Frescoes are forever

Lionel WIJESIRI

HISTORIC PAINTINGS: The fresco (Italian meaning “fresh”) is a type of mural painting. There are many techniques in painting frescos.

In buon, or pure, fresco, a fresh wet layer of plaster is applied to a prepared wall surface. The pigments used in the painting are mixed with water so that it soaks into the plaster.

When dry, a chemical bond forms between the paint and the wall surface and they permanently fuse together. In another type of fresco, the paint is fused on a dry, or secco, surface with adhesive binder

 flakes. This, however, is not permanent.

Generally, buon fresco works are more durable than a secco works. Historically, the secco technique was used more often for final touches or to touch-up mistakes made in a buon fresco work.

Buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster.

Generally, a layer of plaster will require ten to twelve hours to dry; ideally, an artist would begin to paint after one hour and continue until two hours before the drying time.

Thus, an artist would need to know exactly how much he could paint in those hours, before the plaster dries: this area is called the giornata (“day’s work”).

Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done without removing the dried plaster from the wall — a task usually requiring a crowbar or other sharp instrument — and starting over. Hence the use of a secco to repair minor mistakes or to add finishing touches.

In a wall-sized fresco, there may be 10 to 20 or even more giornate. After centuries, these giornate (originally, nearly invisible) have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes, these divisions may be seen from the ground.

Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by a secco painting, which has since fallen off.

Toreador

The earliest known examples frescoes done in the Buon Fresco method date at around 1500 BC and are to be found on the island of Crete in Greece.

The most famous of these, The Toreador, depicts a sacred ceremony in which individuals jump over the backs of large bulls.

While some similar frescoes have been found in other locations around the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Egypt and Morocco, their origins are subject to speculation.

Evidence of frescoes also appears in the Minoan civilization in the second millennium BC. Artists continued to paint frescoes through the Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Empires.

Though few Greek frescoes have survived, many examples of Roman frescoes are found in Herculaneum and Pompeii. In the late Roman Empire (1st-2nd century) frescoes were found in catacombs beneath Rome and Byzantine Icons.

These were also found in Cyprus, Ephesus, Cappadocia and Antioch. Catacombs were places of burial, found mainly in Rome.

Some art historians believe that fresco artists from Crete may have been sent to various locations as part of a trade exchange, a possibility which raises to the fore the importance of this art form within the society of the times.

The most common form of frescoes was the Egyptian and Greek wall paintings in tombs, usually using the secco technique.

In southern Italy, at Paestum, which was a Greek colony, a tomb containing frescoes dating back to 470 BC was discovered.

These frescoes depict scenes of the life and society of ancient Greece, and constitute valuable historical

 testimonials. One shows a group of men reclining at a banquet and another shows a man diving into the sea.

Talking about frescoes one must not forget one of the rare examples of Islam fresco painting seen in Qasr Amra, the desert palace of the Umayyads in the 8th century.

The late medieval period and the Renaissance saw the most prominent use of fresco, particularly in Italy, where most churches and many government buildings still feature fresco decoration.

Andrea Palladio, the famous Italian architect of the 16th century, built many mansions with plain exteriors and stunning interiors filled with frescoes.

Ajantha and Sigiriya

Vast wall frescoes also existed in India and China. Take, for example, Ajantha - the great surviving monument of the painting created by the Buddhist faith and fervour in the land, which gave birth to that religion.

The most beautiful of these paintings are taken from the Jataka stories, the legends of the earthly life of the Buddha in various successive existences. They also illustrate the court life and popular life of the time, as told in the romances and plays.

The paintings of Ajanta represent the pinnacle of an ancient tradition, even the earliest among them is marked by the refinement of style and technique.

These paintings exerted powerful influences over other regions’ artistic production: the beginnings of Buddhist painting in Tibet, Nepal, Central Asia, China, and Japan all can be traced to the inspiration of Ajanta. Indeed, Ajanta is unique in its scope, combining painting, sculpture, and architecture, and illustrating the development of Buddhism over the centuries of the caves’ excavation.

It is a Buddhist site that thrived in a Brahmanical world and at the zenith of its artistic achievement it represented the pervasive classical culture of the Gupta age.

In the words of the scholar Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, “almost all that belongs to the common spiritual consciousness of Asia, the ambient in which its diversities are reconcilable, is of Indian origin in the Gupta period.”

The entire importance of Ajanta today lies in this legacy. Propped by the charity of kings and commoners, Buddhist monastic life hummed in an environment of artistic creativity from the second century B.C. to the seventh century A.D.

In the local scene, the 5th century frescoes of the Sigiriya complex had attracted the attention of modern antiquarians and archaeologists since the early 19th century.

The paintings are found in a depression on the rock face more than 100 metres above ground level. Senake Bandaranayke in his book - Sigiriya - says, ‘ ... (paintings today) are but fragmentary survivals of an immense backdrop of paintings that once extended in a wide band across the western face of the rock and the Mirror Wall.

The painted band seems to have gone as far as the north-eastern corner of the rock, covering an area nearly 140 metres long and, in widest part, about 40 metres high.” John Still in 1907 had observed that; “The whole face of the hill appears to have been a gigantic picture gallery... the largest picture in the world perhaps”. Indeed it would have been a real breathtaking sight!

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