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FRESCO PAIXTIKO. 



FRESCO PAINTING. 



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first covered the wall with m layer of ordinary plaster, over which, 

 when dry, they placed successively three other layers, of * finer quality, 

 mixed with and ; above UMM they placed again three layer* or coata, 

 of a composition of chalk and marble-dust, the upper coata in thii case 

 being each added before the under one wan dry, and successively of 

 finer qualities. By thii elaborate process the planter formed a aolid 

 mam, a* it were, of marble ; waa capable of being cut away and tram- 

 ported in a wooden frame to any distance ; and sometime* even tables 

 were formed of it. (Yitruvius, ii. 8 ; Pliny, xxxv. 49.) 



The proem of varnishing the walls when coloured, Vitruviua terms 

 (vii. 9) a Greek practice, called xauaa, " a burning." When the wall 

 waa coloured and dry, Punic, or purified and bleached, wax, melted and 

 tempered with a little oil, was rubbed over it with a hard brush ; this 

 waa made smooth and even by applying a rauierium, or iron pan filled 

 with lire coals, to the surface, near enough to melt the wax : it was 

 then polished with a linen cloth. [ENCAUSTIC PAINTIM;.] 



Fresco waa not generally practised by the early Italian painters, and 

 it appears to have been first used in the 14th century, simply as a 

 preparatory process, the work being finished in tempera. The earliest 

 works in buo fraco are in the Campo Santo at Pisa (about 1390), in the 

 church of Assisi, in the cathedrals of Orvieto and Siena, and in San Miniato 

 and Santo Spirito at Florence. Thenceforward the practice of fresco 

 improved with the progress of the art of painting, until it reached its 

 greatest excellence in the hands of Michel Angelo, Raffaelle, and their 

 contemporaries, whose greatest works were all executed in this manner. 

 With the decline of the art, fresco fell gradually into disuse. Its revival 

 date* from about 1816, when the young German painters, Cornelius, 

 Overbeck, Veit, and Schnorr, undertook to paint with frescoes the 

 Villa Bartholdy at Rome. Ludwig, then crown-prince, afterwards 

 king of Bavaria, warmly patronised the new art, and at a large expendi- 

 ture, continued through many years, afforded the young painters ample 

 opportunities for a thorough study of the works and processes of the 

 old masters ; and, in the magnificent Olyptotbek, the Ludwigs-Kirche, 

 the new palace, and the Pinacothek, at Munich, of exercising their 

 own powers on a colossal scale. With Hess, Kaulbach, and other 

 German artists, these, the earliest practitioners, have succeeded in 

 restoring the art to nearly all its former supremacy ; and many of their 

 paintings rival in purpose and magnitude, if not in power, the most 

 important works of the great masters of Italy. Fresco has also been 

 practised to a considerable extent in France, and some excellent works 

 have been produced there. In our own country great attention was 

 called to the process, by the recommendation of the Commissioners of 

 the Fine Arts that the new houses of parliament should be adorned 

 with fresco-paintings. As is well known, in pursuance of this recom- 

 mendation, a large number of fresco-paintings have been executed with 

 more or less success by artists of eminence in the house of lords, 

 robing rooms, peers' and commons' corridors, and various chambers. 

 Some of these are highly effective works, but as a rule English painters 

 have not as yet acquired sufficient familiarity with the process to work 

 in it with the necessary freedom and decision. Of the earlier frescoes 

 especially those of subjects from the English poets in the upper 

 waiting hall, some have greatly faded or otherwise changed in 

 appearance, owing as is believed to damp in the walls. In the frescoes 

 recently executed, and now in course of execution, much greater pre- 

 caution is taken to ensure their permanency. The example set in the 

 new palace of Westminster has not hitherto been so extensively 

 followed in this country as might have been anticipated. The principal 

 frescoes since executed here have been a series in a garden saloon al 

 Buckingham Palace ; those by Mr. W. Dyce, R.A. (already distinguished 

 by his frescoes in the new palace), above the altar at All Saints' 

 Margaret Street; and the 'School of Legislation/ by Mr. Watte 

 which covers the north end of Lincoln's Inn Hall. This last is pro- 

 bably the largest fresco executed since the time of Michel Angelo 

 with the exception of the ' Last Judgment,' by Cornelius, in the 

 Ludwigs-Kirche, Munich : the Lincoln's Inn fresco is 50 feet by 34 

 that at Munich, 60 feet by 30. 



1. Wallt. We now proceed to give a more particular account of the 

 processes employed in fresco-painting. Frescoes are painted on four 

 different kinds of walls : in the old gothic buildings, on ashlar walls 

 covered with a thin coat of plaster ; in more recent buildings, on brie] 

 and rubble walls ; and in some of the most recent edifices, on latl 

 covered with various thicknesses of plaster. In many old buildings 

 the walls as built were very uneven, and no attempt was made by the 

 plasterer to correct a defect so detrimental to the appearance and pre- 

 servation of a painting^through the settlement of dirt and the injury i 

 undergoes in cleaning. The plaster is liable to fall away from ashlar 

 walls, especially if the stones are large and the joint* close, as in th 

 cathedrals of Siena and Orvieto ; in the church of Assist, where th 

 tone* are small and not closely jointed, the plaster has a better hold ant 

 is generally still firm, but ashlar walls condense the damp and are th 

 worst of all walls for frescoes ; brick, nibble, and lath are much bettor 

 and nearly all equally good if well constructed. Mr. Wilson, the 

 director of the Government School of Design, in hU report to He 

 Majesty's Commianonen on the Fine ArU, respecting the state of th 

 middle age frescoes and other mur.il painting* to inquire into whic 

 subject he was exprewly sent into Italy ascertained upon what specie* 

 of wall the various frescoes of the most eminent Italian painters were 

 executed, and reported as to the actual condition of those works 



with reference to the walls on which they are painted, and the result 

 s, that tho*e executed on brick are the most general, and in the best 

 state of preservation : equality of surface being a great ad vantage which 

 brick wall baa over the nibble wall. Many of the best of the old 

 COM however are upon rubble walls, and unfortunately upon badly 

 constructed walls of this description, as those of Santa Mara Novella 

 t Florence, and St. Cecilia at Bologna. The older walls of the Vatican 

 are of rubble, or of alternate courses of rubble and brick, or rubble and 

 ufo, a coarse porous volcanic stone, and are thickly coated with rough- 

 cast, or coarse plaster of sand and lime mixed. The ' Trionfo della 

 forte.' by Orcagna, in the Campo Santo at Pisa, is painted upon lath, 

 and is the but preserved fresco there. By this provision his work was 

 protected from the damp which rises from the soil, and that win. !i 

 nfiltrates from the roof ; the sea air therefore cannot have injured the 

 thcr frescoes, or it would have injured this likewise. There are many 

 rescoes at Florence and at Venice, on lath, and all are In tolerable 

 reservation ; many vaulted or coved ceiling* are of lath, plastered 

 bove as well as below. The frescoes in the new palace at Westminster 

 lave been executed on lath, but in the most recent ones the laths have 

 *>en fixed to a panel of slate 14 inch thick, a space for air half an inch 

 eep being left between the laths and the slate by means of battens at 

 he ends : the method is shown by aid of diagrams in the llth Report 

 if the Commissioners of the Fine Arts. 



2. Platter and Lime. The method of plastering the walls for painting 

 is been nearly uniform in most ages. The walls of the baths of Titu.i 

 at Rome are covered first with a layer about half an inch thick of 

 coarse sand and lime ; above this a thicker layer of lime and pozzolana, 

 with an admixture of sand and pounded brick ; the third and upper 

 coat is of lime and pounded marble. The third loggia of the Vatican, 

 Minted by Giovanni da Udine, is much the same as this ; the first 

 ayer upon the lath is a thin coat of coarse sand and lime, the second 

 s also a thin coat of lime and pozzolana, and the third is of lime and 

 marble-dust, but not finely pulverised. 



In all plastering for fresco painting the lime should be rather old, 

 even in the first coat or rough-cast ; but it is indispensable in the last 

 coat, OF intonaco, upon which the painting is executed. Various di- 

 rections are given by writers on art as to the proportions of lime and 

 other materials for the several coats, and they all agree in essentials. 

 The oldest writers are Cennino Cennini and Leon Battista Albert!. 

 !ennini's ' Trattato della Pittura' waa written in 1437, but was first 

 . ublished in Rome by the Cavaliere Trambroni in 1821 ; an English 

 .ranslation of it, by Mrs. Merrifield, was published in 1844. The work 

 of Albert!, ' De Re Edificatoria,' though written after the treatise of 

 Dennini, was published shortly after Albert! s death, in 1485, by his 

 Brother Bernardo. 



Cennini recommends that both lime and sand should be well sifted, 

 and if the lime be rich or recently slaked, that there should be two 

 arts of sand to one of lime ; that enough for fifteen or twenty days 

 ihould be prepared at a time, and that it should be kept for some days 

 a render it less caustic, for if too caustic, the intonaco will blister, 

 Albert! speaks of three coats as necessary : in the first, or rough-cast. 

 Be recommends the use of pit sand and pounded bricks ; in the second, 

 or sand-coat, he recommends river sand ; in the third coat, which 

 should be white, he recommends pounded white marble instead of 

 sand; but finely sifted well-washed river sand makes a superior 

 intonaco : these three coats were called by the Italians the riiuafatu, 

 rough-coat; the arriciato, sand-coat; and the intonaeo, the fresco 

 ground. Cennini speaks only of two coats, both of which he terms 

 intonaco. Similar directions in essentials are given by Aniu-nini, in hi< 

 treatise ' De' Veri Precetti della Pittura,' Ravenna, 1587 ; at the end 

 of the treatise on perspective, ' La Prospettiva,' by Andrea I 

 Rome, 1698 ; and in still greater detail by Palomino, in his work ' El 

 Museo Pictorico y Escala Optica,' Madrid, 1715. Various other 

 writers also have given more or less concise directions for fresco painting, 

 but they contain scarcely any information that is not given at greater 

 length in the above-mentioned works, from which Sir C. J. Eastlake 

 made several important extracts in an Appendix to the ' Report of the 

 Commissioners on the Fine Arts ' for 1842. What follows here from the 

 directions of Cornelius, Hess, and other eminent contemporary fresco 

 painters, from the same Report, agrees in every material point with 

 the advice of those earlier practitioners in the art. 



The selection of the limestone to be employed in fresco painting, 

 both for the ground and for the white, is a matter of great importance ; 

 it should be nearly pure carbonate of lime, and should contain as few 

 foreign materials as possible. The early Italian painters found 'I 

 tine the stone beet fitted for the purpose ; it is in great abunil. 

 the Roman Carapagna, being a deposit or calcareous sediment from the 

 streams of water which run from the Apennines, which consist in 

 Central Italy chiefly of a soft limestone. Travertine consist* of a carbo- 

 nate of lime, with an extremely minute portion of alumina and a trace 

 of oxide of iron. Its lime is pure white. The lime used now l.y the 

 Florentine fresco painters is so nearly pure carbonate of lime that no 

 appreciable quantity of any admixture can be detected. The limestone 

 used by the painters of Genoa is also of do purest white, and is 

 extremely good ; it contains about one-third carbonate of magnesia. 

 The Genoese frescoes, notwithstanding their vicinity to the > 

 perfectly durable. The fint fresco that wa executed in Genoa, accord- 

 ing to Soprani, is still in excellent preservation ; it is the Annunciation 



