In painting a fresco, the handling of wet mortar compels one always to move from top to bottom and from left to right, not to spoil yesterday's work with today's plastering.

A small Roman fresco from Pompeii

The most detailed illustrations are to be found on the ' ship fresco ' at Akrotiri on the island of Thera ( Santorini ) preserved by the ash fall from the volcanic eruption which destroyed the town there.

A vestige of that appears in a portrait of Alexander the Great in a fresco from Pompeii dated to the first century BC, which shows the image of the head of a woman on his armor that resembles the Gorgon.

Saint Benedict of Nursia ( c. 480 – 543 ), detail from a fresco by Fra Angelico, Saint Mark's Basilica | San Marco, Florence ( c. 1400 – 1455 ).

File: TombofNebamun-2. jpg | Room 61-The famous false fresco ' Pond in a Garden ' from the Tomb of Nebamun, c. 1350 BC

Devils-a fresco detail from the Rila Monastery

The word fresco ( Italian: affresco ) is derived from the Italian adjective fresco meaning " fresh ".

This area is called the giornata (" day's work "), and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, by a sort of seam that separates one from the next.

It is important to distinguish between a secco work done on top of buon fresco, which according to most authorities was in fact standard from the Middle Ages onwards, and work done entirely a secco on a blank wall.

The three key advantages of work done entirely a secco were that it was quicker, mistakes could be corrected, and the colours varied less from when applied to when fully dry — in wet fresco there was a considerable change.

Some art historians believe that fresco artists from Crete may have been sent to various locations as part of a trade exchange, a possibility which raises to the fore the importance of this art form within the society of the times.

A fresco painting, from the Italian word affresco which derives from the adjective fresco (" fresh "), describes a method in which the paint is applied on plaster on walls or ceilings.

A fresco in Ørslev church in Zealand from about 1400 shows nine people, men and women, dancing in a line.

Despite his low opinion of painting, Michelangelo also created two of the most influential works in fresco in the history of Western art: the scenes from Genesis on the ceiling and The Last Judgment on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Rome.

Plato ( left ) and Aristotle ( right ), from a detail of The School of Athens, a fresco by Raphael.

Dante Alighieri, detail from a Luca Signorelli fresco in the chapel of Orvieto Cathedral # Chapel of the Madonna di San Brizio | San Brizio, Duomo, Orvieto.

The condottiere and his horse are presented as if the fresco was a sculpture, seen from below.

In 1502 the Cardinal commissioned a library with access from an aisle of the Duomo di Siena that was intended to house the library of humanist texts assembled by his uncle and commissioned the artist Pinturicchio to fresco its vault and ten narrative panels along the walls depicting scenes from the life of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini.

image: StratilatesandTyron. jpg | Theodore of Amasea ( on the left ) and Theodore Stratelates ( on the right )-a fresco from Rila Monastery, Bulgaria ( 19th century?

The First Council of Constantinople, as depicted in a fresco in the Stavropoleos Monastery, Bucharest, Romania.

Miracle of the Moose ( modern fresco in Pechersky Ascension Monastery ).

Apocalypse depicted in Eastern Orthodox Church | Christian Orthodox traditional fresco scenes in Osogovo Monastery, Republic of Macedonia

Icon of the Passion, detail showing ( left ) the Flagellation and ( right ) Ascent to Golgotha ( fresco by Theophanes the Cretan, Stavronikita Monastery, Mount Athos ).

16th century fresco of Baptism of Christ from the Kremikovtsi Monastery

During the First Serbian Uprising ( 1804 – 1813 ), a fresco of Miloš as a haloed, sword-bearing saint was painted in Prince Lazar's narthex in the Hilandar Monastery on Mount Athos ( Greece ).

Marko's father King Vukašin, a fresco in the Psača Monastery, Macedonia.

Crucifixion, fresco from Church of the Holy Virgin, Monastery of Studenica, 1208.

Circumcision of Christ, fresco from the Preobrazhenski Monastery, Bulgaria

" Later Georgian authors of the 15th-18th centuries are more informative: they are almost unanimous in identifying him as Shota Rustaveli, a name which is preserved on a fresco and a document from the formerly Georgian Monastery of the Holy Cross at Jerusalem.

The fresco representing the legendary Georgian poet Shota Rustaveli was vandalized in June 2004 in the 11th-century Georgian-built Monastery of the Holy Cross.

Gelati Monastery fresco of King David, 12th century

Fragment from medieval fresco, Kremikovtsi Monastery

Fragment of a fresco with Armenian language | Armenian inscribed text in Dadivank Monastery, shows a masterpiece of Culture of Nagorno Karabakh | medieval culture of Artsakh.

image: Saints_Theodore_Tyron_and_Theodore_Stratilates. jpg | Theodore of Amasea ( on the left ) and Theodore Stratelates ( on the right )-a fresco from Kremikovtsi Monastery, Bulgaria ( 16th century?

The most comprehensive and the best preserved work of Dionisy is the monumental fresco painting of the Virgin Nativity Cathedral of the Ferapontov Monastery ( 1495 – 96 ).

Contemporary donor portrait in fresco of Ivan Alexander from the Bachkovo Monastery ossuary

Image: Rozhen_Monastery_-_fresco. jpg | A fresco in the Rozhen Monastery

A fresco of a red-haired woman in the Ostrusha Mound in central Bulgaria.

Image: Thrace-ostrusha. jpg | A fresco of a red-haired woman in the Ostrusha Mound in central Bulgaria.

A 14th-century donor portrait in fresco of Bulgarian tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria | Ivan Alexander in the ossuary