Art & MusicGreek → English
Gesso
/ˈdʒɛsoʊ/noun
A white ground of chalk and glue brushed onto a panel before painting.
The Greek roots
γύψος
gýpsos
chalk, plaster, gypsum
Literally: “plaster”
Follow a root:γύψος3 words
The story of the word
Italian gesso comes down from Latin gypsum, which Greek had taken from a Semitic source, probably the same root behind Arabic jibs. Panel painters laid on as many as a dozen coats and scraped each one back before any gold or pigment touched the wood; Cennini gives the recipe in the 1390s. Acrylic gesso in a tube keeps the name and almost none of the method.
- How it travelled
- Semitic → Ancient Greek → Latin → Italian → English
- First recorded
- 17th century
The same roots elsewhere
Other languages reached for exactly the same Greek pieces.
Same family
gypsumgypsophila
In a sentence
Three coats of gesso, sanded between each, and the board took the ink without bleeding.