Sulle pagine di Public Domain Review un saggio di Daniel Elkind ricco di immagini esplora la tecnica dell’intarsio ligneo.

Despite the obvious talent of the intarsiatori, the Florentine polymath Giorgio Vasari — considered by many the first art historian — famously dismissed their meticulous craft as “counterfeit painting”, which has “always been exercised by persons possessing more patience than skill in design.” Though “praiseworthy and masterly”, wooden inlay was nevertheless an extravagant waste of time, wrote Vasari, doomed to a short life “because of worms and fire”, noteworthy only insofar as it demonstrated the Renaissance fascination with perspective.² In other words, a curiosity like pastiglia boxes or mother of pearl. At best, Vasari and his contemporaries considered the so-called decorative arts derivative of the fine arts, painting and sculpture. But painting in wood is in many ways more complicated than painting on wood.

Secondo l’autore dell’articolo ci vuole molto talento invece per intarsiare il legno:

But painting in wood is in many ways more complicated than painting on wood. Rather than fabricating objects from a single source, the art of intarsia is the art of mosaic, of picking the right tone, of sourcing only properly seasoned lumber from mature trees and adapting materials intended for one context to another. Painting obscures the origins of a given material, whereas intarsia retains the original character of the wood grain — whose knots and whorls are as individual as the islands and deltas of friction ridges that constitute the topography of a fingerprint — while forming a new image. From a distance, the whole appears greater than the sum of its parts; up close, one can appreciate the heterogeneity of the components.

L’intarsio rappresenta quindi una fusione mirevole di abilità artigianale, pazienza e creatività.