Giovanni Pratesi, the artist who makes stones “speak”.

NoIn ancient times, those who owned rare and precious stones were considered truly rich. They, if well chosen, have the power to give those who possess them luck.

In a modern way, the Roman lawyer Faustino Corsi dealt with semi-precious stones and collected a precious collection of them. In the first decades of the nineteenth century he collected over a thousand specimens of marble, which came to Rome from every province of the empire and were then continuously reused by architects and stonemasons in the construction of the monuments which, over the centuries, have outlined the face of the City. The catalog raisonné in which the characteristics of each marble were described, accompanied by cultivated and in-depth annotations, was published with the title Ancient Stones. Treaty in 1833.

Among the scholars of our time Raniero Gnoli, cultured and wise, between East and West, has collected and studied all the precious stones of ancient Romeclassified in his famous Roman Marmora. The most sensitive antique dealer, Mario Tazzoli, purchased the entire collection, which Gnoli had collected and “stolen” in all the lands of Roman domination, and which he did not stop collecting even after the alienation.

For the Roman marbles he lived and lives in the marvelous Palazzo Patrizi in Castel Giuliano. A famous Sanskritist, his field of research concerned the theologies and religious philosophies of India. Raniero Gnoli was also the first to translate the most important texts belonging to Indian religious traditions from Sanskrit into Western languages. An expert and passionate about Greco-Roman culture, with Roman Marmora he conducted an accurate «study of the decorative stones used by the ancients, that is, of the marbles which, in the classical meaning of the word, include all the decorative stones susceptible to cleaning».

The stones of Giovanni Pratesi

I thought nothing more could be done. And instead, with extraordinary amazement, one day, it arrived in Figline Valdarno, in the sacristy of the rediscovered Oratory of the Spedale Serristori I saw, well arranged in simple display cases, the rarest stones and of the most varied shapeswith the most changeable designs, the most capricious whims, well lit. A large and rich collection. Roman Marmora again? Still fragments patiently found in long searches? In a certain sense. But this time Rome was not far from home. On the bed of the Arno which passes through Figline. In a series of methodical and patient excursions on idle weekend days, Giovanni Pratesi, dressed in country clothes, collected stones of various shapes and sizes, sensing, from their colors and shapes, the mysterious designs they kept in their hearts. But to know them it was necessary to open them, dissect them, cut them.

And so the patient collector returned every Sunday with a bag full of stones, expertly selected, in each one an unpredictable mystery of beauty is hidden. All that remained was to find out. And so, in a craft workshop, the stones were sliced ​​into thin strips of proportional measured shapes for display.

In the orderly display and enumeration, desired by a spirit of classification that is both imaginative and rigorous, the dissected stones reveal the most surprising designs, in a feast of shapes. Is it a collection or an invention? Pratesi’s undertaking is not that of the collector who finds what is there or rediscovers what seemed lost, but rather that of the artist who gives new shape to nature and alters it with respect to how it appears. Pratesi transforms the stones and makes them become something else than they were. In this way he acts like a conceptual artist: and he does not re-elaborate, but discovers what is and what lives hidden, with the same procedure as those who have mounted the found stones in “exhibitions” or have obtained, through sections, the secret landscapes of the stones villages. Never before him had the flesh of stones been felt. There is therefore an artist, Giovanni Pratesi, who, in showing the products of his creation on the tidy shelves, he makes a gesture not dissimilar to that of Damien Hirst with the medicinal tablets displayed in equally tidy shop windows, but like dead souls. The stones of Pratesi are alive.

The result is seductive and the stones appear both new and full of time, in an illusion of eternity, of suspended time. Pratesi invents stone today, takes it away from nature to transfigure it into art. He creates forms that exist, but were hidden before him. His is a work of revelation, of unveiling. By cutting the stones, he finds their soul. Thus a new artist is born, not a collector, not a researcher. He patiently collected stones and searched for their veins, their heart. We had met an antique dealer, sophisticated, curious, cultured; we are in front of an artist.

iO Donna © ALL RIGHTS RESERVED