ABSTRACT
Generally speaking, it is quite acceptable that the art historian’s main endeavor concerns the dating of objects. His observation is thus based on metamorphosis, namely the change of forms, shapes, and even textures and consistencies of materials as related to time. Ruins, cracks, discoloration, and patina are therefore main indications substantiating the art historian’s measurement of time. Indeed, we unquestionably accept that change cannot be divorced from time and movement, and that no alterations simply suggests steadiness, as if time is frozen. This chapter challenges these conventions by focusing on specific artifacts made out of materials that “want” to resist time, i.e. natural materials, like gold, hard precious stones, rock crystals, and marble—materials associated in medieval times with the concepts of everlasting and eternity. These objects, it seems, vehemently reject nature, refusing the theory that time triumphs over material. The chapter discusses the perplexed gaze in medieval time as well as today in front of these objects and highlights specific strategies that enhanced their associations with ideas of timelessness and “eternal.”
