Rome.—Roman pictorial art, like sculpture, followed the Greek, but in mural decoration the Romans have invented a style pecu liar to themselves. They are the inventors or, at all events, the exploiters of that form of painted ornamentation known as "gro tesque," which had originally not the connotation of the bizarre with which it is invested now, but only indicated a stylized and decorative composition of human, animal and plant forms—espe cially used for the filling of long and narrow spaces such as that of pilasters. Typical of their domestic interior decoration is that found in Pompeii ; it was mural painting in the fullest meaning of the word. The walls were made to resemble feigned architec tural "scenes"; the wall, itself usually coloured (Pompeian) red, sometimes yellow or, more rarely, blue or green, was divided horizontally in three parts by means of a narrow frieze and dado, and, at intervals, vertically with devices of feigned architectural "prospects." The centres of the main fields of the walls were embellished either by a mural subject picture or by small iso lated figures appearing as it were to be floating in space ; the dado, often representing a niche or architectural recess, also contained little compositions of landscape or still life, whilst the frieze and margins of the wall might have fanciful embellish ments of "grotesques," festoons or abstract pattern. The im pression of Pompeian decoration, with its incidents of gam bolling "putti," doves and quaint attempts at trompe-l'oeil, is light and playful and reminds one in spirit at least of the decora tions of the i8th century in France, the "Rococo." As regards the more ambitious subject paintings which formed part of the walls—such as the celebrated Aldobrandini-Wedding, now in the Vatican, dating from the 1st century A.D., which was discovered in 1606 and then created a sensation—it is clear that they are infinitely more modern in feeling than the art of the middle ages and the paintings before Raphael's time ; but they are less "decora tive," not only than mediaeval art but also than the paintings of Egypt, Crete or Assyria.
A more vital form of decoration which the Romans received by way of the Greeks from Asia and Egypt is mosaic. The well known "Battle of Alexander" from the "House of the Faun" in Pompeii gives one some idea of the technical skill with which the mosaicist was able to translate into mosaic a picture designed originally in another medium; the original of this subject is sup posed to have been a Greek painting. Mosaic, indeed—apart from its use as a floor covering—took the place of mural painting in Byzantine times.
ours used to embellish the geometrical ornament, carved on stucco in relief, and their very original "stalactite" ceilings com bined to give their mural decoration an effect of clear-cut yet romantic splendour not surpassed by any other style. The best known specimen of Saracenic decoration is the Alhambra at Gra nada, dating from the middle of the 13th century, but magnifi cent earlier examples are in the mosques of Jerusalem, Damascus and Cairo. In the use of script, the Saracenic decorators were, perhaps, only rivalled in ingenuity by the Mayas of Central Amer ica who evolved a decorative effect with literary meaning from the square which appears to have been the unit, not only of their ideograms but of their architecture in general.
The Renaissance.—Mural painting fell into disuse as the highest form of mural decoration when mosaic took its place: but it may, perhaps, be doubted whether until the Renaissance it had ever taken the foremost place in decoration—sculpture being probably regarded as superior. When next we meet with the remains of wall paintings, during the i oth to 14th centuries— virtually the "Gothic" era—they are inferior in decorative value to that most wonderful of all decorative devices, stained glass (q.v.) and even to tapestry. (See TAPESTRY.) The painted chamber is, at all events, always one of less importance in a palace than the rooms decorated with arras and tapestry—an art which incidentally the Christian world owes to the preservative energy of the Saracens.
Mural painting owes its eminence as a fine art—that is to say, as distinct from pure decoration—to a movement towards a re turn from Byzantine formalism to nature. This movement in so far as it was religious is associated with St. Francis and in so far as it was artistic with Giotto. Giotto was a realist—his aims were naturalistic, i.e., directed towards discovering means of greater verisimilitude. This is perhaps best proved by compari son of the paintings of the later upper chapel in Assisi with those of the earlier lower chapel. The latter obey the architecture to a far greater degree and have in consequence a much more deco rative effect than those in the upper chapel which are mainly a series of story pictures. In Masaccio's paintings, Byzantine formalism is overcome ; the mise en scene is more natural, but also the decorative value is not so pronounced.
In Fra Angelico's art we have a reaction; no progress is made in naturalism, but a truer sense of decorative values, within the area of each picture, is discernible. In the art of his pupil, Benozzo Gozzoli, however, we find a strongly pronounced deco rative sense best seen in the so-called "Journey of the Magi" in the Riccardo palace in Florence. This is in the main due to Gozzoli's concentration upon forms and colours as such ; they are to him all of equal interest whether they happen to belong to men or dogs, to trees or rocks—they are all considered in relation to the scheme as a whole. In spirit, therefore, if not in form, they are akin to the Flemish tapestries which reached their best period at about the same time, the latter part of the i 5th century.