CHAPTER XIII. (XXVII.)
How Grotesques are worked on the Stucco.
The grotesque is a kind of free and humorous picture produced by the ancients for the decoration of vacant spaces in some position where only things placed high up are suitable. For this purpose they fashioned monsters deformed by a freak of nature or by the whim and fancy of the workers, who in these grotesque pictures make things outside of any rule, attaching to the finest thread a weight that it cannot support, to a horse legs of leaves, to a man the legs of a crane, and similar follies and nonsense without end.[[233]] He whose imagination ran the most oddly, was held to be the most able. Afterwards the grotesques were reduced to rule and for friezes and compartments had a most admirable effect. Similar works in stucco were mingled with the painting. So generally was this usage adopted that in Rome and in every place where the Romans settled there is some vestige of it still preserved. And truly, when touched with gold and modelled in stucco such works are gay and delightful to behold.
They are executed in four different ways.[[234]] One is to work in stucco alone: another to make only the ornaments of stucco and paint groups in the spaces thus formed and grotesques on the friezes: the third to make the figures partly in stucco, and partly painted in black and white so as to imitate cameos and other stones. Many examples of this kind of grotesque and stucco work have been, and still are seen, done by the moderns, who with consummate grace and beauty have ornamented the most notable buildings of all Italy, so that the ancients are left far behind. Finally the last method is to work upon stucco with water colour, leaving the stucco itself for the lights, and shading the rest with various colours. Of all these kinds of work, all of which offer a good resistance to time, antique examples are seen in numberless places in Rome, and at Pozzuoli near to Naples. This last sort can also be excellently worked in fresco with opaque colours, leaving the stucco white for the background.[[235]] And truly all these works possess wonderful beauty and grace. Among them are introduced landscape views, which much enliven them, as do also little coloured compositions of figures on a small scale. There are to-day many masters in Italy who make this sort of work their profession, and really excel in it.