Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 9.djvu/810

 774 FRESCO processes of art, whilst in mural painting the habits long prevalent of retouching and glazing with strong distempers were confirmed for a time, and new methods were invented to make fresco rival the splendour and force of oil. It is to be regretted that it was not seen that this could be ade quately attained, as had been demonstrated by Masaccio, with little aid from extraneous means. Leonardo da Vinci evidently thought that fresco-painting was unequal to pro duce the effects which he desired, and he executed his great mural picture of the Battle of Anghiari in encaustic, and his still more celebrated work, the Last Supper, in oil, with what disastrous results need not be recorded here except as a warning to artists to avoid methods not sanctioned by experience and not tested by time. A period is now reached, the close of the 15th and first years of the 16th centuries, when modifications were made in the technical preparations for fresco. Benozzo Gozzoli was probably one of the last of the artists who drew the outlines of his mural pictures upon the preparatory coat of plaster. Writers upon fresco have only noticed one illus tration of this custom in the ruins of a fresco by Pietro di Orvieto at Pisa, but it was a generally established method from the 13th to the close of the 15th century. The account which we have in Vasari of the preparation of the cartoons by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo for their rival mural pictures in the hall of the municipal palace of Florence brings the history of fresco-painting to an important epoch. The execution of such full- size drawings, and of the previous sketches and studies requisite under the circumstances, involved an amount of thought and care hitherto little contemplated. The drawings in red on walls or rough plaster were freely executed with little study, and were not calculated to improve the artist s skill in the delineation of form ; but the preparation of the cartoon was for art the most im portant step ever taken towards the cultivation of mastery in design, and to the acquisition of that profound know ledge of form which characterized the great painters of the first part of the 16th century, the golden age of art. The cartoonist first prepared his sketch on a small scale, then made his studies from nature, either in separate drawings or in a general delineation of the entire composition. In like manner he considered accessories and details, and made careful studies of drapery. Some artists modelled the whole subject so as to observe the light and shade. This done, the paper for the cartoon was stretched and squared. Pupils were sometimes employed to transfer the sketches to this the working drawing. How carefully such cartoons were sometimes executed is described in the most interest ing manner in the history of that famous one which Michelangelo drew with such infinite pains. The wall to be painted was then squared like the cartoon, which was cut into pieces of a convenient size, and so was fitted by the help of the squares to the freshly laid intonaco. The out line was then transferred to the yielding plaster either by the help of the pounce bag, the cartoon having been pricked, or it was marked through the paper with the stylus. It is profoundly interesting to observe the different methods followed by the old masters in preparing the outline. The two greatest of all, Michelangelo and Raphael, were scrupu lously careful. They transferred the forms to the wet in tonaco with the pounce, after which Michelangelo marked them in some places with a very sharp cutting point. Sod- doma, a great painter, was on the contrary very careless in the preparation of his cartoon and its transfer to the plaster. He frequently altered the drawing whilst painting. Bernar dino Luini was content with mere indications of the contours. Pordenone indicates a fiery spirit in his mode of dashing them in with any sharp instrument at hand. The history of the practice of fresco-painting now reached its apex in the works of Michelangelo and Raphael ; those of a long line of great mural painters have illustrated in vari ous ways most of the technical processes of this difficult but noble art. Michelangelo was unwilling to paint; he remarked to Pope Julius, &quot; It is not my profession ;&quot; yet his frescos may be taken as perfect types of what ought to be aimed at by every practitioner, so far as method is concerned, apart from the retouching in distemper. The following apparently was his mode of painting. The local colour was laid on and modelled into the cool shadow (the use of terra vert in shadow had now disappeared, and grey taken its place) with that perfect knowledge of form and truth of gradation habitual to Michelangelo, and observable in all his drawings. The lights were then painted with a full brush and softened into the half tints; then the darker parts of the shadows were added. It is observable in the execu tion of this great artist that he modelled the colour in fresco with all the breadth and impasto which slow drying oil paint makes possible. This distinguishes at a glance his work from that of his assistants, which is laboriously stippled. It has been ascertained beyond a possibility of doubt that Michelangelo was not satisfied with pure fresco-painting ; but he did not repaint with distemper, he merely glazed with a thin coating of a blackish grey mixed with size, which he applied in some places with washes, in others with stippling. This is very different from the older methods of painting over the fresco with solid distemper colour. In the celebrated mural paintings of Raphael in the Va tican changes of method are very observable ; yet it may reasonably bo inferred that the great artist s wish was to paint in pure fresco. A century before the execution of these works, Masaccio had shown what great results could be achieved without having recourse to extensive retouchings, and Raphael carefully studied his frescos. In his exquisite early fresco in San Severo in Perugia he showed that he adhered to these principles. In his famous Vatican frescos he at first partially adhered to the mixed method: besides moderate retouching in the usual manner, he prepared by a coat of red in fresco for painting blue in distemper ; but when he executed the noble picture of the School of Athens, he evidently desired to get rid of this old system, and he painted the blues without preparation on the damp intonaco. It was well known from an early period of the art that ultramarine resisted the caustic action of lime. Whatever the blue which Raphael used on this occasion, it has faded more than the other colours in the picture, which is there fore now out of harmony, and his experiment so far failed. At other times the contrary result is observable. In the Aurora by Guido it is the other colours which have faded, and the blues are now too strong, showing that ultramarine if carefully prepared stands better than other colours. Guercino is the artist who has introduced blue in pure fresco with most technical skill, and consequently his works re tain a harmony which is very rare. Raphael evidently aimed at pure fresco-painting, but may have been dis satisfied with the results ; for he allowed the greatest lati tude to his pupils, who employed distemper and apparently other vehicles copiously, when executing portions of their master s works. When he died, charged as they were with the completion of the Stanze, and provided with his designs, they at once commenced on one of the walls of the Hall of Constantino to paint in oil, as if they had been converted by their master s rival Sebastian del Piombo. Such was the admiration excited by these works that Cardinal Dovizza da Bibbiena wrote, &quot; The pupils of Raphael have executed a specimen of a figure in oil on the wall, which was a beautiful work of art, so much so that no one would look at the rooms painted in fresco by Raphael.&quot; These were idle discussions and idle experiments; each branch of art has its field of operation, and it ia to bo re-