INTERIOR DECORATION. Under the general designation of interior decoration are included all the various applications of the DECORATIVE Awr (q.v.) to the adornment of the interiors of buildings. The subject com prises monumental interior decoration, which is largely architectural and has to do with the decorative treatment of the floors, walls and ceilings of important buildings; and domestic interior decoration, which has to do with the furnishings as well as the architectural treat ment of rooms and halls in private residences.
The decoration of hotels and clubs occupies a position intermediate between the two divisions, partaking of one or the other character accord ing to the architectural importance of the build ing. In the first division we are chiefly con cerned with the architectural design of the interior, with columns, arches, pilasters, en tablatures, moldings, niches, vaults, domes, ceilings, wainscoting, panelings and pavements; with the arts of mural painting, decorative sculpture and carving, mosaic and inlay, and stained glass. In the second division these ar chitectural elements are less conspicuous and there enter considerations of furniture, carpets, rugs, tapestries, hangings and wall-papers, and of the comfort and manner of life of the dwellers in the house. The fundamental prin ciples of art are the same in both divisions, but the applications are widely different.
Monumental Interior Decoration; Methods and In order to make the interior of a great building — as a hall, church or theatre — decoratively pleasing, the artist may employ the resources of pure form or of color, or of both together, as is most often the case. Anyone who has seen the interior of Grant's tomb at New York realizes that its decoration is wholly one of form; of architectural features and paneling, executed for the most part in white plaster. At the other extreme is the Sistine Chapel of the Vatican at Rome; an in terior almost absolutely devoid of architectural embellishment, made glorious by the decorative painting of its walls and ceilings by the great est artists of the Renaissance. But in general, form and color are combined, as in the great basilica of Saint Peter, near by; in the superb Camera della Segnatura by Raphael in the Vatican; or, to take a modern instance, in the staircase hall of the Opera in Paris. son in his 'History of Modern Archi tecture> (Introduction, p. 15) draws an in teresting comparison between the interiors of the Sistine Chapel and of King's College Chapel at Cambridge. The last named depends chiefly for effect on the richness of its structural and architectural features, the former on its in comparable frescoes. Which is the higher and nobler sort of decoration? The answer will vary. according to the taste and point of view of the answerer, and still more according to the quality and success of the artist's performance with the other method. Fergusson con
siders the Sistine Chapel as exemplifying the higher type of decoration, but objects to figure painting on the horizontal parts of ceilings. The Arena Chapel at Padua, painted by Giotto (q.v.), he considers superior in method to the Sistine, however inferior in performance and technic of painting. One element in our judg ment of the two systems must inevitably be that of the more sustained, varied and intel lectual interest inspired by noble mural paint ings as compared with richness of architectural detail. The content of mere architectural de tail is soon apprehended, owing to its depend ence on repetition of similar forms, and its novelty of interest is therefore soon exhausted. See MURAL PAINTING.
The resources of interior decoration of a monumental character are, then, first of all architectural forms or (collectively) member ing ; secondly, carving and sculpture; thirdly, the use of fine or semi-precious materials of rich natural color, such as marble, porphyry, onyx, highly polished woods and the like; fourthly, the applied arts of inlay and mosaic and the kindred art of stained glass; and fifthly, mural painting, which includes the painting of ceilings and vaults and ranges from the sim plest harmonies of flat coloring on the various surfaces, through all varieties of painted or nament to the highest forms of allegorical, symbolic and historic painting. To these re sources should be added the decorative treat ment of the accessories and fixed furniture of the building, such as grilles and gates and rail ings in metal, pulpits, choir-screens and sedilia in stone and marble and wood, and other like essential features of the interior equipment. All these resources may be called into service in a single interior to produce almost over whelming effects of richness and splendor, as in the original state of the church of the Divine Wisdom (Hagia Sophia, now the mosque of Aya Sofia) at Constantinople, built in the 6th century; contemporary descriptions of this in terior, in prose and in verse, exhaust the re sources of language in the effort to portray the glories of that marvelous edifice. The interior of the Camera della Segnatura at Rome, men tioned above; of the cathedral of Sienna; of Saint Mark's at Venice; of the Taj Mahal (q.v.) at Agra (India) and of some of the Mogul palaces of that country; of certain halls in the Alhambra at Granada (Spain) ; of the staircase hall and foyer of the Opera at Paris; of the Pantheon and parts of the Hotel de Ville of that city; of the Public Library at Bos ton, Mass., and of the Congressional Library at Washington, D. C., illustrate in varying ways and degrees such combinations of architecture and the applied arts respectively in medifewal, Reniassance and modern times.