"Fresco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... manner; but every head 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 to cut it out in substance, which was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... particularly like, is the absence of all side-lights round its boxes. Two hundred burners, arranged in three rows round a small chandelier, give just light enough to set off the fine chastened white and gold, and the one quiet fresco which embellishes the ceiling. A pit of vast size, divided into comfortable sittings, six tiers of boxes, and an orchestra of great space, suited to the extraordinary size of the house, secure a far less adulterated playhouse atmosphere than we are used to; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... as, with regard to the latter, I felt that I should find out what cold meant in Venice. In addition to this, the grey-washed walls of my large room soon annoyed me, as they were so little suited to the ceiling, which was covered with a fresco which I thought was rather tasteful. I decided to have the walls of the large room covered with hangings of a dark-red shade, even if they were of quite common quality. This immediately caused much trouble; but it seemed to me that it was well worth surmounting, when I ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... it, and some fragments of Roman sculpture scattered through its buildings. The churches, especially those of S.M. Maggiore and S. Francesco, are worth a visit for the sake of Pinturicchio. Nowhere, except in the Piccolomini Library at Siena, can that master's work in fresco be better studied than here. The satisfaction with which he executed the wall paintings in S. Maria Maggiore is testified by his own portrait introduced upon a panel in the decoration of the Virgin's chamber. The scrupulously rendered details of ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... vain striven against. Which of 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 ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... fragrance. Franco pr. n. m. Franco. franja f. fringe, band, border. frentico, -a frenzied, mad, furious, frantic. frente f. brow, face, head, forehead, intellect; —— a opposite, in front of, before; a su —— straight ahead. fresco, -a fresh. frescura f. coolness, luxuriant verdure, freshness. fro, -a cold, indifferent, unsympathetic, unruffled; sangre fra sang-froid, coolness, calmness. fro m. cold. frvolo, -a frivolous. fruncir knit (the brow). fuego m. ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... they have to show you, at Greenwich Hospital, is the Painted Hall. It is a splendid and spacious room, at least a hundred feet long and half as high, with a ceiling painted in fresco by Sir James Thornhill. As a work of art, I presume, this frescoed canopy has little merit, though it produces an exceedingly rich effect by its brilliant coloring and as a specimen of magnificent upholstery. The walls of the grand apartment ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... her if she was satisfied I wasn't marrying beneath the family dignity. 'Gad, she got off a rather neat one at that. Said I might marry under the family tree if I felt like it. Rather good, eh, for mother? I said I preferred a church. Nothing al fresco for me." ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the 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 of plump little ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... those October days in tentative surveys. Alice and Bertha were our chain-men, intelligent and obedient. I drove for George his stakes, or I cut away his brush, or I raised and lowered the shield at which he sighted and at noon Polly appeared with her baskets, and we would dine al fresco, on a pretty point which, not many months after, was wholly covered by the eastern end of the dam. When the field- work was finished we retired to the cabin for days, and calculated and drew, and drew and calculated. Estimates for feeding Irishmen, estimates of hay for mules,—George was sure he ...
— The Brick Moon, et. al. • Edward Everett Hale
... entering a 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 and ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... altar remain in part, and there are faint traces of a fresco painting on the east wall, which is said to have represented scenes in the life of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... region of hell, with its monstrous torments, its wells of flames, its ocean with seven bitter waves: ice, fire, blood ... a rudimentary rendering of legends interpreted in their turn by Dante in his poem, and Giotto in his fresco.[326] The thought of Giotto especially, when reading those sermons, recurs to the memory, of Giotto with his awkward and audacious attempts, Giotto so remote and yet so modern, childish and noble at the same time, who represents devils roasting the damned on ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... 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 ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin
... roof of that august edifice. The "Holy Family" in the Palazzo Pitti at Florence, and the "Three Fates" in the same collection, give an idea of his powers in oil-painting: thus he carried to the highest perfection, at the same time, the rival arts of architecture, sculpture, fresco and oil painting.[3] He may truly be called the founder of Italian painting, as Homer was of the ancient epic, and Dante of the great style in modern poetry. None but a colossal mind could have done such things. Raphael took lessons from him in painting, and professed through life the most unbounded ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... 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 along suite ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... petroleum lamp, 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
... burghers. They were irregular in plan and period of erection; the windows had ornamental frames of great depth, but some were blocked up, which gave the facades a sinister aspect; the walls had not only ornamental tablets in stucco, but, in a better light, would have shown rude fresco paintings not unworthy mediaeval Italian dwellings. Many of the fronts resembled the high poops of the castellated ships of three hundred years ago, and they cast a shadow on the muddy pavement. As they resembled ships, the slimy footway seemed ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... think so yourself, be yet assured of this, that though certain effects of glow and transparencies of gloom are not to be reached without transparent color, those glows and glooms are not the noblest aim of art. After many years' study of the various results of fresco and oil painting in Italy, and of body-color and transparent color in England, I am now entirely convinced that the greatest things that are to be done in art must be done in dead color. The habit of depending on varnish or on lucid tints for transparency, makes the painter comparatively lose ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... 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 the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... most exact attention; and the grotesques, with which the stucco ceilings are covered, equal the celebrated loggios of the Vatican. I don't recollect ever having seen these elegant designs engraven, and believe it would be perfectly worth the pains of some capital artist to copy them. Being in fresco upon damp neglected walls, each year diminishes their number, and every winter moulders ...
— Dreams, Waking Thoughts, and Incidents • William Beckford
... portrait of Bugiardini in Museo Buonarotti. Here comes to view the 'flecked' appearance of the iris, especially in the right eye. The left may be described as almost wholly blue." And so on, and so on, and so on. "In the Museo Civico at Pavia, is a fresco likeness by an unknown hand, in which this fresh red is distinctly recognisable on the face. Taking all these bodily characteristics into consideration, it must be said from an anthropological point of view that though originally of German family he was a hybrid ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton
... referred 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 ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... internal arrangements are equally sedate, condensed, and snug. A calm homeliness, a Quakerly simplicity runs all through it. Nothing glaring, shining, or artistically complex is visible; neither fresco panellings, nor chiaroscuro contrasts, nor statuary groups adorn its walls: if any of these things were seen the members would scream. All is simple, clean, modest. The walls, slightly relieved on each side by two imitation columns, are calmly coloured; the ceiling, containing a floriated centre ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... preoccupied or the idle, he took his way toward the Plaza de Binondo. Nothing was changed. It was the same street, with the same blue and white houses, the same white walls with their slate-colored fresco, poor imitations of granite. The church tower showed the same clock with transparent face. The Chinese shop had the same soiled curtains, the same iron triangles. One day, long ago, imitating the street urchins of Manila, he had twisted one of these triangles: ...
— An Eagle Flight - A Filipino Novel Adapted from Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and waves that rolled Up the white sand-slopes flashed with ruddy gold.) Something it has—a flavor of the sea, And the sea's freedom—which reminds of thee. Its faded picture, dimly smiling down From the blurred fresco of the ancient town, I have not touched with warmer tints in vain, If, in this dark, sad year, it steals one ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... decoration of the new Houses of Parliament, sat to examine witnesses, but Haydon was not summoned before them, a slight which he deeply felt. With an anxious heart he set about making experiments in fresco, and was astonished at what he regarded as his success in this new line of endeavour. During the past year, the Anti-Slavery Convention picture, and one or two small commissions, had kept his head above water, but now the clouds were beginning to gather again, ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... they are 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, ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... 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 together while warm; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... time copied and rescued from entire oblivion. These pictures, which, like most monumental works, represent funeral feasts and games, according to Braun, are valuable for a mass of details relating to antique athletic art, which were before unknown. A Pompeiian fresco, representing the twelve gods, hitherto little esteemed, is made the subject of a profound investigation by E. Gerhard. Among the essays on vases, a long one by Welcker deserves especial mention. It discusses all the known representations of ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... with little sheds, bearing the image of the Saviour, crowned with thorns and frightfully dashed with streaks and drops of red paint, to represent the blood that flowed from his wounds. The outer walls of the better kind of houses were ornamented with paintings in fresco, and the subjects of these were mostly sacred, such as the Virgin and Child, the Crucifixion, and the Ascension. The number of houses of worship was surprising; I do not mean spacious or stately churches ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... For observe this 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 ...
— Stones of Venice [introductions] • John Ruskin
... indeed, in our latitude, the pledge of May. It comes when the grass is short, and the fresh turf sets off its "ring of gold" with admirable effect; hence we know the poet is a month or more out of the season when, in "Al Fresco," he makes it bloom with ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... philosophers:(295) but half a century later, in the pictures of the last judgment which exist in several states of Italy, each a little historic satire with its own peculiarities, we find Averroes depicted as the type of incredulity and blasphemy. In a fresco of the Campo Santo of Pisa, executed about 1335, when perhaps the recent canonization of Aquinas as an opponent of Averroes had directed attention to the influence of the Arabic philosopher, Orcagna has placed a separate bolgia, the lowest ...
— History of Free Thought in Reference to The Christian Religion • Adam Storey Farrar
... as a background or as a decoration in themselves. In the latter case any pictures should be set in specially arranged panels and should be pictures of importance, or fresco painting. The walls of the great periods were of this decorative order. They were treated architecturally and the feeling of absolute support which they gave was most satisfactory. The pilasters ran from base or dado to the cornice and the over-doors made the doors a dignified ...
— Furnishing the Home of Good Taste • Lucy Abbot Throop
... preserve their colour like the English ones. The ceilings of some of the passages are beautifully decorated; and one of the committee rooms, appropriated to agricultural matters, is remarkably well painted in fresco; all the subjects have allusion to agricultural pursuits. In the centre of the building, round the circular part, under the dome, are some very indifferent pictures, representing subjects connected with the history of America, beginning with the landing of Columbus. Two out ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... 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 ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... hall of 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
... Dowden, "a full 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, ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... July of 1843 the first great exhibition of cartoons for the Houses of Parliament was held. These gigantic designs handled the loftiest subjects, executed in the most elevated spirit of the highest art, with a view to ultimate execution in fresco on the walls of the palace of Westminster. It was not in nature for Punch to allow so excellent an opportunity to pass by without taking sarcastic advantage of it. He—conformably with his role of Sir Oracle, omniscient and omnifarious—must have his "cartoons" too; and so on p. 22 of ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... 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
... to walk in this Garden, lest I shou'd spy my own natural Wife lying with the Great Turk in Fresco, upon some of these fine fiowry Banks, and learning how ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. III • Aphra Behn
... pacing up and down and avoiding his helpmeet's eye, but at last he ripped out a smothered oath and racked off down the street to his stable. This was an al fresco affair, consisting of a big stone corral within the walls of what had once been the dancehall, and as he saddled up his horse and rode out the narrow gate he found his ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... awakened. As you traverse the streets, each edifice, be it lordly or humble, presents to your gaze some record of prouder days. "Here an armorial device, there a saint, with his golden circlet or burning lamps, or a half-obliterated fresco, an arched balcony, a fortified gateway, or an ornamented shrine[1]." I heartily agree with the writer, from whose spirited Sketches the preceding extract has been taken, that this old and enduring character of the city is not without its importance. At a period when ...
— Germany, Bohemia, and Hungary, Visited in 1837. Vol. II • G. R. Gleig
... glory. There were several kinds of toothsome sandwiches, salads, olives 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
... 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 martyr ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... and beautiful trees wherever one looked. The decoration of the room was rather curious. The d'Y——s descend—like many Norman families—from William the Conqueror, and there are English coats-of-arms on some of the shields on the walls. A band which looks like fresco, but is really painted on linen—very cleverly arranged with some composition which makes it look like the wall—runs straight around the room with all sorts of curious figures: soldiers, horses, and boats, copied exactly from the famous Bayeux tapestries, the most striking ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... 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
... any great warmth of greeting, except upon sure ground of observation. Soon, however, his look grew kindly and genial (not that it had ever been in the least degree repulsive, but only reserved), and Leutze allowed us to gaze at the cartoon of his great fresco, and talked about it unaffectedly, as only a man of true genius can speak of his own works. Meanwhile the noble design spoke for itself upon the wall. A sketch in color, which we saw afterwards, helped us to form some distant ...
— Sketches and Studies • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... weather-stained Cupid, with one arm broken, and the other raised in the air with a long shell to its mouth. It seemed that in old days it might have been a fountain. At the end of the plot the blind side of a house offered a high wall which had once been painted in fresco. Though much of the coloured plaster had cracked and peeled away, and all that remained was stained and faded, still some traces of the original design might yet be detected: festive wreaths, the colonnades and perspective of ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli
... there are no seats, but the people stand in a mingled throng, now and then prostrating themselves and beating their foreheads on the ground, each as his own devotion may dictate, the resemblance is still more marked. All the interior is covered with fresco pictures; even the pillars have gigantic figures of the saints and doctors of the church painted upon them. From the high roof hang immense brass chandeliers of a peculiar form with many branches, capable of holding hundreds of ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various
... 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
... well as when I was in Ireland) I made such sketches as will make you throw down your brush in despair. I wish you would ask at Molteno's or Colnaghi's for a new Lithographic print of a head of Dante, after a fresco by Giotto, lately discovered in some chapel {90b} at Florence. It is the most wonderful head that ever was seen—Dante at about twenty-seven years old: rather younger. The Edgeworths had a print in Ireland: got by great interest in Florence ...
— Letters of Edward FitzGerald - in two volumes, Vol. 1 • Edward FitzGerald
... Maestro 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 ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... it to us," he said, "that Queen Mary paddled over this lake, or Cromwell's soldiers whitewashed that fresco? Give me a clean, new American church, anyhow, before all of your mouldy, tomby cathedrals. These things are so many cancelled cheques to me. I have nothing to pay on them. It is live issues that draw on my heart. You American girls ought to be at home looking into the negro ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... drugged draught of our own sensualities and evils, and pour out libations to vain and false gods. Brethren! Render unto Him that which is His; and see even upon the walls scrabbled all over with the deformities that we have painted there, lingering traces, like those of some dropping fresco in a roofless Italian church, which suggest the serene and perfect beauty of the image of the One whose likeness was originally traced there, and for whose worship it ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... echoed Diana, with 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 ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... o'clock I found myself installed near the head of an immensely long dinner-table in the salle a manger of the Cheval Blanc. The salle a manger was a magnificent temple radiant with mirrors, and lustres, and panels painted in fresco. The dinner was an imposing rite, served with solemn ceremonies by ministering waiters. There were about thirty guests seated round, in august silence, most of them very smartly dressed, and nearly all English. A stout gentleman, with a little knob on the top of his ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... the idea, sent for Michelangelo, and ordered him to begin forthwith. Buonarroti had had no practice in fresco-painting since his student days under Ghirlandajo. He knew that the painting of a ceiling was not an easy matter. He pleaded every excuse, proposed that the commission should be given to Raphael, saying that for his part, being but a sculptor, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson
... this reason he is now regarded as the patron of cattle. Should a bullock fall sick, his owner purchases an image of St Cornely and hangs it up in the stable until the animal recovers. The church at Carnac contains a series of fresco paintings which outline events in the life of the Saint, and in the churchyard there is a representation of the holy man between two bullocks. The head of St Cornely is said to be preserved within the edifice as a relic. On the 13th of September is held at Carnac the festival ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... great saloon, which is finely ornamented with fresco paintings by Baptiste. Here are a variety of Roman remains, such as dice, tickets for the Roman theatres, mirrors, seals for the wine casks, lamps, &c. and a beautiful bronze head of Homer, which was found ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... work is the series of 135 prints representing the triumphs of the emperor Maximilian I. They are of large size, executed in chiaroscuro, from two blocks, and convey a high idea of his powers. Burgkmair was also an excellent painter in fresco and in distemper, specimens of which are in the galleries of Munich and Vienna, carefully and solidly finished in the style of the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... After a photograph from the fresco by His friend Giotto, discovered under the whitewash on a watt of the Bargello palace; now in the ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... 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 ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al
... 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
... 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 ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... those from the stairs, though the window was partly open. The air from the street fluttered the dusty curtains, which were carefully drawn so as to hide the window bay, where former tenants had testified to their presence by various ornamental additions—a sort of domestic fresco. ...
— The Purse • Honore de Balzac
... the 26th, as you perceive by the date; but I am writing to you by the fire-side, instead of going to Vauxhall. If we have one warm day in seven, "we bless our stars, and think it luxury." And yet we have as much water-works and fresco diversions, as if we lay ten degrees nearer warmth. Two nights ago Ranelagh-gardens were opened at Chelsea; the Prince, Princess, Duke, much nobility, and much mob besides, were there. There is a vast amphitheatre, ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume I • Horace Walpole
... 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
... to painting 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 ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 12, No. 339, Saturday, November 8, 1828. • Various
... atmospheric tints and various lights and shades which the intervening spaces create, than by its groundwork and composition. It is the morning now turned evening and seen in the west,—the same sun, but a new light and atmosphere. Its beauty is like the sunset; not a fresco painting on a wall, flat and bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free. In reality, history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning to evening. What is of moment is its hue and color. ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... is not evolved. All that comes under the category of material and practical purpose, of idea or of moral attitude, belongs to the succession, the evolution, the type But the defining characters of the work of art are independent of time. The temple, the fresco, and the symphony, in the moment they become objects of the critical judgment, become also qualities of beauty and ...
— The Psychology of Beauty • Ethel D. Puffer
... 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, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... a series of scenes which presented the Biblical story from the Creation to the Flood. These frescoes are unequaled for sublimity and power. On the end wall of the same chapel Michelangelo produced his fresco of the "Last Judgment," one of the most famous paintings in ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER
... easy-going treatment of the Breviary had made this the usual time for it, as the name of noon still testifies. The boys' attention, it must be confessed, was chiefly expended on the wonderful miracles of the Blessed Virgin in fresco on the walls of the chapel, all tending to prove that here was hope for those who said their Ave in any extremity ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... was, right in the busiest, most bustling part of the town, its fresco and bronze and iron quaintly suggestive of mediaeval times. Within, all was 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 pity; the sweet, white-robed Virgin at the pretty ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... 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 Giotto did, and done it no worse; as it was, he was a village carpenter, and I will ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... up town and presently entered the door of a ramshackle structure standing midway of a block lined by similar buildings. They walked into a darkened room, and the Wildcat saw a fresco of gleaming white ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... bright mid-day sun, at almost Midsummer, Mr. Woodhouse was safely conveyed in his carriage, with one window down, to partake of this al-fresco party; and in one of the most comfortable rooms in the Abbey, especially prepared for him by a fire all the morning, he was happily placed, quite at his ease, ready to talk with pleasure of what had been achieved, and advise every body to come and sit down, and not to heat themselves.—Mrs. Weston, ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... extreme case of the use of books as ornaments, but it illustrates in a bizarre way what is a not uncommon use. There is this to be said for that illiterate millionaire: well-bound books are excellent ornaments. No decoration with wall paper or fresco can make a parlor as attractive as it can be made with low bookshelves filled with works of standard authors and leaving room above for statuary, or pictures, or the inexpensive decoration of flowers picked ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... himself the interior of a Roman dwelling in full working order, and with all its furniture, paintings, and utensils complete. Up to this, almost every object of value had been removed at once for safety, every fresco even of importance had been cut bodily out of its setting and placed in one of those immense halls on the ground floor of the Museum in Naples. How well do we remember those gaunt chilly chambers, filled from pavement to ceiling with painted fragments ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... house of the Dioscuri was visited next. It is in the Via dei Mercurii, and is a very interesting and extensive ruin, and contains some handsome fresco paintings. After this they visited many other houses, a description of which is not necessary; they were all like the Villa of Diomede, though less interesting; and among them all there was the same general character. ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... there is a more beautiful monument of old days and usages in the thirteenth-century church of St. Martin, not badly restored, where the stained-glass windows are genuinely mediaeval, as well as the fresco on gold ground representing the "Seven Joys of Mary," painted in 1463. Just above Remagen lies the Victoria-berg, named after the crown-princess of Prussia, the princess-royal of England, and this is the evening resort of weary Remageners—a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... vaguely, he hardly knew why, of a Russian. The stranger carried his knapsack into many picturesque corners; he obtained permission to set up his easel in that high garden where the late Squire had held his al fresco banquets. But Paynter had never had an opportunity of judging of the artist's work, nor did he find it easy to get the artist even to talk of his art. Cyprian himself was always ready to talk of any art, and he talked of it excellently, but with little response. He gave his own reasons for ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... guard, 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, ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... entertainers at their domestic 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 of her guest, with a too evident view, under the ostentatious ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte
... blazing pall 140 From some black coffin-lid. Or, best of all, I love to think The leaving us was just a feint; Back here to London did he slink, And now works on without a wink Of sleep, and we are on the brink Of something great in fresco-paint: Some garret's ceiling, walls and floor, Up and down and o'er and o'er 150 He splashes, as none splashed before Since great Caldara Polidore. Or Music means this land of ours Some favour yet, ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... the Virgin in the fresco of the Judgment in the Strozzi Chapel, so grand and majestic in its simplicity, is again recognisable in the panels of Fra Angelico, imitated with his own especial character and spiritual feeling, full of grace and humility, the soft lines breathing beauty and lightness. The saints who ...
— Fra Angelico • J. B. Supino
... Behind these are Zoroaster, Ptolemy, one with a terrestrial, the other with a celestial globe, addressing two figures, which represent Raphael and his master Perugino. The drawing in brown upon the socle beneath this fresco, is by Pierino del Vaga, and represents the death ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... The al-fresco entertainment was over, the dinner transferred on wooden spits from the caldron to huge wooden platters. Game, collops of venison skilfully roasted on long wooden forks, assisted to eke out the contents ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... new chapel, which is being built by the present prince, is circular in form, with a dome one hundred and thirty feet high. The space between the doors is occupied by three circular recesses, with figures of prophets and apostles in fresco. Over one door is the Nativity,—over the other, the Resurrection,—also in fresco. On the walls around were pictures somewhat miscellaneous, I thought; for example, John Huss, St. Cecilia, Melanchthon, Luther, several women, saints, apostles, and evangelists. These ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... was a fine type of the peasant. His features might, in the strong chiaroscuro of the candle-light, have stood as model for some church fresco of a St. Peter. His dress was of grey country homespun, cut in a long coat, and girded by a many-coloured arrow-pattern sash, and on his feet he wore a ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... discouraged, but must not abandon my efforts to speak a new language. Visited the Pantheon—wondrous structure—a sovereign's pride, and a nation's monument. Visited the tombs of the dead; ascended to the dome—magnificent view; fine paintings in fresco. My impressions will never be effaced. This evening was in company with Count Gasparin and his noble father, and Mr. Monod, one of the principal Protestant ministers in Paris. Mr. Monod spoke strongly of Puseyism; mentioned ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... next to the Stable-Door; so that every Customer was alike well served according to his Chance, and every Horse ridden with the same Justice: From whence it became a Proverb, when what ought to be your Election was forced upon you, to say, Hobson's Choice. This memorable Man stands drawn in Fresco at an Inn (which he used) in Bishopsgate-street, with an hundred Pound Bag under his Arm, with this Inscription upon the ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... plan was by baring the ground, and tracing the bedding of the stones which are gone. For this I have cleared all the site of the buildings, and in course of the work several rooms with portions of painted fresco pavements have been found. One room which was nearly entire, about 51 by 16 feet, and two others more injured, have now been entirely exposed to view, and protected by a substantial house, well lighted, ...
— The American Journal of Archaeology, 1893-1 • Various
... 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 ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... in Wroughton Church, Wilts.—Not very long ago, while this church was under repair, there was discovered on one of the pillars, behind the pulpit, a fresco painting of a mitred abbot. I have corresponded with the rector on the subject, but unfortunately he kept no drawing of it; and all the information he is able to afford me is, that "the vestments were those ordinarily pourtrayed, with scrip, ...
— Notes and Queries, No. 209, October 29 1853 • Various
... a 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, and no more think of ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... seems but to receive, and his eye seems only to rest on, what is great, and generous, and lovely. You walk through crowded galleries, where are pictures ever so large and pretentious; and come upon a grey paper, or a little fresco, bearing his mark-and over all the brawl and the throng recognise his sweet presence. 'I would like to have you been Giulio Romano,' J. J. says (who does not care for Giulio's pictures), 'because then I would have been Raphael's favourite pupil.' We agreed ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... high altar. The pillars supporting these arches are Corinthian, with richly sculptured capitals; and wherever gilding might adorn the church, it is lavished like sunshine; and within the sweeps of the arches there are fresco paintings of sacred subjects, and a beautiful picture covers the hollow of the vault over the altar; all this, besides much sculpture; and especially a group above and around the high altar, representing the Magdalen smiling down upon angels and archangels, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... picnicking, and you'll enjoy it as most people usually enjoy those horrid al fresco entertainments. I don't believe there's the slightest real necessity for it, but," she added in a lower voice, "the Irish and Chinese servants are so demoralized now, they wouldn't stay indoors with us. It's a common practice ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... "Hallo! al fresco Euclid!" exclaimed Uncle John, as Sam with a blush ran after his blotted diagrams, as a sudden gust of wind blew them dancing over the garden. Captain Merrifield caught one, and restored it to Sam, with a pat on the ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... 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 out conspicuously above its surroundings. ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... 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 ...
— Florence and Northern Tuscany with Genoa • Edward Hutton
... was a remarkable fact, worthy of high relief in the fresco of weird and startling events then vaguely grouping themselves, that Royson first dreamed of love, even as a fantastic idyll where Irene Fenshawe was concerned, while he was hurrying through the native quarter of Massowah on a mission destined to change the ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... 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. ...
— Vestiges of the Mayas • Augustus Le Plongeon
... and mathematician, were translated into Latin by Italians, among whom his prestige was so great that, as may still be seen, he was painted among the expounders of mathematical science in an Italian church fresco representing the seven liberal arts. Under the name Abraham Judaeus, later corrupted into Avenare, he is met with throughout the middle ages. Abraham ben Chiya, another distinguished scientist, known by the name Savasorda, compiled the first systematic ...
— Jewish Literature and Other Essays • Gustav Karpeles
... Trees"—that group of some half-dozen forest giants that arch overhead with such superb loftiness. But in all the world there is no cathedral whose marble or onyx columns can vie with those straight, clean, brown tree-boles that teem with the sap and blood of life. There is no fresco that can rival the delicacy of lace-work they have festooned between you and the far skies. No tiles, no mosaic or inlaid marbles, are as fascinating as the bare, russet, fragrant floor outspreading about their feet. They are the acme of Nature's architecture, and in building them she ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... France. Francisco Francis. francmason freemason. frase f. phrase, sentence. fratricida fratricidal. frecuente frequent. freir to fry. frenetico frantic. frente f. front, forehead; —— a, facing. fresal m. strawberry plant. fresco fresh, cool. frescura freshness, impudence. frio cold, frigid, m. cold, chill. frito (from freir) fried. frivolo frivolous. frontera frontier. fruta fruit. fruto fruit. fuego fire. fuer; a fuer ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... 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 ...
— The Headsman - The Abbaye des Vignerons • James Fenimore Cooper
... element. There are no better canoe-men on the coast. They ship only on board the Bristol ships, and they have more than once flogged a cruel skipper caught ashore. Passing King George's Town, we halted (11 A.M., January 23) opposite the river and settlement of Fresco, where two barques and a cutter were awaiting supplies. Fresco-land is beautified by perpendicular red cliffs, and the fine broad beach is feathered with cocoas which suggest kopra—the dried meat of the split kernel. ...
— To The Gold Coast for Gold, Vol. II - A Personal Narrative • Richard Francis Burton and Verney Lovett Cameron
... silk, brocaded with clusters of flowers, in which blue and pink predominated, gave a superb effect to the walls, and from the ceilings, a half-dozen cupids, beautifully painted in fresco, seemed showering roses upon the visitor, as he passed under. The carpet was composed of a vast medallion pattern upon a white ground, scattered over with bouquets a little more defined and gorgeous than those upon the walls, as if the blossoms had grown smaller and more ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... to the spot by her outraged indignation that any one should dare speak to her thus. She found herself facing a fresco of a tall, austere figure in an enveloping white garment, an elderly woman with a thin, worn, noble face, who laid one fine old hand on a stone parapet and with divine compassion and tenderness looked out over a sleeping city. The man followed the direction of ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... in fresco in the portico of this palace. Zanetti has preserved the record of a figure said to be "Diligence," in his ...
— Giorgione • Herbert Cook
... similar motives and groupings repeated in a way which shows that the painter—or rather the collaborating painters—must have been reproducing or adapting an original which was particularly admired or had obtained a fashionable vogue. The wall-pictures, done in fresco or distemper and in various dimensions, fall into four main classes. There are landscapes, from a pretty realistic garden scene to a fantastic stretch of sea and land diversified with woods, rocks, figures, and buildings. There are subjects ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... frescoing is contemplated the wall will be faced with porous brick, on which the proper fresco ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... malicious-looking urchin of about fifteen, who appeared to be her son. She came from Toro, a place about a day's journey from Valladolid, and celebrated for its wine. One night, as we were seated in the court of the inn enjoying the fresco, the following conversation ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... known more or less familiarly have faded from my remembrance, but this presentment of the youthful student, sitting there entranced over the page of his text-book,—the child-father of the distinguished scholar that was to be,—is not a picture framed and hung up in my mind's gallery, but a fresco on its walls, there to remain so long as ...
— Pages From an Old Volume of Life - A Collection Of Essays • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... friends; and if she could not get them to kiss each other, she would kiss first one and then the other. I missed her one day, and, after hunting a long while, I found her in the gallery before a fresco of our Lord upon the Cross. She was stroking it and kissing it, with tears in her eyes; and she turned to me saying, 'Poor! poor!' Her eyes always filled with tears when she saw the crucifix. The moon used to interest her exceedingly; she would sit and watch ...
— Our Little Lady - Six Hundred Years Ago • Emily Sarah Holt
... artist's marriage he painted one fresco, "The Procession of the Magi," in which he placed a very splendid substitute for his wife, namely himself. Afterward he painted the Dead Christ which found its way to France and it laid the foundation for Andrea's wrongdoing. This picture was greatly admired ...
— Pictures Every Child Should Know • Dolores Bacon
... is a perfect casket of richness and elegance. The windows are of silvered glass, through which the light glimmers softly on the splendor within. The whole end of the church behind the high altar, is taken up with Cornelius's celebrated fresco painting of the "Last Judgment,"—the largest painting in the world—and the circular dome in the centre of the cross contains groups of martyrs, prophets, saints and kings, painted in fresco on a ground ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... mirrors in sumptuous frames hang on the walls. Vice can see her own image all over the establishment. The ceiling is superbly decorated with bas-reliefs in carton-pierre, like those in Mr Barry's new Covent Garden Theatre; and fresco paintings, executed by Viotti, of Milan, and Conti, of Munich; whilst the whole is lighted up by enormous and gorgeous chandeliers. The apartment to the right is called the Salle Japanese, and is used as a dining-room for a monster table d'hote, held twice a day, and served by the famous ...
— The Gaming Table: Its Votaries and Victims - Volume I (of II) • Andrew Steinmetz
... in black and white stone, not ceiled, and its beams painted, was furnished with one of those enormous sideboards with marble tops, required by the war waged in the provinces against the human stomach. The walls, painted in fresco, represented a flowery trellis. The seats were of varnished cane, and the doors of natural wood. All things about the place carried out the patriarchal air which emanated from the inside as well as the outside of the house. The genius of the provinces preserved everything; nothing was new or old, ...
— An Old Maid • Honore de Balzac
... 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 European reads—generously ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... considering 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 ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... very long; and those that he left were made in such a way, that it may well be believed from this showing that he would have become excellent and rare if he had not died so soon. In two chapels of S. Agostino in Siena there are seen some little pictures with figures in fresco, by his hand; and in the church, on a wall now pulled down in order to make chapels there, was a scene of a youth led to execution, as well made as it could possibly be imagined, there being seen expressed in it the pallor and fear of death, in so lifelike ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol 2, Berna to Michelozzo Michelozzi • Giorgio Vasari
... 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 refused to go on with his work till the ...
— The Village Pulpit, Volume II. Trinity to Advent • S. Baring-Gould
... sketching it in the immensity of its turmoil, it happened—it could not but happen—that the picture displayed more of evil than of good; that some part of the fresco represented a guilty couple; and the critics at once raised a cry of immorality, without pointing out the morality of another position intended to be a perfect contrast. As the critic knew nothing of the general plan I could forgive him, all the ...
— The Human Comedy - Introductions and Appendix • Honore de Balzac
... absent at a distance of over forty miles,"[15] probably at Volterra. He painted there in this year three pictures, all of which are still in the city; the "Annunciation" and the "Madonna and Saints," dated 1491, and the fresco of "S. Jerome" on the walls ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... 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 ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... hours delightfully one evening in listening to Strauss's band. We went about sunset to the Odeon, a new building in the Leopoldstadt. It has a refreshment hall nearly five hundred feet long, with a handsome fresco ceiling and glass doors opening into a garden walk of the same length. Both the hall and garden were filled with tables, where the people seated themselves as they came, and conversed sociably over their coffee and wine. The orchestra ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... arrived with their immediate attendants, and alighting at the door of an inner recess, where a light burns over the manger of Bethlehem, and in which is a simple but exquisite group of St. Joseph, the Virgin, and Child. On the walls of the chapel are painted in fresco a crowd of followers, the varieties of whose costumes, attitudes, and figures are most cleverly portrayed. In modelling the horses which form part of the central group, Ferrari was assisted by his pupil Fermo Stella."—[Fermo Stella is not known ...
— Ex Voto • Samuel Butler |
