materials
Buon Fresco
Painting into wet plaster so the pigment fuses with the wall as it dries—the dominant monumental wall technique from the Renaissance through the eighteenth century.
What it actually is
The plaster (intonaco) is applied in a giornata, a day's section, and the painter has to finish that section while the surface is still wet. Pigment bound in water sinks into the plaster and becomes part of the wall chemically. The technique rewards speed and certainty. It punishes revision—a failed giornata has to be chiseled out and re-plastered. Michelangelo, Raphael, and Tiepolo all worked in buon fresco. Secco, the alternative, paints over dry plaster and is easier to revise but less durable.
Painters who used this
Related techniques
Lead-White Highlights
Reliance on lead white (flake white) for luminous, long-lasting highlights, especially on skin and metal.
Scumbling for Atmosphere
Thin, dry applications of lighter paint over a darker one to generate dust, smoke, haze, or distance.
Limited Palette
Working from a deliberately restricted set of pigments—four or five colors—on the belief that constraint sharpens color decisions.
Tinted Ground
A canvas preparation that is deliberately not white—a brownish, grayish, or warm-toned priming layer baked into the support before painting begins.
No-Medium Direct Oil
Painting in pure oil color straight from the tube, without linseed, turpentine, or glaze medium—a refusal of the thin-layered academic approach.
Tempera Grassa
A hybrid egg-and-oil emulsion paint that combines the matte, luminous quickness of egg tempera with the flexibility and depth of oil.