iLia Anossov and his team of 3 assistants went to Diegueno Country School recently in San Diego to bring a full day of learning and practical experience of the most ancient of arts to 24 7th grade students. Studying the Italian Renaissance, the teachers decided to give their class a taste of actual experience of what it might have been like to be an artist in those times and to work with the materials and tools of the masters like Michelangelo and Raphael.
Beginning at the start of the school day, iLia started with a brief history of fresco, explaining that the first frescos are the cave paintings of primitive man. Not knowing that they were creating something that would last for centuries, man picked up colored stones and rocks and used them to draw on the wet limestone cave walls. Some intricate and highly detailed figures of animals and people, depicting stories of weather, hunting and special events of life at the time have lasted for millennia, still as true to color and form as they were when they were created.
Ilia explained that very different from the methods and materials of the artists of today, fresco does not use canvas and paint. Rather, it uses a mix of sand and lime putty – the original plaster, and crushed, powdered colored stones and minerals as the pigments. He also explained that these rocks and minerals need to be able to withstand the acidity of the limestone. The limestone has a bleach-like action which has the ability to lighten the color to the point of invisibility if you are not careful and use low quality or synthetic pigments. When the lime plaster dries, the calcification traps the mineral in the newly formed limestone and your image becomes literally “written in stone”, giving us the source of that cliché we hear so often in our language.
