Art History Today

Roman Art in the South- Slide list.

 

1) Roman copy of Pericles in a Corinthian Hat (after a bronze original by Kresilas), marble, Vatican.

2) Roman copy of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, (after an original by Timanthes 4 B.C.), 1^st century A.D., discovered at Pompeii, now in Archaeological Museum, Naples.

3) Romulus, Remus and the She-Wolf, c 500-480 B.C., Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.

4) Ara Pacis Augustae, view from west, 13-9 B.C., previously Campus Martius, Ara Pacis Museum, from 1938.

5) Detail: Augustus and his Lictors, south frieze.

6) Detail: Marcus Agrippa & Imperial Family.

7) Detail: Marcus Agrippa, Livia, Drusus, Tiberius, the Young Antonia, her son Germanicus, the elder Antonia, niece of Augustus.

8) Detail: Sacrifice of Aeneas, southwest panel: Aeneas and his son Julius-Ascanius.

9) Head of an Old Man, sometimes called “Brutus”, late 4^th century B.C., Museo del Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome.

10) Statue of a Patrician carrying busts of his ancestors in a Funeral Procession, 1 A.D., marble, Museo Barberini, Rome.

11) Detail: Portraits of ancestors.

12) Map of Italy showing province of Chieti.

13) Head of a Man from Scoppitto, 1st century B.C., marble, h 28 cm, Museo Nazionale, Chieti.

14) Map of Italy showing ancient towns including Taranto (Rom Tarantum).

15) Female head with gold diadem, 4th century B.C., terracotta, h 36 cm, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Taranto.

16) Aerial shot of Greek Temples at Paestum.

17) Horse & Rider from Tomb n 58 from the Andriuolo Necropolis, Paestum, mid 4^th century B.C., fresco, 146 x 98 cm, Museo Archeologico, Paestum.

18) Banqueting and Diver murals from the “Tomb of the Diver,” c. 470 B.C., Paestum.

19) Diver from Tomb of the Diver

20) Arch of Trajan, Benevento, Italy: the side oriented towards the centre of the city. The inscription is catalogued as CIL IX 1558.

21) Arch of Trajan: Scene of sacrificie.

22) Arch of Trajan: Trajan, Allegorical Figures and Italian children.

23) Portrait of Trajan, formerly Villa Albani, c. 108 A.D., Museo Capitolini, Rome.

24) View of the Bay of Naples.

25) National Archaeological Museum, Naples, 1895.

26) Bust of Marcus Aurelius, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples, “Capitoline Imperator Type,” probably 170-80 A.D.

27) Statue of Augustus as the Capitoline Jupiter, 1^st century A.D, marble, National Archaeological Museum, Naples.

28) Farnese Bull (Punishment of Dirce), from Baths of Caracalla, Antonine or Severan copy of a Hellenistic original of c 150 B.C., Naples, Museo Nazionale.

29) Details of Farnese Bull.

30) Mosaic from the House of the Faun: Battle of the Issus, derived from an original Greek painting of 333 B.C., Museo Nazionale, Naples.

31) House of the Faun, Pompeii.

32) Detail: Alexander the Great.

33) Mosaic from House of the Faun, Pompeii: animals and fishes, Museo Nazionale, Naples..

34) Mosaic from House of the Faun, Pompeii: Nilotic landscape with hippotamus, crocodile and ducks, Museo Nazionale, Naples.

35) Dioscorides of Samos (signed), Mosaic from House of Cicero, Pompeii: Travelling Players, 1^st century B.C., Museo Nazionale, Naples.

36) View of Pompeii with Vesuvius in the Background,

37) Ruins of Pompeii.

38) Lucy MecKenzie, Cheyney and Eileen disturb a Historian at Pompeii, 2005, acrylic and ink on paper, on paper, 254 x 368. 3 cm, Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles/Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.

39) Map of Bay showing spread of Mt Vesuvius after eruption in 79 A.D and bodies.

40) Mural from the house of Julia Felix, Pompeii, before A.D. 79: still life with fruit bowl and amphora.

41) Portrait of Paquius Proculo and his Wife, National Archeological Museum, Naples, formerly in the House of Julia Felix.

42) Reconstruction of the House of Julia Felix.

43) Fourth Style wall painting with architectural landscape, a detail from a panel from the portico of the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, Naples National Archaeological Museum.

44) Casa della Venere, Pompeii: Atrium; longitudinal section through the house (Mau); plan of house. Restored in A.D. 79, excavated 1933-35.

45) Portico, House of Venus.

46) Plan of House of Venus.

47) Mural of Venus in her Shell, rear wall of peristyle.

48) Mural of Mars, rear wall of peristyle.

49) Casa del Frutetto (House of the Orchard), Black Garden Room, fresco.

50) Detail: Tree and plants.

51) Casa del Frutetto (House of the Orchard), Blue Garden Room,fresco.

52) Third style from the House of the Vetii, Pompeii, The Ixion Room, 60-79 A.D.

53) Punishment of Ixion, House of the Vettii, Pompeii,

54) Triclinium of Villa of the Mysteries, Pompeii.

55) Detail: Wall scenes.

56) Reconstruction of Dining Room.

57) Detail: Reading of the Rituals of the Bridal Mysteries.

58) Detail: Dionysiac freize.

59) Map of Bay Area showing cities engulfed by Vesuvius.

60) Harbour of Stabiae.

61) Port scene. Roman Fresco from Stabiae. Perhaps the harbour of Puteoli (ancient Pozzuoli). Museo Archeologico Nazionale (Naples).

62) Main entrance to Villa San Marco, Stabiae.

63) “Primavera di Stabiae, previously, Stabiae, now Archaeological Museum, Naples.

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Stabiae.

"On Mount Vesuvius broad sheets of fire and leaping flames blazed at several points. . . My uncle tried to allay the fears of his companions by repeatedly declaring that these were nothing but bonfires left by the peasants in their terror, or else empty houses on fire in the districts they had abandoned." Nephew of Pliny the Elder.

Stabiae was an ancient Roman town situated about 4 km from Pompeii; consequently it was destroyed by volcanic ash in 79 A.D. Stabiae has not had a happy existence since before the volcano, it had already been destroyed by the Roman general Sulla during the Social War of 89 B.C. when many of Rome’s satellites revolted against the capital. Pliny the Elder said that Stabiae was rebuilt and became a holiday spot for wealthy Romans who built luxurious villas. According to sources Pliny the Elder observed the eruption from across the bay at Misenum where he tried to assist victims; but on his return to Stabiae he perished because of aftershocks of the eruption. The archaeological remains of Stabiae were originally discovered in 1749 by Cavaliere Rocco de Alcubierre, an engineer working for king Charles VII of Naples; but the ruins were forgotten until they were re-excavated by a school teacher in 1950. One of the largest villas ever discovered was the Villa San Marco, measuring more than 11,000 square metres, complete with atrium, a courtyard containing a pool, a triclinium with views of the bay, and a colonnaded courtyard. This villa is considered of great importance since it has yielded up frescoes, sculptures, mosaics and architecture, which show styles and themes comparable to those found in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Amongst its treasures are the so-called “Primavera” di Stabiae (above), a beautiful miniature which shows a nymph scattering flowers, possibly the Roman goddess Flora or one of the Hours. It may be one of the first images of Roman art that the post-war art reading public saw as it was reproduced in Gombrich’s best-selling Story of Art.[1]

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[1] E.H. Gombrich, The Story of Art (Phaidon, 1950, repub 1984), fig. 69.

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The Styles of Painting at Pompeii.

The four Pompeian styles were identified by the German archaeologist August Mau (1840-1909) from the excavation of wall paintings at Pompeii.

First style, also referred to as structural, incrustation or masonry style, was most popular from 200 BC until 80 BC. Simulation of marble (marble veneering), with other simulated elements (e.g. suspended alabaster discs in vertical lines, 'wooden' beams in yellow and 'pillars' and 'cornices' in white), and the use of vivid colour, both being a sign of wealth.

Second style, architectural style, or 'illusionism' dominated the 1st century BC, where walls were decorated with architectural features and trompe l'oeil (trick of the eye) compositions. Early on, elements of this style are reminiscent of the First Style, but this slowly starts to be substituted element by element. This technique consists of highlighting elements to pass them off as three-dimensional realities - columns for example, dividing the wall-space into zones - and was a method widely used by the Romans. Landscape scenes, painted columns, illusionistic architectural features.

Third style, or ornate style, was popular around 20–10 BC as a reaction to the austerity of the previous period. It leaves room for more figurative and colourful decoration, with an overall more ornamental feeling, and often presents great finesse in execution. This style is typically noted as simplistically elegant. Flat, decorative, unrealistic. (Above).

Fourth Style. Characterized as a baroque reaction to the Third Style's mannerism, the Fourth Style in Roman wall painting (c. 60–79 AD) is generally less ornamented than its predecessor. The style was, however, much more complex. It revives large-scale narrative painting and panoramic vistas while retaining the architectural details of the Second and First Styles. In the Julio-Claudian phase (c. 20–54 AD), a textile like quality dominates and tendrils seem to connect all the elements on the wall. The colours warm up once again, and they are used to advantage in the depiction of scenes drawn from mythology. Walls open up, more spaces between pictures like a picture gallery.

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The Social Life of Roman Painting in Pompeii.

“Painting within Roman houses owed its importance to a dynamics of social usage involving a series of activities quite different from those that normally take place within the houses of today.” Elinor Windsor Leach.[1]

Unlike the Greeks the Roman house extended out into the public sphere and was considered a symbol of the status of its occupant. While the Greeks kept their households private, their women cloistered away from public view, the Romans encouraged visitors, hence their houses needed to be decorated with grandeur and elegance in order to impress those who entered into them. As Winsor Leach says: “such interiors did not merely accommodate visitors; they demanded them.” [2] Thanks to a number of Roman writers like Cicero and Vitruvius we know the names of spaces where visitors would wait, be received, or engage in social activities. Rooms like atriums and vestibules would become inevitably crowded, especially in the morning, where we can imagine such throngs against a background of painted murals in Pompeian atria.[3] In the atria there may have been family portraits; or ancestral portrait masks evoking family associations. In the garden area or peristyle (open court surrounded by a garden) one may have seen mythological figures Venus and Mars in the Casa della Venere (above). There were also rooms devoted to specific types of painting: garden galleries which could be ones to be seen by day or seen by night (Casa del Frutetto). The pinacotheca (picture galleries) were arranged like a showcase for the display of art objects and precious family treasures. This was “the model for Roman decorative scenes” like in the Ixion Room in the House of the Vettii, or possibly the more esoteric scheme in the triclinium (dining room) of the Villa of the Mysteries. Descriptions of picture galleries occur in literature like Cicero’s Contra Verres, where Cicero accuses the corrupt governor Verres of adorning his property with looted art.We also learn from Pliny the Elder that Augustus employed a landscape painter called Studius or Ludius who earned little money, but great fame with his views.[4] All these sources while not infallible serve to enhance our understanding of how the surviving paintings at Pompeii may have been viewed, though we shall never know for sure.

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[1] Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Social Life of Painting, 18.

[2] Ibid, 19.

[3] An atrium was an inner court open to the sky and surrounded by the roof.

[4] “He painted villas, porticoes, and parks, groves, copses, hills, fishponds, straits, rivers, shores, as anyone could wish. And there he painted all kinds of people walking or going by ship, riding by land towards the villages on donkeys’ backs or in carriages, also fishermen, fowlers, huntsmen or vintagers.” Cited in Ernst Gombrich (“The Renaissance Theory and Rise of Landscape” in Norm and Form: Studies in the Art of the Renaissance, Phaidon, 1966, 107-121, 113) who sees this as an impetus to renaissance artists.

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The Afterlife of Pompeii.

“I see the tall and bending of your streets but now they echo only leather tourist feet and waking, ashen, grey-blue blinding death your sudden winding-sheet.” Peter Hammill, (“Pompeii,” 1975).

Pompeii is now far more famous now than when it stood. Immortalised in painting, music, films, T.V, and even pop songs (as above), the fate of this “city of all cities” has fascinated both experts and the general public. The tragedy of Pompeii has provided inspiration for whole range of artists from French neo-classicists in the 18^th century to photographers like Giorgio Sommer and onwards to modern artists like Robert Rauschenberg in the 1950s.[1] Pompeii has been irresistible to art humourists Lucy McKenzie whose Cheyney and Eileen disturb a Historian at Pompeii (showing a young American couple in the famed Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii) nods to pop and graphic art.[2] There have even been forgeries made of Pompeian frescoes in the age of Enlightenment.[3] But all these are interpretations of Pompeian society and culture which is not the same as looking at Roman painting in its original setting (above). Though we cannot do this, we are fortunate that a significant number of Roman wall paintings have survived and been preserved in museum conditions that allow us to glean something of how art fitted into the social life of Pompeii and other cities in the Bay of Naples. But in order to appreciate the function of this art we must consider the domestic spaces which it occupied.

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[1] See the excellent catalogue of an exhibition held at the Getty Museum: The Last Days of Pompeii (J.P. Getty Trust, 2012).

[2] The Last Days of Pompeii, no. 92.

[3] Ibid, nos 58-60.

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Roman Art in Naples.

“Here we are at last. The Italian proverb says “See Naples and die” but I say, see Naples and live; for there seems a great deal worth living for.” Arthur John Strutt.

The city of Naples- third largest after Rome and Milan- will feature frequently throughout this course since it became a thriving cultural centre. During Greek times the city grew rapidly due to the influence of the powerful Greek city-state Syracuse; it eventually became an ally of the Romans against Carthage. Naples or Neapolis from 6 B.C. (new city) became a Roman colony and withstood the assault of Hannibal’s armies. The first port of call for anybody seeking information about Roman art is the National Archaeological Museum which contains objects from Pompeii, Stabiae and Herculaneum, as well as mosaics and mummies from both Egypt and Pompeii. These include a number from the House of the Faun in Pompeii showing animals, birds and fishes. One of the most famous is the huge mosaic of the battle between Alexander and Darius at the Issus in 333 B.C. which was found in the House of the Faun in 1831. From the same building came the Nilotic landscape showing wild animals like hippopotamuses and crocodiles which may have adorned a garden or peristyle in that building. Mention should also be made of the wonderful scene of street musicians (above), one of whom plays a tambourine and another a pair of castanets which may be linked with the cult of Cybele which occasioned loud music-making with percussive instruments. Amongst the many Roman busts to be seen are portraits of the emperor Marcus Aurelius and Nero’s philosopher Seneca. On a much larger scale is the commanding statue of the emperor Augustus in the guise of Jupiter; but if you want something colossal, try the Farnese Bull, a copy of a Greek sculpture owned by the Roman politician Gaius Asinius Pollio of 40 B.C. This was located in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome.[1]

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[1] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, no. 15. Excavated in the Baths of Caracalla in 1545, and by the following year in the Palazzo Farnese. By 1550 (on the advice of Michelangelo) it had been restored.

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Chieti, Taranto & Paestum.

“Taranto has a very interesting museum. I went there with an introduction to the curator, who spared no trouble in pointing out to me all that was best worth seeing...Nothing is charged for admission, yet no one enters. Presumably, all the Tarentines who care for archaeology have already been here, and strangers are few.” George Gissing[1]

After Rome, we cross to the east coast of Italy to Chieti, one of Italy’s most ancient cities 200 kms north-east of Rome. Here in the National Museum we can find excellent examples of realistic Roman portraiture like the bust of an old man from Scoppitto. One scholar has suggested that this kind of portrait should be called “hyperrealism” in view of its “warts and all” treatment of this Roman official.[2] An example of its polar opposite can be seen further south on the toe and boot of Italy at Taranto (Roman Tarentum) whose history dates back to 706 B.C. when it was a Spartan colony. Later with the Roman expansion through Italy, Taranto fell to them; they rendered it powerless by isolating it and cutting off its trade routes. This terracotta head of a goddess with its wavy hair and acanthus- decorated diadem is an excellent example how the Greek aesthetic became appropriated by Roman art. This head should be placed in the context of heavy plundering of Taranto by members of the Roman elite like Q Fabius Maximus and M Fulvius Nobilior who acquired bronze and marble Greek sculpture from the region.[3] Heading north-west now towards the Bay of Naples we arrive at Paestum (Greek Poseidonia) which boats no less than three splendid Greek temples in the Doric order. After the Greeks, Paestum was conquered by the local Lucanians and then the Romans. According to Livy in 298, the Lucanians made a treaty with Rome, but they were generally opposed to the spread of Roman power. One of the greatest archaeological treasures in Paestum are the painted tombs done during the Lucanian period, but owing much to Etruscan images of banqueting shown last week. Found in 1968 by Mario Napoli, the aptly named “Tomb of the Diver” shows a man diving into the sea, completely unusual iconography, as well as more conventional symposium scenes. This may seem far from Roman art, but this “Italic pictorial tradition” may be present in some of the funereal imagery of Pompeii.[4] As for the Romans themselves, the area also boasts the large Arch of Trajan erected by that emperor which contains reliefs (above) with portraits of Trajan in the Decennial type, along with heads of women which recall the Greek classicism of the Taranto head.[5]

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[1] George Gissing, By the Ionian Sea: Notes of a Ramble in Southern Italy (1900).

[2] D’Ambra, Art and Identity, 26

[3] Ibid, 19. Fabius confiscated a large statue of Hercules from Taranto in 209 B.C.; Fulvius took a hoard of 785 bronze statues and 230 marble statues in 189 B.C.

[4] Eleanor Winsor Leach, The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples, (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 6.

[5] On Trajanic portraits, see Kleiner, Roman Sculpture, 208-212.

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The Romans & the Etruscans.

“When the Emperor Claudius composed his study of the Etruscans, it ran to twenty volumes. But perhaps the fate of Etruria and Etruscan culture in Roman times is encapsulated therein: twenty volumes about the Etruscans became an index of an emperor’s dotage.”[1] Nigel Spivey

Perhaps Claudius as an expert on Etruscan culture may have noted in one of his twenty volumes that the Etruscans were the first kings of Rome, but this was a fact that most Romans were keen to expunge from the historical record. The Romans invented their own foundation myths, mostly famously the suckling of Romulus and Remus by a she-wolf which was put into concrete form with the creation of a bronze wolf suckling two little boys (above), though the story clearly is reflected in Etruscan iconography.[2] However, the Romans complemented the story of Romulus and Remus with another founding myth, that of Aeneas who was thought to be an ancestor of Romulus and Remus. Both myths significantly appear in such famous monuments as the Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) which honoured the Emperor Augustus’s return to Rome from three years in Hispania and Gaul. The front shows a panel with Aeneas sacrificing on first setting foot in Latium (Italy); while another- now almost defaced- shows Romulus and Remus nourished by the wolf. The realistic style present in the Ara Pacis, especially the portraits of Marcus Agrippa and the Imperial family, would develop during the first century B.C. and would owe something to the individualistic portrait style of the Etruscans as present in the so-called “Brutus,” thought to be a portrait of the stern Roman senator.[3] More importantly, the new realistic style would develop with growing interest in “Roman ancestral and funerary practice which was deeply embedded in Etruscan social life.[4]

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[1] Nigel Spivey, Etruscan Art, (Thames and Hudson, 1997), 182.

[2] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, (Yale University Press, 1981) no. 93. First mentioned at the very end of the 10^th century. The figures of Romulus and Remus were added in 1509.

[3] Haskell and Penny, Taste and the Antique, no. 14. The identification seems to have originated in the renaissance period in 1556. After describing the bust, Kleiner says (Roman Sculpture, 24): “These features are comparable to those of other Etruscan bronze portraits of the mid-fourth to the mid-third centuries B.C., although the over-life- size scale of the head is inconsistent with Etruscan practice where over-life size dimensions were reserved for images of divinities.” Kleiner concludes:” The Brutus is an excellent example of the confluence of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman features in the art of the early Republic.”

[4] Diana E.E. Kleiner, Roman Sculpture (Yale University Press, 1992), 36. Pliny, Nat, Hist. XXXV, 2: “In the halls of our ancestors, wax models of faces were displayed to furnish likenesses in funeral processions; so that at a funeral the entire clan was present.”

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The Greeks & the Romans.

“In Greek archaeology, any object you turn up is beautiful: in Roman you are delighted if you can argue it is second rate.” Arnold Gomme, Professor of Greek, 1959.[1]

A professor of Greek’s wry remark delivered to the British Museum captures something of the problems historians of Roman art have faced, in the words of Mortimer Wheeler, “Greek snobs.” This kind of attitude owes something to the stereotype of the Roman as the hard-headed military soldier, or the pragmatic businessman with an almost philistine disregard of the arts. Yet from reading Roman writers like Cicero, Virgil et al it is clear that the Romans greatly valued art though they also acquired much of it through conquest, so there were ulterior motives for its acquisition. As for the Greek question, to be fair, Roman art was indebted to the Greeks because it developed in “the cultural climate of Hellenism in a Mediterranean landscape saturated with the products of Greek civilisation.”[2] As mentioned last week, Greek colonies existed in parts of southern Italy and Sicily and it was inevitable that Greek style would provide a model for Roman artists.

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[1] Quoted in Wheeler, Roman Art and Architecture, 23.

[2] D’ Ambra, Art and Identity, 10.

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When in Rome: A Brief Introduction to Roman Art.

“The problem of characterising Roman art arises from its relationship in the Hellenic world. According to the old theories, Greek art provided the model, Roman art followed suit.” Eve D’Ambra.[1]

As D’Ambra says, “traditionally historians of Roman art have had to defend their field against charges of inferiority to and derivation from the achievements of the Greeks, particularly the idealised figure style of the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. that define classicism.”[2] The first image today is one of the handful of surviving copies of an original bronze bust of the Athenian Pericles made by Roman artists in stone. Whether the original Greek sculptor Kresilas would have approved of the Roman’s interpretation of work which was called by the eminent archaeologist Sir Mortimer Wheeler “a barber’s dummy” is open to question.[3] The same could be asked of a Roman copy of the Greek Timanthes’s painting of the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, (above) which is an example of how Greek painting has been transmitted. Generally, Roman art has suffered from being labelled as predominantly derivative, lacking in originality, and worse of all grandiose in its aims and execution; but as D’ Ambra points out Roman sculpture more than any cultural epoch has had to endure accusations of inferior re-imaginings of the Greeks despite the fact that Roman culture does have its own identity and merit. For example, in the field of architecture the Romans made significant innovations such as viaducts, bridges, roads which have stood for centuries, though it is believed that engineering feats like roads and sewers were originally achieved by the Etruscans. And while there is some truth in the claim that Roman art appropriated the ideas of previous civilisations, the situation is more complex than this. Where sculpture is concerned, attitudes have never really softened towards the Romans since the lost canon of classical sculpture is only known through copies or pastiches of Greek art, but as Hort Janson suggested, the large number of Roman copies of Greek sculpture might be the result of esteem rather than ruthless appropriation of Greek culture.[4]

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[1] Eve D’Ambra, Art and Identity in the Roman World, (Everyman Art Library, 1998), 10.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Mortimer Wheeler, Roman Art and Architecture, (Thames & Hudson, 1964), 160.

[4] H. W. The History of Art, (Harry N. Abrams, New York, 1986) 158.