Upadek techniki buon fresco w XIX wieku

• Authors: Sawicki Tytus

Title variants

EN

The decline of the buon fresco technique in the nineteenth century

• Languages of publication: PL EN

Abstracts

EN

In the course of the nineteenth century, the buon fresco technique was replaced by a great variety of a secco techniques. Nineteenth-century artists who did not attach great importance to the rigours of the technical workshop, found buon fresco too difficult. In order to fulfill large commissions for wall decorations, they opted for simpler and quicker techniques. The reasons for the decline of the fresco should be sought already in the second half of the eighteenth century when the lowering of the level of art techniques became distinctly and increasingly marked. During the last century, buon fresco was revived upon numerous occasions on the tide of interest in historical styles and techniques. It was used, for instance, by the Italian neo-Classicists in the first half of the century or the „Nazarenes” in Germany. Buon fresco, however, did not become a dominating technique. Only in Italy was its tradition sufficiently longlived for wet plaster to be painted well into the twentieth century. In comparison with previous eras, changes which occurred in the fresco technique in the nineteenth century consisted mainly of the introduction of new materials, for example, cement added to plaster, or newly discovered pigments applied in the painting layer. These technological innovations had, unfortunately, an adverse influence on the durability of the paintings. A frequent cause of rapid devastation of nineteenth-century frescoes was their retention of moisture in plaster that contained cement. The alterations of colour in the painting layer could have been brought about i. a. by the employment of adulterated pigments such as pseudo-mineral pigments produced by combining lime with silicon. The nineteenth century did not contribute anything new to the technical aspects of the fresco. The drawing process itself and its transference into the wall remained traditional — a cartoon on a 1:1 scale, the intonaco, the tracing of the drawing in wet plaster, sketching with the aid of a drawing made on squared paper or readymade patterns applied for decorative motifs. The ways of painting differed greatly, owing to the prevalent nineteenthcentury fashion for neo-styles, and tendencies towards joining numerous styles. Research into the history of art techniques was inaugurated at the time and the buon fresco was examined i. a. by Mary Merrifield in England, Ernst Berger and Max Doerner in Germany and Secco Suardo in Italy. The replacement of the buon fresco with a secco techniques changed the very nature of monumental painting. Slowly, it began to adapt technical and formal media of easel painting, for example, the employment of glue-chalk grounder, the gluing of canvas into walls or the installment of wooden or canvas panels. The most popular techniques included tempera, glue, casein, encaust and oil. This was also the period of the renascence of the sgraffito. A purely nineteenth-century invention was the mineral (silicon) technique in which the binder was water glass. At the present, the buon fresco technique is merely a name which is often, and erroneously, used to describe all polychromies, regardless of their execution.

• Publisher: Narodowy Instytut Dziedzictwa
• Journal: Ochrona Zabytków
• Year: 1993
• Issue: 4
• Pages: 347-353

Dates

published

1993

Contributors

author

Sawicki Tytus

References

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Identifiers

ISSN

0029-8247