Any wall painting may be called a mural. Murals have been around since long before the framed painting. Scenic murals date back to at least 2000 B.C. on the island of Crete. Indoor murals for private homes were popular in ancient Greece and Rome, and many of those at Pompeii were preserved by the lava of Mt. Vesuvius. In the Renaissance the muralists Raphael and Michelangelo created great wall and ceiling paintings for the Catholic Church, and Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper became one of the most famous of all murals. Mural painting saw a great revival in Mexico beginning in the 1920s, when a group of muralists inspired by the Mexican Revolution, including Diego Rivera, J. C. Orozco, and D. A. Siqueiros, began taking their intensely political art to the public by creating giant wall paintings, sometimes on outdoor surfaces.
“Muralist.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/muralist. Accessed 28 Dec. 2025.
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