The Fresco technique for painting murals is applying water-based paint directly to wet plaster so that the colour becomes a permanent component of the plaster. It originated in Italy around the thirteenth century, and the Renaissance saw the art form reach its pinnacle.

Water-based colours are painted with the fresco technique on freshly laid plaster, typically on wall surfaces. Dry-powder pigments are ground in pure water to create the colours, which then dry and set with the plaster to become an indelible part of the wall. Fresco painting lends itself to a colossal style, is robust, and has a matte surface, making it perfect for creating murals.

The following steps make up the most robust method, fresco. A wall is troweled with three successive coats of properly prepared plaster, sand, and occasionally marble dust. The first two rough coats are applied, and each is given time to dry (dry and harden).

While waiting, the artist copies the design's outlines from a trace of the full-scale cartoon (preparatory drawing) of the image to be painted onto the wall. The remaining wall that can be painted in a single session receives the final, smooth coat (intonaco) of plaster. This area's boundaries are precisely defined along contour lines so that the seams or edges of each succeeding piece of new plastering remain invisible. These are referred to as giornate, or "a day's work."

The tracing is then carefully aligned with the nearby painted wall segments while being held up against the fresh intonaco, and its pertinent curves and internal lines are traced onto the new plaster; The important contours and inner lines of the tracing are then carefully traced onto the fresh plaster while it is held up against the fresh intonaco and carefully aligned with the nearby painted wall parts. This crude but accurate drawing serves as a guide for painting the image in colour. A well made intonaco will retain its wetness for several hours. Painting colours are absorbed into the plaster as they are water-diluted and applied with brushstrokes. As the wall cures and hardens, the pigment particles join the lime and sand particles in being bound or cemented.

Since the colours are a natural part of the wall surface rather than being painted on top of it, they have a great deal of stability and resistance to ageing. The fresco medium places high demands on a painter's technical ability because he must work quickly (while the plaster is still wet) and cannot fix mistakes by overpainting; this must be done on a fresh coat of plaster or by employing the secco method. A technique known as fresco secco, often known as "dry fresco," eliminates the time-consuming preparing of the wall with wet plaster. Instead, limewater is used to soak finished, dry walls before painting them while they are damp. The colours create a surface coating like any other paint rather than penetrating the plaster.

Secco is helpful for retouching authentic frescos and detailed painting.

Although the origins of fresco painting are uncertain, the ancient Romans and Minoans both employed it at Knossos on Crete (at Pompeii). As seen by the works of Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Correggio—who favoured the sotto in su ("from below to above") technique—and many other painters from the late 13th to the mid-16th century, the Italian Renaissance was the great era of fresco painting. The most well-known frescoes are those by Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel and those by Raphael in the Vatican's Stanza. Yet by the middle of the 16th century, oil painting had largely taken the place of fresco.

In the 20th century, Francesco Clemente, Diego Rivera, and other Mexican muralists briefly revived the method.

The intonaco, which is a thin coating of wet, fresh plaster, is painted with a mixture of buon fresco pigment and room-temperature water (after the Italian word for plaster). A binder is not necessary because of the chemical composition of the plaster since the pigment mixed only with water will sink into the intonaco, which acts as the medium holding the pigment. When the wet plaster absorbs the colour, the pigment is fixed in the plaster by a chemical process that occurs when the plaster dries in response to air. The following are the chemical processes:

• Lime kiln calcination of limestone: CaCO3 CaO + CO2
• quicklime slaking: CaO + H2O Ca (OH)
• Ca(OH)2 + CO2 is used to fix lime plaster in step two.

Roman fresco depicting a young man dating to the first century AD, located in Stabiae's Villa di Arianna. For painting a buon fresco, the entire area is covered with a rough undercoat known as the arriccio and let to dry for a few days. Several artists employed a red pigment known as sinopia, which is also used to refer to these under-paintings, to sketch their compositions on this under layer that would never be visible. Other methods for transferring paper drawings to walls were later developed. When a design was done on paper, the main lines were poked over with a point, the paper was held up against the wall, and black dots were produced along the lines by banging a bag of soot (spolvero) against the paper.

The surface would be roughened to improve adherence if the painting were to be applied over an already-existing fresco. The intonaco, which was added to the portion of the wall that was anticipated to be finished that day, was a thinner, smooth coating of fine plaster that was sometimes matched the shapes of the figures or the landscape but more frequently began at the top of the composition. The several day phases may typically be observed in a big fresco by a slight seam that separates one from the next; this area is known as the giornata ("day's work"). Buon frescoes are challenging to construct due of the drying plaster deadline. An ideal painting session would start after one hour and last until two hours before the drying time, allowing the artist seven to nine hours of working time. Plaster typically takes ten to twelve hours to dry. No more buon fresco can be completed once a giornata has dried, and the unpainted intonaco needs to be removed with a tool before beginning again the next day. It might also be essential to replace them later, a secco, if mistakes have been made, or to remove the entire intonaco for that area.

The carbonatation of the lime, which sets the colour in the plaster and ensures the fresco's endurance for future generations, is a crucial step in this procedure. In order to increase the appearance of depth and highlight certain parts over others, Michelangelo and Raphael adopted a method in which they scraped indentations into particular portions of the plaster while it was still wet. By utilising this approach, persons at the School of Athens appear to have eyes that are sunken in and appear deeper and more contemplative. This method was employed by Michelangelo as part of his distinctive "outlining" of the main characters in his frescoes.

There could be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or distinct regions of plaster, in a wall-sized fresco. The giornate, which were initially almost invisible, have occasionally become visible after five centuries, and in many large-scale frescoes, these divides may be seen from the ground. Moreover, a secco painting that frequently covered the giornate border has since come off. The Isaac Master (also known as the Master of the Isaac fresco, and therefore a name used to refer to the unknown master of a particular painting) in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi was one of the first painters in the post-classical era to employ this style. A frescoist is someone who paints fresco.

Giotto's Fresco and the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua are two additional examples of wall art. A significant portion of the picture has been lost because the sky and Maria's blue mantle were painted in secco. On dried plaster, a secco or fresco-secco painting is created (secco meaning "dry" in Italian). Hence, to bond the pigment to the wall, it needs a binding agent like egg (tempera), glue, or oil. It is crucial to distinguish between work done fully in secco on a blank wall and work done over buon fresco, which most authorities agree was typical from the Middle Ages onward.

While a secco work lasts longer with a roughened plaster surface than a real fresco should, bon fresco works are typically more lasting than any secco work done on top of them. The additional a secco work would be done to make adjustments and occasionally to add minor details, but it would also be done because not all colours can be achieved in true fresco because only some pigments are able to function chemically in the extremely alkaline environment of fresh lime-based plaster. Because neither of the two blue pigments that were then available, azurite blue nor lapis lazuli, work well in wet fresco, blue was a particular problem, and skies and blue robes were frequently added as secco.

Modern analytical methods have also made it increasingly evident that artists in the early Italian Renaissance commonly used a secco technique to make use of a wider variety of colours. Most early examples of this art have since completely disappeared, but a complete painting that was done secco on a surface that had been roughened to provide a key for the paint may survive quite well, albeit dampness poses a greater threat to it than to buon fresco. According to the sixteenth-century author Ignazio Pozzo, a third form known as a mezzo-fresco is painted on nearly dry intonaco, solid enough not to take a thumbprint, so that the colour only slightly penetrates the plaster.

By the end of the sixteenth century, artists like Gianbattista Tiepolo and Michelangelo were using this technique to largely replace buon fresco. In a condensed form, this method offered secco work's benefits. Work completed totally a secco had the following three benefits: it was completed more quickly; errors could be remedied; and the colours fluctuated less from when applied to when fully dried compared to wet fresco. The intonaco is laid with a rougher finish for entirely a secco work, let to dry completely, and then typically given a key by rubbing with sand. The artist then continues in a manner similar to how they would on a canvas or wood panel.

History:

It includes Tomb 100, Hierakonpolis, the Naqada II culture, and the first known Egyptian fresco (c. 3500–3200 BCE). Syria's Zimri-Lim Investiture fresco, which was created around 1770 BCE. The Fisherman is a Neo-Palatial-era Minoan Bronze Age fresco from Akrotiri on the Aegean island of Santorini (officially Thera) (c. 1640–1600 BC). The Minoan eruption on the island covered the town of Akrotiri in volcanic ash, which radiocarbon dating places around 1627 BC. This volcanic ash preserved several Minoan frescoes, including this Etruscan fresco of Velia Velcha from the Tomb of Orcus, Tarquinia.

Ancient Near East and Egypt:

The earliest known Egyptian fresco, which dates to roughly 3500–3200 BC, was discovered in Tomb 100 at Hierakonpolis. Several of the themes and patterns included in the fresco are also found in other Naqada II artefacts, like the Gebel el-Arak Knife. The "Master of Animals" scene, a man battling two lions, individual fighting scenes, and Egyptian and foreign boats are all depicted in the video. Many tombs and homes in the ancient Egypt were painted, but those wall decorations are not frescoes. The Investiture of Zimri-Lim (modern Syria), a Mesopotamian fresco from the early 18th century BC.

Aegean civilizations:

The earliest buon fresco paintings were created during the Bronze Age, in the first half of the second millennium BCE, and are found in Aegean civilizations, specifically Minoan art from the island of Crete and surrounding Aegean Sea islands. The Bull-Leaping Fresco, the most well-known of these, portrays a sacred ritual in which participants jump over the backs of huge bulls. The oldest Minoan frescoes still in existence date to the Neo-Palatial Period and are located on the island of Santorini (formerly known as Thera) (c. 1640–1600 BC).

Although several frescoes that resemble these ones have been discovered in other parts of the Mediterranean basin, particularly in Egypt and Morocco, it is unknown where these paintings originally came from. The likelihood that fresco artists from Crete may have been transferred to various regions as part of a commercial exchange brings to the fore the significance of this art form within the society of the time, according to certain art historians. Egyptian wall paintings in tombs, typically created using the a secco style, were the most prevalent type of fresco.

Ancient antiquity:

"Sappho" fresco from Pompeii, around the year 50 CE. Ancient Greece also produced some frescoes, albeit not many of them have remained. A tomb with frescoes from 470 BC was found in June 1968 at Paestum, a Greek colony of the Magna Graecia in southern Italy. This tomb is known as the Tomb of the Diver. These frescoes serve as priceless historical artefacts and portray scenes from ancient Greek life and society. In one, a group of men are seen lounging at a symposia, and in another, a young man is seen leaping into the water. Italy's Tomb of Orcus near Veii has Etruscan frescoes from the 4th century BC on display.

Frescoes from the Thracian Tomb of Kazanlak, around 4th BC. The Tomb of Kazanlak is a UNESCO-protected World Heritage Site because to the ornately decorated Thracian frescoes that date to the 4th century BC.

View of a woman's face in the main chamber of the 4th-century BC Ostrusha mound in Bulgaria. Buon fresco was used to create Roman wall paintings such as the spectacular Villa dei Misteri (1st century BC) in Pompeii's ruins and others at Herculaneum.

Catacombs beneath Rome have been discovered to contain Roman (Christian) frescoes from the first to second century AD, and Byzantine icons have also been discovered in Cyprus, Crete, Ephesus, Cappadocia, and Antioch. Roman frescoes were created by the artist painting the artwork directly into the wall's damp plaster, making the painting a genuine component of the wall made of coloured plaster. The Churches of Göreme also contain a historical collection of Old Christian frescoes.

India:

Ajanta Caves fresco created and painted in the sixth century AD during the Gupta Empire In more than 20 locations across India, priceless ancient and early mediaeval frescoes have been preserved thanks to the enormous number of old rock-cut cave temples. The oldest known frescoes in India are those on the walls and ceilings of the Ajanta Caves, which were painted somewhere between 200 BC and 600. They portray the Jataka tales, which are accounts of the Buddha's past lives as Bodhisattvas. The story episodes are shown one after the other, but not in a straight succession. Since the site was rediscovered in 1819, their identification has been a primary focus of scholarship on the topic.
Many other locations, such as Bagh Caves, Ellora Caves, Sittanavasal, Armamalai Cave, Badami Cave Temples, and others, also include priceless frescoes from the early mediaeval and ancient periods that have been preserved. Tempera technique is one of the methods used to create frescoes. The later Chola paintings were the first Chola artefacts to be found, and they were located in the circumambulatory path of the Brihadisvara Temple in India in 1931. The method used to create these frescos has been uncovered by researchers. The stones were covered with a smooth batter of a limestone combination, which took two to three days to set. Such substantial paintings were created in that brief period using natural organic pigments.

The Chola murals were covered with new paint during the Nayak era. The fervent saivism spirit is evident in the Chola frescos that are buried beneath. They most likely coordinated with Rajaraja Cholan the Great's completion of the temple. The Sheesh Mahal in Ramnagar houses the frescoes in paintings in the Dogra and Pahari styles in its original condition (105 km from Jammu and 35 km west of Udhampur). These wall paintings depict scenes from the Mahabharat and Ramayan epics as well as images of regional lords. Another historical Dogri fresco location is the Rang Mahal in Chamba (Himachal Pradesh), which has wall paintings of scenes from the Radha- Krishna Leela and Draupti Cheer Haran. This is on display at the National Museum in New Delhi in a room known as Chamba Rang Mahal. Frescos were employed to decorate interiors throughout the Mughal era, including dome ceilings and walls.

The Begum Shahi mosque in Lahore has frescoes in the Mughal style.

Syrian monastery's Saint Moses the Abyssinian Frescoes. At Sigiriya, Sri Lanka, are the Sigiriya Frescoes. painted during King Kashyapa I's reign (ruled 477 – 495 AD). The widely held belief is that these are representations of women from the king's royal court who are shown as celestial nymphs who aresprinkling flowers on the people below. They resemble the Gupta art style that can be seen in the Indian Ajanta Caves in several ways. They are, however, significantly more vibrant, bright, and characteristically Sri Lankan. These are the sole examples of ancient secular art that may still be seen today in Sri Lanka.

Fresco lustro is the painting method used on the Sigiriya paintings. It differs slightly from the pure fresco approach in that a light binding agent or adhesive is also used. Because of this, the paintings are more durable, as is evident from the fact that they have endured for more than 1,500 years while being exposed to the elements. Just 19 remain in existence today, and they are situated in a narrow, protected depression 100 metres above ground. However there may be as many as 500 of these frescoes, according to ancient texts.

Middle Ages:

Interior view of the Boyana Church in Sofia, a building on the UNESCO World Heritage List with frescoes that date back to 1259.

Myrrhbearers at Christ's Tomb, Mileeva monastery, Serbia, ca. 1235 The majority of churches and several governmental structures still have frescoed decorations from the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially in Italy. This modification happened at the same time as the liturgical murals' appraisal. [16] As exhibited in the MNAC in Barcelona, which houses a sizable collection of Catalan romanesque art, Romanesque churches in Catalonia were lavishly painted during the 12th and 13th centuries, serving both decorative and instructional purposes—for the illiterate faithful—as can be seen.

Church wall paintings, or kalkmalerier, were also commonly utilised in Denmark during the Middle Ages (first Romanesque, then Gothic), and they may be seen in 600 Danish churches in addition to churches in the southern region of Sweden, which was Danish at the time. In Qasr Amra, the Umayyads' desert castle built in the eighth century in Magotez, you may witness one of the few specimens of Islamic fresco painting.

Early modern Europe: Northern Romania (historical region of Moldova) is home to a dozen painted monasteries that range in period from the second half of the 15th century to the second half of the 16th century and are entirely covered in frescoes on the inside and outside. The monastery foundations at Voroneţ (1487), Arbore (1503), Humor (1530), and Moldoviţa are the most noteworthy (1532). Suceviţa, which was created around 1600, is a late example of a style that had been popular for about 70 years. Some regions of Romania maintained the custom of painted churches into the 19th century, though not to the same degree.

The renowned Italian builder of the 16th century, Andrea Palladio, constructed numerous palaces with unassuming exteriors and beautiful interiors adorned with frescoes. For the Lycée de Meaux, where he had previously studied, Henri Clément Serveau created a number of frescos, including a three by six metre work. At the 1937 Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne (Paris), Pavillon de la Ville de Paris, which is currently housed in the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, he served as the director of the École de fresques at the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts. He completed a fresco in 1954 for the Garches Cité Ouvrière du Laboratoire Débat. In the Musée Carnavalet's Plan des anciennes enceintes de Paris, he also completed mural decorations.

Tsuguharu Foujita, a School of Paris painter, decorated the interior of the Foujita chapel in Reims, which was finished in 1966, with religious motifs. It was recognised as a historical monument by the French government in 1996.

Mexican wall art:

Famous Mexican artists José Clemente Orozco, Fernando Leal, David Siqueiros, and Diego Rivera revived fresco painting in the 20th century. More than any other artist, Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera, and his wife Frida Kahlo helped establish the history and prestige of Mexican fine art. Orozco, Siqueiros, River, and Fernando Leal founded the art style known as Mexican Muralism by drawing inspiration from pre-Columbian Mexico artworks, such as the genuine frescoes at Teotihuacan.

Contemporary:

Since the 1960s, relatively few frescoes have been produced, but there are several notable outliers.

The monochrome artworks of American artist Brice Marden were initially displayed in 1966 at Bykert Gallery in New York and were motivated by frescos and "watching masons plastering stucco walls." Marden used the imagistic characteristics of fresco, although David Novros had been honing the technique for 50 years. American painter and abstract geometric muralist David Novros creates paintings. Soon after buying the building in 1968, Donald Judd commissioned Novros to make a piece for 101 Spring Street in New York, NY.

By "first drawing a full-scale cartoon, which he transferred to the wet plaster using the classic pouncing technique," or the act of moving powdered colour onto the plaster through minute perforations in a cartoon, Novros used mediaeval techniques to create the mural. [26] Novros valued the fresco's surface unity because the colour he employed fused with the setting plaster and became into a part of the wall rather than a surface coating. Novros's first genuine fresco, which was created specifically for this location, was restored by the artist in 2013.

James Hyde, an American painter, debuted his frescoes in 1985 at Thompkins Square Park's Esther Rand Gallery. At the time, Hyde was arranging small cast concrete panels in true fresco technique. James Hyde, an American painter, debuted his frescoes in 1985 at Thompkins Square Park's Esther Rand Gallery. On little cast concrete panels that were set on the wall at the time, Hyde was utilising the genuine fresco technique. Hyde experimented with a variety of firm supports for the fresco plaster throughout the course of the following ten years, including composite board and plate glass. Hyde made his genuine fresco application debut in 1991 at the John Good Gallery in New York City on a huge block of Styrofoam. The sculpture "objectifies some of the specific aspects that have made modern paintings artistic," according to Holland Cotter of the New York Times.