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Michelangelo had much wished to retouch some portions of the work a secco, as had been done by the older masters who had painted the walls; and to add a little ultramarine to some of the draperies, and gild other parts, so as to give a richer and more striking effect.
Never were such sun-traps as these strips of towns along this island bank, only a few inches above sea level and swept by every wind that blows. Hugging the coast, which is fringed with tamarisk and an occasional shumac, we come next to Porto Secco, another tiny settlement among vegetable gardens.
In the opera the intervals between the lyric arias, etc., had to be filled in with dry explanation or narrative, and there arose the recitative secco, a rapid recitation in which the melody is reduced to a mere shadow.
It lacked the retouches "a secco" of ultramarine and of gold in certain places, which would have made it appear more rich. Julius, his fervour having abated, wished that Michael Angelo should supply them; but he considering the business it would be to reerect the scaffolding, replied that there was nothing important wanting. "It should be touched with gold," replied the Pope.
His banishment of recitativo secco, and his restoration of the chorus to its proper place in the drama, were innovations of vast importance to the history of opera, but the chief strength of the influence which he exerted upon subsequent music lay in his power of suffusing each of his operas in an atmosphere special to itself.
That finished, the same Pope commissioned him to retouch all that first Loggia, which was an error and a thing very ill considered, for the reason that retouching it "a secco" caused it to lose all those masterly strokes that had been drawn by Giovanni's brush in all the excellence of his best days, and also the boldness and freshness that had made it in its original condition so rare a work.
These retouches a secco have destroyed to a great extent the atmospheric quality and the relation of the planes in Michael Angelo’s suave true-fresco method, which, as may be seen in the vault, gives the grey half-tints of the flesh-tones in a way only equalled by Andrea del Sarto in fresco and Rembrandt in oil painting.
And although he did not execute them all with his own hand, he retouched them so much "a secco," besides making perfectly finished cartoons, that they may almost be said to be entirely by his hand; which method he employed because, being troubled by a catarrh, he was not fit for so much labour.
Called likewise; Kogatin, Gogatin, and Gogongin, in the different transcripts of these travels. From the circumstance of this kingdom of Argon being near Arbor Secco it would appear to have been one of the eight kingdoms of Persia mentioned in the sequel; and from the sea voyage, it probably was Mekran, which, reaches to the sea and the Indies, E.
In the same interior are associated with mosaics, frescoes, or rather wall-paintings in secco. On the columns which support the cupola are frescoes which, though of no art value, naturally excited curiosity when they were discovered some few years since, after having been hid for two or more centuries by a covering of whitewash.
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