Antonietta Gallone

The author presents the results of a study on the colour of the frescoes that adorn the apse, the walls of the central nave, the crypt and the baptistery of the basilica of San Vincenzo in Galliano. The analyses, carried out during the restoration work of the 1980s, have made it possible to identify the composition and the structure of the layers of paint, and they have also shown that the way of painting, while evolving over several periods, concords with the instructions in the treatises of Theophilus and Cennino Cennini. The older paintings in the apse and ambo are characterized by the use of hematite and precious lapis lazuli blue; in the later frescoes, instead, the painting material used is not as precious, and the pigments are limited to azurite, ochre and earth pigments. Moreover, on the wall at the end of the crypt, there is a compact stratum of calcium carbonate and gesso between the plaster and the colour.