_Pompeii _
By: Judith
Pompeii is possibly the best-documented catastrophe in Antiquity. Because of
it, we know now how the Pompeians lived because they left behind an extensive
legacy of art, including monuments, sculptures and paintingsPompeii lay on
a plateau of ancient lava near the Bay of Naples in western Italy in a region
called Campania, less than 1.6 kilometers from the foot of Mount Vesuvius.
With the coast to the west and the Apennine Mountains to the East, Campania is
a fertile plain, traversed by two major rivers and rich soil. However, in the
early days, it was not a remarkable city. Scholars have not been able to
identify Pompeii’s original inhabitants. The first people to settle in this
region were probably prehistoric hunters and fishers. By at least the eight
century B.C., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the
region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its
origin is unknown. “The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan
word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community
consisted of five hamlets or, perhaps, was settled by a family group (gens
Pompeia)”(Kraus 7) In the course of the eight century B.C., Greek and
Etruscan colonization stimulated the development of Pompeii as a city around
the area of the Forum. A point for important trade routes, it became a place
for trading towards the inland. Up until the middle of the 5th century B.C.,
the city was dominated politically by the Etruscans. In the course of the 6th
century B.C., the influence of Greek culture is also documented by
terracottas, ceramics and architecture. A group of warriors from Samnium,
called Samnite, invaded the region in the 400’s B.C. Pompeii remained a
relatively unimportant village until the 200’s B.C., when the town entered a
prosperous period of building and expansion. The Romans defeated the Samnites,
and Pompeii became part of the emerging Roman state. Pompeii joined the Italic
revolt against Rome, the Social War of 91-87 B.C., and was crushed by Sulla.
Although the city was not destroyed, it lost its autonomy, becoming a colony
called Colonia Veernia Cornelia P, in honor of its conqueror L. Cornelius
Sulla. By 79 AD, Latin had replaced Oscan as the principal language, and the
laws and culture of Imperial Rome were implanted. The “romanization” had
began Pompeii grew from a modest farming town to an important and
sophisticated industrial and trading center. In 62 A.D., the first disaster, a
terrible earthquake hit the city. As the city was being rebuilt the second
disaster struck. In the summer of A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly erupted with
violence. Hot ashes, lava and stones poured into Pompeii. The eruption caught
Pompeians by surprise: “They heard the crash of falling roofs: an instant more
and the mountain-cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a
torrent; at the same time, it cast forth from its bosom a showe of ashes mixed
with vast fragments of burning stone! over the crushing vines- over the
desolate streets- over the amphitheater itself- far and wide- with many a
mighty splash in the agitated sea- fell that awful shower.”, (Bulwer-Lytton
1). The remains of about 2,000 victims out of a population of 20,000 have been
found in excavations. Some of them were trapped and killed in their homes.
Others died as they fled. Archaeologists have found the shells (molds) of the
bodies preserved in the hardened ash. By pouring plaster into the shells, they
can make copies of the victims, even to the expressions of agony on their
faces Pompeii was not forgotten. Peasants in the area searched for hidden
treasure and they made tunnels. In the 1500’s workers digging a tunnel to
change the course of the Sarno river discovered parts of a temple and the
forum, but no one paid much attention. In 1748, a farmer discovered a wall and
the authorities in Italy began a series of excavations. After 1860, Giuseppe
Fiorelli served as director of the excavations. He directed the first
uncovering of the whole city block by block. The Italian government has
provided funding money for this project. After many years of work, we can now
walk in Pompeii “as Pompeians did” After standing in line for quite a while
and paying for a ticket, the tourist experiences what are about to live are
quite unique. When walking in Pompeii, you can close your eyes and feel the
magic of the city, because it seems like the time has not gone by. Visitors
can see the buildings as they stood 2,000 years ago. They can walk in and out
of houses and up and down narrow streets, see the Temple of Jupiter, which was
an ancient ruin at the time of the eruption, or sit in a tepidarium (part of a
Roman public bath). Tourists can also visit the Antiquarium and see the casts
of some of the bodies, houseware, the remains of food such as carbonized
loaves of bread, eggs and other things that also date back to ancient Rome.
The center of public life is called the Forum, and it played a fundamental
role in the political, religious and economic life of the city. It had the
Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Vespasian, the Sanctuary of the Lares Publici,
Macellum, a Basilica, public buildings, etc. In Pompeii, there are two
theaters, gladiators barracks, an amphitheater, private and public baths,
temples, gates, houses and villas, and even a bakery Pompeii attracted many
wealthy Romans. They built great villas near the Mediterranean shore, where
they could enjoy the mild, sunny climate. It is in the houses where wall
paintings are founded, and, believe it or, not Pompeii owes its fame to the
mural art preserved because they were “hermetically sealed by hardened lava
and slime from all destructive atmospheric influences”(Kraus 156). Because of
that, the houses of Pompeii have given us a treasure of mural paintings, the
most complete record of the changing fashions in interior decoration in the
entire ancient world. The quantity of the paintings, tells us about both the
prosperity and the taste of the times. In the early years of exploration,
excavators were interested exclusively in the mural paintings, especially
those about Greek heroes and famous myths. They were cut out of the walls and
transferred to the Naples Archeological Museum. Later, archeologists stopped
this practice and serious attention was given to the mural designs as a whole.
At the end of the 19 century, August Mau, a German art historian, divided the
paintings into four so-called pompeian styles. The technique used in these
walls differed considerably from that used in Renaissance frescoes. Before the
artist could begin his work, the rough wall had to be covered with three coats
of fine lime mortar, followed by other three coats of a mortar using powdered
marble. When the wall surface was ready, it was polished with mable dust and
the colors laid on at the same time. By doing that, the walls were protected
against future cracking and had a brilliant surface like that on marble
itself. “The mirror-like glaze over the surface involved not only polishing
with marble dust, but also going over the surface with smaller rollers. The
whole process, it is clear, was so elaborate and expensive that it was of
necessity confined to the paintings in the “best” rooms of the house, the
others being much more simply decorated.” ( Kraus 156) The First Style (or
incrustation). It has also been called the masonry style because the decorator
tried to imitate, using stucco relief, the appearance of expensive and costly
marble panels. It appeared about 200 B.C., when it became fashionable to paint
the inner walls of private houses as well as public and religious buildings.
“This decorative mode was of Greek derivation, directly inspired by the
isodomic masonry technique, and used polychrome stucco to reproduce the
projecting elements such as the dado, the middle zone in large panels, the
upper zone in smaller panels, the cornices, and sometimes the pilasters which
articulate the walls vertically. The lively color contrast are no more than a
translation into the pictorial idiom of the Hellenistic innovation of
employing various types and colors of marble, in the realization of the single
elements.” ( Giuntoli 6). They give an illusion of actual marble panels. Roman
paintings were true frescoes, the colors were applied while the plaster was
still damp, but the brilliance of the surfaces was achieved by painstaking
preparation of the wall. The plaster was combined with marble dust if the
patron could afford it. Obviously incrustation was a process of decoration
often beyond the reach of any but the most powerful and wealthiest. A good
example of the First Style is The North wall of the tablinum, House of
Sallust. (pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about
12’ x 8’. Despite some later alterations and additions, the nucleus of this
house, the rooms around the atrium(The court of a roman house that is near the
entrance and open to the sky), stayed as it was until the end of the Tufa
period. The decoration of the tablinum has a band along the base of the wall
(a dado), which is mounted by painted and stuccoed imitations of large stone
blocks (orthostates). These blocks are outlined and give a good idea of the
colorfulness typical of this style(red, yellow, orange and green). In this
style there is no figuration or ornamental motifs. The wall is divided into
three horizontal zones and the top area was a painted cornice. There is no
hidden symbolism or religious meaning in this particular painting. It is
probably been done at the late phase of the style, “the individual field were
once again enclosed in a real three-dimensional framework of stucco rather
than relying only on illusionistic painting”. ( Kraus 165) The Second Style,
also called architectural, became popular in the years when Sulla’s military
colony was established, around 80 B.C. “The decoration on the walls proposed
perspective views with architectural elements illusionistically articulated on
different planes with foreshortenings and complex perspetive effects which
culminated in breaking through the wall towards an imaginary open space. The
immediate models were the illusionistic stage sets of the Hellenistic-Roman
theater and the new “baroque” fashions of 2nd-1st cent. B.C. architecture.”
(Giuntoli 6). Some scholars have argued that this style also has precedents in
Greece, but most believe that is roman invention. The aim of this style
painter’s was not to create the appearance of elegant marble walls, but rather
to dissolve the confining walls of a room and replace them with the illusion
of a three dimensional world constructed in the artist’s imagination. It seems
he is inviting us into his world. In the cubiculum 16, in the Villa of the
Mysteries, we can see how this style is characterized by painted columns
“breaking through the picture plane, architectural vistas teasing the eye with
perspective recessions” (Pompeii 1). It seems that the aim of the artist is to
make the room look larger, and also appears deeper than it really is. He uses
bright colors to achieved these effects. There is an optical effect stronger
than the one of the First Style The Third Style, or ornamental, was a
reaction to the illusionism of Style II, together with the preference for a
more classic typical art of the Augustan period. Painters no longer wanted to
replace the walls with three-dimensional worlds of their own creation. Instead
they decorated the homes of rich Romans with delicate linear fantasies, “The
walls are once more simple flat surfaces which mark the boundaries of an
enclosed space are subdivided horizontally and vertically into monochrome
areas articulated by slender architectural and decorative elements. The focal
point is a painting in the center, generally of mythological, religious or
idyllic subject, set inside an aedicule flanked by panels with small scenes
suspended in the center which depict miniature figures and landscapes.”
(Giuntoli 7). In the North wall of the red cubiculum, from the Villa of
Boscotrecase, in the Museo Nazionale, Naples, we have one of the best examples
of the 3rd Style. The villa was owned by Agrippa Postumus and was decorated
about 11 B.C. We can see here, a landscape, in the middle of the red wall,
representing a sacred precint dominated by the statue of a seated goddess. It
measures only 15’ by 17’9”, and it was appropriate to this hall of 19’8” by
29”, one of the largest in Pompeii. It does not fill the whole wall as in the
Third Style, now is only a picture in every central wall. It is almost square
and has smaller dimensions. The artist wanted to give us the impression of a
picture hanging on the wall. The colors have changed from lively reds, greens
and oranges to broken tones, combining soft browns, a green somewhat on the
blue side and an unusual violet. Now, we begin to see a contour around the
figures The Fourth Style, became popular in the period of Claudius and Nero,
when the earthquake struck in A.D. 72 and the Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.
Returns once again to the architectural illusionism. It is inspired by the
Second and Third styles. It was originated in Rome. “The colors are more
decided and tend to contrasting lively color effects, the decorative element
multiply and crowd together, alternating with illusionistic architectural
views and pictures of mythological subjects often painted in the
impressionistic technique. A particular type is that of suspended carpets with
small pictures and figures in the center, inspired by the Hellenistic fashion
of hanging decorative tapestries on the walls”. ( Giuntoli 7). In the Large
hall, House of Fabius Rufus, we have one of the best examples of the 4th
Style. The house is situated on the southwest edge of the city and it has a
splendid view of the sea, it is the largest room of the house. On a
black-ground enlived by animals, vases, musical instruments and others, we can
see the three-dimensional effects, enhanced, for example by the woman on the
balcony on the left. Apollo, Bachus and Venus appear in the main picture, in
the upper zone above them is Leda with her swan, and small personifications of
muses stand alone in the sides. The decoration stands out because of the
blackground From personal experience, I can say that after touring Pompeii,
I was glad that such a catastrophe preserved the city. If you enjoy art, it is
a must see BIBLIOGRAPHY: Giuntoli, Stefano, Art and History of Pompeii.
(Erika Pauli for Studio Comunicare, trans.) Florence, Italy: Casa Editrice
Bonechi, 1995. Kraus, Theodor, Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Living Cities of
the Dead. ( Robert Erich Wolf, trans.) New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975.
“Pompeii”, World Book Online,
http://www.worldbookonline.com/na/ar/fs/ar438760.htm, November 9, 1999.
“Pompeii undercovered”,
http://www.eliki.com/ancient/civilizations/pompeii/content.htm October 25,
1999. Pompeii is possibly the best-documented catastrophe in Antiquity.
Because of it, we know now how the Pompeians lived because they left behind an
extensive legacy of art, including monuments, sculptures and paintings.
Pompeii lay on a plateau of ancient lava near the Bay of Naples in western
Italy in a region called Campania, less than 1.6 kilometers from the foot of
Mount Vesuvius. With the coast to the west and the Apennine Mountains to the
East, Campania is a fertile plain, traversed by two major rivers and rich
soil. However, in the early days, it was not a remarkable city. Scholars have
not been able to identify Pompeii’s original inhabitants. The first people to
settle in this region were probably prehistoric hunters and fishers. By at
least the eight century B.C., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans
occupied the region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact
date of its origin is unknown. “The root of the word Pompeii would appear to
be the Oscan word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the
community consisted of five hamlets or, perhaps, was settled by a family group
(gens Pompeia)”(Kraus 7) In the course of the eight century B.C., Greek and
Etruscan colonization stimulated the development of Pompeii as a city around
the area of the Forum. A point for important trade routes, it became a place
for trading towards the inland. Up until the middle of the 5th century B.C.,
the city was dominated politically by the Etruscans. In the course of the 6th
century B.C., the influence of Greek culture is also documented by
terracottas, ceramics and architecture. A group of warriors from Samnium,
called Samnite, invaded the region in the 400’s B.C. Pompeii remained a
relatively unimportant village until the 200’s B.C., when the town entered a
prosperous period of building and expansion. The Romans defeated the Samnites,
and Pompeii became part of the emerging Roman state. Pompeii joined the Italic
revolt against Rome, the Social War of 91-87 B.C., and was crushed by Sulla.
Although the city was not destroyed, it lost its autonomy, becoming a colony
called Colonia Veernia Cornelia P, in honor of its conqueror L. Cornelius
Sulla. By 79 AD, Latin had replaced Oscan as the principal language, and the
laws and culture of Imperial Rome were implanted. The “romanization” had
began Pompeii grew from a modest farming town to an important and
sophisticated industrial and trading center. In 62 A.D., the first disaster, a
terrible earthquake hit the city. As the city was being rebuilt the second
disaster struck. In the summer of A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly erupted with
violence. Hot ashes, lava and stones poured into Pompeii. The eruption caught
Pompeians by surprise: “They heard the crash of falling roofs: an instant more
and the mountain-cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a
torrent; at the same time, it cast forth from its bosom a showe of ashes mixed
with vast fragments of burning stone! over the crushing vines- over the
desolate streets- over the amphitheater itself- far and wide- with many a
mighty splash in the agitated sea- fell that awful shower.”, (Bulwer-Lytton
1). The remains of about 2,000 victims out of a population of 20,000 have been
found in excavations. Some of them were trapped and killed in their homes.
Others died as they fled. Archaeologists have found the shells (molds) of the
bodies preserved in the hardened ash. By pouring plaster into the shells, they
can make copies of the victims, even to the expressions of agony on their
faces Pompeii was not forgotten. Peasants in the area searched for hidden
treasure and they made tunnels. In the 1500’s workers digging a tunnel to
change the course of the Sarno river discovered parts of a temple and the
forum, but no one paid much attention. In 1748, a farmer discovered a wall and
the authorities in Italy began a series of excavations. After 1860, Giuseppe
Fiorelli served as director of the excavations. He directed the first
uncovering of the whole city block by block. The Italian government has
provided funding money for this project. After many years of work, we can now
walk in Pompeii “as Pompeians did” After standing in line for quite a while
and paying for a ticket, the tourist experiences what are about to live are
quite unique. When walking in Pompeii, you can close your eyes and feel the
magic of the city, because it seems like the time has not gone by. Visitors
can see the buildings as they stood 2,000 years ago. They can walk in and out
of houses and up and down narrow streets, see the Temple of Jupiter, which was
an ancient ruin at the time of the eruption, or sit in a tepidarium (part of a
Roman public bath). Tourists can also visit the Antiquarium and see the casts
of some of the bodies, houseware, the remains of food such as carbonized
loaves of bread, eggs and other things that also date back to ancient Rome.
The center of public life is called the Forum, and it played a fundamental
role in the political, religious and economic life of the city. It had the
Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Vespasian, the Sanctuary of the Lares Publici,
Macellum, a Basilica, public buildings, etc. In Pompeii, there are two
theaters, gladiators barracks, an amphitheater, private and public baths,
temples, gates, houses and villas, and even a bakery Pompeii attracted many
wealthy Romans. They built great villas near the Mediterranean shore, where
they could enjoy the mild, sunny climate. It is in the houses where wall
paintings are founded, and, believe it or, not Pompeii owes its fame to the
mural art preserved because they were “hermetically sealed by hardened lava
and slime from all destructive atmospheric influences”(Kraus 156). Because of
that, the houses of Pompeii have given us a treasure of mural paintings, the
most complete record of the changing fashions in interior decoration in the
entire ancient world. The quantity of the paintings, tells us about both the
prosperity and the taste of the times. In the early years of exploration,
excavators were interested exclusively in the mural paintings, especially
those about Greek heroes and famous myths. They were cut out of the walls and
transferred to the Naples Archeological Museum. Later, archeologists stopped
this practice and serious attention was given to the mural designs as a whole.
At the end of the 19 century, August Mau, a German art historian, divided the
paintings into four so-called pompeian styles. The technique used in these
walls differed considerably from that used in Renaissance frescoes. Before the
artist could begin his work, the rough wall had to be covered with three coats
of fine lime mortar, followed by other three coats of a mortar using powdered
marble. When the wall surface was ready, it was polished with mable dust and
the colors laid on at the same time. By doing that, the walls were protected
against future cracking and had a brilliant surface like that on marble
itself. “The mirror-like glaze over the surface involved not only polishing
with marble dust, but also going over the surface with smaller rollers. The
whole process, it is clear, was so elaborate and expensive that it was of
necessity confined to the paintings in the “best” rooms of the house, the
others being much more simply decorated.” ( Kraus 156) The First Style (or
incrustation). It has also been called the masonry style because the decorator
tried to imitate, using stucco relief, the appearance of expensive and costly
marble panels. It appeared about 200 B.C., when it became fashionable to paint
the inner walls of private houses as well as public and religious buildings.
“This decorative mode was of Greek derivation, directly inspired by the
isodomic masonry technique, and used polychrome stucco to reproduce the
projecting elements such as the dado, the middle zone in large panels, the
upper zone in smaller panels, the cornices, and sometimes the pilasters which
articulate the walls vertically. The lively color contrast are no more than a
translation into the pictorial idiom of the Hellenistic innovation of
employing various types and colors of marble, in the realization of the single
elements.” ( Giuntoli 6). They give an illusion of actual marble panels. Roman
paintings were true frescoes, the colors were applied while the plaster was
still damp, but the brilliance of the surfaces was achieved by painstaking
preparation of the wall. The plaster was combined with marble dust if the
patron could afford it. Obviously incrustation was a process of decoration
often beyond the reach of any but the most powerful and wealthiest. A good
example of the First Style is The North wall of the tablinum, House of
Sallust. (pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about
12’ x 8’. Despite some later alterations and additions, the nucleus of this
house, the rooms around the atrium(The court of a roman house that is near the
entrance and open to the sky), stayed as it was until the end of the Tufa
period. The decoration of the tablinum has a band along the base of the wall
(a dado), which is mounted by painted and stuccoed imitations of large stone
blocks (orthostates). These blocks are outlined and give a good idea of the
colorfulness typical of this style(red, yellow, orange and green). In this
style there is no figuration or ornamental motifs. The wall is divided into
three horizontal zones and the top area was a painted cornice. There is no
hidden symbolism or religious meaning in this particular painting. It is
probably been done at the late phase of the style, “the individual field were
once again enclosed in a real three-dimensional framework of stucco rather
than relying only on illusionistic painting”. ( Kraus 165) The Second Style,
also called architectural, became popular in the years when Sulla’s military
colony was established, around 80 B.C. “The decoration on the walls proposed
perspective views with architectural elements illusionistically articulated on
different planes with foreshortenings and complex perspetive effects which
culminated in breaking through the wall towards an imaginary open space. The
immediate models were the illusionistic stage sets of the Hellenistic-Roman
theater and the new “baroque” fashions of 2nd-1st cent. B.C. architecture.”
(Giuntoli 6). Some scholars have argued that this style also has precedents in
Greece, but most believe that is roman invention. The aim of this style
painter’s was not to create the appearance of elegant marble walls, but rather
to dissolve the confining walls of a room and replace them with the illusion
of a three dimensional world constructed in the artist’s imagination. It seems
he is inviting us into his world. In the cubiculum 16, in the Villa of the
Mysteries, we can see how this style is characterized by painted columns
“breaking through the picture plane, architectural vistas teasing the eye with
perspective recessions” (Pompeii 1). It seems that the aim of the artist is to
make the room look larger, and also appears deeper than it really is. He uses
bright colors to achieved these effects. There is an optical effect stronger
than the one of the First Style The Third Style, or ornamental, was a
reaction to the illusionism of Style II, together with the preference for a
more classic typical art of the Augustan period. Painters no longer wanted to
replace the walls with three-dimensional worlds of their own creation. Instead
they decorated the homes of rich Romans with delicate linear fantasies, “The
walls are once more simple flat surfaces which mark the boundaries of an
enclosed space are subdivided horizontally and vertically into monochrome
areas articulated by slender architectural and decorative elements. The focal
point is a painting in the center, generally of mythological, religious or
idyllic subject, set inside an aedicule flanked by panels with small scenes
suspended in the center which depict miniature figures and landscapes.”
(Giuntoli 7). In the North wall of the red cubiculum, from the Villa of
Boscotrecase, in the Museo Nazionale, Naples, we have one of the best examples
of the 3rd Style. The villa was owned by Agrippa Postumus and was decorated
about 11 B.C. We can see here, a landscape, in the middle of the red wall,
representing a sacred precint dominated by the statue of a seated goddess. It
measures only 15’ by 17’9”, and it was appropriate to this hall of 19’8” by
29”, one of the largest in Pompeii. It does not fill the whole wall as in the
Third Style, now is only a picture in every central wall. It is almost square
and has smaller dimensions. The artist wanted to give us the impression of a
picture hanging on the wall. The colors have changed from lively reds, greens
and oranges to broken tones, combining soft browns, a green somewhat on the
blue side and an unusual violet. Now, we begin to see a contour around the
figures The Fourth Style, became popular in the period of Claudius and Nero,
when the earthquake struck in A.D. 72 and the Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.
Returns once again to the architectural illusionism. It is inspired by the
Second and Third styles. It was originated in Rome. “The colors are more
decided and tend to contrasting lively color effects, the decorative element
multiply and crowd together, alternating with illusionistic architectural
views and pictures of mythological subjects often painted in the
impressionistic technique. A particular type is that of suspended carpets with
small pictures and figures in the center, inspired by the Hellenistic fashion
of hanging decorative tapestries on the walls”. ( Giuntoli 7). In the Large
hall, House of Fabius Rufus, we have one of the best examples of the 4th
Style. The house is situated on the southwest edge of the city and it has a
splendid view of the sea, it is the largest room of the house. On a
black-ground enlived by animals, vases, musical instruments and others, we can
see the three-dimensional effects, enhanced, for example by the woman on the
balcony on the left. Apollo, Bachus and Venus appear in the main picture, in
the upper zone above them is Leda with her swan, and small personifications of
muses stand alone in the sides. The decoration stands out because of the
blackground From personal experience, I can say that after touring Pompeii,
I was glad that such a catastrophe preserved the city. If you enjoy art, it is
a must see
_Bibliography _
Pompeii is possibly the best-documented catastrophe in Antiquity. Because of
it, we know now how the Pompeians lived because they left behind an extensive
legacy of art, including monuments, sculptures and paintings Pompeii lay on
a plateau of ancient lava near the Bay of Naples in western Italy in a region
called Campania, less than 1.6 kilometers from the foot of Mount Vesuvius.
With the coast to the west and the Apennine Mountains to the East, Campania is
a fertile plain, traversed by two major rivers and rich soil. However, in the
early days, it was not a remarkable city. Scholars have not been able to
identify Pompeii’s original inhabitants. The first people to settle in this
region were probably prehistoric hunters and fishers. By at least the eight
century B.C., a group of Italic people known as the Oscans occupied the
region; they most likely established Pompeii, although the exact date of its
origin is unknown. “The root of the word Pompeii would appear to be the Oscan
word for the number five, pompe, which suggests that either the community
consisted of five hamlets or, perhaps, was settled by a family group (gens
Pompeia)”(Kraus 7) In the course of the eight century B.C., Greek and
Etruscan colonization stimulated the development of Pompeii as a city around
the area of the Forum. A point for important trade routes, it became a place
for trading towards the inland. Up until the middle of the 5th century B.C.,
the city was dominated politically by the Etruscans. In the course of the 6th
century B.C., the influence of Greek culture is also documented by
terracottas, ceramics and architecture. A group of warriors from Samnium,
called Samnite, invaded the region in the 400’s B.C. Pompeii remained a
relatively unimportant village until the 200’s B.C., when the town entered a
prosperous period of building and expansion. The Romans defeated the Samnites,
and Pompeii became part of the emerging Roman state. Pompeii joined the Italic
revolt against Rome, the Social War of 91-87 B.C., and was crushed by Sulla.
Although the city was not destroyed, it lost its autonomy, becoming a colony
called Colonia Veernia Cornelia P, in honor of its conqueror L. Cornelius
Sulla. By 79 AD, Latin had replaced Oscan as the principal language, and the
laws and culture of Imperial Rome were implanted. The “romanization” had
began Pompeii grew from a modest farming town to an important and
sophisticated industrial and trading center. In 62 A.D., the first disaster, a
terrible earthquake hit the city. As the city was being rebuilt the second
disaster struck. In the summer of A.D. 79, Vesuvius suddenly erupted with
violence. Hot ashes, lava and stones poured into Pompeii. The eruption caught
Pompeians by surprise: “They heard the crash of falling roofs: an instant more
and the mountain-cloud seemed to roll towards them, dark and rapid, like a
torrent; at the same time, it cast forth from its bosom a showe of ashes mixed
with vast fragments of burning stone! over the crushing vines- over the
desolate streets- over the amphitheater itself- far and wide- with many a
mighty splash in the agitated sea- fell that awful shower.”, (Bulwer-Lytton
1). The remains of about 2,000 victims out of a population of 20,000 have been
found in excavations. Some of them were trapped and killed in their homes.
Others died as they fled. Archaeologists have found the shells (molds) of the
bodies preserved in the hardened ash. By pouring plaster into the shells, they
can make copies of the victims, even to the expressions of agony on their
faces Pompeii was not forgotten. Peasants in the area searched for hidden
treasure and they made tunnels. In the 1500’s workers digging a tunnel to
change the course of the Sarno river discovered parts of a temple and the
forum, but no one paid much attention. In 1748, a farmer discovered a wall and
the authorities in Italy began a series of excavations. After 1860, Giuseppe
Fiorelli served as director of the excavations. He directed the first
uncovering of the whole city block by block. The Italian government has
provided funding money for this project. After many years of work, we can now
walk in Pompeii “as Pompeians did” After standing in line for quite a while
and paying for a ticket, the tourist experiences what are about to live are
quite unique. When walking in Pompeii, you can close your eyes and feel the
magic of the city, because it seems like the time has not gone by. Visitors
can see the buildings as they stood 2,000 years ago. They can walk in and out
of houses and up and down narrow streets, see the Temple of Jupiter, which was
an ancient ruin at the time of the eruption, or sit in a tepidarium (part of a
Roman public bath). Tourists can also visit the Antiquarium and see the casts
of some of the bodies, houseware, the remains of food such as carbonized
loaves of bread, eggs and other things that also date back to ancient Rome.
The center of public life is called the Forum, and it played a fundamental
role in the political, religious and economic life of the city. It had the
Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Vespasian, the Sanctuary of the Lares Publici,
Macellum, a Basilica, public buildings, etc. In Pompeii, there are two
theaters, gladiators barracks, an amphitheater, private and public baths,
temples, gates, houses and villas, and even a bakery Pompeii attracted many
wealthy Romans. They built great villas near the Mediterranean shore, where
they could enjoy the mild, sunny climate. It is in the houses where wall
paintings are founded, and, believe it or, not Pompeii owes its fame to the
mural art preserved because they were “hermetically sealed by hardened lava
and slime from all destructive atmospheric influences”(Kraus 156). Because of
that, the houses of Pompeii have given us a treasure of mural paintings, the
most complete record of the changing fashions in interior decoration in the
entire ancient world. The quantity of the paintings, tells us about both the
prosperity and the taste of the times. In the early years of exploration,
excavators were interested exclusively in the mural paintings, especially
those about Greek heroes and famous myths. They were cut out of the walls and
transferred to the Naples Archeological Museum. Later, archeologists stopped
this practice and serious attention was given to the mural designs as a whole.
At the end of the 19 century, August Mau, a German art historian, divided the
paintings into four so-called pompeian styles. The technique used in these
walls differed considerably from that used in Renaissance frescoes. Before the
artist could begin his work, the rough wall had to be covered with three coats
of fine lime mortar, followed by other three coats of a mortar using powdered
marble. When the wall surface was ready, it was polished with mable dust and
the colors laid on at the same time. By doing that, the walls were protected
against future cracking and had a brilliant surface like that on marble
itself. “The mirror-like glaze over the surface involved not only polishing
with marble dust, but also going over the surface with smaller rollers. The
whole process, it is clear, was so elaborate and expensive that it was of
necessity confined to the paintings in the “best” rooms of the house, the
others being much more simply decorated.” ( Kraus 156) The First Style (or
incrustation). It has also been called the masonry style because the decorator
tried to imitate, using stucco relief, the appearance of expensive and costly
marble panels. It appeared about 200 B.C., when it became fashionable to paint
the inner walls of private houses as well as public and religious buildings.
“This decorative mode was of Greek derivation, directly inspired by the
isodomic masonry technique, and used polychrome stucco to reproduce the
projecting elements such as the dado, the middle zone in large panels, the
upper zone in smaller panels, the cornices, and sometimes the pilasters which
articulate the walls vertically. The lively color contrast are no more than a
translation into the pictorial idiom of the Hellenistic innovation of
employing various types and colors of marble, in the realization of the single
elements.” ( Giuntoli 6). They give an illusion of actual marble panels. Roman
paintings were true frescoes, the colors were applied while the plaster was
still damp, but the brilliance of the surfaces was achieved by painstaking
preparation of the wall. The plaster was combined with marble dust if the
patron could afford it. Obviously incrustation was a process of decoration
often beyond the reach of any but the most powerful and wealthiest. A good
example of the First Style is The North wall of the tablinum, House of
Sallust. (pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about
12’ x 8’. Despite some later alterations and additions, the nucleus of this
house, the rooms around the atrium(The court of a roman house that is near the
entrance and open to the sky), stayed as it was until the end of the Tufa
period. The decoration of the tablinum has a band along the base of the wall
(a dado), which is mounted by painted and stuccoed imitations of large stone
blocks (orthostates). These blocks are outlined and give a good idea of the
colorfulness typical of this style(red, yellow, orange and green). In this
style there is no figuration or ornamental motifs. The wall is divided into
three horizontal zones and the top area was a painted cornice. There is no
hidden symbolism or religious meaning in this particular painting. It is
probably been done at the late phase of the style, “the individual field were
once again enclosed in a real three-dimensional framework of stucco rather
than relying only on illusionistic painting”. ( Kraus 165) The Second Style,
also called architectural, became popular in the years when Sulla’s military
colony was established, around 80 B.C. “The decoration on the walls proposed
perspective views with architectural elements illusionistically articulated on
different planes with foreshortenings and complex perspetive effects which
culminated in breaking through the wall towards an imaginary open space. The
immediate models were the illusionistic stage sets of the Hellenistic-Roman
theater and the new “baroque” fashions of 2nd-1st cent. B.C. architecture.”
(Giuntoli 6). Some scholars have argued that this style also has precedents in
Greece, but most believe that is roman invention. The aim of this style
painter’s was not to create the appearance of elegant marble walls, but rather
to dissolve the confining walls of a room and replace them with the illusion
of a three dimensional world constructed in the artist’s imagination. It seems
he is inviting us into his world. In the cubiculum 16, in the Villa of the
Mysteries, we can see how this style is characterized by painted columns
“breaking through the picture plane, architectural vistas teasing the eye with
perspective recessions” (Pompeii 1). It seems that the aim of the artist is to
make the room look larger, and also appears deeper than it really is. He uses
bright colors to achieved these effects. There is an optical effect stronger
than the one of the First Style The Third Style, or ornamental, was a
reaction to the illusionism of Style II, together with the preference for a
more classic typical art of the Augustan period. Painters no longer wanted to
replace the walls with three-dimensional worlds of their own creation. Instead
they decorated the homes of rich Romans with delicate linear fantasies, “The
walls are once more simple flat surfaces which mark the boundaries of an
enclosed space are subdivided horizontally and vertically into monochrome
areas articulated by slender architectural and decorative elements. The focal
point is a painting in the center, generally of mythological, religious or
idyllic subject, set inside an aedicule flanked by panels with small scenes
suspended in the center which depict miniature figures and landscapes.”
(Giuntoli 7). In the North wall of the red cubiculum, from the Villa of
Boscotrecase, in the Museo Nazionale, Naples, we have one of the best examples
of the 3rd Style. The villa was owned by Agrippa Postumus and was decorated
about 11 B.C. We can see here, a landscape, in the middle of the red wall,
representing a sacred precint dominated by the statue of a seated goddess. It
measures only 15’ by 17’9”, and it was appropriate to this hall of 19’8” by
29”, one of the largest in Pompeii. It does not fill the whole wall as in the
Third Style, now is only a picture in every central wall. It is almost square
and has smaller dimensions. The artist wanted to give us the impression of a
picture hanging on the wall. The colors have changed from lively reds, greens
and oranges to broken tones, combining soft browns, a green somewhat on the
blue side and an unusual violet. Now, we begin to see a contour around the
figures The Fourth Style, became popular in the period of Claudius and Nero,
when the earthquake struck in A.D. 72 and the Vesuvius erupted in 79 A.D.
Returns once again to the architectural illusionism. It is inspired by the
Second and Third styles. It was originated in Rome. “The colors are more
decided and tend to contrasting lively color effects, the decorative element
multiply and crowd together, alternating with illusionistic architectural
views and pictures of mythological subjects often painted in the
impressionistic technique. A particular type is that of suspended carpets with
small pictures and figures in the center, inspired by the Hellenistic fashion
of hanging decorative tapestries on the walls”. ( Giuntoli 7). In the Large
hall, House of Fabius Rufus, we have one of the best examples of the 4th
Style. The house is situated on the southwest edge of the city and it has a
splendid view of the sea, it is the largest room of the house. On a
black-ground enlived by animals, vases, musical instruments and others, we can
see the three-dimensional effects, enhanced, for example by the woman on the
balcony on the left. Apollo, Bachus and Venus appear in the main picture, in
the upper zone above them is Leda with her swan, and small personifications of
muses stand alone in the sides. The decoration stands out because of the
blackground From personal experience, I can say that after touring Pompeii,
I was glad that such a catastrophe preserved the city. If you enjoy art, it is
a must see BIBLIOGRAPHY: Giuntoli, Stefano, Art and History of Pompeii.
(Erika Pauli for Studio Comunicare, trans.) Florence, Italy: Casa Editrice
Bonechi, 1995. Kraus, Theodor, Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Living Cities of
the Dead. ( Robert Erich Wolf, trans.) New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975.
“Pompeii”, World Book Online,
http://www.worldbookonline.com/na/ar/fs/ar438760.htm, November 9, 1999.
“Pompeii undercovered”,
http://www.eliki.com/ancient/civilizations/pompeii/content.htm October 25,
1999. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Giuntoli, Stefano, Art and History of Pompeii. (Erika
Pauli for Studio Comunicare, trans.) Florence, Italy: Casa Editrice Bonechi,
1995. Kraus, Theodor, Pompeii and Herculaneum: The Living Cities of the Dead.
( Robert Erich Wolf, trans.) New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1975. “Pompeii”, World
Book Online, http://www.worldbookonline.com/na/ar/fs/ar438760.htm, November 9,
1999. “Pompeii undercovered”,
http://www.eliki.com/ancient/civilizations/pompeii/content.htm October 25,
1999.
Word Count: 4920
| 
