Introduction
While fresco is a monumental art form dating back to Egyptian and Greco-Roman times, it achieved full flourish during the Renaissance in Italy. It is from the Italians, then, that we derive the term itself, after affresco, which means “fresh.” In the 15th and 16th centuries, fresco was a principal technique used for a multitude of major commissions - Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel being most familiar to us. As a wall and ceiling decoration, fresco is valued and acclaimed for its vibrancy of color and luminescence, but as important, and barring catastrophe, it endures the life of the wall. Though there currently exists only a handful of practicing fresco masters, the technique is undergoing a North American renaissance, most notably in North Carolina, Minnesota, California and Michigan. This surge of large-scale activity in the final two decades of the 20th century has brought fresco into modern times, employing new technologies to overcome inherent problems and accommodate contemporary architectural designs.
Today, as in Renaissance times, frescoes may
exist as a merely decorative element -- a wall or ceiling border, for example
-- or may follow traditional compositional easel painting approaches in
the manner of the Grand Masters. The following is a description of
method, termed “high fresco,” for painting large-scale frescoes as practiced
by American painter Ben Long. Long worked for seven years alongside
the late Florentine maestro Pietro Annigoni, and is acknowledged as the
maestro’s last apprentice.
What is Fresco?
Fundamentally, fresco is the art of painting
water-suspended earth pigments onto a damp lime plaster wall. It
is a unique approach in that as the painted plaster wall dries, it carbonizes
to form a remarkably hard skin of calcium carbonate, locking the particles
of absorbed pigment into place. Fresco becomes the wall. Thus,
the methodology begins with the element crucial to fresco: lime.
The Lime Pit
Creation of the lime pit typically takes place before, or concurrent with, the artist’s formulation of preliminary compositional drawings, since lime should, ideally, break down for no less than two years before use as a prepared painting surface. A traditional lime pit consists of merely mixing powdered lime and water in a hole dug into the ground. Modern approaches usually involve lining the hole with a watertight tank, or series of tanks, to better control contamination and handling of the lime. Though care must be taken to guard against freezing temperatures, tanks also may be located above ground.
By the time the pit is filled and capped, many
gallons of distilled water and quantities of the purest available lime
will have been combined, small batches at a time, and poured into the pit
to begin the breakdown of the mixture into a soft, gritty paste.
The chemical breakdown of the lime crystals, called “slaking,” must continue
until it is smooth enough to be used as plaster for the “skin,” or finished
painting surface.
The Scratch Coat
In the meantime, many buckets of the partially-slaked
lime will be combined with sand (two parts rough washed sand, one part
lime) to create the “scratch coat,” a three-quarter-inch or more layer
of foundation plaster troweled onto an existing interior wall. It
is to this roughly-scored scratch coat that the final eighth-inch-thick
skin is bound. The scratch coat, applied in two or three layers several
months apart, may be reinforced by a membrane of metal mesh between the
plaster and the wall. A typical Renaissance-era wall consisted of
brick, which allowed the finished fresco to bind and dry with relative
ease. Brick is not the common interior construction material it once
was, so products like Densglass mounted on a reinforced masonry wall may
serve today as a wallboard backing suitable for the scratch coat.
Large-scale frescoes weighing thousands of pounds requires close consultation
with the architect of the building.
Slaking
The process of mixing water with powdered lime
is fraught with hazards. The combination produces a volatile chemical
reaction, which creates enormous amounts of heat and steam. A fifty-pound
bag of lime should be laid flat on the rim of a heat-resistant 55-gallon
barrel containing 11-14 gallons of distilled water. Slitting the
bag along its length, the mixer then dumps the bag’s contents into the
water all at once and loosely covers the barrel with the empty bag to prevent
splattering. Within a very short time, the mixture will begin roiling,
bubbling and steaming, shaking the barrel with its vigorous action.
Workers should wear protective clothing and a Plexiglas face shield to
avoid the 400-degree spatters of wet lime and large volumes of steam escaping
the mixing barrel. Despite these discomforts, the mixer must remain
at the barrel using an industrial drill and extended paddle bit to ensure
the batch is completely blended into a loose slush before it is poured
into the pit. Once filled, the pit is then sealed in such a way as
to minimize exposure to pollution and other contaminants. The pit
should be checked regularly against water leaks and freezing. Additional
distilled water can be periodically stirred into the mixture to maintain
moisture content.
Composition
Fresco painting technique, because of the repeated
cross-hatching of earth pigments onto the absorbent skin, resembles drawing
as much as, or more than, painting. Long before approaching the wall,
the artist begins with pencil, charcoal or conté drawings of models
or other physical elements that will make up the overall preliminary compositional
drawing. The compositional drawing is typically made on a one-inch
to one-foot scale, though it has been suggested that using metric measurement
greatly facilitates transference of gridded drawings to full scale.
These initial drawings -- both individual sketch studies and the compositional
drawing containing these elements -- require an artist with a keen instinctual
eye for exactitude. Precision is critical when it comes time to enlarge
the compositional drawing to full-scale size.
Studies
Once initial drawings are completed, the artist may create more fully refined drawings of certain elements - such as portraits - to fix them even more firmly in the mind. In theory, this “fixing-in-the-mind,” while appearing somewhat repetitive, is an important process throughout the course of conceptualization. It allows the artist to not only embed the subjects into memory, but to also discover new and serendipitous aspects of the original inspiration for the composition.
An oil color study of the full composition,
generally the same size as the compositional drawing, should also be prepared.
Color - rather than detail, as in the drawing - is emphasized. The
artist’s knowledge of color, through experience in easel oil painting,
comes heavily to bear. Here the artist more fully visualizes how
color may affect composition, taking into account the “weight” of certain
colors in balance with others. The color study may result in minor
changes and realignments of all or part of the composition. The artist
and colorist should then decide which color pigments must be acquired.
The Cartoon
In creating the “cartoons,” there is now a
return to refined drawing: charcoal and conté drawings enlarged
to the full scale of the finished fresco. The original compositional
drawing, gridded with one-inch squares, is transferred to large sheets
of paper with a one-foot grid pattern (again, a metric configuration may
well be preferable). This is laborious and exacting, but results
in the ability to view the full composition in terms of proportion and
perspective. Relative weight and arrangement of individual elements
in the picture can be confirmed as properly balanced and scaled to each
other. The cartoons may also be mounted at the actual painting site
wall to allow the artist line-of-sight references.
Tracing and Punching
More importantly, the cartoon is a primary
gauge used to ensure that the accuracy of the original composition is maintained
on the wall. To this end, semi-transparent tracing paper is laid
over the cartoon and dominant lines are traced. The tracing paper
is removed and punched with a large needle every few inches along the traced
lines. These tracings are set aside for the sinopia process, and
are used again when painting begins.
Site and Pigment Preparation
A short time prior to approaching the wall, scaffolding must be assembled as needed and grinding tables arranged at the work site. The artist or colorist supervises a team of assistants in preparing mixtures of pigments and distilled water, which will be rendered to a buttery texture by grinding the colors on glass plates with heavy stone or glass mullers. To whiten a color, slaked lime itself is often used. Mulling is labor intensive - even tedious - but necessary to ensure that pigments and lime crystals are ground finely enough to be drawn into the porous plaster as it dries.
It is at this point - with the colors prepared,
the tracings and punchings completed, and a designated scratch coat area
thoroughly misted with water the night before - that the artist and crew
are ready to approach the wall.
Pouncing
The punched tracings, with the essential outline
information from the cartoons, are affixed with string loops and suspended
in place on the wall from nails gently driven into the scratch coat.
Small gauze bags filled with red earth pigment are tapped - “pounced” -
over the punched holes in the tracings to create a dotted outline on the
scratch coat.
The Sinopia
The tracings are removed, and with drawings
and cartoons mounted nearby for reference, the artist follows the dotted
outline to begin the sinopia, or “underdrawing.” Though the scratch
coat is rough and the drawing (using red pigment suspended in water) is
not particularly detailed, it once again serves to fix the drawing in the
mind and allows a final confirmation of compositional correctness.
The scratch coat is then heavily misted with distilled water the night
before painting.
The Intonaco
The muratore, or mason, is then brought in to apply the thin lime plaster skin over a portion of the sinopia designated by the artist. This application is referred to as the giornata, figuratively translated as “work that can be done in a day.” The muratore is generally directed to extend the fresh plaster lay an inch or so beyond the borders of the giornata to allow room for the artist to evenly trim the edges after the day’s work.
This, the final painting surface - called the
intonaco - is an eighth-inch layer of fully slaked lime and sand, mixed
one-to-one on-site. It must be neither too wet nor too dry for purposes
of trowling and pigment absorbency. Moisture content is an inexact
science even for experienced masons and fresco painters, and conditions
at each site -- such as thickness and absorbency of the scratch coat, ambient
room heat and humidity, temperature of the exterior of the wall -- must
be accounted for. The intonaco be troweled smooth and flat, and checked
from various angles for irregularities. Spot applications of a watery
mixture of pure lime can smooth irregularities in overall surface texture.
Assisting the Maestro
As the muratore’s work is being completed and
second pouncing onto the intonaco begins, assistants must prepare a table
near the intonaco. This table becomes, in essence, the painter’s
palette. On it rests containers - often bowls - of the ground colors
selected for that day. These colors are suspended in distilled water,
and must be frequently stirred or “spun” by an assistant to maintain suspension
of the pigments. Also on the table are containers of various size
brushes, a hand-held palette of mulled color, and several bowls of clean
water for rinsing brushes. An assistant must stand at the ready to
hand the painter brushes, damp sponges and maintain the containers of fresh
water. If satisfied with the pouncing on the intonaco, the artist
proceeds, guided by these critical reference points.
The “Golden Hour”
An indication of the ideal painting surface,
called the “golden hour,” occurs when paint is immediately absorbed when
brushed onto the wall. Viewed at the proper angle to a light source,
this effect can be seen clearly as a reflective brushstroke that disappears
promptly upon application. The wall is said to be “taking” at that
point. Should the wall be seen as slow in taking, the wall is too
wet, resulting in the brush “picking up” - smearing or lifting color.
“Tearing it Out”
Mistakes cannot be brushed out or covered over,
and therein lies the high challenge of fresco. Errors in laying the
plaster, or even painting, may well result in having to scrape off all
or part of the intonaco. Variances in color or inappropriate appearances
of lime patches and the like can be corrected by creating a secondary painting
surface of egg tempera one year after the fresco is painted. But
even when taking correctly, the artist generally has a window of only several
hours before the wall begins to “lock up,” becoming too dry to take pigment
properly.
Misting
As the giornata nears completion, the artist
may occasionally direct that the intonaco be sprayed with a fine mist of
water, which acts as a medium to draw pigments further into the wall.
The End of the Day
At the end of each day, a “day line” must be cut, which consists of trimming the small amount of excess plaster left by the mason at the edge of the intonaco. The day line should be cut and beveled with fine, sharp and flexible instrument (a utility blade or trowel). Execution must be precise, as other giornatas will be troweled adjacent to all or part of the day line at some point. These new intonacos must be painstakingly “married” to the previous day line so as to render the borders virtually invisible.
The scratch coat well beyond the giornata is likely to have absorbed a great deal of moisture. Care must be taken not to over-water the scratch coat for the next day’s painting if the new intonaco is to be laid adjacent to the one prior to it.
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Coordination and understanding of the fresco
process is fundamental to success. Inspired and informed by a sense
of beauty; an acutely intimate understanding of thematic resonances; an
essentially rote knowledge of every detail of the composition; a highly-attuned
eye for drawing; a fulsome understanding of color; as well as an appreciation
for teamwork and the time and effort it has taken to reach the painting
stage, the artists persevere with each day’s work until completion.
Mark Wade Stone is an Emmy Award-winning Cleveland, Ohio television producer, writer and director who is producing an independent feature length cinéma vérité documentary, entitled HIGH FRESCO, about a three-year fresco project painted in 1992 by Ben Long for NationsBank (Bank of America) Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. HIGH FRESCO is his fifth documentary.
Contact Mark Wade Stone at:
216.228.1441
1425 Waterbury Road #17
Cleveland, OH
44107 U.S.A.
mstone@wviz.org
Posted with the permission of the author.
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