VENETIAN PLASTER

Introduction: Venetian Plaster

The word venetian stuccowork was formerly restricted to represent the ancient artistic work of Master stucco decorators, who created true artworks working the 'fresh' faux plaster or the strong plaster directly on ceilings and walls, able as they were to make columns, floor and walls which looked and still looks as if in real marble.

Each of us had for sure a chance to admire relief decorations, light and flying shapes, crossing flowers and fruits, putti, mythological figures, gargoyles, and so on, all these witnesses we find in churches, great Venetian and Roman palaces, in castles and Venetian villas.

At that time the master stucco decorators work could be defined as 'building yard work', because it was done along with the building itself if not even before, during the project sometime changing the building architecture itself.

Venetian stuccowork art, nowadays under the label of 'lower arts' (often restoring or decorating), was often considered as a major art in the past, with all the honors, as well as architecture and painting with which actually was mixing and interacting.

The practical function of this art was in first place to grant protection to the building structure against weather attacks and external factors and was ending up to an accurate interior decoration work reaching a detail level nowadays acknowledged only to the interior design component. Every single decoration was 'unique', thus thought and hand made exclusively for that living environment, it had its own reason and was never repeated elsewhere.