During the three years of study to become a Restoration Technician I learned the ancient technique of fresco.
Fresco consists of painting with pigments combined with water only on a fresh plaster wall surface. Once the plaster has dried, the painting becomes immovable and eternal. This is how the wonderful works of fresco artists such as Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel and many others are preserved.
For a detailed description of the fresco technique I send you to my article on fresco
I tried to reproduce here a part of a fresco that is on the ceiling of Villa Farnesina in Rome, by Raphael.
First of all, for the fresco, you need to prepare a support that recreates a plastered wall, with a roughcast and a layer of plaster.
In the meantime I studied the subject and made several color tests to identify the shades and prepare the pigments.
The subject must be transferred to the plaster that begins to “pull” with the ancient dusting technique.
We then proceed with the colors, which are traditional powdered pigments mixed only with water, overlapped through glazes, transparent like watercolor or more pasty to obtain more material.
Lights and shadows given by hatching or with small, very fast strokes.
The fresco technique allows you to obtain bright, vivid but at the same time delicate colors. Even for this technique, it was wonderful to discover the difficulties and advantages experienced by the great masters of the past.
