Pietre preziose, 2017
GPE-0138
Precious Stones
Xerox reproduction, collage and green pencil drawing
Album 24 x 16 cm folded, 24 x 124.6 cm open
24 x 85 x 12 cm
Titled, signed, and dated on the recto: “Pietre preziose” (first page, centre), “Giulio Paolini / 2017”(seventh page, centre)
Autograph numbering on the recto of the sixth page, centre
9 in Arabic numerals from 1/9 to 9/9
Slight differences in the tearing, position, and size of the individual elements in the image are due to the fact that each edition was made by hand.
Self-produced by the artist
An accordion photo album with a hard cover in green fabric features, in its four central pages, the photographic reproduction of the plaster cast of a draughtsman, wearing a period costume, intent on drawing. Inscribed in the visual angle drawn in green that starts from his left eye is a fragmentary image of the dome of the Chapel of the Holy Shroud by Guarino Guarini in Turin, consisting of two photographic details and a drawing that reproduces the structure of the dome.
The multiple reformulates the theme of the large-scale work with the same title, commissioned by the Consulta per la Valorizzazione dei Beni Artistici e Culturali of Turin for the Gardens of the Royal Museums, in proximity to the same Chapel of the Holy Shroud, and inaugurated on 26 October 2017. In the three-dimensional work the draughtsman's resin sculpture is situated on a granite plinth in which the drawing of the dome is set, and surrounded by seventeenth-century stone fragments from Guarini’s Chapel (the “precious stones” mentioned in the title), which was badly damaged in April 1997.
• Figure: Jacques-Philippe Le Bas, Étude du dessin, 1757, engraving, National Gallery of Art, Washington, from Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin, L’Étude du dessin, 1748, oil on canvas, 41 x 47 cm, Wanas Collection, Switzerland.
• Fragments: Guarino Guarini, Cappella della Sindone, 1667-1682, Musei Reali, Turin.
