Publisher's Synopsis
Many ordinary people in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries had art in their homes - not the high art of easel paintings but a humbler form of art painted directly onto their walls, telling us something important about their social and cultural lives. This wide-ranging and detailed study, the result of many years of research, looks at what this decoration was, how it was done and its significance for those commissioning it. An extensive gazetteer includes photographs of the majority of the paintings.