Plate 10.—Detail from The Arts of Peace
Lord Leighton, Victoria and Albert Museum
allowing a day or so for drying. When any part required a second or third painting, which usually happens, it was found best to begin by moistening the whole of it over with a very thin transparent tint of the local colour, using plenty of spike oil; this has the effect of opening up the wall surface by causing a slight melting of the paint underneath. The painting was then carried to a completer stage of finish by reinforcing the higher lights and deeper shadows. The process lends itself to the accomplishment of almost any degree of finish by the use of subsequent washes of thin colour in the shadows. It is better, as a matter of technique, in any kind of fresco painting to always employ the brush strokes in the direction of the lines of the form, and not across it, as is often done in oil painting; one reason for this is that the work can be accomplished more directly and rapidly, and another is that the drawing of the forms is better expressed.
It may be noticed that there is a marked difference in the technique of the painting of the two frescos in the museum. The “Arts of War,” painted first, is treated broadly, and the colour throughout used rather thickly, while in the “Arts of Peace” a thinner method of treatment in the use of the colour is apparent, and the modelling in the latter, especially in the heads and nudes, is carried to a higher degree of finish, without any loss of breadth, by means of small brush strokes, or “hatching.” This method of work is of special value in fresco painting, and was adopted to a very great extent by the Italian frescanti of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Michael Angelo painted, or at least finished his frescos in the Sistine Chapel in hatched lines; Lord Leighton had satisfied himself on this point by a close examination of the Sistine frescos when he copied the figure of Adam from the “Creation of Man,” which is painted in one of the ceiling panels of the chapel. The broader method of treatment, as seen in the technique of the “Arts of War” fresco, is the more popular, but Lord Leighton preferred the technique of his later work, the “Arts of Peace.”
The following are the constituents of the medium in which the spirit fresco-colours are ground, according to Gambier Parry:—
| Incorporated by heat.— | Elemi resin (gum elemi) 2 ozs. | —weight |
| Pure white wax 4 ozs. | ||
| Oil of spike lavender 8 ozs. | —liquid measure | |
| Finest preparation of artist’s copal 20 ozs. |