Frescoes Defined

Guess My Weight. . .

     I have been asked on numerous occasions, “Are these pieces painted on slate?”, or “This looks like it weighs a ton. Is it stone?” Many years ago a story had circulated in New Orleans' historic French Quarter that a woman once saw me drop one of my ‘granite’ pieces from a second-story balcony onto the street below to achieve the aged effect of my work. This was just lore; however, I loved the publicity.

     My canvas consists of a plaster, lime and gypsum rock compound, which is much lighter in weight than the appearance I create. For instance, a 4ft. x 4ft. fresco weighs approximately 50 pounds, and the majority of my other work is smaller and weighs anywhere from 5 to 30 pounds. The end result is an art piece that looks like it weighs a ton, yet is actually very manageable to handle and easy to display.

                                                                           Steve Bogdanoff

Fresco, the buon fresco of the Renaissance, is the art of painting on freshly-spread moist lime plaster with pigments suspended in a water vehicle. Archaeologists have studied frescoes to learn about the daily lives and customs of people from past civilizations.

Many ancient frescoes were not fresco by true definition. The artists actually applied paint to the plaster after it had dried. This is known as fresco secco. The artist added a lime mixture or albumen (an organic binding agent) to the pigment, which allowed it to adhere to the dried plaster. Colors generally used were black (carbonaceous shale), white (hydrate of lime), red (haematite), yellow (ochre), blue (silicate of copper), and green (blue and yellow mixes).

For simplicity sake, 'fresco' and 'frescoes' are used in the text regardless of whether the methods referenced are buon fresco or fresco secco.