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Fresco-secco (or a secco or fresco finto) is a
* Rudolph F. Zallinger - whose '' Age of Mammals'', a mural painted from 1961 to 1967 on the south wall of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, is painted in this style.
The fresco technique
Fresco-secco (or a secco or fresco finto) is a wall
A wall is a structure and a surface that defines an area; carries a load; provides security, shelter, or soundproofing; or serves a decorative purpose. There are various types of walls, including border barriers between countries, brick wal ...
painting
Painting is a Visual arts, visual art, which is characterized by the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called "matrix" or "Support (art), support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with ...
technique where pigments mixed with an organic binder and/or lime are applied onto dry plaster
Plaster is a building material used for the protective or decorative coating of walls and ceilings and for moulding and casting decorative elements. In English, "plaster" usually means a material used for the interiors of buildings, while "re ...
. The paints used can e.g. be casein paint, tempera
Tempera (), also known as egg tempera, is a permanent, fast-drying painting medium consisting of pigments mixed with a water-soluble binder medium, usually glutinous material such as egg yolk. ''Tempera'' also refers to the paintings done in ...
, oil paint
Oil paint is a type of slow-drying paint that consists of particles of pigment suspended in a drying oil, commonly linseed oil. Oil paint also has practical advantages over other paints, mainly because it is waterproof.
The earliest surviving ...
, silicate mineral paint. If the pigments are mixed with lime water or lime milk and applied to a dry plaster the technique is called lime secco painting.
The secco technique contrasts with the fresco
Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...
technique, where the painting is executed on a layer of wet plaster.
Because the pigments do not become part of the wall, as in buon fresco, fresco-secco paintings are less durable. The colors may flake off the painting as time goes by, but this technique has the advantages of a longer working time and retouchability. In Italy, the fresco technique was reintroduced around 1300 and led to an increase in the general quality of mural painting. This technological change coincided with the realistic turn in Western art and the changing liturgical use of murals.
The treatise ''Silparatna'' by Kumaradeva (8th century) gives an account of the fresco-secco painting technology in detail. According to this text, a picture should be painted with appropriate colours, along with proper forms and sentiments ( rasas), and moods and actions (''bhavas''). White, yellow, red, black and terre verte are pointed out in the text as pure colors. Different shades were also prepared from these original colors. Five types of brushes with various shapes and sizes (flat, long, medium, etc.) made of animal hair and grass fibre are also recommended.
Specialist painters and decorators still use this technique to great effect in the world of interior design e.g. faux marble.
Notable fresco-secco artists
*Giotto
Giotto di Bondone (; – January 8, 1337), known mononymously as Giotto, was an List of Italian painters, Italian painter and architect from Florence during the Late Middle Ages. He worked during the International Gothic, Gothic and Italian Ren ...
* June McEwan, Scottish artist who recreates historic Scottish interiors.
* Beohar Rammanohar Sinha
Beohar Rammanohar Sinha (15 June 1929 – 25 October 2007) was an Indian artist who is very well known for his illustrations in the original final manuscript of Constitution of India, including the complete Preamble to the Constitution of India ...
, artist from India whose frescoes ornamentate the walls and gigantic dome of day today life, family themes and feasting.
* Rudolph F. Zallinger - whose '' Age of Mammals'', a mural painted from 1961 to 1967 on the south wall of the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History, is painted in this style.
See also
*Art movement
An art movement is a tendency or style in art with a specific art philosophy or goal, followed by a group of artists during a specific period of time, (usually a few months, years or decades) or, at least, with the heyday of the movement defined ...
* Creativity techniques
Creativity techniques are methods that encourage creative actions, whether in the arts or sciences. They focus on a variety of aspects of creativity, including techniques for idea generation and divergent thinking, methods of re-framing problems, ...
* List of art media
Media, or mediums, are the core types of material (or related other tools) used by an artist, composer, designer, etc. to create a work of art. For example, a visual artist may broadly use the media of painting or sculpting, which themselves hav ...
* List of art movements
* List of most expensive paintings
This is a list of the highest known prices paid for paintings. The record payment for a work is approximately United States dollar, US$450.3 million (which includes Commission (remuneration), commission) for the work ''Salvator Mundi (Leonardo), ...
* List of most expensive sculptures
A list is a Set (mathematics), set of discrete items of information collected and set forth in some format for utility, entertainment, or other purposes. A list may be memorialized in any number of ways, including existing only in the mind of t ...
* List of art techniques
* List of sculptors
External links
The fresco technique
References
Fresco painting Painting techniques {{Art-technique-stub