Ebony being expensive, it was sometimes simulated with stain.  An old fifteenth century recipe says:  “Take boxwood and lay in oil with sulphur for a night, then let it stew for an hour, and it will become as black as coal.”  An old Italian book enjoins the polishing of this imitation ebony as follows:  “Is the wood to be polished with burnt pumice stone?  Rub the work carefully with canvas and this powder, and then wash the piece with Dutch lime water so that it may be more beautifully polished... then the rind of a pomegranate must be steeped, and the wood smeared over with it, and set to dry, but in the shade.”

Inlay was often imitated; the elaborate marquetry cabinets in Sta.  Maria della Grazia in Milan which are proudly displayed are in reality, according to Mr. Russell Sturgis, cleverly painted to simulate the real inlaid wood.  Mr. Hamilton Jackson says that these, being by Luini, are intended to be known as paintings, but to imitate intarsia.

Intarsia was made also among the monasteries.  The Olivetans practised this art extensively, and, much as some monasteries had scriptoria for the production of books, so others had carpenter’s shops and studios where, according to Michele Caffi, they showed “great talent for working in wood, succeeding to the heirship of the art of tarsia in coloured woods, which they got from Tuscany.”  One of the more important of the Olivetan Monasteries was St. Michele in Bosco, where the noted worker in tarsia, Fra Raffaello da Brescia, made some magnificent choir stalls.  In 1521 these were finished, but they were largely destroyed by the mob in the suppression of the convents in the eighteenth century.  In 1812 eighteen of the stalls were saved, bought by the Marquis Malvezzi, and placed in St. Petronio.  He tried also to save the canopies, but these had been sold for firewood at about twopence each!

The stalls of St. Domenico at Bologna are by Fra Damiano of Bergamo; it is said of him that his woods were coloured so marvellously that the art of tarsia was by him raised to the rank of that of painting!  He was a Dominican monk in Bologna most of his life.  When Charles V. visited the choir of St. Domenico, and saw these stalls, he would not believe that the work was accomplished by inlay, and actually cut a piece out with his sword by way of investigation.

Castiglione the Courtier expresses himself with much admiration of the work of Fra Damiano, “rather divine than human.”  Of the technical perfection of the workmanship he adds:  “Though these works are executed with inlaid pieces, the eye cannot even by the greatest exertion detect the joints....  I think, indeed, I am certain, that it will be called the eighth wonder of the world.” (Count Castiglione did not perhaps realize what a wonderful world he lived in!) But at any rate there is no objection to subscribing to his eulogy:  “All that I could say would be little enough of his rare and singular virtue, and on the goodness of his religious and holy life.”  Another frate who wrote about that time alluded to Fra Damiano as “putting together woods with so much art that they appear as pictures painted with the brush.”