Indian Pietra Dura Panel

Shells and coral at the center, and every stone in the quarry radiating out from them.

This pietra dura panel comes from Rajasthan, India, and is contemporary. It is hardstone. Pietra dura, the art of fitting cut and polished stones into a picture, is generally traced to Renaissance Florence, and in India it flourished under the Mughals as parchin kari, most famously at the Taj Mahal. The panel is a wide arch with scalloped shoulders, divided by black bands into wedge-shaped sections of many colored stones. At the center, an oval inlaid with shells and branching red coral sits inside a speckled border. It is 35.5 inches wide, 18 deep and 0.5 high.

A geology lesson that came out looking like a sunrise.