Cupioli Luxury Living Manufacturing Scagliola Inlay www.cupioli.com Scagliola,Marble.ecc

Informazioni Generali

Cupioli The Luxury Living Made in Italy

Lodovico and Renzo Cupioli, owner of the fecit, Inc., have a long history of excellence in the field of artistic decoration and of restoration. The business started in the 50's with Lodovico and later joined by his brother Renzo.

Thruogh the years, the business of artistic decoration sifted toward tecnical inlaid work of scagliola, while deepening of the knowledge of its origin. Due to this beautiful artistic crafts work, the business built such a grat reputation that in a short time it became worldwide known.
Presently, Lodovico and Renzo Cupioli carry on the family tradition of excellence in collaboration with their children. Sonia handles the public relation, and Luca oversees the technical projects.

The Art of "Scagliola"

The Art of Scagliola had its beginnings in the late Mannerism of the 1500's and its apex in the high Baroque. Amid the architectonic emotions and mystical theatricality permeating the entire sixteenth century, the technique of "Scagliola" found fertile ground in various applications, thanks to its particular ability to mimic stone and marble, an ability perfectly suited to the premises of reality and fiction that dwelt together in Baroque illusion.

Initially, "Scagliola" was used as the surrogate of more precious minerals, but gained its own renown thanks to the skillful creativity of ingenious artists who managed to fuse styles as diverse as mosaic work, copper plat engraving, wood engraving, painting and architecture. Art historians have not yet clarifiedhow the techinque was born, nor its early stages. We can be fairly sure there was no single "invention" but rather an on-going ezperimentation arising out of an effort to perfect commonplace plaster decoration.

The first schools of "Scagliola" inlay appeared in Austria an Germany and especially in Italy, at Carpi. From the end of the 1500s and all through the 1600s and 1700s, Scaliolists from Bavaria and Carpi became so skillful as to produce works tha are still among the highest testimonials to the art. "Scagliola" is obtaibed from Selenite (anhydrite), a mineral which in nature has a characteristic scaly form, hence the word "Scagliola" from scaglia, or scale. Selenite is quarried in pieces and placed in an oven where at a temperature of 128°C the mineral dehydrates and begins to turn to powder.

The powder is removed from the oven, ground in a mortar to completely pulverize it, the carefully sifted to remove all impurities. The resulting white powder is called "Scagliola". When mixed with water, "Scagliola" tends to return to its original structure. But the gesso thus obtained is fragile and delicate. However, when mixed with glues and then dried and treated with oils and waxes, it reaches a state of concrete hardness with good properties of resistance and impermeability. The greatest schools of "Scagliola" artisanship were concentrated in the Emilian Apennines, especially around Carpi, near Modena.

A portrait in the civic museum of Carpi shows a certain Guido Fassi at age thirty-two. The inscription reads, "Guido Fassi of Carpi, inventor of works in colored 'Scagliola' and engineer, 1616". Althought this is the first documentary evidence specifying the invention of the technique, we still can't attribute "Scagliola"'s paternity to fassi with certainty: Artistic "Scagliola" was probably developed outside italy's borders, in Germany, a supposition that gains credence from the name of an ingredient of the "Scagliola" mixture, the so-called "German glue". In addition, numerous objects predating the Fassi portrait are still on display in the palace of the dures and princes of Munich. Monumental door surrounds, window rames, sumptuous fireplaces are decorated in "Scagliola" according to the canons of the most mature Italian Style. Among these works, the most remarkable is the Reiche Kapelle, decorated by Blasius Pfeiffer who began working in 1587 and was the founder of a fortunate family of plasterers and Scagliolists.

In Italy the "Scagliola" phenomenon grew so vast that in the 1600's authorities imposed an annual tax on the "masters of mixture". The technical expertise of artist-artisans in applying "Scagliola" permitted an almost perfect imitation of marble in architectural decor. Altars were produced, and columns, capitals, festoons, corbels, allegorical figures, kettledrums, urns, cornices, balconies, all in faux Carrara marble, faux Breccia, faux neri di paragone, faux granite an faux stone.

But above all, the skill of the Scagliolists is evident in the surfaces of tables and altar frontals. It is clear from looking at these creations how far these artists came from their initial imitation of pietre dure mosaics to the birth of a new persolnal style. "Scagliola"flowers in vases; chalices; Crucifixed and scenes of the lives of the saints based on prints and paintings graced altar frontals, along with floral and vegetable decorations and thick folds of "Scalgliola" lace, fusing into one single work elements from such different arts as engraving, mosaic and weaving, all disposed with geometric harmony.

The creations of Griffoni, Hugford, and Belloni are found in various parts of Europe. From 1700 on it was quite the thing for English lords making the "grand tour" to acquire "Scagliola" tables in italy (a splendid example is a table top commissioned by the Earl of Lichfield and conserved in London's Victoria an Albert Museum).