Professor Christina Strunck | A New Approach to Analysing Art in its Spatial Setting

As murals are embedded in buildings, architecture is essential for our perception and interpretation of such paintings. The interaction of painting and architecture constitutes the second theme of the book.

The field of art history has traditionally been divided into two camps. Architectural historians typically focus on buildings, while art historians concentrate on painting and sculpture. For Professor Strunck, it is time to bring these fields together and to establish a new way of studying spatially embedded art.

In the final chapter of her book, she provides an overview of numerous aspects that need to be considered when analysing mural paintings, such as:

• Avenues of approach
• The relationship between exterior and interior
• Doors, openings, visual frames
• Windows and vistas
• Architectural forms as signifiers
• Painted architectures
• Architectural ceilings and painted skies
• The relationship between the function and decoration of painted spaces
• Points of view, movement in space, and directions within paintings
• Visual hierarchies and degrees of reality
• Pairs and groups of images
• ‘Visual doubles’ and the space of the viewer
• Concettismo: image, architecture, and text

We will highlight a few of these aspects.

Both in palaces and public buildings of the Early Modern period, each room had a well-defined function. Therefore, it needs to be asked how the subject matter of a mural responds to its location. How does it reflect the function of a specific space? And to what extent did the gender and social position of the patron influence the choice of subject matter?

Avenues of approach and the framing of vistas influence our perception of paintings.
Special attention should be dedicated to elements in a composition that guide our movement within a room. Directions within paintings are crucial for the sequence of a visual argument, and may suggest a sense of climax.

Moreover, the placement of paintings within a room establishes visual hierarchies, influencing our interpretation of the scenes. The pairing and grouping of images invite comparisons, and amplify the message of individual paintings. At Windsor, Chelsea and Greenwich, this principle was extended to the design of juxtaposed, thematically related rooms.

Both in wall and ceiling paintings, ‘visual doubles’ could be employed. Here, a mural includes someone or something from the real world, such as a famous building or member of royalty. This emphasises the connection between the depicted allegorical or mythological scenes and British society, making the audience reflect on the contemporary significance of the paintings.

Political murals provided viewers with guidelines for their own conduct. Painted interiors can therefore be regarded as ‘spaces of translation’. They served as places where negotiations between people from different cultural spheres could take shape. As sites of cultural translation, such rooms encouraged the audience to translate the painted messages into action.  

Professor Strunck has not only decoded the complex political messages of the most significant British murals from 1660 to 1727; she has also proposed a methodology for analysing the interaction of mural paintings and their architectural setting. She has expanded on this work in her edited volume Studies on Spatially Embedded Art, which provides an extended discussion of this new methodology.

Drawing on case studies from a wide range of countries, epochs and cultures, Professor Strunck demonstrates that this innovative approach for analysing spatially embedded art goes well beyond the study of British murals. It helps us to understand the visual strategies and meaning of ‘image space ensembles’ all around the world.