Submitted by the staff of the Orillia Museum of Art & History (OMAH)
Fresco painting is a technique of mural painting where the artist applies a powdered pigment to wet lime-based plaster. With this technique, the pigment penetrates the wet plaster and the painting becomes embedded into the surface it is painted on.
Some of the earliest examples of fresco painting are dated as early as 2000 BCE, and can be found around the world in places such as Greece, Egypt, India and Sri Lanka. However, the fresco painting technique became widely used in Italy between 1200-1300, so much so that the word fresco comes from the Italian adjective meaning fresh.
Between 1303 to 1305, Italian artist, Giotto, completed his work on the Scrovegni Chapel located in Padua, Italy. With frescoes on the walls and ceiling, Giotto was amongst the first artists to paint people in a natural, not stylized way which would influence other fresco artists leading into the next century.
Fresco painting reached its peak during the Italian Renaissance roughly between 1400-1550. From that time period came important frescoes such as Michelangelo’s ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (1508-1512) and Raphael’s School of Athens (1509-1511), both in the Vatican City, Rome, Italy.
This fresco, entitled Studio Uno (Study One), 8”x8”, 2024, was created by Jeanette Luchese, a first generation Italian-Canadian visual artist and honours graduate of the School of Design and Visual Art at Georgian College in Barrie.
She used aged (10 year) lime putty, sand, marble plaster, and earth pigments, which parallel the traditional Italian fresco painting process. This artwork is directly inspired by two trips Jeanette took to Italy in 2013 and 2019 to see the Giotto’s Scrovegni Chapel.
In creating these unique contemporary abstract frescoes, Jeanette hopes to raise awareness to this ancient process through the contemporary lens of abstraction.
