# St Mary Magdalen [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [MISERONI, Ottavio]() - Date: 1601-1650 - Technique: Hard stone relief, gold-plated silver setting, 11 x 7 cm ## Commentary St Mary Magdalen c. 1610 Hard stone relief, gold-plated silver setting, 11 x 7 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Ottavio Miseroni discovered the principle of the cameo conceived as a 'commesso', in which various types and colours of stones were composed in a relief. His inspiration possibly came from the <A onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/c/castrucc/landscap.html'\)" HREF="/html/c/castrucc/landscap.html">works of the Castrucci workshop</A> in Prague, or from commessi, as they were created in the Florentine <A onclick="return OpenOther\('/html/m/master/xunk\_it/xunk\_it8/index.html'\)" HREF="/html/m/master/xunk\_it/xunk\_it8/index.html">court of Grand Duke Ferdinando I de' Medici.</A> For the oval-shaped representation of St Mary Magdalen, Ottavio Miseroni meticulously combined fifty individual pieces from about a dozen different stones \(various agates and jaspers, carnelian on chalcedony\) on a plate of chalcedony. Colour and structure of the various stones are effectively combined into a composition. ## Related artworks - [Bowl in the Form of a Lion Skin]() - [Bowl in the Form of a Ship]() - [Herm in a Niche]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()