FRESCO PAINTING.
"Ascend the right stair from the further nave
To muse in a small chapel scarcely lit
By Cimabue's Virgin. Bright and brave
That picture was accounted, mark, of old;
A king stood bare before its sovran grace,
A reverent people shouted to behold
The picture, not the king, and even the place
Containing such a miracle grew bold."
--MRS. BARRETT BROWNING.
As we shall have occasion, in the following pages, to speak of fresco,
secco, and tempera, as distinguished from oil painting, it will be
wise to try and understand clearly what these methods of work are, and
in what respects they differ from, exceed, or fall short of, the
modern practice.
Tempera[22] is the old name for any vehicle used in painting. The two
great divisions of painting in the Middle Ages were fresco and secco;
shortly put "fresco," meaning the painting on walls when the plaster
was wet; "secco," the painting when it was dry. In fresco painting no
vehicle was used but water; in secco painting a tempera was used
composed of white and yolk of egg. Thus, in Cennino Cennini's
_Treatise on Painting_, written in 1437,[23] he says:--"Two sorts are
good, but one is better than the other. The first tempera consists in
the white and yolk of an egg into which are put some cuttings from the
top of a fig-tree; beat them well together, then add some of this
tempera, and not in too great quantity, to each of the vases (of
colour), as if you were diluting them with water. The second kind of
tempera is the yolk of the egg only, and you must know that this
tempera is of universal application on walls, on pictures, and in
fresco, and you cannot use too much of it, but it would be wise to
take a middle course."
It is to be noted that in his instructions for colouring in fresco,
Cennini is very particular to state several times that no vehicle is
to be used except water. All frescoes at this time were re-touched in
secco, with temperas such as above described; the fresco seems to have
been somewhat similar to the first painting in oil, and to have
received all its more minute details from the subsequent work in
secco. This was almost inevitably the case, as from the haste with
which large spaces of the wall had to be covered, there could hardly
be time to put in much detail, besides, many of the colours employed
could not be used in fresco,[24] though all were used to finish works
originally painted in fresco. Secco had an especial province of its
own; all _pictures_, as distinguished from wall paintings, being
executed in it. It must be remembered that in the time of Giotto the
use of canvas was not yet introduced, and all small designs were
painted upon linen cloths, stretched tightly over the surface of a
smooth panel, and covered with coats of plaster carefully trimmed;[25]
the next step in the preparation of the ground was to substitute
parchment stretched over wood for the prepared linen.
It must be noticed that from the time of Cennini to that of Raphael,
the practice of completing the fresco in secco grew gradually to be
considered as a mark of an inferior artist, though it was never wholly
discontinued (according to Mrs. Merrifield's treatise), except by a
few "very expert artists, formed chiefly in the school of the
Carracci." It is perhaps not always borne in mind by those
unacquainted with painting, that the range of colouring in fresco is
strictly limited; no colours being employed in it by the early
Italians except such as were natural, and nearly all the more
brilliant colours are artificial, such, for instance, as lake,
vermilion, azure. The blues were more fugitive than any other hues,
and in many cases have wholly disappeared, turned green or black, or
flaked off from the surface of the walls.
Thus it will be clearly understood that the difference between
painting in fresco and painting in secco, or (as it is more commonly
called) in distemper, lies in two things, the kind of vehicle
employed--water in the first, and glue of some sort (chiefly of egg)
in the second method; and in the nature of the colours used, the first
being restricted to tints comparatively simple and elementary, the
second able to make use of the most elaborate colours obtainable. The
first method is eminently suited to the expression of great thoughts
in simple language, the second is more adapted to give pleasure, from
the exquisiteness of the colours employed, and the skill with which
the details are elaborated. The latter is the painting of the studio;
the former the painting of the church, the palace, or the
market-place. I do not think this difference is sufficiently
understood in the present day; it does not appear as if painters had
grasped the fact that the greatest strength of fresco lay in its
emancipation from all the necessities of minute detail and careful
elaboration; a freedom gained by the nature of the material. It is not
that in itself this freedom is a good thing, but that it affords the
artist a means of expression which he can hardly gain through the
medium of painting in oil. In much the same way as a modern
dining-room, however perfect in its decoration and gorgeous in its
upholstery, can never give us the same effect as the rough pillars of
some ruined temple; so does the comparative rough sublimity of fresco
afford to a true artist a means of expressing great thoughts and lofty
ideas in a comparatively facile manner. For it must be remembered he
has not only spaces to decorate of a size commensurate with his
subject, be it ever so important, but he has hardly to do more than to
express his great thought clearly, and all small details are lost in
the splendour of his conception. This is the real power of size in
painting; a large picture, if it be not finished with the care of a
small one, needs to be a representation of some thought which gains in
grandeur from the size of its canvas; there can be no justification
for covering ten feet square with the representation of an incident of
no particular importance, or a scene of no particular beauty; for with
every added foot of space which the artist takes up, he really makes
an added claim to importance, and a subject which might have been of
sufficient interest to have justified a painting on a minute scale,
does but betray its insignificance when delineated on a large one. The
whole of art being but the nicest possible adaptation of means to
ends, it rightly shocks and repels us when we find an artist wilfully
violating these conditions, and, in order to appear of greater
importance in our eyes, making what might be a tolerable molehill,
into a very indifferent mountain. This was very clearly seen by the
old Italian masters, who almost invariably chose fresco as the medium
for their most important works, assigning to oil painting a lower
province.
In connection with this subject the following quotation of
Michelangelo's opinion may be interesting:--"Quand il fut question de
peindre dans la Chapelle Sextine, le frère Sebastiano, peintre
Vénitienne, conseiller de le Pape, de forcer Michel Ange à le faire à
l'huile, et la mur fut préparé à cet effet. Le grand homme arrive, et
fait degrader cet apprêt, disait fièrement que la peinture à l'huile
n'était bonne que pour les dames, les personnes lentes, et qui se
pique l'adresse, tels que le frère Sebastiano; et l'ouvrage fut fait à
fresque, parce que à genre de peinture méprise cette attention à
manoeuvre; vain merite qui est perdu pour elle. La touche disparait
dans l'enduit qui la dévore, elle n'occupe pas l'âme du grand artiste,
qui alors tout entière aux caractères, aux formes, aux expressions, et
à la saillie des corps. Son goût ne se manifeste pas sans science, sa
main ne s'occupe que d'expérience, et il se livre tout entier à cette
tâche difficile--la seule digne de lui. S'il la remplie, la spectateur
est transporté, et comme l'auteur, il va cherche rien au-delà."[26]
We cannot stay to define the limits, within which it seems to us that
this is a correct expression of the merits of fresco, but that it is
in the main true is indisputable, and it is impossible to tell the
good effect which might be produced upon the art of the present day,
by encouraging our young painters to work in fresco, simply requiring
of them that they should have something to say, and say it clearly. No
theories as to the production of a great school of painting, will, I
think, be able to map out a better means of attaining good art, than
this simple one of making clear expression of a great subject the
first object. Curiously enough, the only English artist who seems
thoroughly to have understood the great scope of fresco painting was
Fuseli, and in his lectures at the Royal Academy may be found a clear
and enthusiastic exposition of this method.
FOOTNOTES:
[22] Though frequently wrongly used as synonymous with secco.
[23] Recent researches by Signors Gaetano and Carlo Milanesi
(Florence, 1859) prove this date, which is given by Tambroni and in
Mrs. Merrifield's translation, to be only that of the copy of the
original MS. Cennini's work was originally written in all probability
at least ten years earlier.
[24] In fresco some colours cannot be used, as artiemen, cinnabar,
azuno della magna, mina, biucca, verdesume, and lacca.--_Cennini._
[25] According to Mrs. Jameson, _Lives of the Painters_, p. 8, all
movable pictures were, up to 1440, painted on panels of prepared wood;
an evident mistake, made from a superficial examination of the back of
the pictures.
[26] _Encyclopédie Méthodique._ Paris, 1788.