History of French Wall Mural Painting

Video Transcript

"IAN LOVEALL: Hi. My name is Ian Loveall and I'm with Expert Village. We're talking about mural painting today. Around the 1400s, frescoes were sort of reaching their heyday and more technology and discovery were being made regarding color and shadow, light and perspective, and this gave rise to a new school of painting known as "Trompe l'Oeil" which is French for "Trick the Eye." This was widely popular in churches. At the time, the church was really the only institution with enough money to commission these paintings. As you can see we've got this beautiful carved niche in the wall with the crucifixion scene. However, if you'll look closely, you'll see that everything on this picture has been painted; all the architecture, the drapery, every element is painted. It's all an illusion. Now this was widely popular because obviously, why pay the millions and millions and millions that would take to actually build a structure like this when you could simply paint something that would look just as real? This tradition continues to this day and this is sort of the school that I have studied and my goal is to continue to perfect my art as a trompe l'oeil artist to the point that you can look at a painting and it'll take you a minute before you realize that you're looking at a painting. And that's sort of the whole goal of trompe l'oeil."