Art Glossary
Fresco /FRESS-koh/
Fresco is a mural painting technique in which pigments are applied to fresh, wet lime plaster, so that as the plaster dries the colours become chemically bound into the wall itself.
Fresco — Italian for 'fresh' — is the great technique of wall painting. In true fresco (buon fresco) the artist works on a final layer of wet lime plaster called the intonaco, applying pigments ground only in water. As the plaster carbonates and dries, a crystalline skin of calcium carbonate forms over the colour, locking the pigment permanently into the wall. The result is exceptionally durable: the painting is not a film on the surface but part of the substance of the wall.
The method imposes a strict discipline. The plaster stays workable for only a day, so the painter must lay just as much intonaco as can be finished in that session — each patch is called a giornata, an Italian 'day's work', and the seams between giornate can often be traced in the finished mural. There is no real reworking: a mistake means chiselling out the plaster and starting that patch again. This demands complete preparation, with full-scale drawings (cartoons) transferred to the wall before painting begins.
Fresco was the dominant medium for monumental painting in Italy from the late Middle Ages through the Renaissance. Giotto's chapels, Masaccio's revolution in perspective, Michelangelo's Sistine ceiling and Raphael's Vatican rooms are all frescoes — works whose vast ambition the technique made possible and whose permanence has carried them to us.
A related, less permanent method, fresco secco, paints onto dry plaster with a binder; it is easier but far less durable. To appreciate a fresco, consider that its colours are not on the wall but in it — which is why, when they survive, they survive for centuries.
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Frequently asked
What is fresco painting?
Fresco is a mural technique in which water-ground pigments are applied to fresh wet lime plaster, binding chemically into the wall as it dries for great durability.
What is the difference between buon fresco and fresco secco?
Buon fresco paints into wet plaster so the colour binds into the wall; fresco secco paints onto dry plaster with a binder, which is easier but far less permanent.