History of Kerala Murals
A tradition over twelve centuries old. Still being painted. Still disappearing.
Before the Walls
Kerala’s mural tradition did not emerge from nowhere. It grew from a longer history of drawing on surfaces — a history that connects the cave paintings of Bhimbhetka, Ajanta, Vatapi, and Thanjavore to the temple walls of Central Kerala through an unbroken thread of religious and ritual intention.
What distinguished the Indian tradition of wall painting from its earliest period was its purpose. The major themes at cave and early temple sites were drawn from Buddhist and Jainist mythology — images made not as decoration but as vehicles for devotion. Kerala mural paintings carried this same fundamental intention forward: they were not meant as attractive ornamentations but as a means to generate bhakti — devotion — in the minds of those who stood before them.
Before the structural temples that came to house Kerala’s mural tradition, the Dravidian Kalamezhuthu tradition was prominent in the region — coloured powders used to draw temporary images of deities on the ground. With the shift from cave temples to structural temples in the eighth and ninth centuries, driven by Aryan cultural influence, the mural tradition began to consolidate on permanent walls. The temporary image on the floor gave way to the permanent image on the wall. The devotional intention remained the same.
The Earliest Sites
The mural paintings of Kerala have their origins traced back to the Thirunanthikkara murals, estimated to have been composed during the ninth century. These, and the sites that followed in the primary era — Kanthaloor, Thrivikramamangalam, Parthivapuram, Ananthapuram in Kasargode, and the cave temple of Chitral — represent the earliest surviving evidence of the tradition.
From the beginning, Kerala mural painting did not follow realism. Idealised, imaginative depictions were the standard — figures drawn according to the thala system employed in sculpture, using precise proportional measurements derived from Sanskrit art treatises. A single thala is roughly the length of a palm, divided into twelve angulas, with different thalapramanas prescribed for different deities. The painter worked not from observation of the world but from the dhyana sloka — the Sanskrit verse describing the deity — held in the mind during composition.
The primary textual sources governing this practice were Chitrasoothram, a part of the larger Vishnudharmottarapurana, and Chitralakshana, a chapter in Shilparatnam by Srikumara. These texts specified not only iconographic requirements but the moral and ritual obligations of the painter — what they must do before beginning, how they must prepare, what qualities of mind the work required.
The Classical Boom — 15th to 18th Century
The earliest surviving mural sites date to this period. The tradition is already mature, suggesting origins earlier still. Cave temples give way to structural temples. The first walls receive permanent painted images.
The tradition consolidates its visual grammar under the Kulashekhara Perumals and their successors. The five-colour system, the iconographic typologies, the compositional conventions — these become the standard that will persist for centuries. Temple construction expands. Mural painting expands with it.
The classical boom. The paintings were in their zenith during this period, as evidenced by the abundance of surviving works. This growth is attributed to the rise of the Bhakti movement in Kerala — the intensification of devotional culture that made the painted deity on the wall not just conventional but spiritually urgent.
The major patronage networks of this period — the Zamorin of Calicut, the Raja of Cochin, the rulers of Travancore — drove the production of the most ambitious mural programs Kerala has seen. The post-primary era sites include the Ramayana paintings of Mattancherry, Vadakkunnatha of Thrissur, Thiruvanchikkulam, and Kottayam Thazhathangadi. The middle era encompasses churches at Akaparamb, Kanjoor, and Angamali alongside temples at Kottaykkal, Thriprayar, and Padmanabhaswami, and palaces including Karivelappura maalika, Padmanabhapuram, and Mattancherry.
The colonial disruption. The collapse of the temple-related socio-cultural life began with the attack of Tipu Sultan and the subsequent British invasion. Temple arts including Kathakali and Kerala mural painting declined during this period. With the onset of British rule, European painting styles began dominating Indian traditional style. The popularity of Raja Ravi Varma led many local artists to abandon the Kerala mural painting tradition in favour of his naturalistic style.
Revival, documentation, crisis. The fire at Guruvayur temple in the 1970s destroyed the murals there and prompted a reassessment of what was being lost. A centre for studying and promoting murals was established in Guruvayur under the Devaswom administration in 1989. Mural camps were organised by the Thanjavore-based Southzone Cultural Centre in 1990. Four main centres now exist for formal instruction of the tradition: Guruvayur Devaswom Mural Institute, Ernakulam Ravipuram Indian School of Arts, Kalady Sree Sankaracharya University, and Aranmula Vasthuvidya Kendra.
What Was Painted and Where
The rules governing which paintings appeared in which locations were precise and non-negotiable. In a Goddess temple, tales of the Goddess received prominence. In a Vishnu temple, tales of Vishnu. In a Shiva temple, tales of Shiva. Other gods could appear, but in strictly specified positions — the Dakshinamoorthi image, for instance, is always drawn in the upper middle of the Southern wall.
The wall surrounding the sanctum sanctorum was divided into five horizontal bands from the ceiling: bhoothamala, pakshimaala, vanamaala, chitramaala, and mrigamaala. The murals were drawn at the chitramaala portion — the central band. Depending on the size of the wall, the bands above chitramaala were either avoided or selectively portrayed. Between scenes from the same storyline, a decorative pattern resembling a manimaala was used as separation — also serving to distinguish gods from humans, asura figures, or kings from their subjects.
The themes were drawn primarily from Hindu mythology — the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Devimahatmyam, the Markandeyapuranam. Apart from the figures of gods, goddesses, and mythical beings, some depictions of sages, ordinary humans, kings, and landlords occasionally appeared. Notable is the absence of depictions from the Uttara Ramayanam across most sites. Notable too is the absence of Shaiva-Vaishnavite conflict in Kerala murals — tales from Shiva mythology appear in Vaishnavite temples and vice versa, and the deity Shankaranarayanan, signifying the union of Shiva and Vishnu, is depicted at several sites.
The Artists
Most of the artists who painted Kerala’s murals are unknown. The tradition of associating art with the artist began only towards the end of the seventeenth century. A few inscribed their names alongside their creations. Most did not.
From what can be recovered, the artists belonged predominantly to elite communities — Tamil Brahmins, Kerala Namboothiris, Ambalavasis, and members of the Nair community. They were trained under the gurukula system — a student accompanying a guru through years of apprenticeship, learning to prepare pigments and brushes, memorising dhyana slokas, practicing figures on floors and wooden planks, then gradually assisting on commissions before working independently.
An inscription at the Udayampeeroor Perumthrikkovil temple, dating to murals finished in 957 AD, details the patronage of the works there. From the inscription, the painters may have been Tulu Brahmins. The inscription also records something remarkable for the period: that even Ezhavas and Valanmar — communities who had no right to temple entry at that time — commissioned these murals. Sasibhooshan suggests this was a consequence of the political conditions of the period, when Mysore’s conquest under Hyder Ali had prompted unlikely unity among communities facing a common threat.
Among the named artists recoverable from later periods are Tamil Brahmins Thiruvananthapuram Narayanapattar and Guruvayoor Chinnathambi Appupattar, and Nenmini Namboothiri. The murals around the sanctum sanctorum of Guruvayur temple were drawn by Raman Nair and his disciples — a lineage that, after the fire of the 1970s, was responsible for redrawing the lost works. This came to be known as the Guruvayoor style.
The Map of Sites
M.G. Sasibhooshan’s categorisation of Kerala mural sites by period remains the most systematic available. The primary era sites — Thirunanthikkara, Kanthaloor, Thrivikramamangalam — represent the oldest surviving examples. The post-primary era — Mattancherry, Vadakkunnatha, Thiruvanchikkulam — represents the tradition at its most developed. The middle era encompasses the fullest range: temples, churches, and palaces together. The post-middle era shows the tradition’s geographic spread in its final classical phase.
This archive documents sites primarily within Ernakulam and Thrissur districts of Central Kerala — the geographic scope of the doctoral research from which it emerged. It is a prototype of a potentially growing archive. Sites within this scope are mapped below. Each point links to the corresponding location in the archive.
The Tradition Now
The Kerala mural tradition is alive. It is also fragile in ways it has never been before.
Second-generation mural artists are increasingly utilising online spaces to disseminate their work — social media pages, e-commerce sites, YouTube. The murals appear in new contexts: as decorative pieces, as part of textiles, adorning the interiors of hotels and commercial spaces. This expansion reflects the demands of new consumers and a tradition adapting to survive outside its original ritual context.
Whether this represents vitality or dilution — or both simultaneously — is a question without a simple answer. What is clear is that the oral and practice-based transmission of artistic knowledge is under pressure. Formal institutions now carry much of the transmission work that the gurukula system once handled. What those institutions preserve, and what they inevitably change, is one of the questions this archive’s interviews with practitioners and students explore directly.
The walls that carry the tradition’s oldest and most significant examples are deteriorating. The knowledge required to make new walls in the traditional manner is held by a small community of living practitioners. The texts that governed the tradition — Chitrasoothram, Chitralakshana, the Tantrasamuchaya — have been translated and published, but reading them is not the same as learning from a guru.
This archive documents what exists. It cannot stop what is being lost. But it makes the case, by the simple act of careful documentation, that what exists is worth the effort of preservation.
