Ancient Roman painted walls

Magazine Antiques, March, 2005 by Alfred Mayor

Ancient Roman wall painting is not quite Peto or Harnett and certainly not Pollock. Think rather of realistic wraparound stage sets, opening and closing vistas, extending and fore-shortening walls, creating gardens, and peopling rooms with gods and mythical heroes at work and play. These paintings are most bountifully evident in villas at Pompeii and Herculaneum, although some prime examples have been found in and near Rome.

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The authors of this large and handsome book have singled out twenty-eight of these painted villas for discussion, each accompanied by illustrations of many of the surviving paintings and a floor plan of the house keyed to indicate the locations of the painted rooms. This is followed by large details from the paintings, printed on mat rather than glossy paper to simulate the texture of fresco, for that is the medium used for all these wall paintings.

Umberto Pappalardo, one of the authors writes: "The first thing we note is that every Roman citizen of a certain rank assumed the airs of a king, and it is from this sense of self that all his other social values sprang." Thus, when military victories made them rulers of the Mediterranean world, the Romans sought the historical background to justify their dominance. They claimed to be the direct descendants of Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic princes, whose luxurious residences they wanted to duplicate at home. Illusionistic frescoes, often peopled with the heroes of Greek myths, were an economical way to gussy up what they wanted to think of as their own Hellenistic palaces.

Ancient Roman wall painting has been broken into four chronological styles. The first, and simplest, consisted of simulated veneers of precious marbles and was in vogue from the fourth to the first century BC. The second style (between 80 and about 15 BC) invoked perspective to dissolve the walls of rooms and extend vistas. The walls flattened again during the third style (about 15 BC to AD 50) and were divided by verticals and horizontals that framed integral paintings. Illusion returned in the fourth style (AD 50 to AD 79) and included scenes chiefly of unhappy love.

Among the most pleasing aspects of these wall paintings are the gardens populated with birds and flowers that bring the outside inside. A particularly extravagant example of the second style is the decoration of the underground dining room in the villa outside Rome occupied by Livia, the wife of the emperor Augustus. The windowless room was surrounded by a continuous frescoed garden alive with blossoms and birds and hemmed in by a wall. To complete the illusion, the walls of the room are topped with simulated rough masonry as though the spectator were dining in a walled garden. The trees and plants are all identifiable, and some of them are quite rare.

Another of the grand Roman villas, the Villa Farnesina, may have been built by Agrippa in 21 BC to celebrate his marriage to Julia, the daughter of Augustus. The elaborate decorations partake of the second and third styles of Roman wall painting. The passages are adorned with spare, repetitive designs, in one case consisting of a frieze of small landscapes and seascapes, a baseboard of sinuous and delicately painted arabesques, all slightly different, and the wall itself divided vertically by poles impaling gesturing ladies linked by delicate garlands. The effect is both spare and animated, inviting the visitor without imagination to pass on, and the observant visitor to pull up a chair and examine each section in turn. A black background was used to hold the warmth of the sun in the winter dining room, and erotica was reserved for bedrooms. However, this is a chaste treatment of often lively fantasies, so voyeurs should seek elsewhere in the ample bibliography about these painted cities.

Some of the entries are accompanied by one or more very precise drawings reconstructing either the layout of the house and placement of the frescoes, or both. One of the techniques used to make these renderings is called isometric axonometry, which will no doubt be self-explanatory to someone.

The book was written in Italian and very well translated, to judge by the English version. The illustrations are first rate, making one want to move right into one of these brilliantly colored stage sets. However, the thought of an entire seaside town full of such houses leaves one searching for a plausible motive to account for them besides the search for a distinguished past to shore up a victorious present.

What is not here, and would have been most useful, is a list of frequently used Latin words, particularly the names for rooms, which are sometimes given with their English equivalents, but often stand mystifyingly alone.

Domus: Wall Painting in the Roman House, by Donatella Mazzoleni and Umberto Pappalardo, trans. A. Lawrence Jenkens for the J. Paul Getty Trust (J. Paul Getty Museum, 800-223-3431), $150.00 (hardcovers).