By Mr. T. Gambier Parry. 



45 



colours, and a varnish for protection against damp and air. It has 

 also the invaluable qualities of durability in itself, permanency of 

 colour, transparency, and freedom from any chemical action on the 

 most delicate mineral or vegetable colours. 



The other two methods used in wall painting were tempera and 

 fresco. The controversy about bucn fresco and fresco secco, used 

 by the Greek artists, is of no practical consequence to us. There 

 is no doubt that buon fresco was used by them ; the question being 

 only how far that system was used in the higher branches of art. 

 The argument inclines to a peculiar method between the real fresco 

 and the secco. Fresco secco is this, — the fresh plaster is allowed 

 to set, and thus far only to be secco — the wall is wetted for use, 

 and the colours used with lime for white, and lime water for a 

 vehicle — whereas the method used by the Greeks and Romans of 

 classic days appears to have been this, viz., to lay upon a secco 

 wall {i.e. where the plaster had set) a fresh wash of lime, into or 

 upon which, before it set, the artist painted ad libitum. 



The methods commonly used in England were various kinds 

 of tempera. Real fresco does not appear to have been practised 

 in England. There is no evidence of its use in Christian art 

 much before the time of Cennini. It was probably first used at 

 Pisa, in the early part of the fourteenth century. The serious 

 objection to fresco of any sort, is, of course, the very limited num- 

 ber of colours which will bear the action of lime. Its excellence 

 is in the mellowness of its effects, and freedom from a glossy 

 surface, a quality absolutely necessary for mural painting. But its 

 surface, unprotected by any varnish, or coating of any sort — its 

 colours held in their places only by the crystallising of the lime 

 water — its porous, or at least granulated surface, on which damp 

 and minute fungi find an easy lodgment, disqualify it from being 

 trusted where walls are constantly exposed to an alternation of 

 damp atmosphere and hot multitudes. 



Tempera painting has many modes of work. Oil is found in 

 some of its recipes. Oil appears to have been of very ancient use. 

 A Greek writer, in the time of the Emperor Augustus, describes 

 the preparation and the use of drying oils. The monk Eraclius 



