Contents Acknowledgments List of Figures Introduction 1 Material as Taxonomic Criterion 2 Fear of Materiality 3 The Heyday of Alabaster 4 Towards an Integrative Approach1 Calcium Sulphate and Calcium Carbonate: Alabaster as Mineral 1 Gypsum Alabaster 2 Calcite Alabaster2 Unfinished Marble and Friendship Maker: Alabaster as Object of Study of Natural Historians and Early Encyclopaedists 1 Name 2 What Came First: City, Vessel, or Stone? 3 Stone of the Goddess Bastet 4 White Stone 5 Stone of Victory 6 The Place of Alabaster in Stone Classifications 7 Christian Appropriation 8 Early Modern Revision 9 The Return of the Question of Nomenclature: Alabaster versus Marble 10 Location of Deposits and Their Characteristics 11 Medicine and Magic3 Matter in Transformation: Alabaster as Art Material 1 Studies on Alabaster Carving Techniques 2 Working in Calcite Alabaster 3 Worsking in Gypsum Alabaster 4 Alabaster as Painting Support4 Broken Vessel and Sanctified Body: Alabaster as Sacred Stone 1 A Glowing Core under a Rough Shell 2 A Vessel Filled with Meanings 3 The Alabaster Bodies of Saints 4 Alabaster Bodies of Artefacts 5 Faux-alb'tre? 6 The Body of Sculpture 7 Pietra incarnata5 Chaste Bodies and Tempting Flesh: Alabaster as the Female Body 1 Chaste Bodies 2 Ideal Poetic Bodies 3 Whitewashing with Alabaster 4 Tempting Flesh 5 Revisiting Alabaster Bodies6 Glowing Stones and Light Chambers: Alabaster as Space Maker 1 Oriental mirabilia 2 Alabaster Windows 3 Loci amoeni 4 Revisiting Glowing Windows and Alabaster Chambers7 Gift of God: Alabaster as a Source of Income and Prestige 1 Julius of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, the 'Economic' Duke 2 Alabaster in Central and Eastern Europe in the Later Sixteenth Century 3 Exploitation of the Natural Resources in the Duchy of Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel 4 Material as a Medium of Inter-court Communication: Business and Auto-promotion 5 A Silesian Excursus 6 Between Court and City: Business and Religious Denominations Conclusion: the Rhetoric of Alabaster Bibliography Index.