Painted Interiors of the British Baroque

Painted interiors, narratives spilling over walls and ceilings, can unlock the sensory worlds of the British Isles in the 17th century. Lydia Hamlett explores how these paintings were designed to appeal to our emotions through the five senses, and reframes the British Baroque interior as an active, imaginative space. This book features stunning new photography by Sara Rawlinson, shining a light on the mural schemes of British royal palaces, town and country houses and public buildings of the Baroque period. Murals of this period served to educate, persuade and entertain, conveying messages on politics, virtue and morality in modes that were both tragic and comic. Architectural spaces were transformed into Olympian realms, Biblical settings, imagined landscapes or estates. Whilst there are hundreds of examples of Baroque mural paintings across the British Isles, only a fraction of them are intact today. They include the extensive painted interiors of Chatsworth House, Derbyshire; Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi’s ceiling and Louis Laguerre's walls at Marlborough House, London; and Antonio Verrio’s enfilade at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, among many others.