DESIGN FOR A FRIEZE DECORATION
than the walls, whether it was in wood, or only as a painted feature, and its moulding or “chair rail” would be coloured so as to harmonise with the dado, because it is also the crown or cornice of that feature.
As regards the debatable question of the imitation of relief mouldings and other architectural features on painted walls and ceilings, there are many precedents for doing so, some of which we will speak of further on, but this can only be successfully done when the decorator has a good knowledge of architecture and knows exactly what to do, like Michel Angelo when he divided the plain surface of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel into panels and niches by means of imitative structural forms and mouldings, in order to separate and enclose his magnificent painted series of scriptural subjects, prophets and sibyls. The imitation of architectural features in painted light and shade may not be logical, but when a great artist does such things, we are obliged to accept them without much criticism, as we accept the work of a great poet who makes his own grammar.
Treatment of Woodwork.
The question of whether to paint in colour the woodwork such as doors, window-frames and wainscoting of interiors, or to leave them in the natural colour of the wood, depends chiefly on the kind of wood employed in their construction. It would be wrong, for example, to advise the painting or colouring of the more valuable kinds of wood such as oak, mahogany, walnut, ebony, or any rare kind of wood, in any way other than that which would deepen or make richer the natural tone of the material by the application of a varnish, and of such a varnish as would only intensify the natural beauty of the wood, but not produce anything like a polished surface. It would be better to accept the natural colour of such woods, and to scheme the colouring of walls and ceiling to harmonise with the colour of the woodwork in such cases, especially if in addition to the door and window-framing there happened to be a considerable amount of wainscoting or wood panelling in the room.
In the medieval and earlier periods, however, whether in churches, palaces, or in smaller houses, even the more valuable woods, especially oak, were always painted and decorated in colours. The natural colour, or the rarity of valuable woods, did not as a rule prevent them from being treated in colour like the other parts of the buildings. Romanesque and Gothic wooden ceilings and rood-screens, though constructed of oak or other hard woods, were invariably treated in colour and partly gilt.
The simplest and perhaps the more satisfactory way of treating the woodwork of an ordinary room in colour would be in selected tones of the colour which appears on the larger wall spaces, but whatever
