VIRTUALLY none of the masterworks from one of the greatest eras of painting have ever been shown in the U.S. or anywhere else outside their native land. These are the fresco paintings of Italy, some of the transcendent achievements of the Italian Renaissance. For centuries, art lovers have had to admire them by reputation and reproduction. To see them firsthand required a trip to Italy. Before oil painting was imported from Northern Europe and the artist's vision shrank to the size of canvases that could be moved from wall to wall, the greatest Gothic and Renaissance artists decorated entire cathedrals, cloisters and chapels with floor-to-ceiling murals illustrating religious legend with robust humanistic imagery. Because these pageants were done a fresco—painted onto the wall while its plaster was still fresh—they became part of the fabric of the building and could not be taken down or moved.
Airily Mysterious. Now, thanks to new scientific techniques that allow the murals to be removed, the U.S. public will be able to see with its own eyes a bountiful portion of the quattrocento's springtime splendor. With $150,000 from Italy's Olivetti and the approval of the Italian government and Rome's Pontifical Commission on Sacred Art, Manhattan's Metropolitan Museum this week puts on view 46 frescoes from walls in Tuscany. Many were removed from their original locations and mounted on separate panels during the past two years because of severe damage resulting from the disastrous 1966 Arno River floods. All are being allowed this unprecedented, seven-week-long excursion across the Atlantic as Italy's way of saying grazie to Americans who, through the Committee to Rescue Italian Art, gave $2,200,000 for the restoration of Florentine monuments and masterpieces.
For the public, including scholars, the exhibition will offer the first real chance to examine, at close range and under modern museum lights, the way in which Renaissance artists made their frescoes. The craft, developed by the ancient Minoans and Etruscans, was so exacting that artists have devoted a lifetime to mastering the technique. First, the brick wall had to be prepared with several coats of a special plaster made with slaked lime that had been aged for a year or so. Then the painter deftly laid on his water-base colors, which were sucked into the wall by capillary action. He had to work quickly, for the paint he added after the plaster had dried lay on the surface and could eventually flake off. But color applied while the plaster was damp stayed in it for centuries. As visitors to the Metropolitan can see, the roses, rusts, golds, apple greens and tangy violets today remain as lusty, yet airily mysterious, as they were 500 years ago.
Hidden Sketches. Detaching a fresco from its wall is a process that has only been perfected in the past decade. In essence, it requires that a piece of canvas be glued temporarily to the face of the fresco. Then the canvas and the attached mural surface are gently peeled off together. The back of the fresco is then remounted on a panel, and the canvas protecting its front is removed. It is a delicate operation, and until Masonite and Fiberglas came along, no backing could be found that did not sag, warp, wrinkle or crack.