mural

/myoor"euhl/, n.

1. a large picture painted or affixed directly on a wall or ceiling.

2. a greatly enlarged photograph attached directly to a wall.

3. a wallpaper pattern representing a landscape or the like, often with very widely spaced repeats so as to produce the effect of a mural painting on a wall of average size; a trompe l'oeil.

adj.

4. of, pertaining to, or resembling a wall.

5. executed on or affixed to a wall: mural inscriptions.

6. pertaining to any of several astronomical instruments that were affixed to a wall aligned on the plane of a meridian, and were formerly used to measure the altitude of celestial bodies: a mural quadrant; a mural circle.

[1400-50; late ME < L muralis, equiv. to mur(us) wall + -alis -AL¹]

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Painting applied to and made integral with the surface of a wall or ceiling.

Its roots can be found in the universal desire that led prehistoric peoples to create cave paintings

the desire to decorate their surroundings and express their ideas and beliefs. The Romans produced large numbers of murals in Pompeii and Ostia, but mural painting (not synonymous with fresco) reached its highest degree of creative achievement in Europe with the work of such Renaissance masters as Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Raphael. In the 20th century, the mural was embraced by artists of the Cubist and Fauve movements in Paris, revolutionary painters in Mexico (e.g., Diego Rivera, José Clemente Orozco, David Alfaro Siqueiros), and Depression-era artists under the sponsorship of the U.S. government (e.g., Ben Shahn, Thomas Hart Benton).

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▪ painting

      a painting applied to and made integral with the surface of a wall or ceiling. The term may properly include painting on fired tiles but ordinarily does not refer to mosaic decoration unless the mosaic forms part of the overall scheme of the painting.

      Mural painting is inherently different from all other forms of pictorial art in that it is organically connected with architecture. The use of colour, design, and thematic treatment can radically alter the sensation of spatial proportions of the building; in this sense mural is the only form of painting that is truly three-dimensional, since it modifies and partakes of a given space. Byzantine mosaic decoration evinced the greatest respect for organic architectural form. The great artists of the Renaissance, on the other hand, attempted to create an illusionistic feeling for space; and the masters of the subsequent Baroque period obtained such radical effects as to seem to dissolve almost entirely the walls or ceilings. Apart from its organic relation to architecture, a second characteristic of mural painting is its broad public significance. The mural artist must conceive pictorially a social, religious, or patriotic theme on the appropriate scale in reference both to the structural exigencies of the wall and to the idea expressed.

      In the history of mural painting many techniques have been used: encaustic painting, tempera painting, fresco painting, ceramics, oil paint on canvas, and, more recently, liquid silicate and fired procelain enamel. In classical Greco-Roman times the most common medium was encaustic (encaustic painting), in which colours are ground in a molten beeswax binder (or resin binder) and applied to the painting surface while hot. tempera painting was also practiced from the earliest known times; the binder was an albuminous medium such as egg yolk or egg white diluted in water. In 16th-century Europe, oil paint (oil painting) on canvas came into general use for murals. The fact that it could be completed in the artist's studio and later transported to its destination and attached to the wall was of practical convenience. Yet oil paint is the least satisfactory medium for murals: it lacks both brilliance of colour and surface texture, many pigments are yellowed by the binder or are affected by atmospheric conditions, and the canvas itself is subject to rapid deterioration.

      The Romans (ancient Rome) used mural painting to an extraordinary extent. In Pompeii and Ostia the walls and ceilings of almost all buildings, public and private, were painted in unified, inventive decorative schemes that encompassed a wide range of pictures, including landscape, still life, and figured scenes. However, at no other time before or since has mural decoration received a higher degree of creative concentration by artist and patron than in the period of the European Renaissance. A continuously inventive spirit and inquiring mind, a wealth of support from patrons, and an ever-awakening attitude toward new creative possibilities are characteristics of this remarkable age. One speaks by and large of an Early Renaissance (15th century), a High Renaissance (1500–30), and a Late Renaissance, or Mannerist, style (second and third quarters of the 16th century). The centres of activity were the various cities and the rival personalities and families who dominated each area as political and cultural leaders.

      In Florence, undoubtedly the most important centre, the development reveals an emphasis on specific problems of form almost to the point of obsession. It began with the concentration on the monumental figure by Masaccio, whereby the solidly built forms in a three-dimensional space are closely integrated by gesture and light and shade to produce a dramatic unity. The skill seems to have been recognized and developed by succeeding artists such as Paolo Uccello, Piero della Francesca, and Melozzo da Forli. The grandiose frescoes of Luca Signorelli (Signorelli, Luca) (chapel of San Brizio, Orvieto) reveal the concentration on anatomy and the well-modeled structure of many nude figures to achieve greater strength and articulation. This then becomes the point of departure for the great art of Michelangelo in the next century.

 A second tradition is the more conservative and Gothic one exemplified by the pure and mystic expression of Fra Angelico (San Marco, Florence). A third tradition is a kind of romantic realism to be found in the frescoes by Fra Filippo Lippi (Lippi, Fra Filippo) (the cathedral at Prato) and Benozzo Gozzoli (Gozzoli, Benozzo) (Medici Palace chapel, Florence). Both of these reveal an awareness of the artistic problems of Masaccio but also a new interest in nature and its recognizable and realistic representation. Finally, these heterogeneous elements are combined into a highly sensitive and decorative style during the last quarter of the 15th century, particularly in the frescoes of Domenico Ghirlandaio and Sandro Botticelli.

 The High Renaissance is dominated by great individuals whose spectacular projects were often left unfinished or completed by pupils. Leonardo da Vinci's (Leonardo da Vinci) rich and universal genius is best demonstrated in the dramatic movement of figures and tensely psychological interpretation of content shown in his two most important mural projects: the Battle of Anghiari in the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence (destroyed but known through partial copies) and the famous Last Supper (Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan).

       Michelangelo, more intense and deeply religious than the scientifically minded Leonardo, sought to channel his expression through the human figure alone. Thus the dramatic movement of the figure carries the total design of his first mural (the Battle of Cascina) for the Palazzo Vecchio of Florence (lost but known through drawings and engravings). The stupendous project for the decoration of the Sistine Chapel ceiling for Pope Julius II followed the same method with increasing concentration on the figure, and the later Last Judgment on the end wall in the same room shows greater interest in the movement of larger figure masses in space with considerable dramatic freedom and intensity.

       Raphael represents the most perfect balance and integration of all the problems of form, space, and decorative unity that had been experimented with through the preceding century. Perfection of form is identified with the juxtaposition of the Disputation on the Holy Sacrament and the School of Athens in the Stanza della Segnatura (Vatican). The later historical murals of the Stanzas reveal an increasing interest in movement.

       Correggio is the last of the High Renaissance mural painters. His frescoes in the cathedral and the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma reflect the transition to the new concept of Mannerism.

      Two factors condition the development of mural decoration in the Baroque (Baroque period) style of the 17th century. One is the enormous building enthusiasm engendered by the Counter-Reformation, particularly through the Jesuit order. The other is the importance given to palaces and homes of the ruling aristocracy throughout Europe as the centres of society's cultural life. The roots of the style are to be found again in the work of the Renaissance masters but as interpreted and taught by the new institution of the Academy (e.g., that of the Carracci at Bologna, Italy, and the French Academy, founded in 1648). Its development can be followed from the allegorical decoration of the Palazzo Farnese in Rome by Annibale Carracci to the increasingly elaborate wall and ceiling frescoes of Domenichino, Pietro da Cortona, and Andrea Pozzo whereby the dramatic movement of foreshortened figures and perspective blends with the architecture to achieve a total unified and endless illusion of space.

      The most prolific and indeed most important single Baroque artist from the decorative point of view is Peter Paul Rubens (Rubens, Peter Paul), whose designs for tapestries, historical paintings (the Marie de Médicis series in the Luxembourg Palace, now in the Louvre), and decorations for the Jesuit churches in Antwerp and the Banqueting hall, Whitehall, London, as well as his own home in Antwerp, reflect both the universality of his productive genius and his international acceptance.

      In late 18th- and 19th-century Europe there was hardly any further development in style or technique. In the 20th century, however, mural decoration reemerged strongly in three major phases. One is the more abstract and expressionistic form stemming from the experimental easel painting of the Cubist and Fauves groups in Paris and developing into the large projects of Pablo Picasso (Unesco, Paris), Henri Matisse (chapel at Vence, Fr.), Fernand Léger, Joan Miró, and Marc Chagall (decorations of the Paris Opéra and Lincoln Center, New York City). The second is that which developed out of the revolutionary movement in Mexico with the remarkable series of frescoes by José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Alfaro Siqueiros, and Rufino Tamayo. With the ensuing acceptance of 20th-century concepts of design and structure in architecture, the new large-scale use of mosaics became a distinctive feature (e.g., the National Autonomous University of Mexico). A third phase was the short-lived American mural movement of the 1930s developed under U.S. federal sponsorship. The wide geographic distribution of the work in U.S. public buildings and the freedom given to both individual and experimental modes of expression as well as to the interpretation of social and political problems provided an artistic impetus to mural decoration. Examples are murals of Ben Shahn, Boardman Robinson, Thomas Hart Benton, Reginald Marsh, and John Steuart Curry.

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