This magnificent book sheds new light on the celebration and uses of marble in art and literature and on the iconic potential of the stone. With 240 color illustrations, it showcases the marble cladding of architecture, the carving of marble and painting on stone, their political and philosophical connotations, and the de- and re-materialising of marble made possible by digital technology.

Marble has been a material of choice and a subject of reflection for millennia. Its geology, history, and economics are well known, but its aesthetics remain understudied. While the iconology of materials highlights their semantic properties, this volume contributes to a historical phenomenology and anthropology of materials. It brings together theoretical propositions and empirical case studies from Late Antiquity to the present.