Stress-induced instability is associated with rock damage. Here, the progressive brittle fracturing process in Jinping marble is studied by introducing two types of true triaxial pre-peak unloading tests, namely, the incrementally cyclic loading-unloading minimum principal stress test (ICM test) and the incrementally cyclic loading-unloading maximum and minimum principal stress test (ICMM test). By comprehensively analysing the irreversible strains, dissipated energy, acoustic emission (AE) characteristics and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) results, the rock damage evolution can be quantified and divided into two distinctive damage stages. At the boundary point, the irreversible strain increments reach their minimum values. In the gentle damage stage, the normalized irreversible strains increase linearly, and this process is associated with a small number of AE hits with low amplitude. The rapid damage stage is characterized by a nonlinear increase in the normalized irreversible strains, and this process is associated with a large number of AE hits with high amplitude. The dissipated energy mainly increases in the rapid damage stage. In addition, the rapid damage stage in the ICMM test mainly occurs in the last five cycles, due to the differences in the deviatoric stresses in each cycle. In both of these tests, the failure mode is principally characterized by tensile failure. Moreover, the precursory signals of rock fracturing and the influence of the loading paths on the strength are discussed.