How Grotesques are worked on the Stucco.
The grotesque is a kind of free and humorous picture produced by the
ancients for the decoration of vacant spaces in some position where only
things placed high up are suitable. For this purpose they fashioned
monsters deformed by a freak of nature or by the whim and fancy of the
workers, who in these grotesque pictures make things outside of any
rule, attaching to the finest thread a weight that it cannot support, to
a horse legs of leaves, to a man the legs of a crane, and similar
follies and nonsense without end.[233] He whose imagination ran the most
oddly, was held to be the most able. Afterwards the grotesques were
reduced to rule and for friezes and compartments had a most admirable
effect. Similar works in stucco were mingled with the painting. So
generally was this usage adopted that in Rome and in every place where
the Romans settled there is some vestige of it still preserved. And
truly, when touched with gold and modelled in stucco such works are gay
and delightful to behold.
They are executed in four different ways.[234] One is to work in stucco
alone: another to make only the ornaments of stucco and paint groups in
the spaces thus formed and grotesques on the friezes: the third to make
the figures partly in stucco, and partly painted in black and white so
as to imitate cameos and other stones. Many examples of this kind of
grotesque and stucco work have been, and still are seen, done by the
moderns, who with consummate grace and beauty have ornamented the most
notable buildings of all Italy, so that the ancients are left far
behind. Finally the last method is to work upon stucco with water
colour, leaving the stucco itself for the lights, and shading the rest
with various colours. Of all these kinds of work, all of which offer a
good resistance to time, antique examples are seen in numberless places
in Rome, and at Pozzuoli near to Naples. This last sort can also be
excellently worked in fresco with opaque colours, leaving the stucco
white for the background.[235] And truly all these works possess
wonderful beauty and grace. Among them are introduced landscape views,
which much enliven them, as do also little coloured compositions of
figures on a small scale. There are to-day many masters in Italy who
make this sort of work their profession, and really excel in it.