Since the times of Ancient Greece and before, the preferred building material
for monuments and nobles’ houses was marble. Wherever such material wasn’t
used, for economical or architectural reasons, the alternatives consisted of
distempers, frescoes or encaustos.
In Venice it was impossible to use marble, being it too heavy for a city built
on wood poles. All heavy building materials were used only as far as they were
functional to the bearing structure of the building. The remaining vertical
surfaces were mainly built with bricks and lime plaster. The lighter the building,
the less expensive.
The second challenge was posed by the salt in the water around the houses and
in the air every time the sea was rough. Those two factors, emphasized by the
frequent fogs, quickly degraded the frescoes and the distempers normally used
within the city.
The third problem consisted of the ascending humidity in the walls. The salts
penetrating the walls made the plasters burst every few years.
Many years of trial and error experiences made it possible to find the solution,
thus Stucco Veneziano was conceived. Originally formulated as a blend of aerial
lime, marble-dust and
line seed oil, blended when hot. The lime, through carbonation, in time would
become as hard as a stone and the oil giving hydro repellence prevented the
salts from damaging the facade.
