New Deal Murals and the Myth of the Renaissance

Murals commissioned in the United States under the New Deal art programs -- especially the Section of Painting and Sculpture of the Treasury Department (1935-43) -- are conventionally considered as an aspect of the American Scene aesthetic and ideology. This essay proposes to complicate this reading, by reconsidering the myth of the Italian Renaissance that fascinated New Deal administrators and, more broadly, the art criticism of the time. My goal is to discuss the paradox of the critical appropriation of the Italian past in the service of a burgeoning American art movement that claimed to be drawn from the heartland of the country and to situate it within a lasting fascination with the virtuous, public-spirited citizenry of the Italian medieval communes for their resonance with America’s self-image.