Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/57

MURAL DECORATION 47 ground. ISTo instance of true fresco lias been discovered in Eng land. In the 13th century, and perhaps earlier, oil was commonly used both as a medium for the pigments and also to make a varnish to cover and fix tempera paintings. Yasari s statement as to the discovery of the use of oil-medium by the Van Eycks is certainly untrue, but it probably has a germ of truth. The Van Eycks introduced the use of dryers of a better kind than had yet been used, and so largely extended the application of oil-painting. Before their time it seems to have been the custom to dry wafl- paintings laboriously by the use of charcoal braziers, if they Avere in a position Avhere the sun could not shine upon them. This is specially recorded in the valuable series of accounts for the expenses of Avail-paintings in the royal palace of Westminster during the reign of Henry III., printed in Vetusta Monumenta, vol. A r i., 1842. All the materials used, including charcoal to dry the paintings and the Avages paid to the artists, are given. The materials mentioned are jrtumbiim album ct rubcum, viridus, vcrinilio, synoplc, acre, azura, aurum, argentum, collis, oleum, vernix. Two foreign painters Avere employed Peter of Spain and William of Florence at sixpence a day, but the English painters seem to have done most of the Avork and received higher pay. William, an English monk in the adjoining Benedictine abbey of West minster, received two shillings a day. Walter of Durham and various members of the Otho family, royal goldsmiths and moneyers, worked for many years on the adornment of Henry III. s palace and were Avell paid for their skill. Some fragments of paintings from the royal chapel of St Stephen are noAV in the British Museum. They are very delicate and carefully-painted subjects from the Old Testament, in rich colours, each Avith explanatory inscription underneath. The scale is small, the figures being scarcely a foot high. Their method of execution is curious. First the smooth stone Avail Avas coA-ered Avith a coat of red, painted in oil, probably to keep back the damp ; on that a thin skin of fine gesso (stucco) has been applied, and the outlines of the figures marked with a point ; the Avhole of the background, croAvns, borders of dresses, and other ornamental parts have then been modelled and stamped Avith A ery minute patterns in slight relief, impressed on the surface of the gesso Avhile it Avas yet soft. The figures have then been painted, apparently in tempera, gold leaf has been FIG. 17. Pattern in Stamped and Moulded Plaster, decorated Avith gilding and transparent colours ; loth-century Avork. Full size. applied to the stamped reliefs, and the whole has been covered Avith an oil varnish. It is difficult to realize the amount of patience and labour required to cover large halls such as the above chapel and the " painted chamber," the latter about 83 feet by 27, with this minute and gorgeous style of decoration. In many cases the grounds Avere entirely covered Avith sliming metal leaf, OA er which the paintings Avere executed ; those parts, such as the draperies, where the metallic lustre Avas Avanted, Avere painted in oil with transparent colours, Avhile the flesh Avas painted in opaque tempera. The effect of the bright metal shining through the rich colouring is very magnificent. This extreme minuteness of much of the medieval wall - decoration is very remarkable. Large wall-surfaces and intricate mouldings Avere often completely covered by elaborate gesso patterns in relief of almost microscopic delicacy (fig. 17). The cost of stamps for this is among the items in the Westminster accounts. These patterns Avhen set and dry Avere further adorned Avith gold and colours in the most laborious way. So also with the architectural painting ; the artist Avas not con tent simply to pick out the various members of the mouldings in different colours, but he also frequently covered each bead or "fillet Avith painted floAvers and other patterns, as delicate as those in an illuminated MS., so minute and highly-finished that they are almost invisible at a little distance, but yet add greatly to the general richness of effect. All this is completely neglected in modern reproductions of mediaeval painting, in which both touch and colour are alike coarse and harsh mere caricatures of the old Avork, such as unhappily disfigure the Sainte Chapelle in Paris, and many cathedrals in France, Germany, and England. Gold Avas never used in large quantities without the ground on Avhich it was laid being broken up by some such delicate reliefs as that shoAvu in fig. 17, so its effect AA-as neA er gaudy or dazzling. Mural painting in England fell into disuse in the 16th century. For domestic purposes wood panelling, stamped leather, and tapestry were chiefly used as wall -coverings. In the reign of Henry VIII., probably in part through Holbein s influence, a rather coarse sort of tempera wall- painting, German in style, appears to have been common. 1 A good example of arabesque painting of this period in black and white, rudely though boldly drawn and very Holbeinesque in character, was discovered in 1881 behind the panelling in one of the canons houses at Westminster. Other examples exist at Haddon Hall (Derbyshire) and elsewhere. Several attempts have been made in the present century to revive the art of monumental wall -decoration, but mostly, like those in the new Houses of Parliament, un successful both in method and design. A large wall-paint ing by Sir Frederick Leighton of the Arts of War, on a wall in the South Kensington Museum, is much disfigured by the disagreeable gravelly surface of the stucco. The process employed is that invented by Mr Gambier Parry, and called by him "spirit fresco." A very fine series of mural paintings has been executed by Mr Madox Brown on the walls of the Manchester town-hall. These also are painted in Mr Parry s " spirit fresco," but on a smooth stucco surface, free from the unpleasant granular appear ance of the South Kensington picture. The Mediaeval Watt-Paintings of the Continent. In the main the above remarks on English mural decoration apply equally to that of France, Germany, and Scandinavia. Though each of these countries had certain peculiarities of style, mostly slight and unimportant, yet in method of execution, choice and arrangement of subjects, and division of the wall-spaces there is a very close similarity between them all. Italy, on the other hand, developed a style of her own, more purely pictorial, with less regard to the exigencies of architecture. In northern lands the mural paintings were strictly subordinate to the main features of the structure for which they were designed, while in Italy as a rule the architect did but little to decorate the interior of his buildings, and left the painter free to treat the walls as he pleased. The very close similarity of the mural decoration in the churches of Sweden to those of England is very remarkable, and some of the Swedish churches have very magnificent and well-preserved schemes of decoration, covering walls and ceilings alike, of dates varying from the 13th to the 15th centuries, all of which have little or nothing to dis tinguish them from contemporary work in England. Man- delgren s Monuments Scandinaves (1862) has well-executed reproductions of some of the best of these, especially the fine and complete specimens in the churches of Bjeresjoe, 1 Shakespeare, Henry IV., part ii., act 2, sc. 1 : " Falstaff. And for thy Avails, a pretty slight drollery, or the story of the prodigal, or the German hunting in watencork, is Avorth a thousand of these bed- liangings and these fly-bitten tapestries."