Religious art is not just about morality, eternity and the immutable rules of the universe. It can also be about speed and how much time there is before a mural painting dries. If you want a mural to last, you have to apply the paint to the wall while it is still wet. You only have one chance, and you cannot afford to make mistakes. The person I spoke to was one of a rare breed of artists that has given us the longest-lasting murals of all time, including those of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican in Rome. Far from being dreamy artists who lie on their backs on scaffolds thinking of what to do next, as I always imagined Michelangelo did, fresco painters must follow strict methods in their work. If they make a mistake, they cannot correct it just by adding another layer of colour. They have to remove the plaster from the wall and start all over again, something they are understandably loath to do. Until a few years ago I didn't know much about frescos and didn't know what the word exactly entailed. But one day I was photographing some paintings in the Coptic monastery of Deir Al-Syrian in Wadi Al-Natroun when an elderly man started talking to me. From him, I learned that the frescoes I had so much admired were found by accident during recent renovations. A fire had charred the top layer of the plaster, and the experts who came to do the restoration discovered an older layer of fresco paintings underneath. A Google search back home provided me with a basic description of fresco painting, as well as of a very similar art, called egg tempera. To quote an Italian Renaissance art website, “The area to be painted was first covered with an under layer of plaster named the arriccio.” Because the artists painted directly onto this wet arriccio, they could not make changes in the painting once they had started and had only eight or nine hours in which to complete their work. This period was called a giornata, or a day's work. “If mistakes were made, the entire day's layer of plaster would have to be removed,” the website noted. What this meant was that the artist had to focus on a specific area every day and there were visible divisions between the work done one day and the work done the next. “In fresco paintings the dividing lines between differing days' work can very often be seen,” the website went on. “These seams between the layers of plaster were often hidden by an application of secco fresco,” or a colour touch-up, it said. Karl Einmi is the man credited with discovering the hidden murals in the Deir Al-Syrian Church, and he explained some of the methods Coptic artists use to paint religious murals. But knowing about fresco painting is one thing, and seeing it performed is quite another. It took me a while to arrange a meeting with Adel Nassif, one of Egypt's best practioners of the art. When I met him, Nassif was standing on a scaffold in Zaqaziq working on a huge mural about the journey of the Holy Family's flight into Egypt. The scene of Nassif at work brought back everything I had heard about his mosaics of the Holy Family in Egypt and Christ's resurrection that decorate the façade of the Archangel Michael Coptic Church in Villejuif in Paris. In 2012, the French Ministry of Culture recognised these as a tourist destination in the city. Talking to Nassif was a revelation. Often I had to interrupt him to ask him to explain some of the technical terms he used to describe aspects of his work. I learned that the oldest Coptic icons go back to the fourth century CE and are kept in the Louvre in Paris. He said that Coptic art suffered from vandalism over the centuries, which may explain why it has shown little sign of development over the passage of time. The 15th-century Arab chronicler Al-Maqrizi once said that the Coptic icons produced during his time were not the best produced in the history of Coptic art, as the best examples had already been lost by his time, Nassif said. Why are Coptic icons two-dimensional and lacking in perspective, I asked, expecting the answer to be about the artists being poorly trained or opting for work that is easier to understand by the uneducated classes. The answer Nassif came up with left me speechless as he said that two-dimensional painting had its roots in ancient Egyptian art. The ancients produced scenes that were two-dimensional and overlooked perspective, he said, because the third dimension, which provides depth, lacks accuracy. When it comes to length and width, these are measurable quantities, he explained. But depth is a matter of where you stand, or how you interpret things. The ancients, seeking certainty, stuck with two-dimensional scenes because for them these were more honest and also more precise. “Length and width are the facts of life. But depth is deceptive, and perspective depends on where you stand. You cannot measure depth in a scene, but you can measure width and length,” Nassif said. “If you look at the ancient murals, you'll notice that the artists paint things on top of each other and not behind each other. You can see this manner of representation in votive tables and also in battle scenes. The ancients didn't use perspective on purpose.” So is Coptic art a copy of Pharaonic art? Again Nassif gave me an unexpected answer. He said that in Pharaonic art the figures are always looking sideways, never towards the viewer, whereas in Coptic art the figures are always looking at the viewer, their eyes larger than usual as if to denote honesty and the desire to share knowledge. Unlike Western religious art, the aim of the Coptic artists was not to impress but to educate. The message was more important than the form, he said. “Art was not intended to embellish churches, but to instruct. The scenes had to be beautiful to attract viewers and encourage them to learn, but they were not supposed to impress them with the virtuosity of the art itself,” he said. As for my idea about Michelangelo lying on his back and taking his time to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Nassif disabused me of this idea. According to him, no fresco artist ever paints from scratch. The painting is planned in advance, and when the time comes to realise it on the plaster the painter follows the original plan, tracing it with exactness and without any last-minute changes. First, the artist sketches the image on transparent paper to the exact size of the painting. Then he places the paper on plaster made from lime and sand, or what the Italians used to call arriccio. Having poked holes in the paper to mark out the image on the plaster, the artist applies the paint to the arriccio and it becomes an integral part of the wall. But why doesn't the artist paint straight onto the wall, instead of using the paper to mark out the image first, I asked. This was when Nassif started glancing at his watch. Speaking faster now, he explained that the plaster dries quickly so there is no room for retouching the paint once it has been applied. Every detail has to be planned in advance. Fresco artists don't improvise. Some artists, however, paint murals using not the fresco technique, but in egg tempera. In this case, they can retouch their paintings as the colours are dissolved in egg or a glutinous base, allowing for a second coat. So why do you use fresco, with all its problems of speed, I asked. Nassif said that this was because in the case of fresco painting, the wall absorbs the painting and it becomes part of it. “You may paint fast, but your paintings will be around long after you're gone,” he said. I was starting to worry about the arriccio drying on the wall before Nassif had finished painting on it. So I let him get on with the rest of his giornata in peace.
