NATURALISM

 Naturalism, in philosophy, a theory that relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings
and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural. Consequently, all
knowledge of the universe falls within the pale of scientific investigation. Although naturalism denies the
existence of truly supernatural realities, it makes allowance for the supernatural, provided that knowledge of
it can be had indirectly—that is, that natural objects be influenced by the so-called supernatural entities in a
detectable way.
 Naturalism presumes that nature is in principle completely knowable. There is in nature a regularity, unity,
and wholeness that implies objective laws, without which the pursuit of scientific knowledge would be
absurd. Man’s endless search for concrete proofs of his beliefs is seen as a confirmation of naturalistic 
methodology. Naturalists point out that even when one scientific theory is abandoned in favour of another,
man does not despair of knowing nature, nor does he repudiate the “natural method” in his search for truth.
Theories change; methodology does not.
 While naturalism has often been equated with materialism, it is much broader in scope. Materialism is
indeed naturalistic, but the converse is not necessarily true. Strictly speaking, naturalism has no ontological
preference; i.e., no bias toward any particular set of categories of reality: dualism and monism, atheism and 
theism, idealism and materialism are all per se compatible with it. So long as all of reality is natural, no other
limitations are imposed. Naturalists have in fact expressed a wide variety of views, even to the point of
developing a theistic naturalism.
 Only rarely do naturalists give attention to metaphysics (which they deride), and they make no philosophical
attempts to establish their position. Naturalists simply assert that nature is reality, the whole of it. There is
nothing beyond, nothing “other than,” no “other world” of being.
 Naturalism’s greatest vogue occurred during the 1930s and ’40s, chiefly in the United States among
philosophers such as F.J.E. Woodbridge, Morris R. Cohen, John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, and Sidney Hook.
HUMANISM
 Humanism is a progressive philosophy of life that, without theism or other supernatural beliefs,
affirms our ability and responsibility to lead ethical lives of personal fulfillment that aspire to the
greater good.
– American Humanist Association
 Humanism is a rational philosophy informed by science, inspired by art, and motivated by compassion.
Affirming the dignity of each human being, it supports the maximization of individual liberty and
opportunity consonant with social and planetary responsibility. It advocates the extension of participatory
democracy and the expansion of the open society, standing for human rights and social justice. Free of
supernaturalism, it recognizes human beings as a part of nature and holds that values-be they religious,
ethical, social, or political-have their source in human experience and culture. Humanism thus derives the
goals of life from human need and interest rather than from theological or ideological abstractions, and
asserts that humanity must take responsibility for its own destiny.
– The Humanist Magazine
The Creation of Adam- 1511
FRESCO PAINTING
The Toreador Fresco
The Toreador Fresco, restored wall
painting from the Palace at Knossos,
Crete, c. 1550 BCE; in the
Archaeological Museum, Iráklion, Crete.
Height (including borders) 81 cm.
 Fresco painting, method of painting water-based pigments on freshly applied plaster, usually on wall
surfaces. The colours, which are made by grinding dry-powder pigments in pure water, dry and set with the
plaster to become a permanent part of the wall. Fresco painting is ideal for making murals because it lends
itself to a monumental style, is durable, and has a matte surface.
 Buon, or “true,” fresco is the most durable technique and consists of the following process. Three successive
coats of specially prepared plaster, sand, and sometimes marble dust are troweled onto a wall. Each of the
first two rough coats is applied and then allowed to set (dry and harden). In the meantime, the artist, who has
made a full-scale cartoon (preparatory drawing) of the image to be painted, transfers the outlines of the
design onto the wall from a tracing made of the cartoon. The final, smooth coat (intonaco) of plaster is then
troweled onto as much of the wall as can be painted in one session.
 The boundaries of this area are confined carefully along contour lines, so that the edges, or joints, of each
successive section of fresh plastering are imperceptible. These sections are called giornate, a “day’s work.”
The tracing is then held against the fresh intonaco and lined up carefully with the adjacent sections of
painted wall, and its pertinent contours and interior lines are traced onto the fresh plaster; this faint but
accurate drawing serves as a guide for painting the image in colour.
Fra Angelico: The Annunciation
The Annunciation, fresco by Fra Angelico,
1438–45; in the Museum of San Marco,
Florence.
 A correctly prepared intonaco will hold its moisture for many hours. When the painter dilutes his colours
with water and applies them with brushstrokes to the plaster, the colours are imbibed into the surface, and as
the wall dries and sets, the pigment particles become bound or cemented along with the lime and sand
particles. This gives the colours great permanence and resistance to aging, since they are an integral part of
the wall surface, rather than a superimposed layer of paint on it. The medium of fresco makes great demands
on a painter’s technical skill, since he must work fast (while the plaster is wet) but cannot correct mistakes
by overpainting; this must be done on a fresh coat of plaster or by using the secco method.
Giotto: The Nativity
The Nativity, fresco by Giotto, c.
1305–06, depicting the birth of
Jesus; in the Scrovegni Chapel,
Padua, Italy.
ART Collection/Alamy
 Fresco secco (“dry fresco”) is a process that dispenses with the complex preparation of the wall with wet
plaster. Instead, dry, finished walls are soaked with limewater and painted while wet. The colours do not
penetrate into the plaster but form a surface film, like any other paint. Secco is useful for detailed painting
and for retouching true fresco.
 The origins of fresco painting are unknown, but it was used as early as the Minoan civilization (at Knossos
 on Crete) and by the ancient Romans (at Pompeii). The Italian Renaissance was the great period of fresco
painting, as seen in the works of Cimabue, Giotto, Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Correggio—who favoured the 
sotto in su (“from below to above”)_technique—and many other painters from the late 13th to the mid-16th
century. Michelangelo’s paintings in the Sistine Chapel and Raphael’s Stanza murals in the Vatican are the
most famous of all frescoes. By the mid-16th century, however, the use of fresco had largely been supplanted
by oil painting. The technique was briefly revived in the 20th century by Diego Rivera and other Mexican
muralists as well as Francesco Clemente.
Michelangelo: The Creation of
Adam
The Creation of Adam, detail of
the ceiling fresco by
Michelangelo, 1508–12; in the
Sistine Chapel, Vatican City.
TEMPERA PAINTING
 Tempera painting, painting executed with pigment ground in a water-miscible medium. The
word tempera originally came from the verb temper, “to bring to a desired consistency.” Dry pigments are
made usable by “tempering” them with a binding and adhesive vehicle. Such painting was distinguished
from fresco painting, the colours for which contained no binder. Eventually, after the rise of oil painting, the
word gained its present meaning.
Master of the Codex of Saint
George: The Crucifixion
The Crucifixion, tempera and
gold leaf on wood panel by
the Master of the Codex of
Saint George, c. 1340–45; in
the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York City.
 Tempera is an ancient medium, having been in constant use in most of the world’s cultures until it was
gradually superseded by oil paints in Europe, during the Renaissance. Tempera was the original mural
 medium in the ancient dynasties of Egypt, Babylonia, Mycenaean Greece, and China and was used to
decorate the early Christian catacombs. It was employed on a variety of supports, from the stone stelae (or
commemorative pillars), mummy cases, and papyrus rolls of ancient Egypt to the wood panels of Byzantine 
icons and altarpieces and the vellum leaves of medieval illuminated manuscripts.
 True tempera is made by mixture with the yolk of fresh eggs, although manuscript illuminators often used
egg white and some easel painters added the whole egg. Other emulsions—such as casein glue with linseed
oil, egg yolk with gum and linseed oil, and egg white with linseed or poppy oil—have also been used.
Individual painters have experimented with other recipes, but few of those have proved successful; all but 
William Blake’s later tempera paintings on copper sheets, for instance, have darkened and decayed, and it is
thought that he mixed his pigment with carpenter’s glue.
 Distemper is a crude form of tempera made by mixing dry pigment into a paste with water, which is thinned
with heated glue in working or by adding pigment to whiting (a mixture of fine-ground chalk and size). It is
used for stage scenery and full-size preparatory cartoons for murals and tapestries. When dry, its colours
have the pale, matte, powdery quality of pastels, with a similar tendency to smudge. Indeed, damaged
cartoons have been retouched with pastel chalks.
 Egg tempera is the most-durable form of the medium, being generally unaffected by humidity and
temperature. It dries quickly to form a tough film that acts as a protective skin to the support. In handling, in
its diversity of transparent and opaque effects, and in the satin sheen of its finish, it resembles the modern 
acrylic resin emulsion paints.
 Traditional tempera painting is a lengthy process. Its supports are smooth surfaces, such as planed wood, fine
set plaster, stone, paper, vellum, canvas, and modern composition boards of compressed wood or paper. 
Linen is generally glued to the surface of panel supports, additional strips masking the seams between braced
wood planks. Gesso, a mixture of plaster of paris (or gypsum) with size, is the traditional ground. The first
layer is of gesso grosso, a mixture of coarse unslaked plaster and size. That provides a rough absorbent
surface for 10 or more thin coats of gesso sottile, a smooth mixture of size and fine plaster previously slaked
in water to retard drying. This laborious preparation results in an opaque, brilliant white, light-reflecting
surface similar in texture to hard flat icing sugar.
Madonna of the Harpies, tempera
on wood by Andrea del Sarto,
1517; in the Uffizi Gallery,
Florence. 2.07 × 1.78 m.
 The design for a large tempera painting was traditionally executed in distemper on a thick paper cartoon. The
outlines were pricked with a perforating wheel so that when the cartoon was laid on the surface of the
support, the linear pattern was transferred by dabbing, or “pouncing,” the perforations with a muslin bag of
powdered charcoal. The dotted contours traced through were then fixed in paint. Medieval tempera painters
of panels and manuscripts made lavish use of gold leaf on backgrounds and for symbolic features, such as 
haloes and beams of heavenly light.
 Areas of the pounced design intended for gilding were first built up into low relief with gesso duro, the
harder, less-absorbent gesso compound also used for elaborate frame moldings. Background fields were
often textured by impressing the gesso duro, before it set, with small, carved, intaglio wood blocks to create
raised, pimpled, and quilted repeat patterns that glittered when gilded. Leaves of finely beaten gold were
pressed onto a tacky mordant (adhesive compound) or over wet bole (reddish brown earth pigment) that gave
greater warmth and depth when the gilded areas were burnished.
 Colours were applied with sable brushes in successive broad sweeps or washes of semitransparent tempera.
Those dried quickly, preventing the subtle tonal gradations possible with watercolour washes or oil paint;
effects of shaded modelling therefore had to be obtained by a crosshatching technique of fine brush strokes.
According to the Italian painter Cennino Cennini, the early Renaissance tempera painters laid the colour
 washes across a fully modelled monochrome underpainting in terre vert (olive-green pigment), a method
later developed into the mixed mediums technique of tempera underpainting followed by transparent oil
glazes.
Painting from the tomb of
Nebamun at Thebes
Banquet scene with musicians,
tempera painting on gesso from the
tomb of Nebamun at Thebes, 18th
dynasty (c. 1400 BC); in the British
Museum, London.
 The luminous gesso base of a tempera painting, combined with the cumulative effect of overlaid colour
washes, produces a unique depth and intensity of colour. Tempera paints dry lighter in value, but their
original tonality can be restored by subsequent waxing or varnishing. Other characteristic qualities of a
tempera painting, resulting from its fast-drying property and disciplined technique, are its steely lines and
crisp edges, its meticulous detail and rich linear textures, and its overall emphasis upon a decorative flat
pattern of bold colour masses.
 The great Byzantine tradition of tempera painting was developed in Italy in the 13th and 14th centuries by 
Duccio di Buoninsegna and Giotto. Their flattened picture space, generously enriched by fields and textures
of gold leaf, was extended by the Renaissance depth perspectives in the paintings of Giovanni Bellini, Piero
della Francesca, Carlo Crivelli, Sandro Botticelli, and Vittore Carpaccio. By that time, oil painting was
already challenging the primacy of tempera, Botticelli and some of his contemporaries apparently adding oil
to the tempera emulsion or overglazing it in oil colour.
OIL PAINTING
 Oil painting, painting in oil colours, a medium consisting of pigments suspended in drying oils. The
outstanding facility with which fusion of tones or colour is achieved makes it unique among fluid painting
mediums; at the same time, satisfactory linear treatment and crisp effects are easily obtained. Opaque,
transparent, and translucent painting all lie within its range, and it is unsurpassed for textural variation.
Rembrandt van Rijn: Portrait
of a Couple as Isaac and
Rebecca
Portrait of a Couple as Isaac and
Rebecca (also known as The
Jewish Bride), oil on canvas by
Rembrandt van Rijn, c. 1665–69;
in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
121.5 × 166.5 cm.
 Artists’ oil colours are made by mixing dry powder pigments with selected refined linseed oil to a stiff paste
consistency and grinding it by strong friction in steel roller mills. The consistency of the colour is important.
The standard is a smooth, buttery paste, not stringy or long or tacky. When a more flowing or mobile quality
is required by the artist, a liquid painting medium such as pure gum turpentine must be mixed with it. In
order to accelerate drying, a siccative, or liquid drier, is sometimes used.
 Top-grade brushes are made in two types: red sable (from various members of the weasel family) and
bleached hog bristles. Both come in numbered sizes in each of four regular shapes: round (pointed), flat,
bright (flat shape but shorter and less supple), and oval (flat but bluntly pointed). Red sable brushes are
widely used for the smoother, less robust type of brushstroke. The painting knife—a finely tempered, thin,
limber version of the artist’s palette knife—is a convenient tool for applying oil colours in a robust manner.
 The standard support for oil painting is a canvas made of pure European linen of strong close weave. This
canvas is cut to the desired size and stretched over a frame, usually wooden, to which it is secured by tacks
or, from the 20th century, by staples. To reduce the absorbency of the canvas fabric and to achieve a smooth
surface, a primer or ground is applied and is allowed to dry before painting begins. The most commonly used
primers have been gesso, rabbit-skin glue, and lead white. If rigidity and smoothness are preferred to
springiness and texture, a wooden or processed paperboard panel, sized or primed, may be used. Many other
supports, such as paper and various textiles and metals, have been tried.
Diego Velázquez: Las meninas
Las meninas (with a self-portrait of
the artist at the left, reflections of
Philip IV and Queen Mariana in the
mirror at the back of the room, and
the infanta Margarita with
her meninas, or maids of honour, in
the foreground), oil on canvas by
Diego Velázquez, c. 1656; in the
Prado Museum, Madrid.
 A coat of picture varnish is usually given to a finished oil painting to protect it from atmospheric attacks,
minor abrasions, and an injurious accumulation of dirt. This varnish film can be removed safely by experts
using isopropyl alcohol and other common solvents. Varnishing also brings the surface to a uniform lustre
and brings the tonal depth and colour intensity virtually to the levels originally created by the artist in wet
paint. Some contemporary painters, especially those who do not favour deep, intense colouring, prefer a
matte, or lustreless, finish in oil paintings.
 Most oil paintings made before the 19th century were built up in layers. The first layer was a blank, uniform
field of thinned paint called a ground. The ground subdued the glaring white of the primer and provided a
base of gentle colour on which to build images. The shapes and objects in the painting were then roughly
blocked in using shades of white, along with gray or neutral green, red, or brown. The resulting masses of
monochromatic light and dark were called the underpainting. Forms were further defined using either solid
paint or scumbles, which are irregular, thinly applied layers of opaque pigment that can impart a variety of
pictorial effects. In the final stage, transparent layers of pure colour called glazes were used to impart
luminosity, depth, and brilliance to the forms, and highlights were defined with thick, textured patches of
paint called impastos.
Hopkins, Frances
Anne: Canoe Manned
by Voyageurs Passing
a Waterfall
Canoe Manned by
Voyageurs Passing a
Waterfall, oil on
canvas by Frances
Anne Hopkins, 1869;
in Library and
Archives Canada,
Ottawa, Ontario.
 The origins of oil painting, as was discovered in 2008, date to at least the 7th century CE, when anonymous
artists used oil that may have been extracted from walnuts or poppies to decorate the ancient cave complex
in Bamiyan, Afghanistan. But in Europe, oil as a painting medium is recorded only as early as the 11th
century. The practice of easel painting with oil colours, however, stems directly from 15th-century 
tempera-painting techniques. Basic improvements in the refining of linseed oil and the availability of volatile
solvents after 1400 coincided with a need for some other medium than pure egg-yolk tempera to meet the
changing requirements of the Renaissance. At first, oil paints and varnishes were used to glaze tempera
panels, painted with their traditional linear draftsmanship. The technically brilliant, jewel-like portraits of the
15th-century Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, for example, were done in this way.
 In the 16th century, oil colour emerged as the basic painting material in Venice. By the end of the century,
Venetian artists had become proficient in the exploitation of the basic characteristics of oil painting,
particularly in their use of successive layers of glazes. Linen canvas, after a long period of development,
replaced wooden panels as the most popular support.
 One of the 17th-century masters of the oil technique was Diego Velázquez, a Spanish painter in the Venetian
tradition, whose highly economical but informative brushstrokes have frequently been emulated, especially
in portraiture. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens influenced later painters in the manner in which he
loaded his light colours, opaquely, in juxtaposition to thin, transparent darks and shadows. A third great 17th-
century master of oil painting was the Dutch painter Rembrandt van Rijn. In his work a single brushstroke
can effectively depict form; cumulative strokes give great textural depth, combining the rough and the
smooth, the thick and the thin. A system of loaded whites and transparent darks is further enhanced by glazed
effects, blendings, and highly controlled impastos.
Leonardo da Vinci: Last Supper
Last Supper, wall painting by
Leonardo da Vinci, c. 1495–98,
before the restoration completed
in 1999; in Santa Maria delle
Grazie, Milan.
 Other basic influences on the techniques of later easel painting are the smooth, thinly painted, deliberately
planned, tight styles of painting. A great many admired works (e.g., those of Johannes Vermeer) were
executed with smooth gradations and blends of tones to achieve subtly modeled forms and delicate colour
variations.
REFERENCES

 https://www.britannica.com/topic/naturalism-philosophy
 https://www.google.com/search?q=naturalism&hl=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjny5
HVnZjtAhXCG6YKHbvCBckQ_AUoAXoECB4QAw&biw=1920&bih=912#imgrc=H8PZtYTnGXda5M
 https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Creaci%C3%B3n_de_Ad%C3%A1m.jpg
 https://www.britannica.com/art/fresco-painting
 https://www.britannica.com/art/tempera-painting
 https://www.britannica.com/art/oil-painting
 https://mymodernmet.com/what-is-modern-art-definition/
THE END