# oil on slate (painting)



## Cucafera

Hola!

_Slate _es siempre pizarra? Estoy en un contexto de pintura, y me planteo traducir _slate_ por _lienzo_, pero no sé si realmente se pintó sobre pizarra. Por si alguien conoce la obra, se trata de _Las hermanas de Faetón,_ de Santi di Tito, pintado en 1572.

La frase: Entitled _The Sisters of Phaethon_, this dramatic oil on slate was painted by Santi di Tito in 1572.

Mi intento: *Este impresionante óleo sobre pizarra, titulado **Las hermanas de Faetón,*_* es obra de Santi di Tito, que lo pintó en 1572*_
__ 
_*Gracias!!!*_


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## iinnffooss

As far as I can remember, this painting is on a wall. It's a fresco. Therefore, using "lienzo" would be wrong. However, I hesitate the wall is actually "pizarra" (Italian Renaissance, Palaces in Florence >> usually bricks or masonry for certain parts) since slate is not usually a consistent building material.


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## cirrus

Is it beyond the bounds of possibility that the wall has a slate covering which the fresco has been painted on?  I share iinffooss reservations about lienzo - canvas wouldn't work for a fresco because by definition frescos have to be painted onto a wall.


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## iinnffooss

As far as I know, slate is mainly used for floors and to cover surfaces exposed to water because it is a quite good water-proof material. I don't know if sometime it has been used to cover an internal wall but it sounds strange to me (although I'm art historian and buildings archaeologist, not architect). However, it sounds strange speaking about one of the "poshest" palazzi -palazzos, palaces- of the Renaissance Florence (local stone, bricks and marble from Carrara were the main materials used, along with lighter volcanic stones for the domes). If slate was used or not, is something I can't confirm 100% sure, but it sounds strange to me.

Apart from that, the techinque of fresco implies that the paint is applied on a fresh surface (plaster with big content of lime I think), not yet solidified. Paint "al fresco" is never applied on the solidified wall and even less on a hard surface of slate. Besides, under my point of view, slate is not a suitable material to let the plaster stick on it, which should lodge the later painting. Therefore, having a wall covered with slate and plaster applied on it to paint "al fresco" later, is something that sounds strange for me.

Some architect or someone who knows about fine arts' techniques will know it probably better than me.

May Cucafera's source be wrong?


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## Cucafera

Thank you both!

After all your explanations, I think I will translate the whole thing for fresco, and forget about the oil part. It will be something like: este impresionante fresco, titulado...

It could be that the source is wrong, it is not a book on art, but on stones, minerals and gems, and this entry is about amber (Phaethon's sisters cried amber tears after his death), but I would have thought that the author know what he's talking about?

Many thanks again!!!​


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## cirrus

A wee technical point here. A fresco generally involves working with plaster and various pigments so it becomes part of the wall. Oil on slate is something else, it doesn't meet this definition.


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## Cucafera

Oh dear... What do you think, then, about doing it the other way round?: este impresionante óleo, titulado... and forget about slate?

I've trying to find the painting in question with google, and see whether they say anything, but I've had no luck so far.

Thanks


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## iinnffooss

Cucafera said:


> Oh dear... What do you think, then, about doing it the other way round?: este impresionante óleo, titulado... and forget about slate?
> 
> I've trying to find the painting in question with google, and see whether they say anything, but I've had no luck so far.
> 
> Thanks



Cucafera, I'd use just "fresco". You definitely *can not use* óleo because the fresco paintings are never painted with oil but with tempera (_pintura al temple_ in Spanish). Oil is a technique used to paint on canvas and tempera to paint mainly on wood and fresco.

If you read a bit of the link suggested by Cirrus in the last post, you'll see how the technique of fresco works, which has to end in a painting integrated onto the wall (and with dry and matt look). The oil would never react in this way (you may know "The Last Supper" by Leonardo da Vinci, in a very poor state of preservation and hardly on its wall; it is like that because Leonardo was a humanist and experimentalist and he was trying a new technique other than fresco for that painting which involved oil and it obviously was not successful: after less than 30 years the monks in the monastery were already complaining about the painting peeling off from the wall).

Therefore, I think that the problem is going to be that the source was wrong. The most common way to refer to a painting is saying "oil" because most of the paintings use this technique, but not frescos. Then, the author of that text might have seen the painting and just try to pretend to be knowledgeable in art and use a technical word that it is actually wrong. I can not think in other option.

A brick wall covered with slate? Don't think so.
Oil on slate? Could be sometimes, but not for a wall.
Tempera on slate? Don't think so.
Fresco on slate? Don't think so either!
Just a normal fresco on a normal brick wall with its normal plaster and its normal tempera technique? I definitely think so.
Am I wrong? Maybe, I'm more expert in buildings than in paintings.


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## iinnffooss

Actually, the "oil on slate" technique seems to have existed but, as I suspected, it wasn't very common nor successful. It seems to have been used nearly as experiment in the second part of the XVIth century, right after Leonardo and others brought it from the North of Europe to the Italian Renaissance.

It's worthwhile to mention that any of the paintings I've found painted with this technique is a fresco but small format paintings optimum to experiment.


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## cirrus

The fresco may well be a red herring.  What we know is that painting is on slate. This doesn't meet the standard definition for a fresco as frescoes involve painting on wet plaster.


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## iinnffooss

Cirrus, I had to look for the meaning of "red herring" on WR and then for a thread where someone asked for its second meaning. I never heard that idiom, thanks! 

And it definitely is not a red herring. The thing that the painting is a fresco was told by me because I knew it (and you can check it in the internet). Then, what we actually know is that it is a fresco. What we don't know is if this fresco is painted on a slate. This sounds pretty weird for me. After a degree in Art History I have never heard such a strange technique. Tough unfortunately I haven't studied all the art works in the world. And after that degree, I specialized in buildings archaeology (what is not much related to Art History but...) and I've never seen slate covering surfaces other than floors or roofs or sometimes drains.

What doesn't match here is what Cucafera said she was trying to translate. Her text seems to be wrong to me cause painting on slate is a weird technique, although sometimes used as I mentioned some post above, and oil for a fresco is impossible. The slate is not a porous stone and it wouldn't allow the oil to stick well. That's why it is used for water-proof surfaces.

Therefore, the only thing we do know for sure is that the picture is a fresco (probably not on slate according to the place where and the moment when it was painted, and completely sure it is not an oil painting).


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## cirrus

Iinnffooss you have arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion to my own. This thread is about oil on slate. If it's oil on slate, it's not a fresco.


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## iinnffooss

cirrus said:


> Iinnffooss you have arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion to my own. This thread is about oil on slate. If it's oil on slate, it's not a fresco.



Perdona que de pronto me pase al español. Tal vez me exprese mejor en mi propia lengua. El hilo, efectivamente, se ha iniciado porque Cucafera quería saber si existía otra traducción para _slate_ que no fuera _pizarra_. Lo que parece evidente es que no porque todavía nadie ha ofrecido una alternativa.

Cucafera ofrece el nombre de la obra a la que se refiere _por si alguien la conoce_ [sic] y efectivamente, yo la conozco (ademas de conocer la historia de Faetón porque en Historia del Arte europeo hay que saber bastante de religión cristiana y mitología clásica). Y aseguro que es un fresco. No es una conclusión, es un hecho: es un fresco. Y los frescos no se pintan ni al óleo (aunque ciertas grasas animales pueden ser usadas como aglutinantes, no se denomina "pintura al óleo") ni sobre pizarra.

Por lo tanto, lo que yo humildemente pienso es que el texto del que Cucafera extrajo la información sobre esa pintura, es erróneo. Sobretodo si no es un texto especializado sino que  trata sobre Geología: las hermanas de Faetón lloraron ámbar y ese es el origen mitológico de esa resina fosilizada.

Así, yo recomiendo a Cucafera que para su traducción no utilice las palabras _óleo_, _pizarra_ ni _lienzo_ porque creo que ninguna de ellas corresponde a esa pintura.

Now, I'm not sure if I don't understand you or you don't understand me or I don't understand myself or Cucafera has understood anything...

Ay madre, que lío!


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