"Fresco" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or so little tables covered by red cloths with a white design stood ranged at right angles to the deep brown wainscoting of the underground hall. Bronze chandeliers with many globes depended from the low, slightly vaulted ceiling, and the fresco paintings ran flat and dull all round the walls without windows, representing scenes of the chase and of outdoor revelry in mediaeval costumes. Varlets in green jerkins brandished hunting knives and raised on ...
— The Secret Agent - A Simple Tale • Joseph Conrad
... those damp young peasants passing on the mattresses of their hideous barrack, without anything around to remind them that they were in the most civilised of countries. The only traces of former splendour now visible in the Papal pile are the walls and vaults of two small chapels, painted in fresco, so battered and effaced as to be scarcely distinguishable, by Simone Memmi. It offers of course a peculiarly good field for restoration, and I believe the Government intend to take it in hand. I mention this ...
— A Little Tour in France • Henry James
... fern-hunting and flower-gathering, the vicar frequently popping upon the little picnickers unawares, whilst they were watching the rabbits and rabbitikins combing out their whiskers under the fir-trees, and Jupp and Mary getting an al fresco ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... eye-grip and he appeared to be studying the fresco design of the ceiling over the private ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... 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 that the growth of the place ...
— Early Letters of George Wm. Curtis • G. W. Curtis, ed. George Willis Cooke
... cirri above, or of the thundercloud below. There is no conceivable cause either in the geology, or the moral character, of the two sides of the town of Abbeville, to explain why there should be decorative fresco on the sky over the southern suburb, and a muttering heap of gloom and danger over the northern. The electric cloud is as calm in motion as the harmless one; it changes its forms, indeed; but imperceptibly; and, so far as can be discerned, only at its own will is exalted, ...
— The Storm-Cloud of the Nineteenth Century - Two Lectures delivered at the London Institution February - 4th and 11th, 1884 • John Ruskin
... 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. fire, ardor, flame, ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... a fresco peels and drops, Wherever an outline weakens and wanes Till the latest life in the painting stops, Stands One whom each fainter pulse-tick pains: One, wishful each scrap should clutch the brick, Each tinge not wholly escape the plaster, ...
— Libraries in the Medieval and Renaissance Periods - The Rede Lecture Delivered June 13, 1894 • J. W. Clark
... about to paint a picture of St. Augustine, as a fresco for the chapel of the Magi of the church I have named. And having seen me and heard that story of mine, he conceived the curious notion of using me as the model for the figure of the saint. I consented, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... designs and figures painted on the inner surfaces of their walls during the Middle Ages. Our ancestors used to make free use of colour for the purpose of architectural decoration, and employed several means in order to produce the effect. They sometimes used fresco, by means of which they produced pictures upon the walls covered with plaster while the plaster was wet. Sometimes they employed wall-painting, i.e. they covered the walls when the plaster was dry with some pictorial representation. The distinction between fresco and wall-painting ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... however, that those works of Carrache which I would recommend to the student are not often found out of Bologna. The "St. Francis in the midst of his Friars," "The Transfiguration," "The Birth of St. John the Baptist," "The Calling of St. Matthew," the "St. Jerome," the fresco paintings in the Zampieri Palace, are all worthy the attention of the student. And I think those who travel would do well to allot a much greater portion of their time to that city than it has been hitherto ...
— Seven Discourses on Art • Joshua Reynolds
... America, are: Columbus before the Council of Salamanca, Columbus in chains, Columbus before Queen Isabella, Washington crossing the Delaware, Washington at Monmouth, and Washington at Princeton. One of his last works is the fresco in the Capitol at Washington, "Westward the star of empire takes its way." He died in Washington, ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... 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 Knowledge;—the rest must come and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... once into the library 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 ...
— A Noble Life • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... 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 ...
— The Jealousies of a Country Town • Honore de Balzac
... 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 European reads—generously ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... 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 ...
— Frances Waldeaux • Rebecca Harding Davis
... 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 that he was at a school this week where ...
— The Story of My Life - Being Reminiscences of Sixty Years' Public Service in Canada • Egerton Ryerson
... Raphael's fresco of a battle, in the Vatican, saw again a fierce struggle last Friday. More than fifty were brought ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... 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 opinion upon The ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... who had not punished him, cannot, will not punish me, who have done nothing." A strange sound attracted the young man's attention. He looked round him, and saw on the mantel-shelf, just below an enormous crucifix, coarsely painted in fresco on the wall, a rat of enormous size engaged in nibbling a piece of dry bread, but fixing all the time, an intelligent and inquiring look upon the new occupant of the cell. The king could not resist a sudden impulse ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... state, the period in which any given people reach their highest power in art is precisely that in which they appear to sign the warrant of their own ruin; and that, from the moment in which a perfect statue appears in Florence, a perfect picture in Venice, or a perfect fresco in Rome, from that hour forward, probity, industry, and courage seem to be exiled from their walls, and they perish in a sculpturesque paralysis, or a ...
— The Two Paths • John Ruskin
... madly to the Benzine Hut. Plates and mugs were seized and portions measured out, while the diners distributed themselves on odd boxes lying about on the ice. Many who were accustomed to restaurants built tables of kerosene cases and dined al fresco. After the limited stew, the company fared on cocoa, biscuits—"hard tack"—and jam, all ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... removed from the walls, and in doing this a Norman altar recess was discovered in the east wall of this transept; the southern end of this had been cut away when the choir aisle was widened in the fourteenth century. In this recess traces of fresco may be seen. A piscina stands to the north of this altar recess, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: Wimborne Minster and Christchurch Priory • Thomas Perkins
... 'The 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.' ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... beauty 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
... of Mary's look, as she turned from Calvary. The dancers still kept the position of the figures, the men with their arms about their partners' waists, the women stepping forward; they were like the painted figures of dancers in a fresco. And among them stood Judith, waiting to play her part, waiting to show her world that she could dance and be merry because all was well with her and hers. But the bronzed sons of the saddle hung back, they who a day before would have quarrelled for the honor of a dance. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... the arts of etching and mezzotint engraving depend principally for their effect on the velvety, or bloomy texture of their darkness, and the best of all painting is the fresco work of great colourists, in which the colours are what is usually called dead; but they are anything but dead, they glow with the luminous bloom of life. The frescoes of Correggio, when not repainted, ...
— Lectures on Art - Delivered before the University of Oxford in Hilary term, 1870 • John Ruskin
... whose full name is "ALFRED FRESCO," writes to suggest that the Alhambra under Mr. JOHN HOLLINGSHEAD's management should start a Rotten Row Galop and Kensington Gardens Quadrille to follow as in a series the highly successful ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 10, 1892 • Various
... 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 thro' bronze may breathe thro' silver, Fitly serenade a slumbrous princess; He who writes ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... lovely color and 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 Gate of Appreciation - Studies in the Relation of Art to Life • Carleton Noyes
... 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 to ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... scientist. Poets go as pioneers in the advance guard, and they often discover new countries, suggesting solutions. There is there a borderland which belongs to them, between the conquered, the definitive truth, and the unknown, whence the truth of to-morrow will be torn. What an immense fresco there is to be painted, what a stupendous human tragedy, what a comedy there is to be written with heredity, which is the very genesis of families, of societies, and of ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... excitement reach amongst the crowd privileged to witness it, that the friars judged it prudent to bring its performances to a close by removing it from the church, and shutting it up in a press in the convent. The second madonna is a fresco in the open piazza as one approaches the church and convent. It is a recent painting, of life-size, with eyes lowered on the spectators looking at it from below, in such a manner that the movements of the pupils ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... this manner, "the man's joy," while escaping "the artist's sorrow." So Raphael, the painter, wrote a volume of sonnets to be seen only by one. Dante, poet of the "Inferno," drew an angel in memory of the one (of Beatrice). He—Mr. Browning—has only his verse to offer. But as the fresco painter steals a camel's hair brush to paint flowerets on his lady's missal—as he who blows through bronze may also breathe through silver for the purpose of a serenade, so may he lend his talent to a different use. ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... De Laperouse, was born at Albi, on August 23, 1741. His birthplace is the chief town in the Department of Tarn, lying at the centre of the fruitful province of Languedoc, in the south of France. It boasts a fine old Gothic cathedral, enriched with much noble carving and brilliant fresco painting; and its history gives it some importance in the lurid and exciting annals of France. From its name was derived that of a religious sect, the Albigeois, who professed doctrines condemned as heretical and endured severe ...
— Laperouse • Ernest Scott
... rooms that Gypsy and I both liked best of anything. One is called the Marble Room, and the other the Fresco Room. The Marble Room is all made of marble,—walls, floor, window-sills, everything but the furniture. The marble is of different colors and patterns, and just as beautiful! The furniture is covered ...
— Gypsy's Cousin Joy • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps
... of the building brilliantly illuminated. The woodwork of the "stand" and the bible platform, the velvet-and-gold curtains of the Holy Ark, and the fresco paintings on the walls and ceiling were screamingly new and gaudy. So were the ornamental electric fixtures. Altogether the place reminded me of a reformed German synagogue rather than of the kind with which my idea of Judaism had always been identified. This seemed to accentuate the fact that ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... removed, and the proceedings terminate by a Grand Al Fresco Carnival. Ladies of the ballet dance bewitchingly, while soldiers play at Bo-Peep behind enormous red hoops. Finally the entire strength of the ballet link arms in one immense line, and simultaneously execute a wonderful chromatic kick, upon which the blue draperies descend amidst prolonged and ...
— Punch Volume 102, May 28, 1892 - or the London Charivari • Various
... 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 de, in the manner ...
— Novelas Cortas • Pedro Antonio de Alarcon
... 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 faintest shade of hope. But, when the closing scene was actually come, the spirit all but upon ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... luncheon time, arrayed with 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 ...
— Fair Margaret - A Portrait • Francis Marion Crawford
... orchestra, and Berlioz requires four orchestras to obtain a pianissimo, this strange man of genius has quietly gone back a few centuries and discovered for himself an exquisite lost world, which was disappearing like a fresco peeling off a wall. He has burrowed in libraries and found unknown manuscripts like a savant, he has worked at misunderstood notations and found out a way of reading them like a cryptogrammatist, he has first found out how to restore ...
— Plays, Acting and Music - A Book Of Theory • Arthur Symons
... wind (see illustration), as marvellous for rhythm, power, and invention as the blast-whipped brambles and naked bushes that crest a scarped brow above the jealous husband who stabs his wife, in Titian's fresco at Padua. Again, the unspeakable tragedy of the stooping figure of Jesus, who is being dragged by His hair up the steps to Annas' throne, in the Little Passion, is rendered by lines instinct with the highest dramatic power. These are ...
— Albert Durer • T. Sturge Moore
... 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 up by the ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... 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 and flickering notion of what the picture will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... thought a man took up interior decorating just because he happened to have been an upholsterer or fresco painter. I never knew there was any studying to ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... 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, which has now ...
— Personal Recollections, from Early Life to Old Age, of Mary Somerville • Mary Somerville
... 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 Giotto ...
— The Way of All Flesh • Samuel Butler
... cheered, the girl chatted merrily all through the al fresco meal, in her turn inwardly giving thanks for the Arab's perfect manners and knowledge of table methods, for in her heart she, particular to the point of becoming finicky about the usually so unpleasant process of eating, had looked forward with absolute horror to the ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... 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 time, is all detail; the grand suggestive ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... himself young; in fact, one principal reason for keeping Alain secluded in Bretagne was 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 to voluntary exile rather ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... once the residence of a zamindar, now owned by Coja Solomon of Cossimbazar, and leased to a fellow Armenian of Chandernagore. It had been hired more than once by Monsieur Sinfray, the secretary to the Council at Chandernagore and a persona grata with the Nawab, for al fresco entertainments got up in imitation of the fetes at Versailles. But of late Monsieur Sinfray had had too much important business on hand to spare time for such delights. He was believed to be with Sirajuddaula at Murshidabad, and the ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... vegetation, save a few olives and scrub oaks and the bitter herbs and euphorbus. No scented happy Tuscan things. And deep below, the arches of Nero's Villa—with demons no doubt galore. Those giottesque chapels hold in them, all hung with lamps, a small tufo grotto, the one down which, as in Sodoma's fresco, the angels sent baskets of provisions and the devils made horns ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... inimitable productions Of the ancients. Instead of employing their art to preserve the master-pieces of antiquity, they have endeavoured to destroy and efface many of them. I have seen with my own eyes an evident proof of this at Bologna, where the greatest part of the paintings in fresco on the walls of the convent of St Michael in Bosco, done by the Carracci, and Guido Rheni, have been ruined by the painters, who, after having copied some of the finest heads, scraped them almost entirely out with nails. Thus, you see, nothing is exempt ...
— Letters of the Right Honourable Lady M—y W—y M—e • Lady Mary Wortley Montague
... 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 ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... Italian in Santa Maria Novella, a church where we saw some of the most interesting pieces of mediaeval painting I have ever seen, interesting not so much from an artistic as from a moral and historical point of view. Particularly noticeable was the great fresco expressive of the grandest mediaeval conception of the Communion of Saints, a figure of Christ surmounting a crowd of all ages and stations, among whom were not only Dante, Petrarca, Giotto, etc., etc., but Plato, Cicero, and best of all, Arius. ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... arches 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
... 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 St. Thomas ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury - with some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst Gloucestershire • H. J. L. J. Masse
... 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 ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... cathedral is opened before my gaze. The lofty white marble columns support a vaulted roof painted in fresco, from which are suspended a thousand lamps that emit a mild and steady effulgence. The great altar is illuminated; the priests, in glittering raiment, pace slowly to and fro. The large voice of the organ, murmuring to itself awhile, breaks forth ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Mount, because Mecenas having his palace on this hill, Horace, Propertius and Tibullus dwelt there also. Not far from here are the ruins of the Thermae of Titus, and of Trajan. It is believed that Raphael took the model of his arabesques from the fresco paintings of the Thermae of Titus. It is there, also, that was discovered the group of the Laocoon. The freshness of water affords such pleasure in hot countries that delight is taken in assembling together all the pomp of luxury, and every enjoyment of the imagination, in the places appropriated ...
— Corinne, Volume 1 (of 2) - Or Italy • Mme de Stael
... the elevation of English art by means of fresco I cannot sympathize.... It is not the material nor the space that can give us thoughts, passions, or power. I see on our Academy walls nothing but what is ignoble in small pictures, and would be disgusting in large ones.... It is not the love of fresco that we want; it is the ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... and my bed to be sent on to me, 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; ...
— My Life, Volume II • Richard Wagner
... ALIGHIERI After a photograph from the fresco by His friend Giotto, discovered under the whitewash on a watt of the Bargello palace; now in ...
— The World's Best Poetry Volume IV. • Bliss Carman
... exists such a paradox as an aristocracy among boarding-houses, Mrs. Schulem's was of it. None of the boiled odors lay on her hallways, which were not papered, but a cream-colored fresco of better days. There was only one pair of bisques, no folding-bed, and but the slightest touch of dried grasses in her unpartitioned front parlor. The slavey who opened the door was black-faced, white-coated, and his bedraggled skirts were trousers with a line of braid up each seam. Two more of ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... 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. A lukewarm sun disappears in a slot in the mountains ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... 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 ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... from the main road to find a secluded spot where we could spread our cloth and open our hampers without fear of interruption or, to use a more sinister word, detection. It was rather a jolly affair, that first and last al fresco banquet of ours under the spreading branches of mighty trees and beside the trickling waters of a gay little mountain brook that hurried like mad down to the broad channel of the Danube, now many miles away. The strain of the first few hours had slackened. ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... 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 hand, upright on ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... resemblance. The house, the rooms, are almost absolutely the same; there may be changes of detail, but they don't modify the general effect. There are the same precious pictures on the walls of the salon—the same great dusky fresco in the concave ceiling. The daughter is not rich, I suppose, any more than the mother. The furniture is worn and faded, and I was admitted by a solitary servant, who carried a twinkling taper before me up the great ...
— The Diary of a Man of Fifty • Henry James
... finished was placed by the monks over the high altar of the church, whence it was afterwards removed to make way for the picture of Alesso Baldovinetti, which is there to-day. It was afterwards placed in a small chapel of the south aisle in that church. Cimabue next worked in fresco at the hospital of the Porcellana, at the corner of the via Nuova which leads to the Borgo Ognissanti. On one side of the facade, in the middle of which is the principal door, he represented an Annunciation, and on the other side, ...
— The Lives of the Painters, Sculptors & Architects, Volume 1 (of 8) • Giorgio Vasari
... chase. A painting on the right occupies one side of the large room, and here are represented wild animals, the lion chasing a bull, &c. The upper part of the house is raised, where stands a gaily-painted column—red and yellow in festoons; behind which, and over a doorway, is a fresco painting of a summer-house perhaps a representation of some country-seat of the proprietor, on either side are hunting-horns. The most beautiful painting in this room represents a Vulcan at his forge, assisted by three dusky, aged figures. In the niche of the outward ...
— The Illustrated London Reading Book • Various
... although more recent, was in various forms practised in Etruria. Equally dependent on the Greeks, but otherwise quite on a level with the workers in the plastic arts, were the Etruscan designers and painters, who manifested extraordinary activity both in outline-drawing on metal and in monochromatic fresco-painting. ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... the "Requiem" that Berlioz revealed himself in all the grandeur and might of his being. For in it all the aristocratic coolness and terseness of "La Damnation de Faust" and of "Harold en Italie," all the fresco-like calm of "Les Troyens a Carthage," find their freest, richest expression. "Were I to be threatened with the destruction of all that I have ever composed," wrote Berlioz on the eve of his death, "it would be for ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... represents the father standing on the step of his mansion, about to embrace his son, who stands near. The background of the picture should represent the portico of a house, and can be made in the following manner: Procure at a paper store four fresco pilasters, with caps and bases, and a wide cornice to match; also a roll of granite paper; paste the cornice and pilasters on cloth; fasten the cornice across the ceiling of the stage, five feet from the background, and suspend the pilasters from the lower edge, placing them at equal ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... their type of beauty, which is terrestrial and peculiar to Ferrari, without a touch of Correggio's sensuality; but also in the intensity of their emotion, the realisation of their vitality. Those which hover round the Cross in the fresco of the 'Crucifixion' are as passionate as any angels of the Giottesque masters in Assisi. Those again which crowd the Stable of Bethlehem in the 'Nativity' yield no point of idyllic charm to Gozzoli's ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... triumphant on my Brow? dost not see the little wanton God there all gay and smiling? have I not an Air about my Face and Eyes, that distinguish me from the Croud of common Lovers? By Heav'n, Cupid's Quiver has not half so many Darts as her Eyes— Oh such a Bona Rota, to sleep in her Arms is lying in Fresco, ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... the greatest 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 ...
— Sonnets • Michael Angelo Buonarroti & Tommaso Campanella
... 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) ...
— The American Woman's Home • Catherine E. Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe
... sketching, and tracing, analytic geometry, differential calculus, physics, descriptive geometry, botany, and physical geography. In the third year the course is extended to the theory of decoration, color, form, and proportion; conventionalism, symbolism, the decorative arts, stained glass, fresco painting, tiles, terra-cotta, original designs, specifications, integral calculus, strength of materials, dynamics, bridges and roofs, stereotomy. In the fourth year the student is turned out a finished architect, after a course of the history of ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 446, July 19, 1884 • Various
... 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 designs, and ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... Ribbon Club. Their seat was in a sort of carrefour, at Chancery-Lane end, a centre of business and company, most proper for such anglers of fools. The house was double-balconied in front, as may be yet seen, for the clubsters to issue forth, in fresco, with hats and no peruques, pipes in their mouths, merry faces, and diluted throats, for vocal encouragement of the canaglia below, at bonfires, on usual and unusual occasions. They admitted all strangers that were confidingly introduced; for, it was a main end of their institution to ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... 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, each basin ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... 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 ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... 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 ...
— A Little Pilgrim • Mrs. Oliphant
... extrinsic &c. 6; ecdemic[Med], exomorphic[obs3]. Adv. externally &c. adj.; out, with out, over, outwards, ab extra, out of doors; extra muros[Lat]. in the open air; sub Jove, sub dio[Lat]; a la belle etoile[Fr], al fresco. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... old city-gate, which, unfortunately, was to be torn down to make way for a new road. Those gates are veritable pictures, with their beautiful round arches and the niche with its fresco underneath. This porta preserved perfectly in the crimson stone the smooth slide down which the suspended gate slipped at night or in times ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... I stopped at the principal inn, two centuries old, the quaint front painted in fresco, the interior neat and fresh as a new toy,—a very gem of a house! The floor upon which I entered from the street was paved with flat stones; a solid wooden staircase, dark with age, led to the guests' room in the second story. One side of this ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 118, August, 1867 • Various
... "Creation." Murillo became Murillo only at forty years of age. Poussin was seventy when he painted "The Deluge," which is the most poetically great of all his noble pictures. Michael Angelo counted more than sixty years when he encrusted his incomparable fresco, "The Last Judgment," upon the walls of the Sistine Chapel; and he was eighty-seven when he raised the cupola of St. Peter's to the heavens. And our own Milton was sixty-three when he wrote ...
— Sketch of Handel and Beethoven • Thomas Hanly Ball
... in favour of centralization, but against this one must remember that the "subject nationalities" were inferior beings. The Yugoslavs, the Roumanians and the Slovaks could not claim a glorious descent from Attila, of whom a fresco decorates the House of Parliament at Buda-Pest, and thus the Magyars had always thought it seemly that, by various devices, a limit should be put to the number of Yugoslav, Roumanian and Slovak deputies. Count ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... was gone. The small monastery of Sant' Onofrio, where he spent the last short month of his life, used to be a lonely and beautiful place, and is remembered only for his sake, though it has treasures of its own—the one fresco painted in Rome by Lionardo da Vinci, and paintings by Domenichino and Pinturicchio in its portico and little church, as well as memories of Saint Philip Neri, the Roman-born patron saint of Rome. All these things barely sufficed to ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford
... 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 their home in a shop door-way in Liverpool ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... the outside whitewashed walls of their temples and houses with mural paintings. They often present a quaint mixture of hunting-scenes, and animals and gods, and soldiers and Indians and Europeans. One such fresco, on the wall of the house of the headman of Yerandawana village, is a most comical reproduction of the garden front of Windsor Castle, taken from an Illustrated London News, but embellished with many Indian characteristics. ...
— India and the Indians • Edward F. Elwin
... extending through to Twenty-ninth street. The interior is very large and very beautiful. The altar is of pure white marble, and its adornments are of the richest description. The church is decorated with a series of excellent fresco paintings of a devotional character. The altar piece, representing The Crucifixion, is a magnificent work. The music is perhaps the best in the city. The church will seat nearly 4000 ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... last rays of the sun; and I still see your look of absolute unconcern. You wore a long blue apron 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
... am I afraid 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
... very beautiful 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")
... is called the Morning Chapel, from its original use for morning prayer on weekdays. The mosaic above the altar is in imitation of a fresco by Raphael. That at the west end, by Salviati, is in memory of William Hale Hale, a voluminous writer and editor of the "Domesday of St. Paul's," who was a Residentiary, Archdeacon of London and Master of the Charterhouse. He died in 1870. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... anybody turned his head to stare at them. I suppose the denizens of the district were used to the apparition of them. To me they looked as if they had been the originals from which Guido Reni painted those of the car in which he has placed the celebrated Aurora of his world-famous fresco. They were solidly and heavily built wheels—very barbarous an English carriage-builder would have considered them in their heavy and clumsy magnificence—but they were very gorgeous. What could be the meaning of their appearance in public under such circumstances? I was walking with an Italian ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... made by Torres' cartographer, shows that Torres' Tierra de san Buenaventura (Basilisk Island), is one of several islands off the south-eastern extremity of New Guinea; and, by coupling this fact with what Torres says of his inability to navigate the bay (Milne Bay), and proceed east of Cabo Fresco (Challis Head), although he noticed wide channels in that direction, we may infer that the reefs and coral patches (not contrary winds as generally believed) compelled him to seek the southwest ...
— The First Discovery of Australia and New Guinea • George Collingridge
... numerous retinue, she afterwards removed to Campden House. Christ Church, in Lancaster Gate, is in a decorated style of Gothic. It was consecrated July 17, 1855, and the architects were Messrs. F. and H. Francis. It contains a very fine marble pulpit, and a fresco reredos, enclosed in a heavy stone setting. Though Paddington is of such modern date, the streets are not conveniently built; it is frequently necessary to walk the whole length of a street or terrace for lack of a cross-cut into a parallel ...
— Mayfair, Belgravia, and Bayswater - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... stood I could look into the cheery farm kitchen, where Alison West and I had eaten our al fresco breakfast. I looked at the table with mixed emotions, and then, gradually, the meaning of something on it penetrated my mind. Still in its papers, evidently just opened, was a hat box, and protruding over the edge of the box was a streamer ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... riding in the plain—dignified, cloaked and hooded figures, startlingly suggestive of a sacred picture) on mule or donkey, stop to descend from their perch between the saddle-bags or panniers. It is a sort of al fresco cloakroom where these ladies repair the ravages of wind or storm, where they assemble in the evening to pack their purchases on their beasts of burden, and finally climb to the top of all themselves. For it is not etiquette to ride in or out of the ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... refectory of Santa Croce, containing an invaluable Cenacolo, if not by Giotto, at least one of the finest works of his school, is used as a carpet manufactory. In order to see the fresco, I had to get on the top of a loom. The cenacolo (of Raffaelle?) recently discovered, I saw when the refectory it adorns was used as a coach-house. The fresco, which gave Raffaelle the idea of the ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... highly to recommend it. We have, 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 together while warm; and, in this medium, the colours should ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 57, No. 356, June, 1845 • Various
... works, to be corrected by the kind of bloom which the distance of thirty or forty feet sheds over them. I say, "sometimes," because this optical effect is a very subtle one, and seems to take place chiefly on certain colors, dead fresco colors especially; also the practice of the great workmen is very different, and seems much to be regulated by the time at their disposal. Tintoret's picture of Paradise, with 500 figures in it, adapted to a supposed distance of from fifty to a hundred feet, is ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... 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 ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... it be said, however, that the general opportunities for acquiring correct and elevated taste are, on the whole, greater in Germany than in England; and that in many cities there is a profusion of exterior ornament, more especially in Munich, in the shape of the fresco paintings of the Palace Garden, on Isar Thor, and in the Basilica and churches generally, so that the eye is better educated in artistic combinations; and the same necessity does not exist for special art instruction with them as with us. Then, let us never forget ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie
... 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 ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... fire and shine, abrupt as when there's slid Its stiff gold 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, to pity won By Purcell from his Rosy Bowers— "Give me my so-long ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... is very likely, 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 ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... range, real genius! Highly as the chap ranked, he would rank even higher before they had finished with him. The second Goya craze would be greater even than the first; oh, yes! And he had bought. On that visit he had—as never before—commissioned a copy of a fresco painting called "La Vendimia," wherein was the figure of a girl with an arm akimbo, who had reminded him of his daughter. He had it now in the Gallery at Mapledurham, and rather poor it was—you couldn't copy Goya. He would still look at it, however, if his daughter were not there, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... presently. It is a city of priests, and monks, and nuns, and friars, of every order, white and gray, black and greasy. As in all Spanish-American towns, the fronts of the houses are plastered and painted in fresco; but the fresco painting has gone too long without renewing, and the town looks now, as it did two years ago, gray, streaked, and inhospitable. The unwashed houses are filled with unwashed people; and the streets swarm with filthy beggars, and monks asking for alms in the name of the ...
— Mexico and its Religion • Robert A. Wilson
... 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 ...
— Raphael - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll
... my own living. I could run a ranch, I suppose, if I still had one, but two or three years of such work would see me a hatchet-faced old termagant with fallen arches and a prairie-squint. Or I could raise chickens and peddle dated eggs in a flivver-and fresco hen-coops with whitewash until the trap-nest of time swallowed me up in oblivion. Or I could take a rural school somewhere and teach the three R's to little Slovenes and Frisians and French-Canadians even more urgently in need of soap and water. Or perhaps I could be housekeeper for one ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... 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 from one's own garden. I am inclined to think that the ...
— The Guide to Reading - The Pocket University Volume XXIII • Edited by Dr. Lyman Abbott, Asa Don Dickenson, and Others
... highly. He 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 ...
— Giotto and his works in Padua • John Ruskin |
