A peculiar artistic tradition of wood inlaying flourished in 16th century Italy. Intarsia panels were assembled from hundreds of cut pieces of wood, and arranged as images of open cabinets. The artist demonstrated his prowess by including complicated polyhedrons that appear three-dimensional despite being composed of flat tiles of cut wood. This page shows several such intarsia panels:
Note that intarsia are flat panels. The appearance of open cupboard doors is a trompe l'oeil effect of the masterful perspective... To construct intarsia, outline drawings are used as templates for cutting many pieces of wood (perhaps a thousand or more in these examples). The cut wooden pieces are glued to a wooden substrate and varnished. Different colors of wood provide the different shadings used. Sometimes stains, bleaches, or heat were applied to the wood to provide a wider range of tones.The two panels below were crafted around 1520 by Fra Giovanni da Verona for the church of Saint Mary in Organo.
