What is a fresco?

Today you can meet a lot of proposals from different companies for the production of digital frescoes, flexible plaster, etc. Let's find out what a fresco is.

The word "fresco" in Italian means "painting on damp plaster". This is an ancient technique of wall painting, in which paints are applied to wet plaster. And the plaster or gesso, as it is called by specialists, is not at all like the usual decoration of walls. To make a fresco a mixture of sand with hydrated lime is used. As the paints use natural pigments, diluted with water.

Technique of fresco


Paints that are applied to moist lime, dried up with it, are covered with a transparent thin calcium film, which permanently protects the painting on a fresco . But if the paints are applied to the drying lime coating, then such a strong film will not work, and the paints may crumble.

The artist, who works in the technique of fresco, must be a real master of his craft, because you can not remodel or complete the drawing. Only in extreme cases, to repair a fragment of a dried fresco, a layer of lime is completely lost, a new one is applied and the process is repeated. Therefore, to create a fresco, a moist lime layer is applied over a small area: exactly enough so that the wet weight does not have time to dry out, and the master managed to apply the pattern for one day.

What is a fresco in history?

The technique of fresco is inherent in many monuments of monumental painting. It appeared in ancient times. The owners of the villas decorated the walls with paintings and mosaics. Today the Pompeian style of wall fresco painting, which arose in ancient times, is known. The highest flourishing technique of the fresco was in the Renaissance, when decorating the walls with frescoes became very fashionable, the interior of the premises became more and more magnificent and luxurious due to this. In the famous bedroom in the palace of the Duke of Mantua, Louis Gonzaga, the walls are decorated with frescoes from the life of the owners of the house. The great Italian masters of that time - Raphael, Michelangelo, Masaccio and others - created unique frescoes that have survived to this day.

During the Renaissance, the riches and luxury of the palaces of the nobility were achieved thanks to fresco painting.

Bright examples of Old Russian frescoes are on the walls of Svetogorsk Monastery, located near Pskov, and Ferapontov Monastery near the city of Kirillov.

Today you can admire the example of Byzantine fresco painting adorning the walls in the church of Santa Maria in Rome.

The art of wall painting has gradually been more and more perfected and has come down to our days. There were new types of paints, the methods of transferring drawings to the wall changed. Today, it is almost impossible to find all those natural materials that were used in the past. For example, a special lime for a fresco should be extinguished for decades. So now the fresco is an image on the wall with the help of acrylic paints or modern digital printing.

Decorating a modern interior, many designers use frescoes to create an original design of a country house , a city apartment or other public premises. An experienced master, using modern colors and technologies for applying them to the surface, can create a real masterpiece, a unique author's work of art. The cost of such work, of course, will be high.

If you are not ready for such expenses, and decorate the room unusually still want to, use a modern type of wall decoration - digital or printed frescoes. Such an image can be large, according to the size of the wall. And sometimes the fresco consists of small fragments, located in different places of one room.

Fresco, as one of the types of wall decoration, is able to create a unique individual interior of any room.