Benutzerspezifische Werkzeuge

Fellows and staff members of the ZI as well as visiting scientists report on ongoing work. The open format of the workshop facilitates intensive discussion.

The history of oil painting on walls in the Italian Renaissance is one of risk and rivalry, failure and technical mastery. Drawing on new evidence from the recent restoration of Raphael’s Rooms in the Vatican Palace (1508–1524), this talk explores the experimentation with oil binders that shaped the practice of mural painting in the early sixteenth century. Despite Giorgio Vasari’s praise of true fresco – using water-based paints on a wet plaster surface – as the most durable and noble medium for wall painting, I suggest instead that Leonardo’s (unsuccessful) attempts to introduce oil binders in his murals (especially the lost Battle of Anghiari) set in motion a chain of experimentation, competition, and emulation that challenged younger artists, such as Raphael, Sebastiano del Piombo, and Giulio Romano. As a result, the material instability and the greater perishability of this oil medium, as compared to fresco, turned the former into a testing ground for painters to prove their technical and intellectual prowess. Thus, oil on wall should be characterized as one of the major though neglected sites of technical experimentation and innovation in early modern painting. Ultimately, this talk will demonstrate how my book project on the oil-on-wall medium lays the groundwork for a counter history of Italian Renaissance mural painting that questions the long-accepted primacy Vasari accorded to true fresco. 

[Caption: Peter Paul Ruben's copy of the lost Battle of Anghiari, around 1603]