e Chapel the series of earlier frescoes on the lower
wall by Botticelli, Lorenzo di Credi, Ghirlandajo, Pinturicchio, and
other Florentine painters of the fifteenth century are really more
strictly mural in feeling, and safer as guides in general treatment,
than the work of the great master himself. They have much of the repose
and richness as well as the quiet decorative effect of tapestry.

[Fresco-Work of Italian Painters]

The frescoes in the Palazzo Publico at Siena, Pinturicchio's work in the
Piccolomini Chapel and the Appartimenti Borgia, the Campo Santo at Pisa
and the Riccardi Chapel of Benozzo Gozzoli at Florence, may be mentioned
as among the gems of mural painting.

[Modern Mural Work]

We have but little important mural painting in this country. Doubtless,
from various traces discovered under Puritan whitewash, the walls of our
mediaeval churches were painted as frequently as in continental
countries, but so completely did artistic tradition and religious
sentiment change after the Reformation that the opportunities have been
few and the encouragement less for mural painting. An attempt to revive
fresco-painting was made in our Houses of Parliament, and various scenes
from our national history have been rendered with varying degrees of
merit; but they have chiefly demonstrated the need of continuous
practice in such work on the part of our painters and the absence of a
true decorative instinct.

[Illustration (f120): Pinturicchio: Mural Painting (Piccolomini Chapel,
Siena).]

It is to the honour of Manchester that her Town Hall contains one of
the most important and interesting pieces of mural painting by one of
the most original of modern English artists--Ford Madox Brown--a work
conceived in the true spirit of mural work, being a record of local
history, as well as a decoration, while distinctly modern in sentiment
and showing strong dramatic feeling, as well as historical knowledge.

The chapel on which Mr. F. J. Shields is engaged in London will probably
be unique in its way as a complete piece of mural decoration by an
English artist of singular individuality, sincerity, and power, as well
as decorative ability.

But unfortunately opportunities for important mural decoration of this
kind are very rare in England. The art is not popularized: we have no
school of trained mural designers, and we have no