Indian Sculpture and Painting, Illustrated by Typical Masterpieces, with an Explanation of their Motives and Ideals c10.78

c10.78

One of the oldest pictorial processes in India, as in Egypt, was fresco-painting, *i.e.* painting on a prepared surface of lime spread on a wall of wood, brick, or stone. The true process of fresco-painting—the *fresco buono*, as it is called in Italy, in which the painting is begun and finished piece by piece on a section of a wall (kept continually moist so that the colours are chemically united with the ground)—seems to have been practised in India from very early times, but tempera painting was more common, as it still is in the present day.