Art & Exhibitions

Why Contemporary Artists Are Raiding the Renaissance Toolkit

Ultra-contemporary artists Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle are reviving marquetry and intarsia in the age of A.I.

Michael Bühler-Rose, Bühler-Rose Studiolo Winter ‘26 (FDR & Grand St.)1-4, (2026). Photo: Max C. Lee, Courtesy of the artist/Stems Gallery, Brussels.

by J. Cabelle AhnMay 8, 2026 Share This Article

Artists have been raiding the toolkits of the Old Masters with new urgency of late, borrowing and reworking Renaissance and Baroque compositional drama, symbolism, and increasingly, their labor-intensive methods. 

While much of that renewed interest has centered on oil painting, this May three artists—Alison Elizabeth Taylor, Michael Bühler-Rose, and Nick Doyle—are pointing to another Renaissance inheritance: the decorative woodworking traditions of intarsia and marquetry. In their hands, these old-world techniques signal less of a market mood than a way of piecing together the authority of images in a world saturated by throwaway content. 

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The Gubbio Studiolo as Contemporary Inspiration 

Intarsia is an ancient decorative woodworking process embraced in early Islamic art, refined in Renaissance Italy, and still practiced by artisans today. The term has since been adopted for related inlay techniques. Traditional intarsia is made from interlocking pieces of wood cut into different shapes (think: a neatly fitted mosaic), while marquetry usually refers to images made from assembled veneers—thin slices of wood—laid onto a solid backing (think: a completed puzzle mounted on board).