Word: frescos
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...Frutkin, an Ottawa-based author of three poetry collections and six novels, writes like a fresco sprung to life. You can feel the warmth of the sirocco, the wind that carries fine sand from the Sahara; smell the musty parchment of Cambiati's secret library; and taste the bitter elixirs peddled by the traveling troupe in the town's piazza. The action is broken into short chapters, making the plot trot along at a jaunty clip. Through Cambiati's alchemy and Archenti's reason, Frutkin examines the science of magic and the magic of science. He also keeps...
...village even has its own truffle museum located in a medieval castle, with cross-vaulted ceilings and 16th century fresco remnants. The Museo del Tartufo tells the fascinating tale of the native, intensely pungent magnatum pico, or white truffle, which, together with other prestigious truffles such as the black P?rigord, were historically reviled as a tool of witchcraft and sought after by the Romans as an aphrodisiac. Flat screens show mini-documentaries about dog-training methods that prime canines to sniff out the prestigious white truffle; some trainers introduce the fungus to puppies by rubbing it on the mother...
...clear physical or documentary evidence that any of the glue and lampblack on the Sistine was put there by Michelangelo himself. James Beck cites a phrase in an account by Ascanio Condivi, a Renaissance biographer, about Michelangelo applying "so to speak, the ultima mano" (final touches) to the mighty fresco cycle; but Condivi did not say what medium these touches were in. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), whose Lives of Italian artists is a fundamental source on the Sistine, describes how "Michelangelo desired to retouch some parts a secco, painting backgrounds, draperies and skies in ultramarine, and ornaments in gold...
...pros also point to Michelangelo's ethic, so to speak, of fresco. Before he began work on the Sistine, Michelangelo knew all about the humiliating mess Leonardo da Vinci made by painting on walls with untested brews of oil, water and varnish bases, which began to come off almost as soon as they were put on. Though Michelangelo grouched about his immense Sistine task, there is no question of his mastery of pure fresco, which he had learned in Florence in 1488 from his master Ghirlandaio...
Giulio Carlo Argan, doyen of Italian art critics, believes Michelangelo took the Sistine as an opportunity of asserting the power of what his rival could not do: "Michelangelo, who was always in competition with Leonardo, wanted to reaffirm the traditional buon fresco technique. The Sistine is that affirmation." True fresco did not include the use of glue sizing and dark washes a secco. "No other fresco painter applied such a glue," says Head Restorer Colalucci, "so why should Michelangelo have done so? He knew very well that the final result could not have lasted long. To suggest that he gave...