Includes bibliographical references (pages 372-418) and index.

Introduction -- chapter 1. A medium foretold : material synthesis and heavenly stones in the ancient Near East -- chapter 2. A medium fulfilled : the emergence of the marble temple -- chapter 3. Ancient geology, living rock, and ex uno lapide -- chapter 4. Painting in stone : from Knossos to Rome, from fresco to marble -- chapter 5. Homes fit for heroes : luxury and light from the per a'a to the domus -- chapter 6. Medieval substitutions in the Western church -- chapter 7. Hagia Sophia and Byzantium -- chapter 8. Walking on water : cosmic floors in antiquity and the Middle Ages -- chapter 9. Relics, tabernacles, throne rooms : painting and marbled architecture in the Renaissance -- chapter 10. Renaissance chapels and church façades : antiquarianism, gems, and sympathetic magic -- chapter 11. Marble mansions and painted palaces in Renaissance Italy -- chapter 12. From gems to cloud architecture : reinventing marbling in early modern Rome -- Epilogue.

Spanning almost five millennia, 'Painting in Stone' tells a new history of premodern architecture through the material of precious stone. Lavishly illustrated examples include the synthetic gems used to simulate Sumerian and Egyptian heavens; the marble temples and mansions of Greece and Rome; the painted palaces and polychrome marble chapels of early modern Italy; and the multimedia revival in 19th-century England. Poetry, the lens for understanding costly marbles as an artistic medium, summoned a spectrum of imaginative associations and responses, from princes and patriarchs to the populace. Three salient themes sustained this 'lithic imagination': marbles as images of their own elemental substance according to premodern concepts of matter and geology; the perceived indwelling of astral light in earthly stones; and the enduring belief that colored marbles exhibited a form of natural-or divine-painting, thanks to their vivacious veining, rainbow palette, and chance images.