usual to use inferior materials, mud bricks, or rough stone, and cover their surface with a coat of stucco which might be ornamented with frescoes or decorations of other kinds. The quality of early Greek stucco is wonderfully fine.
The rough stone used by the Greeks was like the Roman Travertin, very porous and not capable of taking a fine surface, so they stuccoed it over, polished it and sometimes decorated it with frescoes. Traces of this are still to be found. The Byzantine
Greeks used stucco very generally in the cornices and enrichment of their churches, and their mosaics were embedded in a plaster-putty composition of similar nature.
In Egypt a strange use of stucco was as a thin coat over sculpture as a basis for whitewashing. At all occasions of its use in this way it concealed in some measure the full detail of the sculptor’s work in reliefs. In the 12th dynasty the finest lines were hidden by it, and on coming down to less remote times the plasterer ignored all the sculpture below, filling the figures with a smooth layer of
plaster on which the painter drew what he liked. It is curious that sculptors should have continued to produce fine detail of work where it would immediately be disregarded. It would seem to indicate very little in the way of interdependence of the arts at that period of Egyptian history.
Among these people, stucco was also used for independent modelling, as in Italy. It was laid on a flat canvas base, stretched over wood, and the whole relief was in the stucco. The chariot of
Tahutmas III is an important example of such work. The relief is low and smooth and full of detail. There is none of the sketchy, rough tooling seen in Roman stucco reliefs. Minute details of dress and hair are all tooled in and supply some of the best studies of Syrian robes. The varying patterns in shields of the different branches of Syrians, the feathering of arrows, the shape of the flowers of the papyrus and lotus of north and south are all accurately rendered. Plaster was also used for casting in molds.
The Romans knew plaster and stucco intimately
PLASTER CEILING, CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY, HARTFORD
DONN BARBEE, ARCHITECT
The rough stone used by the Greeks was like the Roman Travertin, very porous and not capable of taking a fine surface, so they stuccoed it over, polished it and sometimes decorated it with frescoes. Traces of this are still to be found. The Byzantine
Greeks used stucco very generally in the cornices and enrichment of their churches, and their mosaics were embedded in a plaster-putty composition of similar nature.
In Egypt a strange use of stucco was as a thin coat over sculpture as a basis for whitewashing. At all occasions of its use in this way it concealed in some measure the full detail of the sculptor’s work in reliefs. In the 12th dynasty the finest lines were hidden by it, and on coming down to less remote times the plasterer ignored all the sculpture below, filling the figures with a smooth layer of
plaster on which the painter drew what he liked. It is curious that sculptors should have continued to produce fine detail of work where it would immediately be disregarded. It would seem to indicate very little in the way of interdependence of the arts at that period of Egyptian history.
Among these people, stucco was also used for independent modelling, as in Italy. It was laid on a flat canvas base, stretched over wood, and the whole relief was in the stucco. The chariot of
Tahutmas III is an important example of such work. The relief is low and smooth and full of detail. There is none of the sketchy, rough tooling seen in Roman stucco reliefs. Minute details of dress and hair are all tooled in and supply some of the best studies of Syrian robes. The varying patterns in shields of the different branches of Syrians, the feathering of arrows, the shape of the flowers of the papyrus and lotus of north and south are all accurately rendered. Plaster was also used for casting in molds.
The Romans knew plaster and stucco intimately
PLASTER CEILING, CONNECTICUT STATE LIBRARY, HARTFORD
DONN BARBEE, ARCHITECT