7 Metaphors for frescoing

Fresco was essentially the Florentine vehicle of expression.

This vast fresco is nearly seventy feet in height, painted upon the wall at the end of the chapel, as an altar-piece.

The frescoes and panel-work were a study by themselves, uniting the classic and modern styles in allegorical subjects.

Round these great men are grouped a host of secondary but distinguished paintersPalma with his golden-haired large-bosomed sirens; idyllic Bonifazio; dramatic Pordenone, whose frescoes are all motion and excitement; Paris Bordone, who mingled on his canvas cream and mulberry juice and sunbeams; the Robusti, the Caliari, the Bassani, and others whom it would be tedious to mention.

The frescoes of Signorelli, the bas-reliefs of the Pisani, the statuary of Lo Scalza and Mosca, the tarsia of the choir stalls, the Alexandrine work and mosaics of the façade, the bronzes placed upon its brackets, and the wrought acanthus scrolls of its superb pilastersthese are the objects for inexhaustible wonder in the cathedral of Orvieto.

The two frescoes on the east wall are now poor pictures by very inferior masters; but the twelve Scripture histories and Botticelli's twenty-eight Popes remain from the last years of the fifteenth century.

The fine fresco by Mainardi, in the Baroncelli Chapel, is an instance; and I must cite one yet finer, that by Ghirlandajo in the choir of S. Maria-Novella: in this last-mentioned example, the Virgin stands erect in star-bespangled drapery and closely veiled.

7 Metaphors for  frescoing