Joseph's Dream - Watercolor Study for Fresco

Joseph's Dream
after Fresco, circa 1355, by Bartolo Battilori,
Cathedral, San Gimignano, Italy

A small watercolor study of a 10"x22" fresco panel I'm getting ready to paint. Inside the Cathedral in San Gimignano, frescos cover the walls. I had a revelation about the frescos when I was there several years ago. One of the ladies in our group wondered what story they told, and I knew they were scenes from the Bible, that this was how most people "read" the Bible in the 14th Century because the liturgy was in Latin, which most didn't understand, and many people then could not read. I remember that the scene of Joseph's dream was the fresco image that brought it all into focus for me. The scene is a composite of two dreams - one where his brothers' sheaves of grain bowed to Joseph's sheaf and the other dream where the sun, moon and 11 stars bow down to Joseph. Just another example of how God speaks through the visual, bridging language and social barriers, still as clear today as in the 14th century. After all, God is always speaking - are we listening?

Back to (Art) Work

Fresco I - 8"x8"

Now I have some free time to get back to working with Fresco - experimenting on my own, using traditional lime putty and sand, already mixed for the intonaco layer by Natural Pigments. This is 8"x8" cement board (my two next door neighbors were kind enough to cut a piece of cement board into various sizes for me) which I soaked in water and put one coat of plaster on it. I think I put the plaster on the wrong way but it didn't crack, and I could paint on it for 2 days. The plaster literally kept drinking the paint. I took a buon fresco class from George and Tanya O'Hanlon of Natural Pigments last year in Santa Fe where we painted 12"x16" prepared panels. I have called George in California several times, and he has been most generous with answering my questions. He told me that I would have more time to work with the fresco because of the climate here in Charleston/Mt. Pleasant, SC, and he was right. He suggested that I work out the colors and technique on the smaller pieces of cement board. There is much preparation involved - grinding the pigments and choosing the colors to prepare. I tried to incise my image entirely too soon, the plaster was too wet. However, I chose a relatively simple design so I didn't really lose the image. I painted the background black and then covered the black with blue on top the next day (using no binder, but the plaster was still drinking). A few days after I had painted the fresco, the top layer of paint was powdery, the consistency of pastel, so maybe I should have waited with blue and made egg tempera to cover the black. Several days later, I just put the fresco in the sink and ran cold water over it - that dealt with the powder and fortunately, a lot of the blue remained. We'll see if that lasts.