人类最早的绘画就是画在壁上的,如阿尔塔米拉洞穴中的《狩猎图》,这幅画在当时虽然不是有意识地美化原始人的居住环境——仅是为了记录或教授打猎的情景。但由于特殊的表现形式和造型技法,其效果却显然起到了装饰美化居住环境的作用。因此,我们可以肯定的说,壁画是建筑艺术的重要组成部分。我国的壁画艺术,有着悠久的历史和辉煌成就,自佛教从印度传入后,从西北到内地开凿了数十处石窟,兴建了上千所寺庙。在这以后的几个世纪里,是我国宗教壁画艺术发展的高峰。举世闻名的敦煌壁画,是所有这些壁画中技术最精湛,内容最丰富,并且最具有代表性的杰作。它不仅是世界艺术史上光辉灿烂的一页,而且对后来壁画的发展,起了重大的作用。以后历代营建的石窟、庙宇,寺观也都留下了大量的壁画。当然,制作这些壁画的目的有两个方面, The earliest paintings of mankind were painted on the wall, such as the “hunting map” in Altamira caves, which at the time though did not intentionally beautify the primitive people’s living environment - just to record or teach hunt scenes . However, due to the special forms of expression and modeling techniques, the effect has obviously played a decorative beautification of the living environment. Therefore, we can say with certainty that murals are an important part of architectural art. China’s mural art has a long history and brilliant achievements. Since Buddhism was introduced from India, dozens of grottoes have been excavated from the northwest to the interior and thousands of temples have been built. In the centuries after that, it is the peak of the development of religious mural art in our country. The world-famous Dunhuang frescoes are the most technically sophisticated, the most informative and the most representative of all these murals. It is not only a glorious page in the history of world art, but also plays an important role in the development of later murals. After the construction of ancient caves, temples, temples have also left a lot of murals. Of course, the purpose of making these murals has two aspects,