Encyclopaedia Britannica states plainly that the origins of fresco painting are unknown, even while naming Minoan Crete (Knossos) and ancient Rome (Pompeii) as its earliest well-documented sites of use. No continuous, traceable lineage connects Bronze Age Aegean fresco practice to the Roman and later Italian tradition.
What would resolve this Comparative technical analysis of surviving Minoan and early Roman fresco samples, or archaeological evidence of an intermediate transmission chain across the eastern Mediterranean, could settle whether the technique was inherited or independently developed.
OpenArchaeology and art historyEncyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica