Historical Survey; Decoration. — Certain caves in France and Spain have pre served to us the remarkable efforts of primitive man to adorn these interiors with paintings of animals. (See ABORIGINAL ART). These date back probably to an antiquity of at least 25,000 years. Then follows a hiatus of many millen niums preceding the earliest extant Egyptian interiors of tombs and temples, with which his toric art in interior decoration may be said to begin. In the temples the solemnity of pillared hypostyle halls and of the sanctuaries was re lieved and enriched by pictures and 'bands of hieroglyphics, cut into the stone in outline or carved in low relief, and painted in brilliant colors. The pictures represent gods and kings, sacrifices and sacred vultures, with conventional ornament executed in the same way. The walls of the tombs were adorned with scenes from real life, sometimes painted on plaster, some times cut in low relief on the stone (Tomb of Perneb in the Metropolitan Museum, New York). As ancient as some of these Egyptian works are the remarkable paintings of walls in Crete, especially at Knossos; while somewhat later in date (9th to 6th century a.c.) are the decorations in the palaces of the Assyrian kings. Low relief pictures on alabaster or limestone slabs formed a high wainscot in the halls of these palaces ; above were probably borders in encaustic tile and tapestries or other hangings. In places even the pavements were of alabaster carved with ornaments in low relief.
The Classic the Greek interiors almost nothing has survived to our time; all the (restorations" shown in books and models are conjectural. We know from literary sources that mural painting was practised; the Stoa Poikile at Athens was a public colonnade whose wall behind the columns was covered with such paintings. At Olympia there was found a beautiful fragment of decorative pave ment executed in hard stucco in black and white. Since color was freely used on the ex teriors of temples it is probable that the interior columns and walls were painted and the wooden ceilings richly painted and gilded, per haps paneled somewhat like the stone ceilings of the exterior colonnade or pteroma.
It was the Romans who, of all antique peoples, developed interior decoration to its greatest splendor by recourse to.new methods and materials and processes. The Roman dec orative system was that of a dress or sheathing or facing of fine material applied to a Massive core-construction of coarser materials, such as rubble, concrete or brick. This was faced with stucco, or sheathed with marble and adorned with columns, niches, recessed arches, moldings, entablatures and panels, for which provision was made in the more massive primary con struction. Columns were of polished granite, porphyry or marble; capitals and entablatures were richly carved; there was much ornament of stucco molded in relief and brilliantly painted, and ceilings and vaults were deeply paneled, with rich ornaments- in relief painted and in parts gilded. The lower parts of the walls were wainscoted with precious marbles, and the floors were of marble in patterns of various colors or in mosaic of opus Grecanicum. (See MOSAIC). The vastness of the Roman in teriors of temples, baths and basilicas unen cumbered by columns, and the majesty of their lofty vaulted ceilings, produced effects of in ternal grandeur never before dreamed of, which were greatly enhanced by the splendor of the materials employed. The Pantheon re
mains to-day a marvelous example of this splendor, though deprived of the former en richments of its majestic paneled dome. The brilliant wall paintings of Pompeii (q.v.), the Pompeiian and Roman painted reliefs in stucco, and many Roman mosaic floors, preserve for us examples of Roman interior decoration of a less monumental sort.
The Medieval With the fall of Rome, the leadership in the arts passed to Con stantinople, where the Byzantine style rapidly developed in the 6th century to its culmination in Hagia Sophia, the church of the Divine Wisdom. It was pre-eminently a style of in terior decoration, not of external splendor. De riving from Roman precedents the system of massive vaulted construction with surface fac ing of marble sheathing and applied decoration, it introduced two new and transcendently im portant elements — the dome on pendentives and the use of pictorial and ornamental mosaic in brilliant colors on a gold ground, to cover all vaulted surfaces. Fine surface-incised carv ing was used sparingly and effectively, but the main effect was of rich and harmoniously blended colors upon every visible surface. Fresco-painting (see Fiasco) was employed in some cases instead of mosaic on walls and vaults, at least in the later churches. The Byzantine mosaic-workers and other artists found wide employment in Italy, and when in 1047 the Venetians set about the reconstruc tion of the church of Saint Mark, it was built upon the model of the church of the Apostles at Constantinople, largely by artificers from that city. Though much smaller than Hagia Sophia, and though some of its mosaics are of a much later age than the 11th century, it is to-day one of the richest and most splendid in teriors in the world. Of much earlier date are the two basilicas of San Apollinare at Ravenna (6th century) with fine mosaics, those of San Apollinare Nuovo being particularly impressive. The baptistery of the Orthodox and the domical church of San Vitale at Ravenna also offer striking examples of Byzantine interior decora tion in marble and mosaic.
The Romanesque period in western Europe, from the 8th to the mid-12th century, produced little of importance in interior decoration ex cept in Venice as just noted, and in Sicily where a blending of Oriental and Byzantine in fluences has left to the world a number of re markably beautiful and impressive interiors in churches and chapels at Palermo and in the neighboring cathedral of Monreale. The pave ments of these are patterned in colored marble, the walls wainscoted with marble crested with Arabic patterns, the wall's and domes and apses glow with impressive symbolic pictures in mosaic, and the timber ceilings were painted in brilliant colors The baptistery of Florence (10th century) and the neighboring church of San Miniato are exceptions to the general rule of severity, of interior effect of the Roman esque architecture.
For the remarkable styles of interior decora tion of the Arabs, Moors and other Mo hammedan peoples — styles in which pictorial representation and sculpture were excluded by • religious prejudice and geometric and conven tional ornament in brilliant colors in plaster, tiles and inlay developed to their utmost splen dor during the Middle Ages, see MOHAMME