The first is the most prominent and popular technique, where mineral or earth pigments are applied to a layer of wet lime or gypsum plaster, known as an arricciato, which absorbs the pigment fully as it dries. Artists first sketch out a composition in charcoal and sinopia onto the wet plaster, before applying pigments suspended in water, which unite with the plaster as they dry, resulting in vivid, glowing colours.
The fresco secco, or dry, technique demands a binding medium, such as glue adhesive or egg yolk to make paint stick to the surface and produces less vibrant colours. Mezzo fresco, by contrast, is made on a nearly dry intonaco and was particularly popular during the Italian Renaissance.
Some of the earliest examples of fresco painting have been traced back to BC, made by Minoans in Crete, Israel and Egypt to adorn palace walls and tombs, while others date from Bronze Age Greece in BC.
Ancient Roman examples of fresco paintings depicted false marble walls, columns and balconies, lavishly decorating the homes of those who could not afford such luxuries in real life. In BC frescoes appeared in China during the Han Dynasty, while others have been uncovered on the walls of Hindu temples in India from around AD during the Guptan period, illustrating scenes from Hindu stories.
Art Term Fresco Fresco is a mural painting technique that involves painting with water-based paint directly onto wet plaster so that the paint becomes an integral part of the plaster. Twitter Facebook Email Pinterest. Related terms and concepts. Mural A mural is a painting applied directly to a wall usually in a public space. Renaissance French word meaning rebirth, now used in English to describe the great revival of art that took place in Italy …. A mural from the Latin muralis , wall is any painting on a wall.
Indeed, since the fresco is effectively integral to the plaster, the painting is only as durable as the plaster. While it is the slow-curing nature of the lime itself that enables the fresco process, it is also the qualities of lime plaster—relative flexibility in response to movement or climate change, its ability to translate and not trap moisture—that contributes to the durability of fresco painting.
In other words, a solid masonry support using lime mortar, and exclusively lime plaster for the scratch, brown and finish coats, are the default conditions for a durable fresco painting.
On the other hand, the great challenge of fresco painting is the speed required to accomplish it. This is why Leonardo da Vinci tried to modify the fresco medium in the Last Supper to allow his slower, meticulous working process, to disastrous effect on its durability.
Now, lime plaster being an almost living thing, it behaves differently in different climates; so, if you want a long giornata , pray for rain. The unusual aspect of fresco painting is that there really is no painting medium, or binder per se like oil —instead, the medium is, in fact, the lime in the plaster. In buon fresco painting, pure powdered pigments are brushed on simply with water, although some have advocated using lime water which increases the bond with the plaster but also lightens the colors as they dry.
Brushing the pigments suspended in water onto the curing lime plaster surface activates the lime, which bonds the pigments into the matrix of the plaster as the water evaporates. In true fresco, the pigments become slightly embedded in the surface of the plaster.
Each of these aggregates influences the color of the plaster and therefore the fresco: sand can vary from gray to yellow, marble dust is brilliantly white, and pozzolana has a mauve hue. It tended to be true historically that fresco was considered a relatively cheap way of covering a lot of wall, or ceiling surface, with paintings. It is also the nature of mural or ceiling painting that the overall effect, seen from a distance, was primary. Speed, conditioned by the medium, economics and context, had inevitable consequences for painting technique.
The Carracci cousins who painted the great Galleria in the Palazzo Farnese worked remarkably differently in oil and fresco. Up on the ceiling, up close, there are aspects that are almost impressionistic, and they allowed—even required—visible brushstrokes in ways they never would have allowed on a canvas.
But these are not compromises. This bravura technique is what gives fresco its liveliness, its freshness, its sparkle. But it also demands what Renaissance Italians meant by disegno —preparatory drawing, to be sure, but also design, or composition. Much of what sustains the loose brushstroke of frescoes up close is the way the strong drawing and design carries the composition from a distance.
If you look closely, you can still see these incisions in raking light. While Italy may be the land of fresco painting, frescoes can be found outdoors even as far afield as Russia; and while we associate fresco with Mediterranean warmth, it is mostly true that only in colder northern Italy do you find a quantity of frescoed facades there are exceptions, of course, in both Florence and Rome.
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