Word: retouching
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...biographer, about Michelangelo applying "so to speak, the ultima mano" (final touches) to the mighty fresco cycle; but Condivi did not say what medium these touches were in. Giorgio Vasari (1511-74), whose Lives of Italian artists is a fundamental source on the Sistine, describes how "Michelangelo desired to retouch some parts a secco, painting backgrounds, draperies and skies in ultramarine, and ornaments in gold." But he was prevented by Julius II, who wanted his chapel finished on All Saints Day, Nov. 1, 1512, at which the artist dismantled the scaffolding and reluctantly declared the job done. Thus...
Does this mean that Michelangelo did not retouch at all? Of course not. Nobody thinks that even Michelangelo could have got every passage of color and shade in the thousands of complex forms that make up the scheme of the Sistine right with the first layer of color on each. The Serpent coiled around the tree in the Temptation of Adam and Eve, for instance, far from being the more or less monochrome reptile of old, reveals the most delicate complexities of feathered stroking in green and yellow over reddish tones of shadow. The slow drying of the intonaco gave...
Auel can be unintentionally hilarious, especially when her prehistoric characters talk in anthropological jargon ("the Arterians make a spear point with bifacial retouch"). There is a campy charm to this, as if the author had, beyond our wildest imaginings, found a way to combine The Flintstones, Dynasty and the story of Mme. Curie...