The term fresco is often used improperly in the language running to more rarely indicate the Mural in general and the technique. The word fresco comes from the Italian “ has fresco ” which means “in the expenses”. It is a particular technique of mural whose realization takes place, before it is dry, on a Enduit, called intonaco .

The fact of painting on a coating which did not dry yet makes it possible the Pigment S to penetrate in the mass, and thus with the colors to last longer than a simple painting surfaces some on a substrate. Its execution requires a great skill, and is done very quickly, between the installation of the coating and its complete drying.

Stages of the fresco

The creation of the mortar

The mortar, a thickness from 5 to 6 cm, is also called Arriccio .

On a wall, healthy and robust, the artist prepares a mortar containing lime and of sand, which it spreads out thereafter by leaving it rough (from where his name " arriccio"). The choice of lime as mortar is not only due to its artistic qualities but to its great capacities of conservation of the pigments.

The coating consists of sand (silica) and lime in variable proportions (one more or less adds lime according to the smoothness wanted for the coating). The last layer is made up with equal sand and lime shares (it is the smoothest layer and finest).

Three successive coats of plaster are generally made. Each installation must be separate of a few hours in an decreasing order of time. The first layer must be made several days before the departure of painting, the second the day before and the last on average front 12:00. The period, during which the artist can paint, is on an interval very court of a few hours.

The draft

After drying, the artist outlines with coal the desired figure. Then using ocher and of sinopia (color containing red ground), the artist shade and specifies contours.

Preparation of the coating

The coating is a layer of approximately 5 mm called Intonaco.

After having outlined the wanted figure, the artist applies to the dry arriccio (completely carbonated lime), but deeply humidified as a preliminary, the intonaco, coated containing air lime, smoothed with the trowel (long and fine called " language of chat"). It is him which will receive tons them colors, from where " intonaco". The artist must envisage the sufficient quantity at one day's work (this surface between 1 and 4 m ² are called " giornata" ). Indeed painting must be realized on the still fresh coating. The preparation of lime is complex because different according to the layer to coat and must be worked with the hand and not via a concrete-mixer. The use of a trowel is then obligatory.

If surface to be painted is important, it is essential that the masons and painters work together but in separate sections of the wall. It is the mason who in general indicates to the painter that the mortar is ready and the technique to determine it is simple but rests only on the experiment of this one; the mortar must still be wet and not stick more to the finger; painting will be able to then cover the mortar without too penetrating it to lose of its intensity, one says that the mortar is " amoureux".

Painting

Painting is prepared using natural pigments such as metallic oxides or of the grounds. The preparation of natural pigments is done by crushing of the crystals and mixture with lime water. The lime water is the excess of moisture which emerges from the lime which was put beforehand at rest. Painting with fresco requires specific pigments, any pigment used for painting has secco (dry) is not always appropriate for the process has fresco . This explains why certain coloured pieces disappear more quickly than from others (and the blackening of some of the frescos of saint François d' Assise, for which the painter used white lead)…

The pigments react with lime and penetrate in-depth as long as the mixture is not yet dry (each zone is called giornata because it was to be pigmented in the course of the day). This process does not make it possible to make large surfaces at the beginning.

Painting is carried out quickly, the painter is skilful and precise, each error is generally irrevocable. Painting is most generally started in top on the right of painted surface so that the run-outs and the splashes do not deteriorate work already carried out.

Previously the painter carries out a first coat of paint to the " Verdaccio" ombrant and surrounding the drafts carried out as a preliminary on the ariccio. It can also defer its preparatory drawing using 2 techniques:

  • the commonplace (the broad outlines of work, drawn on sheet, are bored small holes with through which one makes pass the ocher contained in a pounce)
  • the copy engraved (the broad outlines of the copy are deferred by engraving on the intonaco)

Interest of the fresco

Painting with fresco longer preserves the colors than painting on traditional support.
Firstly the coating being fresh, the colors are impregnated in the intonaco, secondly, the intonaco contains a substance called cullet which, lasting the drying of the coating, migrates towards surface and is superimposed on painting thus creating a protective coating. This chemical reaction, called carbonation (by evaporation of the water of the coating, the carbonic gas of the air combines with the Hydroxyde of calcium of lime to form a film of Carbonate of calcium, cullet), is characteristic of painting with fresco and confers cohesion and hardness to him. To reinforce this one the painter passes on coloured surface the " language of chat" , a certain time after having posed its color, and, between each pigmented layer, water goes up on the surface and deposits cullet, for this reason certain frescos appear polished.

The frescos were polychrome but the problems of the cost of the pigments often limited the number of colors. With Saint-Savin in Vienna for example, one finds four colors safe in the chorus where one adds more expensive blue on a less surface. Water for example was often painted in white and description by corrugated features.

The fresco yesterday, today and tomorrow

At Lascaux already, the Pigments are fixed on the walls, as in a fresco, by a calcium carbonate crust formed during the centuries. With the Neolithic , one paints on a dry white coating (often of the gypsum). Towards 2500 av. J. - C. in Mésopotamie and Egypt appear the first lime kilns, which will make it possible the fresco to be born in Mésopotamie towards 1800 av. J. - C. and in Crete dice 1700 av. J. - C. The Asian schools, the Greek and the Romains develop the technique. The formidable frescos of Pompéi prove the perenniality of the process to us.

In France, the technique knows its apogee in the Romanesque art which likes plenitude, the power, the monumentality, with a suspicion of reserve however; it is indeed current (alas), that these paintings are completed dry. The Abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe, the “Vault Sixtine de France” is the perfect example. The Gothic style reduced the plane surfaces by supporting the light and the fresco disappears, however certain modest churches such Sillegny in Lorraine present many frescos.

In Italy on the contrary, at the time of the Rebirth, of Giotto to Michel-Angel, it is a golden age, but, as of the 16th century, the glare and modelled of a new process competes with the fresco: oil-base paint. The mural declines slowly and unrelentingly. At 19th and the beginning of the 20th century, some nostalgic artists of a monumental art try to make revive the fresco - with very unequal successes. The achievements of Diego Will rivet with the Mexico, of Ducos of Haille to the Museum of African Arts and Océaniens with Paris, or of various painters in Sardinia (in particular with Orgosolo) prove the interest of a modern design of this Article.

Today, one can find an technical education in certain schools of art, the training courses, the technical treaties like those of Baudouin, Petresco, Prieur.

The largest obstacle is the lack of order. The fresco, art public and social since millenia, does not interest any more the public authorities. The urban fashion of the “painted walls” has resorts to other techniques like the acrylic resin. The fresco thus finds a refuge in the houses of the private individuals who can appreciate his resistance, his luminosity, his intrinsic beauty.

The rebirth of the fresco would require the training of the artists, of the private and public orders but especially the conscience of an accessible and incomparable art which comes us from the origins of humanity.

Medieval frescos and Rebirth

Are known like the oldest frescos of France and Europe:

  • Paintings or frescos on the tomb of Junien saint in the abbey of Nouaillé-Maupertuis 8th century.
  • the martyrdoms of Saint-Savin and Saint-Cyprien with the abbey church of the 9th century of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in the Vienna beside Poitiers in the greatest whole of frescos of France, this fact classified with the World heritage of humanity of UNESCO in 1984.
  • the frescos of the Carolingian church of Saint-Pierre-the-Churches close to Chauvigny in the Vienna, which are perhaps the oldest frescos of Western Europe since one goes back them to before the 10th century.
  • Christ rider king of the kings or rider of the Apocalypse of holy Jean in a crypt of the 11th century under the Saint-Etienne Cathedral of Auxerre

  • frescos of Giotto in the Basilica higher of Saint-François than Sitted and in the Vault of Scrovegni of the Church of the Arena to Padoue, (end of the 13th century and beginning of the 14th century), classified on the List of the world heritage of UNESCO.

  • frescos of the History of the True Cross of Piero della Francesca in the Saint-François church with Arezzo.
  • frescos of the vaults and the fresco of the last Judgment painted by Michel-Angel for the Vault Sixtine with the the Vatican.

The sculpture with fresco

This term was employed (in particular by the architect Roger-Henri Expert) in connection with a technique used as from 1926 by the sculptor Carlo Sarrabezolles. It is about direct size in a Béton still fresh (approximately 12 hours of catch), which asks for a great speed of execution. This technique was used by other sculptors, but rather seldom. It is particularly well adapted to architecture.

See too

Internal bonds

External bonds

  • Site on Italian painting

  • Murals, trompe-l'oeil and anamorphosis
  • www.trompe-l-oeil.info 9000 photographs of urban mural frescos: 1000 walls of France and Europe
  • Frescos in trompe-l'oeil

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