Thursday, July 22, 2010

David Mayernik Completes the San Cresci Fresco Cycle



Some time ago, we featured the work of noted American fresco artist and architect David Maynernik in completing the interior of the venerable Italian parish church of San Cresci in Tuscany with a cycle of frescoes depicting the life of the titular saint, as well as a large and quite stunning crucifixion. I am excited to say that the last two of the five scenes of the San Cresci cycle are finally complete. More can be found about the project at David's weblog, here. Above can be seen the second-to-the-last of the images, and below are a series of photos showing the process of completing the work, as well as the sinopia underpainting. This single fresco took five days to paint; each of the five segments is called a giornata, as it is literally a day's work. Fresco artists must work quickly, given the nature of their medium, and any mistakes cannot simply be painted over but must be chiseled out, and, in most cases, the affected giornata started over from scratch.











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