​Lucca, Lime, and a Renaissance

TED and Tradition

Chancel Arch, S. Maria dei Servi, Lucca, site of the TEDX event

This past Saturday Lucca hosted its first TEDx event, Tempo Scaduto, or Time’s Up, organized around the theme of sustainability and the future of the planet. To their great credit, the first speaker was Daniela Murphy, a restorer based in Florence: conservation of culture is a critical part of the conservation of our environment in the broadest sense. Ms. Murphy spoke about lime—its chemical properties, its role in mural painting, its part in global sustainable construction. She made a call for artists and builders to use lime in their projects, whether in buon fresco painting or traditional masonry. 
 
We at the Tuscan Renaissance Academy have been advocates of lime-based painting and construction for decades. David Mayernik has been painting frescoes since he studied with the great restorer Leonetto Tintori in 1989. He worked alongside Tintori’s successors in the chapel of San Cresci in Valcava in the Mugello, they restoring an eighteenth-century Annunciation, he painting a new Crucifixion. 
 
Our integration of classical drawing and fresco technique is a unique approach to teaching principles and practice, orienting drawing toward its most important goal in the Renaissance, mural painting.

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