Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume VII.djvu/497

 FKESCO PAINTING breaking the tablets has been greatly extolled. The Zuccheri, Andrea del Sarto, Sebastian del Piombo, Vasari, and nearly every other distin- guished painter of the age, practised fresco painting, and sometimes on the most extensive scale; but the art rapidly deteriorated until toward the close of the century, when the Car- racci, Domenichino, Guido, and other painters of the eclectic school, restored somewhat of its former vitality. Their efforts, however, were but transient, and after the middle of the lYth century, with a few exceptions, no work in fresco of more than moderate merit was executed in Italy. No mention has been made of the great Venetian painters, because they seldom attempted fresco, except on the facades and exteriors of buildings, but developed their genius in oil painting. The present century has witnessed a revival of fresco painting in various countries of Europe, more particularly in Germany, where, with the exception of a few rude mural decorations in some of the older cathedrals, the art seems never previously to have been practised. The movement was due to the enthusiasm of a number of young German artists established in Rome at the commencement of the century, whose first works were executed in the house of the con- sul general of Prussia, M. Bartholdy, and in the villa Massimi. In these efforts Cornelius, Overbeck, Schnorr, Schadow, Veit, Koch, and others participated, and Overbeck subsequent- ly painted the "Vision of St. Francis" in the church of the Angeli at Assisi, in the neighborhood of the place where more than five centuries before Cimabue and Giotto had executed their first frescoes. Overbeck and a portion of the new school attempted to re- establish the sentimental or ascetic art of the early Italian masters, while others sought to create at once what they considered a na- tional Teutonic school of painting. They were hailed throughout Germany as the regenerators of art, and King Louis of Bavaria invited Cor- nelius to Munich to decorate the Glyptothek and Pinakothek, as the galleries of sculpture and paintings in that city are called. Under the influence of this master a school of fres- co painting sprang up in Munich, numbering among its pupils Kaulbach, Zimmermann, Hess, and many others, whose works cover the walls of the basilica of St. Boniface, the Konigs- bau, the Festbau, the Allerheiligen-Kapelle, and other buildings. In the Ludwigskirche is executed Cornelius's largest fresco, the " Last Judgment." In the new museum, the royal palace, and elsewhere in Berlin, are also grand specimens by Cornelius, Kaulbach, Schnorr, and others. Mural decorations made little progress in France until the present century ; but during the second empire many churches in Paris were embellished by Amaury-Duval, Motez, Bremond, and others. The most celebrated mural painting in Paris, Delaroche's " Hemicy- cle " in the palais des beaux arts, is painted in oil, although it is commonly called a fresco, and FRESENIUS 485 has all the breadth and freedom of that method. The erection of the new houses of parliament gave the first decided impulse to fresco paint- ing in England, and in response to an invita- tion from a select committee of the British parliament the principal artists sent to exhibi- tions held in Westminster hall in 1843-'5 car- toons and specimens of fresco for the decora- tion of the building. Some of these designs, comprising abstract representations of religion, justice, &c., and passages from British history and mythology, were subsequently executed by Cope, Dyce, Ward, Maclise, Herbert, Watts, and others. A summer pavilion in the gardens of Buckingham palace, the hall of Lincoln's Inn, and several churches in London have also been painted with frescoes. With respect to all frescoes, painted according to the method of the best Italian masters, it may generally be observed that in the climate of northern Europe they are soon affected by cold and dampness. Those in Munich executed on the exteriors of buildings are rapidly falling to pieces, and a simi- lar fate has overtaken many in the British houses of parliament. The latter may in fact be considered a failure, both on account of the dampness and imperfect light of the building, and of the apparent inability of English artists to master the technical processes of fresco painting. In the opinion of eminent native ar- tists the process is unsuited to the genius of the English school, and no completed works in fresco exist in England equal to those by the same painters executed in oil. The paintings executed according to the new stereochrome process, above described, are apparently more durable than the ~buon fresco, but it is impos- sible to conjecture how long they may remain in good condition. Fresco painting has made little progress in America. The only examples of the process worthy of mention are to be found in the national capital at Washington, and they are of little artistic value. FRESENIUS, Karl Remigins, a German chem- ist, born in Frankfort, Dec. 28, 1818. He completed his studies at Bonn and at Giessen under Liebig, whose assistant he became. In 1845 he was appointed professor of chem- istry, physical science, and technology at the agricultural institute in Wiesbaden, where he founded a chemical laboratory, which has ac- quired great celebrity, and to which a phar- maceutic school was added in 1862. In the same year he founded at Brunswick Die Zeit- schrift fur analytische CJiemie. He is a high authority on analytical chemistry, and has pub- lished a valuable series of works relating to the mineral springs of Wiesbaden, and of other German watering places. His principal works are Anleitung eur qualitativen chemischen Ana- lyse (Bonn, 1841 ; 13th ed., 1870), and Anlei- tung zur quantitative?!, chemischen Analyse (Brunswick, 1846 ; 2d ed., 1866 ; English trans- lation, " System of Instruction in Quantitative Chemical Analysis," edited by S. W. Johnson, New York, 1869).