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Product Description
Pietra Paesina Polished Rock Italian Picture Jasper Stone Slab
A lovely natural picture jasper, known as Pietra Paesina. It is found in the Florentine Hills near Florence, Italy.
The gorgeous slab is polished on one face, but it does not take a high gloss.
It is 8 inches by 2.25 inches and 11mm or almost 1/4 inch thick.
The stone slab looks like a desolate canyon scene with pinnacles and cliffs silhouetted against the sky and shrubs dotted here and there.
Paesina stone is a variety of Alberese limestone which can be found in all the Northern Apennine mountain areas of Italy. It is also known as landscape stone, ruin stone, ruiniform limestone or marble, and Florentine marble.
It is a sedimentary stone mainly made of compressed limestone and clay formed in sea beds about 50 million years ago (Eocene-Paleocene epoch). The patterns are formed by Iron and Manganese seeping into jasper that has been fractured and recemented.
These stones only reveal these great patterns when you broken or cut open and also there is no specific quarry or location to find them, so it is extremely rare!
The Pietra Paesina was discovered in the 16th century, and was used in Florence in the inlays for furniture and cabinets. In the 17th century, the decorative use of Pietra Paesina spread also in France, England and Germany; and became very much sought after in the Royal courts of the era.
Paesina Stone was also used by famous painters and engravers as a background for oil paintings, where the landscapes depicted on these stones by nature were completed by the artists who added images, objects and real or mythical creatures.
