A paneled Italian Paesina stone and Carrara marble, hinged box. Interior lined in green felt trimmed in green paint. Paesina stone is a variety of Alberese limestone which can be found in all the Northern Apennine mountain areas of Italy. It is the most singular example of "pictorial stone" in the limestone family. Because of the depictions it is able to conjure up and because of its specific origin, it is also called: landscape stone, ruin stone, ruiniform limestone or marble, and Florentine marble.
It is a sedimentary stone mainly made of compressed limestone and clay formed in sea beds about 50 million years ago (Eocene-Paleocene epoch). The drawings and colors that seem made by a talented painter, are instead absolutely natural; they are produced by the millenary work of mineralized infiltrations in hydroxides of Iron and Manganese.
