Blasius Pfeiffer (doc. 1585-1622) was the founding father of a family business that supplied scagliola to the Wittelsbach rulers of Bavaria throughout the seventeenth century.  There is an unconfirmed suggestion that he came from the imperial free city of Augsburg, an internationally famed centre for woodcarving and cabinet making; true or not, this was the craft in which he was trained.  Apart from that, his early life is unknown.  In 1587 he was taken on as a court artist at the Munich Residence, with an annual salary of 150 guilders and two years back-pay of 40 guilders.  With the exception of a brief period during the abdication crisis of 1597, when, as part of an economy drive, Duke Maximilian I dismissed all his father’s court artists, Blasius served the royal household until his death.  At some stage in his career, possibly at the court’s request, he latinised his name (‘Piper’ in English) to Fistulator.  Presumably he – or they – hoped to give it more distinction.

We can follow the outline of his career through surviving court documents from the period, where he is initially described as a joiner and cabinet-maker, then as a woodcarver and sculptor, and finally as a stuccadore.  He was clearly a versatile craftsman, but how did he make the unlikely transition from joinery to scagliola, and did he actually invent his remarkable artificio?  The following three theories summarise the available evidence: 

1.Back to the Middle Ages

Until the second half of the 20th century there was disagreement within the specialised world of scagliola studies as to whether the honour of inventing the technique should go to Germany or Italy.   It was generally accepted that the material had appeared on both sides of the Alps around 1600, but in the absence of hard evidence, tradition and hearsay had favoured the Italians.

The argument swung the other way in the late 1950s when the Viennese art historian Dr. Erwin Neumann published an extensive article on the history of scagliola.  One of his findings was a significant piece of documentary evidence that he had discovered in the records of the royal court of Salzburg.  On 10th June 1591, the Salzburg royal stonemason Hans Kerschpaumer wrote a letter to his employer, the Archduke Ferdinand II of Tirol and Further Austria (r. 1564-1595), describing all the things he was capable of making with his polished stucco:

‘table tops from all kinds of colours, landscapes, townscapes, coats of arms with shields and crests, animals and birds, sweet bowls, credence vessels, marbled surfaces, door surrounds, cornices etc.  Were the Archduke to allow him to make a coat of arms, he would have a drawing of the [Archduke’s] coat of arms made and coloured by an artist.  As proof he is sending a small coat of arms made in haste.’ 

The letter was written a full twenty years before the first evidence of Italian scagliola – a simple memorial stone in Carpi Cathedral dated 1611.  The list is remarkable because it covers the entire repertory of traditional European scagliola, as well as rarer carved objects such as bowls and credence vessels (used at Holy Communion).  It implies that Kerschpaumer, with his background in stone and marble work, had mastered a completely new set of skills and materials, and now felt confident enough to offer them to a Habsburg Archduke.  How he came by his knowledge, whether he was self-taught or had learnt from others, is not known.

A royal coat-of-arms made from scagliola would seem an obvious contender for inclusion in the Archduke’s famous Wunderkammer (Chamber of Curiosities) at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck, but there is no evidence that such a commission was ever given, and nothing more was heard of Kerschpaumer or his polished stucco.

Despite the early date on the letter, Dr. Neumann did not give the royal stonemason credit for the invention of scagliola.  On the contrary, he saw Kerschpaumer’s list as evidence of a fully mature technique which could only have been the culmination of long years – even generations – of prior experimentation.  His article ended on a somewhat gloomy note; to discover the true origins of artificial marble, it would be necessary to delve back into the early Renaissance or even the high Middle Ages, a task he feared would be laborious and unrewarding.

2. The Duke’s Man.

Maximilian I of Bavaria (r.1597-1651) saw things quite differently.  In a letter written in 1609 to his cousin, Queen Margaret of Spain, he stated that artificial marble had been invented in Munich by his man, Blasius Fistulator.  The Duke was here laying  claim to the remarkable new material in its entirety.  Just four years later (1613) he would make his views official by issuing a royal protocol which elevated Blasius’s Stuckmarmor (marble stucco) to the status of a ‘princely material’ and imposing a royal monopoly on its production.

Coming from one of Europe’s earliest ‘absolute’ rulers, we should treat Maximilian’s statement with caution; the demands of princely representation often led to exaggerated claims on property and people.  However, we know from court documents (see below) that Blasius Fistulator was supplying  scagliola to the Munich royal court from 1587 – at least four years before the Austrian Kerschpaumer wrote his letter – and earlier still, if we take his two years of back-pay into account.  Add to that the  absence of any documentary or physical evidence of  scagliola production in Europe before the mid-1580s, and the Duke’s assertion becomes more credible.

3. Florentine Influence 

An art historian with extensive knowledge of the Munich Residence during this period has proposed a theory which adds an Italian dimension to Maximilian’s claim.  Dr. Dorothea Diemer attributes the invention of scagliola to a collaboration between Blasius Fistulator and Carlo di Cesare del Palagio (1538-1598), a Florentine stuccador, mould-maker and bronze sculptor. 

Carlo probably served his apprenticeship under Santi Buglioni (1494-1576), the leading Florentine maestro of stucco and glazed terracotta, whose family had established a successful business in the late 1400s producing glazed terracotta sculpture.  In the mid-1500s Buglioni was commissioned to produce several very expensive patterned terracotta floors for the Medici, examples of which survive in the Palazzo Vecchio and Michelangelo’s Laurentian Library.  Chemical analysis has shown that in addition to burnt clay, these floors contain inclusions of coloured plaster.  This implies that the Buglioni workshop had learnt how to make a hard-wearing plaster which could be pigmented and polished.  It would have been used for touching in unsightly gaps and joints in their terracotta floors. 

At the end of the sixteenth century stuccowork was still largely the preserve of Italians , and while Italian stuccatori had travelled as far afield as Fontainebleau in France and Hampton Court in England, knowledge of their methods and materials had not yet circulated outside their own close-knit and secretive communities.

Carlo di Cesare del Palagio was one of a select team of Italian artists and craftsmen summoned to Bavaria at the end of the 1560s to supply the southern German elites with the latest Italian architecture and decorative art.  Initially the group worked  at the Fuggerhaus in Augsburg, the principle home of the immensely wealthy Fugger family.  They subsequently moved on to Landshut, where Crown Prince Wilhelm (to the disgust of his traditionally-minded father Duke Albrecht V, and at ruinous expense to the court) was converting the medieval castle of Trausnitz into a ‘modern’ Italianate villa.  When Duke Albrecht died in 1579, his heir, now Duke Wilhelm V, moved his court and his artists to the Munich Residenz, where he initiated an ambitious programme of modernisation and new building which would reflect his passions for all things Italian.

Dr. Diemer describes in detail how the Munich court became a centre of experimentation for different uses of stucco and plaster throughout the 1580s and 90s, largely through the influence of Carlo di Cesare del Palagio and the Netherlands’ sculptor and bronze caster Hubert Gerhard (c.1550-1620).  Working for Duke Wilhelm under the artistic direction of Friedrich Sustris (c. 1540-1599), they introduced a series of techniques that were new to southern Germany: terracotta sculpture, stucco forte (a hardened weather-resistant stucco), ornamental stucco, plaster mould-making and figurative bronze casting; they also brought knowledge of a hard gypsum-based plaster (the same or similar to Buglioni’s) that could be pigmented and polished – in other words a basic scagliola.

Dr. Diemer suggests that Carlo already knew how to make artificial marble in slab form, but it was the German cabinet maker, Blasius Fistulator, also working at the Munich court, who saw and exploited the material’s true potential, developing and refining it to imitate polychrome marble panelling and hardstone (Pietre Dure) inlaid work.

Postscript

In 1586 Wolf Pronner, an official of the Munich court, was given responsibility for the purchasing and distribution of all artists’ and craftsmen’s materials, as well as keeping a close record of their timekeeping and output.  Duke Wilhelm suspected them of syphoning off precious materials (expensive pigments, gold and silver leaf etc.) for private work conducted in his time;  his finances were once again overstretched and he was looking for ways to save money.  Pronner kept the ledger until his death in 1590; known as Wolf Pronner’s Malbuch (painting book), it provides valuable insights into the art history of the period.

An entry from November 1587 states that Blasius was at work on the third large panel for Wilhelm’s chapel, and by January of the following year on the fourth.  This would mean that within just two years of his arrival at the Munich court (1585), he had conceived of and perfected this difficult and brand-new technique – presumably under the constraints of  secrecy – while simultaneously carrying out whatever other duties the court expected of him.  It seems a tall order.

Perhaps an earlier encounter had taken place.  In 1569 Carlo di Cesare del Palagio had  left Florence for Augsburg and was working at the Fuggerhaus alongside Friedrich Sustris.  He remained there until 1573 when the project came to an end, but returned again with Hubert Gerhard in the early 1580s, before eventually re-joining Sustris at the Munich Residence.  If Blasius Pfeiffer did indeed come from Augsburg, a major centre for woodcarvers and cabinet-makers, then he too would very likely have been employed at the Fuggerhaus; or he may have arrived as a journeyman, signing on with Wendel Dietrich, the renowned woodcarver who was supplying the joinery for this most prestigious of building projects.  An Augsburg connection would have allowed Blasius to meet Carlo in the early 1570s or 80s, giving him a much longer period of experimentation; with results that were sufficiently impressive to secure his eventual employment at the Munich court, possibly on the recommendation of Sustris and Carlo, or even of Count Fugger himself.