01 October 2012

Fresques bis

Here are three more photos of the wall art in the church in Saint-Aignan-sur-Cher. Enhanced, of course. And frescos, only maybe. I think I'm nerdy enough to enjoy using Photoshop, but not nerdy enough to enjoy figuring out what the differences are when it comes to frescos, murals, wall paintings, and ... well, tags.




I'll be moving on now. But the artwork in the church at Saint-Aignan will probably just stay there — for another thousand years, I hope. If you like such art, there are fantastic examples at Saint-Savin-sur-Gartempe (86), and pretty good ones in the Prieuré Saint-Laurent in Palluau-sur-Indre (36). I'm told that another place to see in this connection is the church in Lavardin (41), on the Loir River not far from Vendôme and Montoire-sur-le-Loir, a ways north of Amboise and Blois.

14 comments:

  1. Thanks for a fascinating series of posts, Ken.

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  2. Tim, I read in another guidebook that there are both wall paintings and frescos in the church here, some from one century, others from another.

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  3. Thanks so much for all of these, Ken. Great to see!
    Judy

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  4. My mistake to name St Lazarre the priory in Palluau instead of St Laurent. On the bright side, I had more than half the letters right!

    Now, some more nit-picking. Carolyn said she found information about ‘fresco secco’ which means painted on dry plaster with, I assume, water based colors. So, it seems you can paint ‘a fresco’ on ‘secco’ as well as ‘wetto’ plaster. Then, my question is what medium did the artists use for their imagery to be called wall painting instead of the equally general term fresco? I’m asking the experts, what is the difference? End of rant.

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  5. CHM, do you think there are any experts here? Hope you feel better.

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  6. Merci, encore, Ken. I've also enjoyed seeing these frescoes which I would have enjoyed more if I had known they were nearby when I visited Blois a few years ago. A well-kept secret that just never came up when I was researching before my trip!

    My replacement decking project has become a replacement exterior stairs project and I just haven't taken time to respond to your beautiful photos before now.

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  7. I'm not an expert but I did share an office with the National Trust Wall Paintings Conservator for 8 years. I had frequent contact with various freelance wall painting conservators, read the NT files on wall paintings, attended meetings where wall paintings were discussed and training courses where their care was detailed.

    I have noticed that in touristic blurb in France the word fresque is used generically, and very often inaccurately. I noticed that our local archaeologist was very careful to point out that the Danse Macabre 'fresque' in the Chapelle de Tous les Saints in Preuilly is not a fresco but a wall painting. That is, it was painted on a dry wall, not on wet plaster.

    My understanding is that true fresco is such a technically demanding and limiting way of working that it doesn't really exist much outside of Italy and Greece. In France, wall paintings are either painted on dry walls or sometimes are a mixture of fresco and secco.

    The term Carolyn found of fresco secco has to be a nonsense unless they mean this hybrid technique.

    You can refer to wall paintings as murals, but professionals tend not to, I think because the nuance is that the word mural is used to indicate something more modern.

    The safest option is to refer to them all as wall paintings unless you are certain of the technique used to create them. Wall painting is the term used by professionals in all except very specific cases, such as true fresco.

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  8. Thank you Susan for your interesting, informative and detailed explanation.

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  9. Well... I'm no expert either... (Ken, you may go about your business... we know you've had enough of our nitpicking about plaster painting!)... but, the term fresco secco is easily found in a simple Google search about fresco technique.

    buon fresco: water-based paint applied in the still wet plaster

    secco fresco: glue or casein-based paint applied on an already dry surface.

    I found this info from numerous sources, and here is just one of them.

    So, this explains why Michelin refers to any of the wall paintings as fresques. Even mural painting on dry surfaces is a type of fresco.

    (Ken, you may return.)

    Judy

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  10. (oh... p.s.... I don't think the French are throwing around the term fresque innacurately-- see above.)

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  11. Yes, thanks Susan. My question is, are there any examples of actual frescos in the technical sense here in the Loire Valley?

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  12. Thanks for the information, Judy. It's interesting to me, linguistically, to see that the French term fresque is used in an extended and figurative sense, beyond the technical meaning of the term. That's a very common linguistic phenomenon, of course. Misnomers abound and proliferate. I've edited my posts slightly to make the terminology more generic.

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  13. Ken, I think that we were (some of us) just putting too much restriction on the term fresco. In any language, it is not restricted to painting into still-wet plaster (as I was originally thinking). In English and Italian, fresco can refer to either wet or dry surface wall painting.... it just needs buon or secco added if one really wants to clarify.

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  14. Do they ever restore the frescoes?

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