The beginnings of cartapesta and papier mâché: material choices, recipes and makers in Italy and Germany

The topic of Italian Renaissance cartapesta has gained increasing attention in art history during the last two decades. Most research so far has been focused on the use of the material in established categories of Italian Renaissance fine art traditions. Taking its lead from a small number of articles that offer a wider outlook, the present article also considers the phenomenon of paper-made three-dimensional ex voti as well as devotional works from north of the Alps, leading up to the sixteenth century. In addition to the well-known recipe for cartapesta in Filippo Baldinucci’s Vocabulario toscano dell’ arte del disegno of 1681, two earlier examples are cited. One of these appeared in Don Alessio Piemontese’s Secreti nuovi, the other in the Nuremberg Art Book, a fifteenth-century manuscript from that city’s female convent of St Katharina, which belonged to the reformed branch of the Dominican order. Tracing and analysing the origins of these texts points towards close connections to the nascent paper industry and the making of images for religious devotion in religious reform orders in Lucca and Nuremberg respectively. Source texts related to the affordability and reception of papier mâché are rare. However, following the example of Maria Alessandra Chessa, the article proposes possible connotations of the material, depending on its historical contexts. The discussion ends with a consideration of the extensive use of papier mâché by the Lüneburg artist Albert von Soest in the context of the Lutheran Reformation.