Transcription
[Music] when you want to work on a wall that is the sweetest, the vaguest, work that first has lime and sand, mix them well, both of them. And if the lime is very fatty and fresh, it requires two parts sand, one third part lime. When you want to enamel, first sweep the wall well and wet it well, it cannot be too wet. And take your well-mixed lime with a trowel, with a trowel, and enamel it first once or twice, so that the plaster comes on the wall smoothly. Then when you want to work, first have the intention of making this enamel well-textured and a little rough. Then according to the story or figure that you have to make, if the plaster is dry, remove the charcoal and draw and compose and gather well every measure of yours, first beating some thread, taking the middle of the spaces. Then take a little sinopia without tempera and with a fine pointed brush, draw noses, eyes, hair, and all extremities and outlines of figures, and make sure these figures are well proportioned with every measure. Because these make you know and provide for the figures you have to color. Then first make your friezes or other things you want to do around, and as it suits you, take from the aforementioned lime, well-mixed with a hoe and with a trowel, in order, so that it looks like a [Music] fragment. The piece with which we open this episode is taken from the book "The Art" by Cennino Cennini, one of the most famous medieval treatises for the late Middle Ages. Cennino Cennini writes a treatise aimed at informing, at guiding the reader by the hand to learn the technique of drawing and painting techniques. Here we are at Santa Maria Antiqua, the Sistine Chapel of medieval painting, inside the Roman Forum. Here, nine pictorial phases unfold on the walls of the church, leading from the sixth century to the ninth century. What better place to start talking about the execution procedures of medieval painting? [Music] Medieval wall paintings developed over a chronological span of 10 centuries, from the fourth to the thirteenth, and used different techniques: fresco, lime paintings, and also with organic binders. These techniques can coexist within the same pictorial cycle or be distinct. Fresco uses pigments dissolved in water without other substances, which are applied to a plaster that must still be wet. The colors are fixed to the plaster through the process of carbonation, which consists of the transformation of lime into calcium carbonate, which fixes the colors onto the plaster surface. Lime painting, on the other hand, equally widespread in the Middle Ages and transmitted by sources such as Theophilus, a Romanesque-era source, uses pigments dissolved in lime milk. With this technique, fresco paintings made on large expanses of plaster can be completed, or one can paint on dry plaster with the technique of lime painting. Here we are in the presbytery of Santa Maria Antiqua, where the painters of Giovanni, between 705 and 707, painted using fresco bases, on which they intervened to define the images, and in particular the faces, with the technique of lime painting. Therefore, these two techniques, fresco and lime painting, naturally coexist in early medieval wall paintings. [Music] I liked the idea of living in contact with works of art and interacting with them. It wasn't easy for me to get into this school; I had to take the entrance exam three times until two years ago I managed to win the competition, and I am one of the five students who are part of the 69th Course. And when I restore, well, certainly my passion, so I feel a sense of peace, but at the same time it is also a responsibility. I believe the most difficult thing for a restorer is having to manage many different situations at the same time, so for example, having to take into account a work of art in its context and as a whole, but at the same time always keeping control of the smallest detail, and therefore having it constantly close but at the same time [Music] far away. I chose restoration because, besides being in love with all our cultural heritage, restoration is the activity that, in my opinion, allows us to be in direct contact with beauty, and therefore for me, it is also the moment when I feel truly part of beauty and am able to preserve it. The work of restoration is not something purely local that concerns only our cultural heritage or your cultural heritage, but it is something that requires international experience to find a connection, for example, in Japan, in China. Perhaps we have different ideas of restoration. In Italy, we find more Western, more European experience, which also concerns different materials. So it is precisely in trying to connect these different experiences that we could ultimately unify all the experiences of the whole [Music] world. The techniques for preparing the support to create a fresco are almost the same as many years ago. The material used was coarse-grained sand, lime, fine-grained sand, properly sifted, and slaked lime putty. The preparation of the support is carried out in three phases. The first is the application of the "arriccio," composed of coarse-grained sand and slaked lime. Subsequently, the "tonachino" is made with very, very fine sand and slaked lime putty. The third phase is called "velo" (veil), as it is a truly thin application of slaked lime putty, very, very diluted in water. Let's now prepare [Applause] We will add some [Music] slaked lime. At this point, we will add [Music] water. We will have to work this mixture well so that it is homogeneous. We are now wetting the part of the wall we want to fresco. In this case, for simplicity, we have used a tile. [Music] [Music] In this phase, called "arriccio," the master would create his preparatory drawing, called "sinopia," made with red earth, so called because it comes from Sinope, a city in Turkey. Then he takes a small, pointed bristle brush with a little ochre without liquid tempera like water, and he draws and sketches your figures, shading as you would have done with watercolor when you learned to draw. Then take a bunch of pens and sweep away the charcoal drawing well. Then take a little sinopia without tempera and with a fine pointed brush, draw noses, eyes, hair, and all extremities and figures, and make sure these figures are well proportioned with every measure. Because these make you know and provide for the figures you have to color. Then consider within yourself how much you can work in a day, because what you enamel, you must finish that day. It is true that sometimes it is possible to work in damp conditions on a stone wall; sometimes the fresh enamel holds up for the day. But if you can, do not delay, because working in fresco, that is, on that day, is the strongest and best tempera, the most enjoyable work that is done. Wall paintings are the decorative clothing of architectural structures, and they establish an indissoluble relationship with them, which occurs through the preparation and preparation of the wall with preparatory layers that receive the pictorial surfaces. Cennino Cennini tells us how to prepare the support and how to prepare the preparatory layers. He begins by saying to clean the wall, sweep it well, and wet it so that the subsequent layers can adhere well. Then the "rinzaffo" is applied where necessary to make the surface to be painted planar, and then the preparatory layers, which are three: the "arriccio," with coarser characteristics and a rough surface, the "intonaco," and the "intonaco" which is thinner, made with lime and inorganic aggregates. This stratification is an ideal stratification. Very often, by analyzing medieval wall paintings, we realize that not all the layers described by Cennino Cennini are always present. At Santa Maria Antiqua, for example, in the stratification of the palimpsest, the succession of paintings occurs with one layer of mortar or two layers. In other cases, we find the presence of the "arricciamento" applied unevenly beneath a layer of plaster. The preparation of the preparatory layers is a fundamental moment. It is also a fundamental moment because it accommodates the first phase of image design. It is precisely on the "arriccio" that the sinopia is actually painted, that is, the first preparatory drawing made with earth ochres, and in particular with the earth of Sinope, which defines the sketch, defines the general scheme, the general project of the wall painting. It is therefore a painting that allows, through a quick sketch or elements of greater detail made not only with a brush but also with tools like a plumb line and string battens, to define the relationship between figure and background and more generally the composition on that wall. The sinopia is also the only pictorial element that remains visible as one proceeds with the application of plaster in "giornate" or "pontate." The sinopia is not the definitive preparatory drawing on which the master would create the fresco with pigments, but it is a preparatory drawing that remains on the base of the "arriccio," which will then be subsequently covered by the "tonachino" as the master proceeds with the creation of the fresco. Precisely for this reason, because the sinopia was made on the "arriccio," it has often been found following detachments of [Music] frescoes. Now I will show you how the sinopia was made. h [Music] Now we will proceed to the second phase of preparation, the so-called "tonachino." [Music] We will use finely [Music] sifted sand and slaked lime putty. [Music] We will have to create a very smooth surface. We will now apply a layer of "tonachino" to our "arriccio" and cover the [Music] sinopia. We will cover the entire surface of the "arriccio" of this sample. We have thus created the "tonachino," which will be smoothed and [Music] polished. At this point, we will proceed to the third phase of preparation, the so-called "velo" (veil). We will use slaked lime putty, very [Music] diluted, precisely because this phase should be simply a glaze that will allow the underlying surface to be seen. [Music] This last phase is extremely delicate. The preparation must result in a very [Music] smooth surface. At this point, the master can transfer his drawing onto this surface using the pouncing technique and finally dedicate himself to the creation of his work. [Music] Autoptic observation by expert eyes and visible light imaging certainly constitute the first and fundamental step in the study of a parietal work. Diffuse light imaging allows us to document the original color scheme of the work and its composition. However, to obtain additional information about the work itself of an archaeometric nature, therefore on the execution technique, and diagnostic, therefore on its state of conservation, the imaging methods can be modified and the images can be enlarged more and more, as in the case of macrophotography, microphotography, and digital microscopy. In this way, enlargements of very small portions of the work are obtained, which would otherwise escape the human eye, which is unable to distinguish distances greater than one-fifth of a millimeter. Another technique that allows the study of parietal works is observation in raking light. This is done by illuminating the area of interest from only one side using a collimated beam of light with lenses. In this way, a strongly chiaroscuro and almost unrecognizable image compared to the visible is generated, which highlights the individual asperities and unevenness of the substrate. An example in which this study method has been applied is in the work of the painter Onufri in the fortress of Berat. It was thus possible to observe the state of conservation of the master's works and to evaluate the presence of more or less superficial fractures and detachments, but above all, we obtained additional information about his execution technique. In fact, the artist applied the plaster with his hands, so much so that the marks of his fingers can be followed. It was possible to observe the divisions of the fine "giornate" and to observe how, with touches of body color applied dry, he rendered in detail the three-dimensionality and decorative richness of the clothing of the depicted characters, and it was thus possible to retrace the executive genesis of the work. On the wall, instead, fill the drapery with ochre, having added a little lime to give it shine, and make the shadows with simple red, or with prasine green, or with green posuit. The same ochre and green create the membrane color. On the wall, it was mixed with ochre, cinnabar, and lime, and made as above. Its green posk, the pink, and the highlights. When drawing figures and other images on a dry wall, spray it immediately with water so that it is well wet, and on the same wet surface, apply all the colors that must be placed under the others, which must all be mixed with lime and allowed to dry with the wall so that they adhere. The layer of plaster that receives the pictorial film is applied in portions. These portions vary in size and can be "pontate" or "giornate." "Pontate" are large portions of plaster that usually correspond to the width of the wall to be painted and the height of the scaffolding on which the painters were working. On large "pontate," large plaster applications, painting was done when the plaster was wet, but also while it was drying, so one had to paint quickly using colors tempered in water, i.e., in fresco, and then finish with lime painting, as described by Theophilus at the beginning of the 12th century. One could also paint "a secco" (dry) on layers of "scialbo," i.e., very thin layers of plaster, on which one painted exclusively "a secco" with colors tempered in lime or organic binders. Here at Santa Maria Antiqua, this type of plaster application is present on this wall, where between two paintings made with plaster, an intermediate phase painted "a secco" is interposed, and these are the darker frames bordered in white that we can see on this wall. From the end of the 200s, the way of applying plaster changes. One proceeds by "giornate," i.e., by smaller portions that correspond to a part of a figure, or an entire figure, or well-defined details. On these smaller plaster portions, one could more easily work "a fresco," and one had more time to finish with the lime painting. We are at the detached seat of Matera of the Higher Institute for Conservation and Restoration. The institute is a research and training institute founded more than 80 years ago in Rome by Cesare Brandi and Giulio Carlo Argan to train future restorers and to conduct research in the field of restoration. Therefore, the institute is the oldest training institute for restorers, and we chose Matera because Matera is a city that for many years now has been developing its role as a cultural capital, and last year it was also the European Capital of [Music] Culture. We are inside the art restoration laboratory, which includes works in plaster, stucco, mosaics, and wall paintings, the so-called architectural surfaces. In this laboratory, we have the opportunity to deepen, first of all, the traditional techniques and the constituent materials of the works. In this case, we see examples created by the students themselves of reproductions of Byzantine paintings from the medieval period, as often found in this Lucanian area. Techniques applied to facades, the so-called sgraffito, which includes two tonal layers and then a graphic operation to highlight the ornamental motif, and then even a technique that perfectly imitates the Pompeian technique, following the suggestions given by Vitruvius. The study of techniques and constituent materials allows students to apply what they have already had the opportunity to study during theoretical lessons in materials chemistry, physics, and also the study of sources, and to acquire a certain manual skill that will allow them to become more at ease in conservative intervention as well. [Music] What are the main phases for the creation of a medieval wall painting? Now we must delve into the execution procedure and understand how the drawing is transferred to the plaster, moving from the small-format model to the creation of the preparatory drawing, and this will be the topic of the next episode. [Music] of [Music]