Coming into vogue in the 1860s, the Renaissance Revival was a flavor of NeoClassicism infused with the august aura of the great Merchant Princes of the Italian Renaissance, and as such was a perfect foil for the newly-minted Medici created by the American Industrial Revolution. Renaissance Revival interiors often included elaborately carved furnishings and extravagantly draped windows beneath ornamental ceilings that varied in style from simple stencilled borders to elaborate trompe l'oeil paintings.
Itinerant decorative painters traveled the length and breadth of America in the 19th century, painting and stencilling the interiors of local merchants and industrialists. They were often highly trained immigrants from Germany and Italy, and the newly popular concept of mail order subscription provided them a continuous flow of the latest stencil patterns from the Continent. The model for our NeoClassical ceiling came from a sketch by a German-born painter who worked in the American Midwest.