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Among all the outstanding works I saw at the Corning Museum, this was one of the most impressive. Outwardly a modest genre painting, this turns out not to be a painting at all, but a mosaic— a micromosaic, to be specific.
The picture is made up of thousands of tiny glass rods bundled together and standing on end. There are 1400 rods per square inch, all assembled by hand. (Some works had as many as 5000)
Were I condemned to make a work like this, I’d be raving mad within a day.
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In 1731, the chemist and glassmaker Alessio Mattioli developed a recipe mixing marble powder. This dough, flexible and stretchable, allows you to form thin baguettes which are then cut into very small pieces. These latter thus form tesserae called in Italian smalti filati.
Once the micro-mosaic is completed, the often small work is polished, waxed then set in a metal frame.