The fresco is a particular technique of mural painting whose realization occurs, before it is dry, a coating , called The term comes from the Italian "a fresco" means "in charge".

Does painting on a coating that has not dried yet allows pigments to penetrate the mass, and thus the colors last longer than just paint on a substrate surface. Its implementation requires great skill and is very fast, between the laying of the coating and drying complete.

The term is often used by metonymy in everyday language to describe the mural painting in general and more rarely the art.

Summary 1 Principle of the fresco 2 History 2.1 Medieval and Renaissance Frescoes 3 Technique of the fresco 3.1 The creation of mortar 3.2 The outline 3.3 Preparation of coating 3.4 The paint 3.5 The sculpture mural 4 The practice and learning today 5 Notes and references 6 See also 6.1 Linkages internal 6.2 External Links

/ / Principle of the fresco

Four elements are involved:

• the rinzaffo (the base coat): first primer in contact with the medium, granular layer, rough.
• the arricio: the first real-coated substrate (mixture of lime, sand and water) to make it straight and smooth (about 1 cm).
• the intonaco: the layer itself, which will receive the pigment (composed of fine sand, marble dust or pozzolana , lime and water).
• colors that are incorporated on the intonaco still fresh and wet (mineral pigments because the basic pH of the lime plaster).

The coating is fresh, the colors permeate into the intonaco including a substance called cullet during drying of the coating, migrates to the surface and is superimposed on the painting creating a protective layer. This chemical reaction called carbonation (by evaporation of water from the coating, the carbon dioxide from the air combines with the calcium hydroxide lime to form a film of calcium carbonate , cullet) is characteristic of fresco painting and gives it cohesion and hardness. To reinforce this, the painter goes on the colored surface "language of chat, some time after asking its color, and between each layer pigmented, water rises to the surface and deposit the cullet is for why certain frescoes seem polished.

Polychrome frescoes were problems but the cost of the pigments often limited the number of colors. In the Abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienna, for example, there are four colors except in the chorus where the blue, more expensive, occupies a smaller area. Water for example, was often painted in white and highlighted by wavy lines.

Fresco painting lasts longer than paint colors on traditional media.

History

At Lascaux already, the pigments are fixed to the walls, as in a fresco by a crust of calcium carbonate formed over the centuries. In Neolithic is painted on a dry-white coating (usually gypsum). Around 2500 BC. BC in Mesopotamia and Egypt appear the first lime kilns, which will allow the mural to be born in Mesopotamia around 1800 BC. AD and Crete in 1700 BC. AD. Asian schools, the Greeks and Romans developed the technique. The wonderful frescoes Pompeii we prove the continuity of the process. In France , the art reached its apogee in the Romanesque who loves fullness, power, monumentality, with a hint of reservation, however, it is indeed common (unfortunately), these paintings are completed in seconds. The abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe , the "Sistine Chapel of France" is a perfect example. The Gothic style cut flat surfaces by promoting the light disappears and the fresco, however, some small churches such Sillegny in Lorraine have many frescoes.

In Italy however, the time of the Renaissance , from Giotto to Michelangelo , it's a golden age, but from the ^sixteenth century, the brightness and the contours of a new process for the mural competition: the oil painting. The mural declines slowly and inexorably. In the nineteenth ^century and early ^twentieth century, few artists nostalgic for a monumental art trying to revive the mural - with very mixed success. Achievements of Diego Rivera in Mexico , of the Ducos Haille Museum of African and Oceanic Arts in Paris , or various painters in Sardinia (including Orgosolo ) prove the interest of a modern conception of art.

Meanwhile, a practice of true fresco is proven in the pre-Columbian world. It is the work of the civilization of Teotihuacan. An example possibly representing the Great Goddess of Teotihuacan was found near Tetitla of Teotihuacan.

Medieval and Renaissance Frescoes

Are known as the oldest frescoes medieval and Renaissance in France and Europe :

• paintings or murals on the tomb of St Junien Abbey Nouaill-Maupertuis ^(eighth century).
• the martyrdom of Saint Savin and St. Cyprian 's Church in ^the ninth century abbey of Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe in Vienna near Poitiers in the largest collection of paintings from France, this is classified as UNESCO World Heritage Site Humanity of the UNESCO in 1984.
• the frescoes of the Carolingian church of Saint-Pierre-les-Eglises near Chauvigny in Vienna , which are perhaps the oldest paintings in Western Europe since they were built before the ^tenth century.
• Christ cavalier, king of kings horseman of the Apocalypse of St. John in ^the eleventh century crypt under the Cathedral Saint-Etienne of Auxerre.
• The frescoes of the life of St. Francis at Assisi to Giotto in the upper church of St. Francis Basilica in Assisi , and in the Scrovegni Chapel of the Church of the Arena at Padua , (late ^thirteenth and early fourteenth ^century), classified on the World Heritage List of UNESCO.
• the frescoes of the History of the True Cross of Piero della Francesca in the church of St Francis in Arezzo.
• the frescoed vaults and the fresco of the Last Judgement painted by Michelangelo for the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
• The use of the fresco is a legacy of relations between the city of Mulhouse with the Swiss cantons. The best example is the city hall of the sixteenth ^century to the walls with paintings of trompe-l'oeil , but it is also the case with many blind gables of the city.