Fresco

Fresco is a technique of wall painting in which water-based pigments are applied directly onto fresh, damp lime plaster, known in Italian as buon fresco, meaning true fresco. As the plaster dries and the lime undergoes carbonation, the paint is absorbed into the surface and becomes an integral part of the wall, ensuring exceptional durability. The artist must work quickly, in sections called giornate, while the plaster is still wet, because once it dries corrections are impossible. Fresco reaches back to antiquity, as in the Minoan murals of Crete, and attained its heights in Italian art, from Giotto to Michelangelo and his ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In Ukraine fresco has a thousand-year tradition: the pre-Mongol eleventh-century murals of the Saint Sophia Cathedral in Kyiv and the frescoes of Saint Cyril's Church are among the oldest monuments of monumental art. In the early twentieth century Mykhailo Boychuk and his school revived monumental fresco painting, drawing on Byzantine and folk heritage; tragically, most of their works were destroyed by the totalitarian regime.