The desperate resistance of these small fortresses built of ordinary stone slabs plastered with mortar had frustrated not one invasion of the Bulgarian lands. Sculpture and stone reliefs in the medieval Bulgarian art were used as an individual or a supplementary element of decoration in secular and church architecture and their grandeur and strict plasticity were outstanding indeed. Long before the appearance of the impressive sculptures as an element of architectural decoration in Western Europe, they had appeared on the facades of palaces and churches in the Bulgarian capital of Preslav. The most remarkable of all monumental plastic art in the Bulgarian lands of that time is, undoubtedly, the stone relief of a horseman, carved high up on a huge cliff at Madara almost within sight of Pliska. It dates back to the beginning of the eighth century and has become famous under the name of the Madara Horseman.
Monumental painting is definitely the most interesting achievement of the Bulgarian fine arts.
The earliest monuments dating from the 9th through the 12th centuries are the churches at Kostur, Ohrida, Vodocha, Sofia and Bachkovo. They were built in the style of Byzantine art, with its stationariness, archaism and asceticism characteristic of that period. Even so, some of the monuments display the original vigour of the Bulgarian artists overriding the monotony of rigid canon. From the 12th through the 17th centuries fresco and other mural painting was quite well spread. There are many monuments, extant examples of this throughout the Bulgarian lands.