federico Barocci: Renaissance Master,” which was presented at the Saint Louis Art Museum and the National Gallery, London. In recognition for her scholarship relating to the Barocci exhibition and catalogue, Mann received the Association of Art Museum Curators’ Outstanding Monographic Exhibition Award. She holds a graduate degree and doctorate from Washington University. ———