Chapter IV of VI · Gold set at angles
L’ Oro
Inside the laurel wreath there is nothing but gold.Each piece is set at its own slight angle,so the ground never reads flat: move the lightand a different handful of pieces catches it.
Scroll to discover
move the light slowly
2,925 tesserae · The gold ground
Gold isset atan angle.
A gold tessera is a sandwich: gold leaf laid on a base of glass and sealed under a thin cover glass, which Italian makers call the cartellina. On its own a piece is almost dull; together, set at slightly different angles into the bed, they turn a wall into something that seems to breathe with the light.
The setters of Ravenna knew this, and their gold grounds still flicker as you walk under them. On our wall the engine gives every gold piece its own tilt — up to about seventeen degrees — and your pointer is the lamp. Press your eye close and move it slowly: that is the whole point of the gold.
- Gold tesserae on the wall
- 20,013
- Share of the wall
- 22.3%
- Tilt
- up to ~17°, each piece its own
From cartone to tessera
The same figure, three times
