Plaster wall ornamentation in pompeii went right along with some of the earliest faux marble painting because plaster made a great surface to paint for artists because it would actually absorb part of the paint into the surface, fusing the color to the artwork. This was necessary before the advent of modern chemistry to have a long lasting fresco when tempura (or egg whites) and linseed oil where the primary substances used to bind pigments together. The reason the Sistine Chapel frescos and wall paintings still look astonishly beautiful after 500 yrs. is because they were painted on wet plaster by Michelangelo. At first when Michelangelo started painting, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he made it so wet it started growing mold and had to be completely removed in favor of a better plaster formula developed by one of his art assistants. You'll find that problem solving goes hand in hand with the creation of a true artistic masterpiece. Sometimes technical challanges can be discouraging at first, but without them maybe we wouldn't have had the Sistine Chapel fresco.

MICHELANGELO'S SISTINE CHAPEL FRESCO