fresco

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  Fresco: The Industrial Arts of War
• WordNet 3.6
  • v fresco paint onto wet plaster on a wall
  • n fresco a durable method of painting on a wall by using watercolors on wet plaster
  • n fresco a mural done with watercolors on wet plaster
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Additional illustrations & photos:

Fresco: The Industrial Arts of Peace

Cupid: From a Fresco

Dining al fresco

• Interesting fact: High-wire acts have been enjoyed since the time of the ancient Greeks and Romans. Antique medals have been excavated from Greek islands depicting men ascending inclined cords and walking across ropes stretched between cliffs. The Greeks called these high-wire performers neurobates or oribates. In the Roman city of Herculaneum there is a fresco representing an aerialist high on a rope, dancing and playing a flute. Sometimes Roman tightrope walkers stretched cables between the tops of two neighboring hills and performed comic dances and pantomimes while crossing.
• • Fresco A cool, refreshing state of the air; duskiness; coolness; shade.
  • Fresco (Fine Arts) A painting on plaster in either of senses and .
  • Fresco (Fine Arts) In modern parlance, incorrectly applied to painting on plaster in any manner.
  • Fresco (Fine Arts) The art of painting on freshly spread plaster, before it dries.
  • v. t Fresco To paint in fresco, as walls.
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• • n fresco Coolness; a cool, refreshing state of the air; shade. See al fresco.
  • n fresco A method of painting on walls covered with a ground or coat of plaster or mortar, with which the colors become permanently incorporated if properly chosen and applied; also, a picture or design so painted. True fresco (Italian buon fresco) is painting in colors mixed with water or hydrate of lime upon a wet surface of mortar made of lime and pure quartz-sand. In this method earth pigments are chiefly used, because all vegetable and many mineral pigments are decomposed by lime or altered by light. The solidity of the painting depends upon the penetration of the colors into the plaster or mortar, and upon the crystalline layer which forms upon its surface before the mortar has set, as it does in a few hours through the absorption of carbonic acid from the atmosphere. If this crystalline layer is disturbed, or if it has begun to form while the artist is painting, or if it forms between the thinner and thicker coats of color successively applied, the colors will flake and fall away. Dry fresco (Italian fresco secco) is a method of fresco-painting upon a dry surface. The last coat of plaster, or intonaco, when perfectly dry, is rubbed with pumice-stone, and well wetted with water and a little lime the evening before painting, and again immediately before the artist begins work. The first step in this process is to pounce the outline of the design upon the wall. The phrase fresco secco is applied also to retouching in distemper. The implements used by fresco-painters include wooden and glass floats, trowels of wood and iron, palette-knives of steel and bone, a trimming-knife, a bone or ivory stylus, and brushes of hog-bristles and other hair, of such quality as to be neither curled nor burned by lime. Compare distemper.
  • fresco To paint in fresco, as a wall.
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• • n Fresco fres′kō a painting executed with colours, consisting chiefly of natural earths, upon walls covered with damp freshly-laid plaster
  • v.t Fresco to paint in fresco:—pr.p. fres′cōing; pa.p. fres′cōed
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