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Fresco   Listen
noun
Fresco  n.  (pl. frescoes or frescos)  
1.
A cool, refreshing state of the air; duskiness; coolness; shade. (R.)
2.
(Fine Arts)
(a)
The art of painting on freshly spread plaster, before it dries.
(b)
In modern parlance, incorrectly applied to painting on plaster in any manner.
(c)
A painting on plaster in either of senses (a) and (b).
al fresco in the open air; out of doors; outdoors; as, to dine al fresco.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Fresco" Quotes from Famous Books



... subsequently fell into a state of pitiable decay. It has, however, been repaired with great taste by the present prince within the last few years. Internally, it possesses a magnificent marble staircase and some fine apartments. One long gallery is said to have been painted in fresco by Michael Angelo, but it has been so much restored that the original design alone remains. Another gallery is covered with good pictures by the Genoese artist Carlone. Five doors open on this latter gallery—one leading to the private chambers of the prince; another to those ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various

... to, I also dissented from Lowell's statement, in "Al Fresco," that in early summer the dandelion blooms, in general, with the buttercup and the clover. I am aware that such criticism of the poets is small game, and not worth the powder. General truth, and not specific fact, is what we are to expect of the poets. Bryant's "Yellow Violet" poem ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs

... doubt, to guard this delicious creature.... Ah, then the duenna made me deeper in love. I grew curious. On Saturday, nobody. And here I am to-day waiting for this girl whose chimera I am, asking nothing better than to pose as the monster in the fresco." ...
— The Thirteen • Honore de Balzac

... unconstraint, what delightful ease! What a series of charming portraits, each more lifelike, more animated, still better than all the others! "These little miniatures—due to the brush of a woman of the world—are better worth studying than is many a picture or fresco." ...
— Women of Modern France - Woman In All Ages And In All Countries • Hugo P. Thieme

... representations on objects of the Mycenaean period, the most interesting of which will be presently described (see page 67). The comparison of these with one another leaves little room for doubt that the Tirynthian fresco was intended to portray the chase of a wild bull. But what does the man's position signify? Has he been tossed into the air by the infuriated animal? Has he adventurously vaulted upon the creature's back? Or did the painter ...
— A History Of Greek Art • F. B. Tarbell

... by a way filled with delight, one reaches Shorwell, a little village beautifully placed, and with a curious old church full of interest. Upon one of the walls is an old fresco illustrating the life and adventures of St. Christopher, and there is a quaint memorial brass erected by Barnabas Leigh in honor of his two deceased wives, and with a flattering allusion to wife ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 12, No. 32, November, 1873 • Various

... E. of Sparkford), is a village on the N.E. side of Cadbury Camp, with a church dedicated to St Thomas a Becket, who is perhaps intended by the fresco of a bishop which is on the splay of a window in the N. aisle. The responds of the aisle arches are curiously banded. There is a good reredos, a ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... significant form. A change in the mechanical methods of painting, also, had its influence on a change in the conception of the function of art. With a very few exceptions, the works of Giotto were executed in fresco as wall decorations. The principles of mural painting require that the composition shall be subordinated to the architectural conditions of the space it is to fill and that the color shall be kept flat. The fresco method ...
— The Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes

... and the schools of sleekly black porpoises that, for him, had whisked through violet waves. Most of all, he brought back the yesterday's long excitement and delight of seeing the Irish coast hills—his first foreign land—whose faint sky fresco had seemed magical with the elfin lore of Ireland, a country that had ever been to him the haunt not of potatoes and politicians, but of fays. He had wanted fays. They were not common on the asphalt of West Sixteenth Street. But now he had seen them ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... and a lamp and one of White's sewing-machines the only marks of civilization. On the outside, at one end of the terrace, burns the cooking-fire under a shed; at the other there is perhaps a pen for pigs; the remainder is the evening lounge and al fresco banquet-hall of the inhabitants. To some houses water is brought down the mountains in bamboo pipes, perforated for the sake of sweetness. With the Highland comparison in my mind, I was struck to remember the sluttish mounds of turf and stone in which I have ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson

... forms of art were all applied. Stone carving was applied to architecture, thus colored stones, called mosaics, as wall decorations; from these to the fresco; from the fresco to the pictorial form of painting. To-day the final degeneration of art is in the easel picture, which as an object detached and disassociated from its surroundings, takes refuge in the story-telling phase ...
— Mother Earth, Vol. 1 No. 3, May 1906 - Monthly Magazine Devoted to Social Science and Literature • Various

... of the Apennines, close to the sea-coast between Genoa and Spezzia, is a marine villa, that once belonged to the Malaspina family, in olden time the friends and patrons of Dante. It is rather a fantastic pile, painted in fresco, but spacious, in good repair, and convenient. Although little more than a mile from Spezzia, a glimpse of the blue sea can only be caught from one particular spot, so completely is the land locked with hills, covered with groves of chestnut ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli

... criticism praised to the skies Stendhal's Chartreuse de Parme published in the previous year. A letter he had addressed to Stendhal in April 1839 was more moderate in its tone, though eulogistic with its well-turned compliment: "I make a fresco, and you have made Italian statues." He blamed the writer in his letter for situating the plot of the Chartreuse in Parma. "Neither state or town," he told him, "should have been named. It should ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton

... were gathering for supper. He glanced in as he went, and had a glimpse of the clean solemn hall, lighted with candles along the panelling, the long bare tables laid ready, the Prior's chair and table at the further end and the great fresco over it. A lay brother or two in aprons were going about their business silently, and three or four black figures, who had already entered, stood motionless along the raised dais ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson

... may regard as the pigment has possibilities similar to the colours of a painter. The manipulation being of necessity slow, it is more difficult to convey the idea of spontaneity in design than it is in a fresco painting. ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison

... her deliverer would develop into one of the workmen from Washington, employed by General Smith in the renovation of Shirley. One of the carpenters, or—as he looked gentlemanly and wore a coat, a fresco man, abroad in search of an original idea for the dining-room ceiling. This idea she had obligingly furnished him, and he would be able to make a very effective ceiling of her, and Sawney, and the sheep, if he should handle them rightly. These suggestions ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland

... houses the names of the owners over the doors are still legible, and the fresco-paintings on the inner walls are still quite fresh and beautiful. The public fountains are adorned with shells formed into patterns; and in the room of a painter there was found a collection of shells in perfectly good order. A large ...
— Wonders of Creation • Anonymous

... duties, he extracted infinite satisfaction from Foo-Yup, the Chinese servant, who was particularly detached for his service. From his invalid coign of vantage at the window he was observant of all that passed upon the veranda, that al-fresco audience-room of The Lookout, and he was good-humoredly conscious that a great many eccentric and peculiar visitors were invariably dragged thither by Miss Macy, and goaded into characteristic exhibition within sight and hearing ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... fail to produce a deep impression on any one of thought and feeling; yet even here there would be a first shock, to any untrained eye, from the faded colors, the defaced and spotted surface; and this must be got over before the fresco can be even seen. Moreover, in my experience, there is no pleasure connected with the whole business of seeing galleries like that of revisiting them: not only should we return to them daily on first acquaintance, but we should make a practice of seeing them again ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various

... and Fancy waste, And pour'd a winter o'er the realms of Taste, Each Science trembled at the ruffian sound, Forsook her shades, and fled her classic ground; The lofty column prostrate in the dust, Defac'd the arch, o'erthrown the matchless bust; The shatter'd fresco animates no more, And ruthless winds thro' clefted temples roar! Florence beheld the scene with sad surprise, And bade the prostrate pile in grandeur rise. Then, oh! thou truly "Father of the Art[B]!" 'Twas thine superior vigour to impart; Illustrious ...
— Poems • Sir John Carr

... our being invited to a scientific meeting which was to be held at Pisa. We were presented to the Grand Duchess, who was very civil. We spent the summer at Siena, and had a cheerful airy apartment with a fine view of the hills of Santa Fiora, and with very pretty arabesques in fresco on the walls of all the rooms, some so very artistic that I made sketches of them. In these old cities many of the palaces and houses are decorated with that artistic taste which formerly prevailed to such an extent in Italy, and, ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville

... remained. And they have preserved too, in an extraordinary degree, the brightness of their antique paintings, the fresh tints of their costumes, of their robes of turquoise blue, or lapis, or emerald-green, or golden-yellow. It is an artless kind of fresco-work, which nevertheless amazes us by remaining perfect after thirty-five centuries. All that these people did seems as if made for immortality. It is true, however, that such brilliant colours are not found in any of the other Pharaonic monuments, ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... are exquisite in their simple proportion, and the delicate charm of the fresco of their vaulted passages. The quality of this interior decoration is enhanced by the beauty of the staff work, which throughout this court is the most successful found in the Exposition. Here this plaster is soft, rich and warm, and looks more real ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber

... drawn better than the heroes themselves, whose adventures are entirely unconnected. There is a series of jumps from one situation to another, with gaps and interruptions of considerable length, which break the chain of events. It is for this reason that, instead of seeing a historical fresco, we see a whole gallery of sketches, executed with subtle artistry, but insufficiently connected with the main action ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky

... suggest at least one more stage for the support of the usual chapel. The latter we have restored as a timber structure covered with metal plates, skins, or coloured planks. The three stages immediately below the chapel we have decorated with painted imitations of panels, carried out either in fresco or glazed brick. As for the internal arrangements we know very little. The great doorway with which the mound itself is prefaced in the relief must have led to some apartment worthy of its size and importance; we have therefore pierced the mass in our section ...
— A History of Art in Chaldaea & Assyria, v. 1 • Georges Perrot

... neighboring field. The preternaturally happy invalid was smiling at the lovely woods beyond the terrace, woods where little princes had frolicked, and older princes had wooed and won. Mr. Jaccaci was still petting the beautiful little boy who looked like the bambino on the celebrated fresco of Florence; Mrs. Hill was kissing and hugging several little girls who had clung to her skirts. It was, in spite of its origin, a ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... business at Garafield's, even if the times are bad? Mrs. Garafield was down to tea a few evenings since, and she was greatly encouraged. There is such a rage about the new style of papering. Everybody has run mad on dados and friezes, and fresco patterns, bordering, and harmonies of color," laughingly. "And they have some wonderful ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... curious beyond description. Most of theses ornamentations, as well as the paintings, were the work of brothers of the order, who must have spent half a life-time in their consummation. The cloisters are surrounded by a wretched series of life-size paintings in fresco of the mystic type, also the work of brothers attached to the convent, representing Carthusians tormented by the English in the time of Henry VIII. But here and there was seen the work of an artistic hand shining ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou

... was stamped with that character for which he stood unrivalled. I have since heard that, when the house was pulled down, this picture was sold as one of the lots, in the sale of furniture, and bought by a dealer. It was painted on the wall, like a fresco; and how to remove it was the difficulty. On sounding the wall it was found to be lath and plaster, with timber framework (the usual style of building in the reign of Elizabeth). It was therefore determined ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various

... placed on a table, lighted the ante-room, a large apartment with bare fresco-painted walls, simulating hangings of red and gold, draped regularly all around in the antique fashion. A few men's overcoats and two ladies' mantles lay on the chairs, whilst a pier table was littered with hats, and a servant sat there dozing, with ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola

... first-known 'versi sciolti,' or blank hendecasyllabic verses, and in his apparent absence of form, a true and genuine passion suddenly showed itself. The same voluntary renunciation of outward effect, through confidence in the power of the inward conception, can be observed some years later in fresco-painting, and later still in painting of all kinds, which began to cease to rely on color for its effect, using simply a lighter or darker shade. For an age which laid so much stress on artificial form in poetry, these verses of Brunetto mark the beginning ...
— The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy • Jacob Burckhardt

... died away on the stairs, and Peace was convinced in her own mind that they had really gone for good, than a change came over her. She was sitting erect in a stiff-backed chair in one corner of the room, while her companion in misery sat huddled in the opposite corner, staring at the fresco of flags above her head. Both looked dreadfully woe-begone, and as if the tears were very near the surface, for punishment sat heavily upon these two light-hearted spirits, particularly as such severe measures did not seem ...
— The Lilac Lady • Ruth Alberta Brown

... secondary regard to grace or beauty, while a modern painter invariably thinks of the grace and beauty of his work first, and unites afterwards as much truth as he can with its conventional graces. I will give you a single strong instance to make my meaning plainer. In Orcagna's great fresco of the Triumph of Death, one of the incidents is that three kings,[35] when out hunting, are met by a spirit, which, desiring them to follow it, leads them to a churchyard, and points out to them, in open coffins, three bodies of ...
— Lectures on Architecture and Painting - Delivered at Edinburgh in November 1853 • John Ruskin

... Fellows, and presented to them the Papist by him chosen to be their Warden, instead of the Protestant whom they had elected. They were not of so stern a stuff as the Fellows of Magdalen, who, despite His Majesty's menaces, had just rejected Bishop Farmer. The Papist was elected, there and then, al fresco, without dissent. Cannot one see them, these Fellows of Judas, huddled together round the sun-dial, like so many sheep in a storm? The King's wrath, according to a contemporary record, was so appeased by their pliancy that he deigned to lie for two nights in Judas, and at a grand refection ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... entered the saloon, for dinner. It was a larger light, and lofty room. The ceiling was covered with paintings of allegorical subjects, in fresco, descriptive of the advantages of piety and learning. Among the various groups, I thought I could discern—as I could only take a hasty survey during my meal—the apotheosis of the founder of the monastery. Perhaps I rather wished to see it there, than that ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin

... to say; but the work is valuable as regards the subject generally, and might have been published with advantage to the public. The artist delivered also lectures on "The Beautiful and the Picturesque," as well as on "Fresco Painting." ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... court, upon a filthy canal, you chance on a house, the curiously frescoed front of which tempts you within. A building which has a lady and gentleman painted in fresco, and making love from balcony to balcony, on the facade, as well as Arlecchino depicted in the act of leaping from the second to the third story, promises something. Promises something, but does not fulfill the promise. The interior is fresh, clean, and new, and cold and dark ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells

... into the Exhibition? Would a single one of those frescoes we went to see when we were at Padua have the remotest chance of being hung, if it were sent in for exhibition now? Why, the Academy people would be so outraged that they would not even write to poor Giotto to tell him to come and take his fresco away. Phew!" continued he, waxing warm, "if old Pontifex had had Cromwell's chances he would have done all that Cromwell did, and have done it better; if he had had Giotto's chances he would have done all that ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler

... in a narrow, dirty court, to which light can scarcely find access. The Ducal Palace now belongs to the Governor. It has been modernised, but in the dark alleys adjoining there are remains demonstrative of its former extent—pictures of the different Doges in fresco on the walls half erased, and little bridges extending from the windows (or doors) of the palace to the public prisons and other adjoining buildings. The view from my albergo (della villa) is the gayest imaginable, looking over the harbour, which is crowded with sailors and boats ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville

... plainly Portuguese. [The following are a few of the Portuguese words in common use by the Malay-speaking natives of Amboyna and the other Molucca islands: Pombo (pigeon); milo (maize); testa (forehead); horas (hours); alfinete (pin); cadeira (chair); lenco (handkerchief); fresco (cool); trigo (flour); sono (sloop); familia (family); histori (talk); vosse (you); mesmo (even); cunhado (brother-in-law); senhor (sir); nyora for signora (madam). None of them, however, have the least notion that these words belong to a European language.] This people ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... low galleries, while additions, greater in extent than the main building, had been erected—not as wings and projections, but massed upon it on either side, changing its rigid square outlines to a vague parallelogram. While the patio retained the Spanish conception of al fresco seclusion, a vast colonnade of veranda on the southern side was a concession to American taste, and its breadth gave that depth of shadow to the inner rooms which had been lost in the thinner shell of the new erection. Its cloistered gloom was lightened by ...
— Maruja • Bret Harte

... thought, between her and the world. And now, she had attained to the savage joy of loneliness. She dreaded change. Above all she dreaded Hilliard. That warmth of his beauty had faded utterly from her senses. It seemed as faint as a fresco on a long-buried wall. Intrusion must bring anxiety and pain, it might bring fear. She had had long communion with her stars and the God whose name they signaled. She, with her dog friend under her hand, had come to ...
— Hidden Creek • Katharine Newlin Burt

... pockets. But in Yoshimasa's time there Were nine of such fetes in five years, and four of them had no warrant whatever except pleasure seeking—as a performance of the Sarugaku mime on an immense scale; a flower-viewing party; an al-fresco entertainment, and a visit to the cherry blossoms. On each of these occasions the court officials and the military men had to pawn their estates and sell their heirlooms in order to supply themselves ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... Biaggio, master of ceremonies to Paul III., having accompanied the Pope on a visit that His Holiness made to see Michael Angelo's fresco when it was about half finished, allowed himself to express his own opinion upon The ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton

... painted fresco, where coloured shapes Of old, ineffectual lives linger blurred and warm; An endless tapestry the past has woven drapes The halls of my life, compelling my soul ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... answer. Her thoughts had drifted away, back through her weary past, to a little village church where a fresco painting stood on the wall, sketched in days long before, of a company of guests at a feast, clad in Saxon robes; and of One, behind whom knelt a woman weeping and kissing His feet, while her flowing ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt

... of the houses are lofty and the floors stuccoed or tiled in marble, while the walls and ceilings are frequently ornamented in fresco, the excellence of the workmanship varying in accordance with the owner's means. The most striking peculiarity of the town-house in Cuba is the precaution taken to render it safe against sudden attack. Every ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou

... water-color box carrying six colors, which may be set over the thumb, a water-bottle attached, and with it one can stand unobserved in a corner and get color notes which otherwise must be passed by. In studying fresco painting, tempera is very useful. It is mixed up with water and applied to paper, but may be worked over in the manner of oils,—a great ...
— The Brochure Series Of Architectural Illustration, Vol 1, No. 2. February 1895. - Byzantine-Romanesque Doorways in Southern Italy • Various

... place of worship, and, in addition, induces all the other ladies present to turn round, or look on one side, for the purpose of seeing what she is wearing; is more of a conversationalist than a speaker; likes chit- chat; would be at home in a conversazione or al fresco tea party, where the attendants walk about, gossip merrily, and, whilst holding a tea cup in one hand, poise with two fingers a piece of delicately- buttered toast in the other—a continental style quite aesthetic ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus

... bustling part of the town, its fresco and bronze and iron quaintly suggestive of mediaeval times. Within, all cool and dim and restful, with the faintest whiff of lingering incense rising and pervading the gray arches. Yes, the Virgin would know and have ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore

... boarding-house in the world where the seemingly prosaic table had not a living fresco for its background, where you could see, if you had eyes, the smoke and fire of some upheaving sentiment, or the dreary craters of smouldering or burnt-out passions? You look on the black bombazine and high-necked decorum of your neighbor, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... but a gentleman, of all which the invalid heard nothing, and the lazzarone took no notice. They visited the Via dei Sepolchri, the houses of Diomedes and Cicero. At last they came to Sallust's house, in one of the rooms of which was a fresco that hit the Englishman's fancy exceedingly. He immediately sat down, took a pencil and a blank book from his pocket, and began copying it. He had scarcely made a stroke, however, when the soldier and the lazzarone approached him. The former was going to speak, but ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various

... favorite ideals were drawn from youth and womanhood, it was not because he did not understand the purely masculine. The AEneas of the Borgo fresco, the Paul of the Cecilia altar-piece, and the Sixtus of the Sistine Madonna show, in three ages, what is best and most ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... the fresco of the "Ascension of St. John." Inside, the lecturer's voice faltered, as well it might. The audience shifted uneasily, and so did Lucy. She was sure that she ought not to be with these men; but they had cast a spell over her. They were so serious and so ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster

... less good taste than the lilies of the field, but yet in a manner to outdo Solomon in all his glory, and she was conveyed in a perfectly new motor car. When Margaret, looking on from beyond the pond, saw her descend from the machine, she could not help thinking of a dreadful fresco she had once seen on the ceiling of an Italian villa, representing a very florid, double-chinned, powerful eighteenth-century Juno apparently in the act of getting down into the room from her car, to the great inconvenience of every ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford

... used as the parlor or sitting-room; the other side is arranged for bedroom conveniences. Of this, Fig. 4 shows the front side;—covered first with strong canvas, stretched and nailed on. Over this is pasted panel-paper, and the upper part is made to resemble an ornamental cornice by fresco-paper. Pictures can be hung in the panels, or be pasted on and varnished with white varnish. To prevent the absorption of the varnish, a wash of gum isinglass (fish-glue) must be ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe

... cried he: "to be sure there is. Here is a little anecdote which I came upon the other day. Perugino fell ill at a village about half-way between Citta di Piese (where, as I may mention, by the by, a second large fresco by his hand, fully equal, I am assured to the well-known Adoration of the Magi still preserved in that little town, has quite recently been discovered) and Perugia. He was very sick, and like to die. The parish priest of the place came to him as a matter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... place, men have gathered together. There are companies and droves of men, with watchmen, in the vapors of dawn; and in the middle one makes out the children and the women, crowding together like fallow deer. To eastward I see, in the silence of a great fresco, the diverging beams of morning gleaming, through the intervening and somber statues of two hunters, whose long hair is tangled like briars, and who hold each other's ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... sit before a snow-white table without a cloth, in the inn-parlor, kitchen, laundry, and dining-room, all in one, just over against the end of the lake; and enjoy a rasher of bacon and eggs with as much gusto as if we were in the midst of a palace of fresco. Ornamental eating has become with us a species of gaudy, ostentatious vulgarity; and a dining-room a sort of fool's paradise. I never think of the little simple meal at St. Peter's now, without tenderness ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters? These forms are more agreeable to the fancy and imagination than fresco paintings or other the most expensive furniture. I now first began to inhabit my house, I may say, when I began to use it for warmth as well as shelter. I had got a couple of old fire-dogs to keep the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau

... there. The interior of the little house was just such a dainty box as the art of the eighteenth century devised for the pretty profligacy of a fine gentleman. The dining-room, on the ground floor, was painted in fresco, with garlands of flowers, admirably and marvelously executed. The staircase was charmingly decorated in monochrome. The little drawing-room, opposite the dining-room, was very much faded; but the Countess had hung it with ...
— Honorine • Honore de Balzac

... machine, one of great antiquity and dignity. It is, perhaps, the most absolute bequest of past centuries which we have had, unchanged, in domestic use till the present time. You may see a loom like the Yankee one shown here in Giotto's famous fresco in the Campanile, painted in 1335; another, still the same, in Hogarth's Idle Apprentice, painted just four hundred years later. Many tribes and nations have hand-looms resembling our own; but these are exactly like it. Hundreds of thousands of men and women of the generations ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle

... ride, a sable messenger arrived at the door, not halting a moment, not even knocking to see if he might get in, but passed up and smote the lips into silence forever. The sable messenger moving that morning through the splendid Capitol stopped not to look at the mosaics, or the fresco, or the panels of Tennessee and Italian marble, but darted in and darted out in an instant, and his work was done. It is said that Charles Sumner was more scholarly, and that Stephen A. Douglas was a better organizer, and that John J. Crittenden was more ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller

... (much to the amusement of the chorister boys) though with a kind of veil upon them. Doubtless, in a future generation, when the plaster begins to blister, some antiquarian will discover this "wonderful mediaeval fresco," and call the attention of the public ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam

... retouchings and delays. They show him refusing to work except at the moment of invention, scornful of any one who supposed that art could be a work of mere industry and rule, [120] often coming the whole length of Milan to give a single touch. He painted it, not in fresco, where all must be impromptu, but in oils, the new method which he had been one of the first to welcome, because it allowed of so many after-thoughts, so refined a working out of perfection. It turned out that on a plastered wall no process could have been less durable. ...
— The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Horatio Pater

... Yet a semblance of resource avails us— Shade so finely touched, love's sense must seize it. Take these lines, look lovingly and nearly, Lines I write the first time and the last time. He who works in fresco, steals a hair-brush, Curbs the liberal hand, subservient proudly, Cramps his spirit, crowds its all in little, Makes a strange art of an art familiar, Fills his lady's missal-marge with flowerets. He who blows through bronze, may breathe ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various

... lady had the hardiness to attempt alone," the writer continued, "will (I am assured) be set on foot by our persons of fashion, as soon as the hot days come in. Ranelagh is the place pitched upon for their meeting; where it is proposed to have a masquerade al fresco, and the whole company are to display all their charms in puris naturalibus. The pantheon of the heathen gods, Ovid's Metamorphoses, and Titian's prints, will supply them with sufficient variety of undressed characters." A cynic might harbour the suspicion that ...
— Inns and Taverns of Old London • Henry C. Shelley

... where the earl usually sat. Strange contrast it was between the spacious apartment, with its lofty octagon walls laden with treasures of learning; book-shelves, tier upon tier, reaching to the very roof, which was painted in fresco; every ornamentation of the room being also made as perfect as its owner's fine taste and lavish means could accomplish, and this owner, this master of it all, a diminutive figure, sitting all alone by the vacant fireside—before him a little table, a lamp, and a book. But he was not reading; ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik

... great artist, and this conviction constituted his happiness. This much at least could be said of him, that he managed his brush and pencil with remarkable dexterity, and could execute four or five square feet of fresco painting in a few hours. The doctrines of Mount Athos, which place he had visited in his youth, had no more secrets for him; Byzantine aesthetics had passed into his flesh and bones; he knew by heart the famous "Guide to Painting," drawn ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne

... thou seen his Bacchus, or his battle-fresco? Knowest thou the later work of Raffaello? And what sayest thou to our Fra Lippo Lippi? A Christian monk he, forsooth! What sayest thou to Giorgione of Venice and his pupils, to this efflorescence of ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill

... and pickles, fruit and plenty of sweets for dessert. There was coffee in two large thermos bottles, and there was also imported ginger ale. The hungry girls lost no time in seating themselves about this al fresco luncheon, making the quiet hollow ring with the merry talk and laughter of their last ...
— Grace Harlowe's Problem • Jessie Graham Flower

... They form a khaki fresco on the cab and sides of the giant commissary trucks that raise the dust along the winding white road over the hills. Snorting motorcycles with two men over the motor and an officer in the side car skim over the ground, passing all others. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons

... less certainly one of its truest poets in the vulgar language, lived as tutor to Lorenzo's children in the palace of the Medici at Florence. Benozzo Gozzoli introduced his portrait, together with the portraits of his noble pupils, in a fresco of the Pisan Campo Santo. This prince of humanists recommended Michelangelo to treat in bas-relief an antique fable, involving the strife of young heroes for some woman's person. Probably he was also able to point out classical examples by which ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds

... emotion. I will give you a typical instance of one of these puzzles. It formulated itself in my mind a few weeks ago at Verona, while going to see a certain little church on the slopes above the Adige. You go through the priest's house and vineyard; there is a fine carved lintel and a bit of fresco, all in the midst of a rag fair of squalid streets. What a place this must once have been! I felt the charm and splendour of piled-up palace and hanging gardens in former days. In former days! And a little doubt dropped into it, "If former days there ...
— Hortus Vitae - Essays on the Gardening of Life • Violet Paget, AKA Vernon Lee

... of this sacrament is called a sacrifice for two reasons. First, because, as Augustine says (Ad Simplician. ii), "the images of things are called by the names of the things whereof they are the images; as when we look upon a picture or a fresco, we say, 'This is Cicero and that is Sallust.'" But, as was said above (Q. 79, A. 1), the celebration of this sacrament is an image representing Christ's Passion, which is His true sacrifice. Accordingly ...
— Summa Theologica, Part III (Tertia Pars) - From the Complete American Edition • Thomas Aquinas

... old cathedral of Salamanca is a fresco of the Last Judgment, perhaps by the Castilian painter Gallegos. Over the retablo on a black ground a tremendous figure of the avenging angel brandishes a sword while behind him unrolls the scroll of the Dies Irae and huddled clusters ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos

... an involuntary lift of the eyebrows, and she looked round the immense hall, with its costly furniture, its glaring electric lights, and the band of bad fresco which ran round its ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... occupied by statues, all arranged in exquisite variety of attitude, so as to appear to be offering to whoever approaches them the rare flowers which it is the duty of the attendants to place in their hands. The ceiling is painted in fresco, in patterns and colours harmonising with those on the mosaic floor. The cornices are of silver, and decorated with mottoes from the amatory poets of the day, the letters of which are formed by precious stones. ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins

... confession of Mr. Browning's creed with respect to art in the poem entitled 'Old Pictures in Florence'. He sees the ghosts of the early Christian masters, whose work has never been duly appreciated, standing sadly by each mouldering Italian Fresco; and when an imagined interlocutor inquires what is admirable in such work as this, the poet answers that the glory of Christian art lies in its rejecting a limited perfection, such as that of the art of ancient Greece, the subject of which was finite, and the lesson taught by which was submission, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson

... both of nations and individuals with sudden and awful reverses. This statue was placed in a temple of the goddess at Rhamnus, about eight miles from Marathon. Athens itself contained numerous memorials of her primary great victory. Panenus, the cousin of Phidias, represented it in fresco on the walls of the painted porch; and, centuries afterward, the figures of Miltiades and Callimachus at the head of the Athenians were conspicuous in the fresco. The tutelary deities were exhibited taking ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1 • Various

... while with a facility the wonderful London auctioneer Robbins might envy, Ralph imparts to a lime-box, or pig-sty, a negro hovel, or an Irish shanty, all the romance, artistic elegance and finish of a first-class manor-house, or Swiss cottage, inlaid with alabaster and fresco, surrounded by elfin bowers, grand walks, ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley

... nevertheless, found it very good, and admirably adapted for getting in a subject, as affording means of great rapidity of execution. We allude to the admixture of starch and oil—the less oil the more like distemper will it be; or, we should rather say, fresco, which it much more resembles; but oil may be used with it in any proportion. The starch should be made as for domestic use, with water saturated with borax, and the oil added by degrees, and the whole stirred up ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various

... The day gets brighter, brighter, brighter, till it's night. The summer gets hotter, hotter, hotter, till it explodes. The fruit gets riper, riper, riper, till it tumbles down and rots. . . . Ask me a question or two about fresco: will you be so good? All the houses are painted in fresco, hereabout (the outside walls I mean, the fronts, backs, and sides), and all the colour has run into damp and green seediness; and the very design has straggled away into the component atoms ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster

... will think that I am developing a passion for detail, but it is rather that I wish to photograph exactly my first impressions of the place. There seems a primitive simplicity about it that must vanish at the first touch of modern progress like a pretty old fresco exposed to the light, and I feel myself like a traitor in the camp. If I decide to live here I shall probably be the motive force that will set the ball of progress rolling. Life here is almost stagnant, I fancy, unlike ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford

... Refectory of the old Dominican Friary attached to the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie, we saw Leonardo da Vinci's famous fresco of the Last Supper. It is on the wall of a large, bare, whitewashed room, this celebrated work being almost the only furniture and decoration. Although in a very bad state of decay and dilapidation, it ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux

... about these ladies—in their simple, but noble grace, in their half-Gallic, half-classic beauty, in a jocund buoyancy mated to an amiable dignity—that made them appear to the scholar as though they had just bounded into life from the garlanded procession of some old fresco. The resemblance was not a little helped on by the costume of the late Revolution (most acceptably chastened and belated by the distance from Paris). Their black hair, somewhat heavier on Clotilde's head, where it rippled once or twice, was knotted ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable

... in addition to the black and white of his mother's skin, he had gray and yellow mottled in all over him. Jim thought it looked as if his skin had been painted, so he named him Fresco. ...
— The Hunter Cats of Connorloa • Helen Jackson

... perhaps worth while mentioning that by the antro dell' Aurora was no doubt intended the room in the castle, said to have formed part of the private apartments of Leonora, still known as the sala dell' Aurora, from a wretched fresco on the ceiling by the local artist ...
— Pastoral Poetry and Pastoral Drama - A Literary Inquiry, with Special Reference to the Pre-Restoration - Stage in England • Walter W. Greg

... Death has long been the theme of the moralist in art, from Orcagna's fresco on the walls of the Campo Santo at Pisa to Holbein's great woodcuts and our own Rowlandson. In Germany especially have these macabre imaginings flourished. The phantasmagoria of decay has haunted German art, as it haunted ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers

... without bonnets and fantastically dressed, were regaling themselves upon ices and other elegancies in an atmosphere redolent with the perfume of orange-flowers, and musical with the sound of trickling water, and the melody of musical snuff-boxes. There was a complete maze of fresco, mirrors, carving, gilding, and marble. A dinner can be procured here at any hour of day or night, from one shilling and sixpence up to half-a-guinea, and other meals in like proportion. As we merely went to see the restaurant, we ordered ices, ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird

... roof. There were no windows on the side opposite to the river, but arches below leading into chambers, one of which showed a glimpse of a garden beyond, and above them a long space of wall gaily painted (in fresco, I thought) with similar subjects to those of the frieze outside; everything about the place was handsome and generously solid as to material; and though it was not very large (somewhat smaller than ...
— News from Nowhere - or An Epoch of Rest, being some chapters from A Utopian Romance • William Morris

... seated on the couch near Countess Martin, talked of Dante with enthusiasm as the best sculptor among the poets. He recalled to Therese the painting they had seen together two days before, on the door of the Servi, a fresco almost obliterated, where one hardly divined the presence of the poet wearing a laurel wreath, Florence, and the seven circles. This was enough to exalt the artist. But she had distinguished nothing, she had not been moved. And then she confessed that Dante did not ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... cabbage-growing, wide open spaces where the wall of a temple, the arch of an aqueduct, rose crowned with wall-flower and weeds out of the rank grass, the briars and nettles, the heaps of broken masonry and plaster, among which shone beneath the darting lizards, scraps of vermilion wall-fresco, the chips of purple porphyry or dark-green serpentine; long avenues of trees early sere, closed in by arum-fringed walls, or by ditches where the withered reeds creaked beneath the festoons of clematis and wild vine; solemn and solitary wildernesses within the city walls, where the silence ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)

... itself down to that which, on the Friday of which I write, converted many miles of thoroughfare at the East End of London, as well as one of the prettiest forest scenes still surrounding the metropolis, into a vast al fresco tavern, where the "worship of Bacchus" was as freely indulged as in any ...
— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... goose called the Egyptian Goose, or goose of the Nile. Its feathers are very handsomely marked with black, brown, green, and white. It is the goose so often represented, in old fresco paintings of heathen temples, by the ancients. This goose is famous for its devotion to its young. The old birds will remain with their offspring during times of most imminent danger, refusing to save themselves and leave ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")

... insomuch as that he was rather given to assure his patients they would soon be strong enough to enjoy the al fresco delights of a gipsy party, even though he knew that they had not an hour's prolonged life left in them. Not so Jan. Never did a more cheering doctor enter a sick-room than Jan, so long as there was the ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood

... exclusively for them; and, besides, vast and splendid saloons, destined for grand balls, ought to have a different character from rooms in ordinary occupation: there is between the two species of apartments the same difference as between a splendid fresco and a ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue

... was a painter called Bonamico, who was engaged by Cardinal Aretino to paint a series of pictures in his chapel. He began with a beautiful fresco of Jesus Christ. A day or two afterwards, when he came to his work in the morning, he found his picture smeared all over with dabs of colour, red, and black, and blue, and yellow, and utterly defaced and spoiled. The painter was so angry that he ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould

... though we should not meet immediately. Burrill will see if there is any such place as we wish about you. I have not much hope of his success. The scent of the roses will not depart, though the many are scattered. I hardly hope to say directly how very beautiful it lies in my memory. What a heart-fresco it has become! All the dignity, the strength, the devotion will be preserved by you; that graceful "aimlessness" comes no more. And yet that was necessary. Long before I knew of the changes I perceived ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke

... herself so many airs that she did nought but make wry faces, as if there came to her a stench from whomsoever she saw or met. But, letting be many other vexatious and tiresome fashions of hers, it chanced one day that she came back to the house, where Fresco was, and seating herself near him, all full of airs and grimaces, did nothing but puff and blow; whereupon quoth he, 'What meaneth this, Ciesca, that, to-day being a holiday, thou comest home so early?' To which she answered, all like to die away with affectation, ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio

... They were connected by bowers impervious to the rays of the sun. The pavilions nearest to that of the sun were reserved for the Princes of the blood and the ministers; the rest were occupied by persons holding superior offices at Court, or invited to stay at Marly. Each pavilion was named after fresco paintings, which covered its walls, and which had been executed by the most celebrated artists of the age of Louis XIV. On a line with the upper pavilion there was on the left a chapel; on the right a pavilion called La Perspective, which concealed ...
— Memoirs Of The Court Of Marie Antoinette, Queen Of France, Complete • Madame Campan

... genius of the Italian Renaissance has worn the ill-fitting disguise prepared for him by a literary 'breeches-maker.' In fact, Michael Angelo the poet suffered no less from his grandnephew than Michael Angelo the fresco painter from his follower ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella

... steal, even for the young. There are gangs of lad thieves in the low Whitechapel lodging-houses, varying in age from thirteen to fifteen, who live by thieving eatables and other easily obtained goods from shop fronts. In addition to the Embankment, al fresco lodgings are found in the seats outside Spitalfields Church, and many homeless wanderers have their own little nooks and corners of resort in many sheltered yards, vans, etc., all over London. Two poor women I observed making ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth

... moral right, of the vast variety of philosophy. Above all, we should have had none of the great art men love so well, no Odyssey, Divine Comedy no Hamlet, no Oedipus, no Handel, no Beethoven, no painting or sculpture where the love and sorrow of the soul breathe in canvas, fresco, marble and bronze, no, nor any of the great and loving lives who suffered and overcame, from Christ to the poor woman who dies for love in a London lane. All these are made through the struggle and the sorrow. We should not have ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke

... a curious thing that we do not succeed in fresco. The grace is gone out of it; modern painters have not the lightness of touch necessary; they are used to masses of colour, and they use the palette knife as a mason the trowel. The art, too, like the literature of our ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida

... strength; but certain I am that you excel by a long way all the painters who hold up their heads so proudly in the Academy of St. Luke[2.4] here—Tiarini,[2.5] Gessi,[2.6] Sementa,[2.7] and all the rest of them, not even excepting Lanfranco[2.8] himself, for he only understands fresco-painting. And yet, Antonio, and yet, if I were in your place, I should deliberate awhile before throwing away the lancet altogether, and confining myself entirely to the pencil That sounds rather strange, but listen to me. Art seems to be ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann

... sweetness of his coloring. Eight years ago he was commissioned by M. de Luynes, who then wore the title of Duke—which, it must be said, he is still called by, though the Republic frowns on such aristocratic distinctions—to paint two historical pictures in fresco, for a country-house near Paris. The subjects were left to the choice of the artist, who was to have 100,000 francs (or L20,000) for the two pictures, one quarter of which was paid him in advance. During these eight years Mr. Ingres has begun various ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various

... Acropolis upon the Agora, Paul would distinguish a cloister or colonnade. This is the Stoa Poecile, or "Painted Porch," so called because its walls were decorated with fresco paintings of the legendary wars of Greece, and the more glorious struggle at Marathon. It was here that Zeno first opened that celebrated school which thence received the name of Stoic. The site of the garden where Epicurus taught is now unknown. It was no doubt within the city walls, and ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... and there couches which were invitations of themselves. The articles of furniture, which stood out from the walls, were duplicated on the floor distinctly as if they floated unrippled water; even the panelling of the walls, the figures upon them in painting and bas-relief, and the fresco of the ceiling were reflected on the floor. The ceiling curved up towards the centre, where there was an opening through which the sunlight poured without hindrance, and the sky, ever so blue, seemed in hand-reach; ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace

... with his arms folded and his feet well apart, in an attitude of easy admiration: 'The Wounded Adonis, attended by the Loves and Graces. Familiar Pompeiian fresco.' ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... of his ruin—very true, however—everything in the recital had amused Dorsenne. He knew enough Italian to appreciate the untranslatable passages of the language of the man of the people. He was again on the verge of laughter, when the fresco madonna, as he sometimes designated the young girl, handed him an envelope the address upon which soon converted his smile into an undisguised expression of annoyance. He pushed aside the day's bill of fare which the old cook presented to him and said, brusquely: "I fear ...
— Cosmopolis, Complete • Paul Bourget

... the connection patent to all? She fused everything, and filled him with it and it with him: the mounting tones of violins and trumpets, the sparkling quincunxes of the girdling balcony-front, the wide band of fresco which ran in unison with the arches of glittering bulbs above their heads, the circling and swaying throng—all the sheen and splendor of a vast ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller

... pretty breakfast-room, whose three broad windows, always open to the veranda, gave an al fresco effect to every meal, was a pathetic endeavor of the Southern-bred Peyton to emulate the soft, luxurious, and open-air indolence of his native South, in a climate that was not only not tropical, but even austere in ...
— Susy, A Story of the Plains • Bret Harte

... bas-reliefs, representing his totem and that of his wife—dying warriors—the whole being surrounded by the image of a feathered serpent—Can, his family name, whilst the walls of the two apartments, or funeral chambers, in the monument raised to his memory, were decorated with fresco paintings, representing not only Chaacmol's own life, but the manners, customs, mode of dressing of his contemporaries; as those of the different nations with which they were in communication: distinctly recognizable by their type, stature and other peculiarities. The portraits of the great ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon

... terrace, and immediately the party disembarked. From the portico they passed a noble hall to a stair-case of marble, which led to a saloon, fitted up in a style of magnificence that surprised Emily. The walls and ceilings were adorned with historical and allegorical paintings, in fresco; silver tripods, depending from chains of the same metal, illumined the apartment, the floor of which was covered with Indian mats painted in a variety of colours and devices; the couches and drapery of the lattices were of pale green silk, embroidered and fringed with ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe

... Extract from a fresco by SPINELLO ARETINI, in the Municipal Palace at Siena, representing a GALLEY FIGHT (perhaps imaginary) between the Venetians and the fleet of the Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and illustrating the arrangements of mediaeval galleys. Drawn from a very dim and imperfect ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa

... Dionysus takes us back, then, into that old Greek life of the vineyards, as we see it on many painted vases, with much there as we should find it now, as we see it in Bennozzo Gozzoli's mediaeval fresco of the Invention of Wine in the Campo Santo at Pisa- -the family of Noah presented among all the circumstances of a Tuscan vineyard, around the press from which the first wine is flowing, a painted idyll, with its vintage colours still opulent in decay, and ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... Last Supper of Leonardo da Vinci.' A reproduction of the head of our Blessed Lord, taken from the fresco (photograph), is given in the quarto edition of Southwell's complete Poems in the Fuller Worthies' Library—none the less precious that it pathetically reveals the marks of Time's 'effacing fingers.' No engraving approaches the 'power' of this autotype ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth

... have no control. No, happen whatever may happen, Time, I suppose, will subsist; the earth will revolve on its axis; People will travel; the stranger will wander as now in the city; Rome will be here, and the Pope the custode of Vatican marbles. I have no heart, however, for any marble or fresco; I have essayed it in vain; 'tis vain as yet to essay it: But I may haply resume some day my studies in this kind. Not as the Scripture says, is, I think, the fact. Ere our death-day, Faith, I think, does pass, and Love; but Knowledge abideth. Let us seek ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various

... the Chateau, the scene of the gorgeous feasts of the Intendant, was brilliantly illuminated with silver lamps, glowing like globes of sunlight as they hung from the lofty ceiling, upon which was painted a fresco of the apotheosis of Louis XIV., where the Grand Monarque was surrounded by a cloud of Condes, Orleanois, and Bourbons, of near and more remote consanguinity. At the head of the room hung a full-length portrait ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby

... features of grand and imposing sublimity were prominent The day was among the peaks above them, while the shades of night still lay upon the valleys, forming a landscape like that exquisite and poetical picture of the lower world, which Guido has given in the celebrated al-fresco painting of Aurora. The ravines and glens were covered with snow, but the sides of the rugged rocks were bare in their eternal hue of ferruginous brown. The little knoll on which the Refuge stood was also nearly naked, the ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper

... "A fresco painting represents, in a hemicycle, the Empress in her bridal dress, offering to the Virgin a diamond necklace; young girls are kneeling around her in prayer; admiration and fervent faith are depicted ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 41, March, 1861 • Various

... received them in an antechamber. And then they passed into a room which ran nearly the whole length of the kiosk, opening on one side to the gardens, and on the other supported by an ivory wall, with niches painted in green fresco, and in each niche a rose-tree. Each niche, also, was covered with an almost invisible golden grate, which confined a nightingale, and made him constant to the rose he loved. At the foot of each niche was a fountain, but, instead of water, each basin was ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli

... choice of subjects. It is indeed possible that the walls of the nave and aisles, which are now whitewashed, may have been covered with fresco or mosaic, and thus have supplied a series of subjects, on the choice of which we cannot speculate. I do not, however, find record of the destruction of any such works; and I am rather inclined to believe that at any rate the central division of the building was originally, ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin

... Republic. Very few are the remnants that have come down to us from the time of the Bishops. An inscription, however, on a house in Via S. Luca close to S. Siro remains, telling how in the year 580 S. Siro destroyed the serpent Basilisk. In the church itself a seventeenth-century fresco commemorates this monstrous deed. ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton

... the case, you will be able to add others. We shall endeavor in the present volume always to paint things in bold fresco style and leave the miniatures to you. According to the characters concerned, the indications which we are describing, veiled under the incidents of ordinary life, are of infinite variety. One man may discover a symptom in the way ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac

... the crosses did Donatello kneel, but at each of the many shrines, where the Blessed Virgin in fresco—faded with sunshine and half washed out with showers—looked benignly at her worshipper; or where she was represented in a wooden image, or a bas-relief of plaster or marble, as accorded with the means of the devout person who built, or restored from a mediaeval antiquity, these places ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... of the last ten years, in the study of Italian art, has been the rediscovery of an all but forgotten great master, Pietro Cavallini. The study of his fresco at S. Cecilia in Rome, and of the other works that readily group themselves with it, has illuminated with an unhoped-for light the problem of Giotto's origin and development. I felt stimulated to a fresh ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... morning under the spell of their magical picturesqueness. Roderick declared that he would go nowhere else; that, after the Juno, it was a profanation to look at anything but sky and trees. There was a fresco of Guercino, to which Rowland, though he had seen it on his former visit to Rome, went dutifully to pay his respects. But Roderick, though he had never seen it, declared that it could n't be worth a fig, and that he did n't care to look at ugly things. He remained stretched on his overcoat, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James

... his reluctance to introduce into the world a son "as old as myself" he would say pathetically. The news of his death, which happened at Baden after a short attack of bronchitis caught in a supper 'al fresco' at the old castle, was duly transmitted to Rochebriant by the Princess; and the shock to Alain and his aunt was the greater because they had seen so little of the departed that they regarded him as a heroic myth, an impersonation of ancient chivalry, condemning himself ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... without having the slightest desire to perform upon them. [Footnote: My estimate of the rank of water-color amongst the fine arts has steadily risen as the true technical relations of the graphic arts have become clearer to me. Water-color is quite as great an art as fresco, whilst it is ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... with small square windows, guards this portal, reminding us that at some time or other the monks found it needful to arm their solitude against a force descending from Chiusure. There is an avenue of slender cypresses; and over the gate, protected by a jutting roof, shines a fresco of Madonna and Child. Passing rapidly downwards, we are in the courtyard of the monastery, among its stables, barns, and out-houses, with the forlorn bulk of the huge red building spreading wide, and towering up above us. As good luck ruled our arrival, we ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds

... reaches perfect expression it has done so. Some of the distinctly primitives are different; their works inclose a charm which is not artistic. Fra Angelico, after being a great disappointment to me in some of his large set pictures in the Academia and elsewhere, shows himself lovely in fresco (though I think the "crumb" element helps him). His great Crucifixion is big altogether, and has so permanent a force in its aloofness from mere drama and mere life. In San Marco, the cells of the monks are quite charming, a row of little square bandboxes ...
— An Englishwoman's Love-Letters • Anonymous

... the human patience and thought that have gone to its making and beautifying, inside and out. No other church has had much more than a tithe of such toil. The Sistine Chapel in Rome is wonderful enough, with its frescoes; but what is the labour on a fresco compared with that on a mosaic? Before every mosaic there must be the artist and the glass-maker; and then think of the labour of translating the artist's picture into this exacting and difficult medium and absolutely covering every inch of the building with it! ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas

... our churches be deemed insuperable, we have buildings designed for civil purposes in abundance, which are well adapted for this species of decoration." He then instances Westminster Hall, the walls of which might be covered with fresco; and the outsides of houses in many German cities and towns in the German cantons of Switzerland, the outsides of which are painted with scriptural and historical subjects. "Painting," observes he, "were the use of it universal, would be a powerful means of instruction to children and the lower ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various

... beautiful octagonal room, richly furnished, with the walls lined, so it appeared, from floor to ceiling with books,—one or two great stands and vases of flowers made flashes of colour among the shadows, and a quick upward glance showed me that the ceiling was painted in fresco, then my guide signed ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... fresco," my particular friend suggested. And from his tone, at once modestly content and artificially careless, I knew that that nursery-rhyme fresco was one of the sights of the pleasure quarter of New York, and that I ought ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... guard-room, and on the north side of this room a pointed doorway leads into the chapel, which keeps some of its special characteristics. At the east end a square space is sunk in the wall above the spot where the altar stood, and in this space the faint traces of a fresco can still just be seen. In the wall that shuts off the guard-room is a cinquefoiled piscina and a four-light window, the stonework of which is like that in the east window, and this window allowed anyone in the guard-room to join ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote

... the seed-bearing Bach and his fugues—emotional mathematics, all of them! Of what avail the decorative efforts of tonal fresco painters, breeders of an hour's pleasure, soon forgotten in the grave's muddy disdain! Had not the stage lowered music to the position of a lascivious handmaiden? To the sound of cymbals, it postured for ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker

... left the villa at Triebschen, on the lake at Lucerne, with much regret. For there he had been able to work in perfect seclusion, under the protection and forethought of the devoted Cosima. His new villa at Bayreuth he called "Wahnfried," setting over the door a fresco of mythological figures, symbolising music and tragedy; in whom are portrayed Cosima Wagner, his final ideal, and Wilhelmine Schroeder-Devrient, who had been his first inspiration, and also figures of Wotan and Siegfried; the former being the portrait of Franz Betz, the singer of the role, ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes

... made, in my mind, for a sort of al fresco function, to come off about the time Cornish gets back with our London visitor," he replied, "which ought to knit up the ravelled sleeve better than new. I'm going to dedicate Lynhurst Park to the nymphs and deities of sport—which ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick

... line of those artists ended with Fra Angelico, whose works are only larger illuminations in fresco and on panel. In those days some precious volume became the Laura of a poor monk, who lavished on it all the poetry of his nature, all the unsatisfied longing of a lifetime. Shut out from the world, his single poem or book of saintly legends was the window through ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various

... my particular friend suggested. And from his tone, at once modestly content and artificially careless, I knew that that nursery-rhyme fresco was one of the sights of the pleasure quarter of New York, and that I ought to admire it. Well, I did admire it. I found it rather fine and apposite. But the free-luncheon counter, as a sight, took my fancy more. Here it was, the free-luncheon counter of which the ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett

... and close-grown laurel, up and up through the college woods, and across country in the direction of the quarry, a still, wonderful place like a cathedral, with a deep, dark pool at the bottom of the massive stone walls. There were over-arching pines, hemlocks, and oaks for vaulted roof with the fresco of sky and flying cloud between. It was a wonderful place. Once when they had climbed there together and stood for a long time in silence watching the shadows on the deep pool below, looking up to the arching green, and listening to the praisings of a song sparrow ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill

... us have not had such moments of despondency in the face of a great task? In such moments I have often called to mind one of those parables of Nature which are everywhere around us, unseen and unheeded, like those exquisite fresco angels of the old masters, in dim corners of ancient churches, blowing silent trumpets of praise and adoration and touching mute viols into mystic melodies which are lost to us. So thin has the material veil grown under the touch of modern science that everywhere ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... pais son de madera. El tejado de nuestra casa es plano. No son planos todos los tejados. Los tejados de las iglesias son generalmente en declive. En el verano subimos al tejado por la noche, porque alli hace mas fresco que en la casa. En frente de la casa esta un pequeno parque. Alli jugamos a la pelota en la primavera y en el verano. Jugamos tambien al tenis y en el ...
— A First Spanish Reader • Erwin W. Roessler and Alfred Remy

... variety of subjects they embody, but it is further shown in the structure of each work. A modern picture or statue is of far more heterogeneous nature than an ancient one. An Egyptian sculpture-fresco usually represents all its figures as at the same distance from the eye; and so is less heterogeneous than a painting that represents them as at various distances from the eye. It exhibits all objects as exposed to the same degree of light; and so is ...
— Essays: Scientific, Political, & Speculative, Vol. I • Herbert Spencer

... rows at their little desks, or marched about, singing in choruses. One exercise, through which a number of them, from six to eight years old, were conducted by two of the Sisters, might have been studied from a fresco by Fra Angelico representing the heavenly choirs, and gave the most intense delight evidently to the singing children as well as to the smiling and kindly Sisters. There is a large church, too, at St.-Waast ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert

... I found save solitude. I stood to-day before the mutilated fresco of Morone, my rapture of six years ago, and hated it with unreasoning hatred. The Madonna belied the wreath-supported inscription above her head, "Miseratrix virginum Regina nostri miserere," and greeted me with a pitiless simper. The unidentified ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke

... Europe. In the gardens are the ruins of the baths of Constantine and those of the temple of Sol. The Aldobrandini palace contains the proudest monument of ancient painting—the Aldobrandine Wedding, a fresco purchased by Pius VII., in 1818, in which the design is admirable. The great Farnese palace, begun from the designs of Sangallo, and completed under the direction of Michael Angelo, is celebrated both ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects and Curiosities of Art (Vol. 3 of 3) • S. Spooner

... pleased her to watch the others, and see how one turned this way and one another, every one finding something that delighted him above all other things. She herself took a great pleasure in watching a painter, who was standing upon a balcony a little way above her, painting upon a great fresco: and when he saw this he asked her to come up beside him and see his work. She asked him a great many questions about it, and why it was that he was working only at the draperies of the figures, and did not touch their faces, some of which were already finished and seemed to be looking at her, ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant

... outlet, in altarpieces and designs for church frescoes which were to influence thousands. Here the spirit of poetry, brooding in the mysterious lines of Dante, or echoing from past ages in the myths of the Greeks, took form and glowed on the walls in mighty cartoons to be made imperishable in fresco. Here the spirit of luxury was satisfied by beautiful designs for ornaments, dress stuffs, tapestries, vases and "cassoni," &c., which brought beauty into every life, and made each house a poem. The soul, the mind, and the body, could alike be supplied at those fountains of the beautiful, ...
— Fra Bartolommeo • Leader Scott (Re-Edited By Horace Shipp And Flora Kendrick)

... was used by the party for their sitting and eating room was usually a large hall, with a brick or stone floor, and a vaulted ceiling above, painted in fresco. The walls of the room were usually painted too. There was generally a small and very coarse carpet under the table, and sometimes one before the fireplace. The doors were massive; and the locks and hinges upon them, and also the andirons and the shovel ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott

... that came all round you and a bodice of the same colour. In that blue faded by the sun, with your hair a pale cloud in the gold of the sunset, you looked like an archangel taken from some Italian fresco. ...
— The Choice of Life • Georgette Leblanc

... was not, indeed, a loose or sketchy painter, but he was by no means a delicate one. His lines, as the story of the circle would lead us to expect, are always firm, but they are never fine. Even in his smallest tempera pictures the touch is bold and somewhat heavy: in his fresco work the handling is much broader than that of contemporary painters, corresponding somewhat to the character of many of the figures, representing plain, masculine kind of people, and never reaching any thing like the ideal refinement of the conceptions even of Benozzo Gozzoli, far less of Angelico ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin



Words linked to "Fresco" :   art, artistic production, paint, mural, painting, artistic creation



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