In an intarsia, or wood inlay, panel from the north sacristy in the Florence Duomo, a book’s pages are delineated by the wood grain, a conceptual synthesis of the artist’s materials and the materials from which paper is made. In an intarsia panel from the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, woodworm traces adorn the surface of a globe, suggesting not only the geographic features of earth but also the changeability of earthly matter. And in a panel from the Siena Cathedral, a saint’s robes are inflected with a green-staining fungus that illuminates the wood from within. These intriguing details indicate that Italian intarsia makers, who assembled thousands of pieces of wood to create illusionistic pictures of landscapes, still lifes and religious figures, were doing more than implementing designs in wood. They were designing from wood, intimately engaged with the woodland environment and thinking about the life cycle of trees.

My dissertation examines how intarsia makers’ inventive engagements with wood provoked new ways of thinking about the human relationship to forests, trees and plant life. From the mid-fifteenth to early-sixteenth centuries, intarsia panels formed the backdrop for spiritual practice and everyday life, and intarsia makers were key participants in networks of architects, sculptors, and painters. While most prior studies have focused on intarsia’s optical qualities, including its relationship to early theories of linear perspective, I focus instead on intarsia’s biological and ecological embeddedness, investigating how intarsia makers gathered unusual tree species and specimens and manipulated wood to produce pictures that entangled arboreal processes with philosophical and spiritual concerns. I argue that the knowledge and expertise developed by intarsia makers spurred innovations in other artforms, especially painting, drawing attention to the animacy of tree and vegetal life and encouraging ways of thinking about human life, death, and rebirth in distinctly arboreal terms.