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Fresco
What Is It?
fresco (Ital. fresh) Wall-painting in a medium like watercolour on plaster.
Fresco secco, painted on dry plaster, gives an effect not unlike an ordinary
distempered wall and suffers from the same defect of the paint scaling off, but
true fresco, or buon fresco, practised in Italy from the 13th century and perfected
in the 16th, is one of the most permanent forms of wall decoration known.
The wall is first rough-plastered and then a coat, known as the arricciato (or
arriccio), is applied. On this the sinopia is drawn, or the
cartoon is traced, so
that the whole composition is transferred to the wall, and then an area sufficient
for one day's work is covered with the final layer of plaster, called the intonaco.
The cartoon is redrawn over this, joining up with the parts still uncovered,
and the damp plaster is then painted with pigments mixed with plain water or
lime-water, allowance being made for the fact that the colours dry much lighter.
Because the plaster is still damp a chemical reaction takes place and the colours
become integrated with the wall itself, so that scaling cannot occur. The
use of a detailed, full-size cartoon means that several assistants can work
simultaneously on different parts of the wall, provided that all work is done
from the top downwards so that the splashes fall on the unpainted parts. At the
end of the day all the unpainted intonaco is cut away, to be re-laid next day, so
that the working surface is always damp: careful examination of a fresco reveals
the joins in the plaster and from these the number of days (giomate) taken to
paint the whole can be estimated very approximately. Fresco secco may legitimately
be employed to retouch or to add accents, but during the 16th century it was
almost obligatory to work entirely in huon fresco, and some of the finest examples
of the technique are Raphael's decorations in the Stanze of the Vatican. Climatic
conditions outside Central Italy are not always favourable and the Venetian
preference for oil painting is usually ascribed to this. Attempts to revive the
technique in London for the decoration of the House of Lords, early in the
19th century, were not successful, although Rivera and 0rozco
practised a
form of fresco in Mexico in the 20th-century.
Source: The Penguin Dictionary of Art and Artists (Penguin Reference Books)
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