Gilding by tracing (punzonatura)

The creation of a polished surface was only the first, technical stage of gilding, after which the true artistic decoration began. 

The first centers in Italy where gilding by tracing (punzonatura) began to be used were, apparently, Lucca and Florence. At the same time, examples of this technique have been preserved in some works of painting of the twelfth century from Pisa, Siena and some other Italian cities. The tracing of these early works was usually made with the help of simple round stamps of small diameter, and the stars and rosettes they embossed were not very diverse. 

Duccio, for example, still preferred engraved drawings, as can be seen in his famous " Majesty", although in some of his works one can see engraving, dotted lines and impressed rosettes at the same time. In the 13th century, patterns were mainly common along the outer contour of the halo, made with a pointed or rounded stamp, or it was a single or double pressed circle along the contour of the halo. Later, they began to be decorated with additionally drawn lines, sometimes combined with an engraved ornament. At the beginning of the fourteenth century, in centers such as Siena and Florence, punzonatura supplanted engraving, while in other artistic centers of Italy it was still common for a long time.

The heyday of punzonatura in its unusually developed and diverse form in Italy falls on the XIV century. Simple stamps, small stars, the smallest single and double rings, engraved patterns and leaf-like ornaments cover the surface of gold in the works of all Italian schools. The Sienese school was especially famous in this field. Over time, small rosette-shaped stamps began to be added to the engraved pattern which were used, combining them in groups, while creating complex inflorescences. The Sienese Simone Martini (1284-1344), who began with simple patterns in his works, moved on to an extremely diversely developed method of punzonatura, combining and grouping various patterned stamps. He arranged stamps with floral and other motifs in symmetrical groups of four to eight, achieving the most elaborate forms, until he reached the point where the borders of the painting on his boards were decorated with a continuous multi-row ornament with arcades embossed with complex stamps, enriched with details borrowed from architecture.

Instead, in the same period, Byzantine masters were content only with drawing the border between the golden halo and the background with a double or single circular line or a chain of small "dots" along its contour, made with a shallow stamp of small diameter. Such punzonatura along the outer contour of the halos was also characteristic of the masters of early Christian painting. Since the final establishment of the veneration of icons in Byzantium, although gold was still used in icon painting, it, unlike Italian painting, did not receive there the same strong objectified ornamentalism, retaining to a greater extent its dogmatic and religious significance.

With regard to Western European schools, where such methods of mechanical processing of gold as punzonatura were widely used, it can be considered that painters possessed stamps of their own, sometimes of very diverse design, which were used only by the master himself or in his workshop. The study of embossed primers not only allows us to obtain information about the change in the technical methods of the work of determined masters or of different art schools, but can help to distinguish one workshop from another, and over time, perhaps, to identify individual masters.