The academic publication “Corpus of mural paintings from the first half of the 19^th century” presents murals in the Bulgarian lands in the pre-modern age. It is the result of a two-year research project for the study of church frescoes in contemporary Bulgaria by experts from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (BAS) and universities and museums from around the country.

The study is 900 pages long and features 1,200 photographs. The essay which serves as a preface presents over 40 churches with murals. Another 52 fresco monuments are presented as individual corpus entities. In an interview for the Bulgarian National Radio, Assoc. Prof. Emmanuel Mutafov from the BAS Institute of Art Studies explained that until the 1850s, the master craftsmen working in our lands zealously clung to the tradition established in the Balkans in the period from the 15^th to the end of the 19^th century, so overstressing Western and French influence is not a good approach to this form of art.