Art under the Roman Empire, AD 14-337

Week 10: Roman domestic wall-painting (2)

Essay question

What factors may explain the choice of wall-paintings in the Casa dei Vettii (VI.15.1) at Pompeii?

Answer with reference to both subject matter and arrangement. This may involve considering the possible
occupants of the house; the theory that Roman wall-paintings exhibit ‘pictorial programmes’; and the
function of different spaces.

Bibliography

 
Zanker, P, Pompeii: Public and Private Life (1998), 135-203
     Impressive examples of Vespasian art (pinacothecae) can be seen in the House of the Vettii –
galleries for pictures in the 4th style
     Hard to avoid overemphasising the importance of Pompeian painting because it is so well
preserved – great quality and also provides information on lost masterworks of Greek panel
paintings
     Also reveals a lot about the function of the world it depicts in the overall context of Neronian and
Flavian culture and Pompeian daily lives
     Much more effort put into rebuilding after the earthquake of 62 by the middle class Pompeians
as they earned their living there
     The Hellenistic culture that spread down to the poorer people cannot have been experienced by
them all – thus imitation of the rich/educated
 
Classical Art from Greece to Rome, Mary Bear and John Henderson (2001)
 
     House of Vettii – phallus of the phallic god Priapus splashed across the entrance, thrust right in
the face of every visitor (how would the Pompeians have felts about this?)
 
Hales, S. (2009), ‘Freedmen’s Cribs: Domestic Vulgarity on the Bay of Naples, in J.Prag and I.
Repath, Petronius: a Handbook, 161-80.
 
     Snapping dog in the Satyricon has morphed from a realistic painting into the hound Scylax – much
like Virgil’s Cerberus – suggesting a living hell in Trimalchio’s home
     Fake Corinthian bronze, latest dining room gadgets and autobiographical frescoes all epitome of
poor taste at Trimalchio’s
     House of the Vettii with Priapus weighing his erection against gold is thought to have belonged to
freedmen brothers (also pornographic frescoes and fake marble)
     In many villas there was a transcendence over the natural world (bath houses in the sea and so
on) that was considered to be of poor taste and hubris
     There is a great stress on the acquisition of wealth in the Satyricon – Trimalchio has built his
house himself from a shack
     Vitruvius suggests that the domus was a place in which to reconcile the family with its civic
surroundings (houses = marker of visibility and status)
     Family rituals of marriage death etc move from private into public spaces (and vice versa) and so
no surprise Trimalchio starts the cena from the baths
      House of Tragic Poet shares the dog motif on the mosaic floor
     The house of Trimalchio is unlike those in Pompeii with readily viewable layouts and wide
viewpoints, instead a winding disorganised maze that confuses
     The autobiographical frescoes, with written descriptions and cameo appearances from the gods
(Minerva, Mercury, Fortune and Fates)
     Tradesmen often called upon these deities (Vettii have Priapus and call upon wealth – Well hello
profit! – on the floor)
     Lararium of Trimalchio features his own beard clippings along with a golden statue of himself
(this could point to Sulla who had multiple paintings of himself)
     Also has mythological paintings from the Iliad and Odyssey and amphitheatre games at Laenas –
eclectic mix of high culture and low entertainment
     Desire to show off Greek mythology is exceedingly common in Roman and Pompeian homes, and
was intended to parade education and culture
     No garden or hunting scenes in Trimalchio’s home (but hunting imagery in the couch-covers and
acting hunting as entertainment)
     Paintings of columns and so on mimic the theatricality of Trimalchio’s cena
     Illusionism in art may be a high point of artistic endeavour, but is not the sole, or even main aim
of the artist
  
Archer, William C. "The Paintings in the Alae of the Casa dei Vettii and a Definition of the Fourth Pompeian
Style." AJA 94. 1 (1990): 95-123.
 96 - Created in 4th Style before the 62AD earthquake, the alae are opposite each other with
virtually identical systems of decoration – differ only in choice of ornaments in centres of large
panels of the central zone
 Black socle decorated with plants in broad panels and had a band of red just below upper border
 Central zone then dominated by three large yellow panels, some with concave borders, some
rectangular or slightly pedimented, and each panel is fully framed by delicate white filigree
 Enclosing each central panel is a slender gold aedicula with colonnettes resting on the border
 98 - Illusionistic use of architecture in the central zone of the Vettii alae system shows that this
has principles based in the 4th Style (Filigree borders also place this in 4 th Style)
 Slender constructions foreshadowed in late 3 rd Style – delicate pavilions in nearly full height of
the zone seen in cubiculum R of the Casa di Orfeo
 House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto, like in House of the Vettii, uses the predella containing the
bases for the aedicula columns in the central zone
 113 - House of the Centenary – large yellow panels in the central zone and the construction on
the east wall includes at its base a semi-circular entablature, recalling the Vettii alae
 109 – Villa San Marco at Stabiae is dated in decoration of the upper peristyle to 54 AD (Narcissi
Augusti stamp) – panels in the peristyle have concave borders and precision and intricacy of
detail in the fringe like bordering similar to the filigree borders

Bergmann, B. (1994) “The Roman House as Memory Theatre: The House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii,”
Art Bulletin 76: 225-256 (available on the JSTOR website) - important but remember to read critically
     Memory training in the ancient world was related to the home and even the sculptures and
paintings in it – very visual society
     As Cicero said, images are retained more easily than abstract thoughts, but they ‘require an
abode’
     Roman houses were seen as an extension of the self, signalling piety to divine protectors and
social and genealogical status to the world outside
     Damnatio memoriae was when you tried to eradicate a person’s memory – destroying the house
was a key part of this
     House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii has become a veritable paradigm of the Roman domus and
has furnished a kind of stage set for the projection of our own retrospective notions about
Roman life and manners
     The House of the Tragic Poet has been so much dismembered, neglected and forgotten that is
shows us a great deal about our own memory
     Small atrium too modest for the monumental figural panels in fresco on the walls
     Located on a major thoroughfare linking the forum and romantic Street of the Tombs
     Plan and contents triggered associations with familiar ancient texts – sequence and complement
of the rooms exemplifies the plan described by Vitruvius in De architectura (long fauces followed
by simple atrium, raised tablinium, peristyle with Doric columns, lararium and a majestic
triclinium)
     Two approaches used – one was to document the remains as they were found, the other to make
the fragments whole
     Illusionism in the décor of this house that stirred the memory of Petronius’ Satyricon, written
about the time the interior was decorated
     Mosaic in the fauces recalls the scene in which Encolpius is tricked by a painted dog on the wall
saying ‘Cave canem’ – Raoul-Rochette related the mosaic dog to the Neronian taste for naïve
realism
     ‘Public axis’ accessible to a visitor, and when the doors were open, to a passerby on the street
was along the fauces with raised rooms to either side
     Second, private, axis was through the back door, through the peristyle to the triclinium
     Rooms in front part of house have red dados and yellow walls, while back part has black dados
and red walls – important rooms in yellow walls, but dados adhere to respective parts of the
house
     Three privileged spaces also received the monumental, epic scenes
     6/22 panels removed, chosen for their literary associations, primarily with Homer’s Iliad (4ft by
4ft, with ¾ life size characters)
     1 – Zeus removes Hera’s veil (virginity to marriage), 2 – Achilles sits before his tent and releases
Briseis, 3 – Helen gets onto ship to Troy, 4 – Alcestis hears news that Admetus may be spared
death if another dies in his place, 5 – Iphigenia about to be sacrificed by her father, 6 –
Preparations for Greek satyr play (Silenus costume)
     Trimalchio’s house also had Homeric tableaux
     In this house, however, extensive Iliadic portraiture, with Achilles wrath, Briseis, Aphrodite,
Amphitrite and Poseidon in the atrium
     Walls show the highest level of Roman fresco technique, built up in several layers of expensive
pigments with a final coat for polish
     Postures, colours and costumes linked the scenes in the atrium (purely formal or visual rather
than thematic)
     Painters’ puns used – Hera and Briseis in the same dress, posture and facial features, but status
very different
     Focal points on the left are all naked – Aphrodite, Amphitrite and Achilles, while Helen, Hera and
Briseis on the right are all fully clothed (pits chastity against eroticism and recalls when Hera
asked for Aphrodite’s help in seducing Zeus)
     Shows the themes of love and war, gods throughout, and the different male/female relationships
(archetypal marriage of Hera and Zeus, adultery of Helen, slave/master of Achilles and Briseis
and abduction of Amphitrite)
     This collection could be a copy from a Greek temple or house (or an original)
     The grandiose allusion here enhances the quasi-public role of the atrium as an area for family
rituals as well as reception of business clients
     In Satyricon, these tableaux were combined with live acting – certainly auditory element to the
visual paintings (even if just some debate/commentary)
      While atrium required a moving viewer, painting of Iphigenia and Alcestis could be viewed sitting
or reclining (but from all these positions more art could be glimpsed)
     No unitary program or meaning, but also not without meaning so was more than just decoration
– some may have dismissed it as conspicuous consumption
     Patron emerged as a cultural agent in Rome’s creation of ancestral past

Leach, E.W. (2005) The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples (Cambridge).**
 185 - House of the Vettii either argued as the ill-modulated taste of freedmen or defended them
as the apex of craftsmanship
 187 – 5 brightly painted Pinacoteca may have suggested that all Flavian Pompeiian art vibrated
with colour but most rooms now are bare on in a state of disarray – could be because treasure
hunting excavators took the stuff, could be degeneration of plaster over time, could be in some
state of redecoration (as in House of Vettii one room)
 241 – heroic male contrapposto figure of Theseus Victor in Balbus’ building at Herculaneum has
an equal in the Mercury of the Ixion Room
 Daedalus too is in equivalent posture, and though he is turned away and wearing a workman’s
exomis, he is elegantly proportioned and muscular, too much so for a non-heroic figure

Ling, R. (1991) Roman Painting (Cambridge), pp.135-140.**

 Painting there to make the room more comfortable and attractive, and to be improved and
enhanced
 1st Style imparted an effect of monumental masonry and Hellenistic palaces
 2nd Style with porphyry and alabaster columns, gilded detail and exotic architectural devices may
have been intended to evoke the glamour of Eastern courts or mansions of nobility in Rome
 3rd Style and to a greater extent the 4th transported the viewer into a world of pure imagination
 Perspective of 2nd and 4th seemed to enlarge the physical space in the room and in some cases
break through the bounds of the wall, with painted windows or mythological scenes through
them e.g. garden murals of Prima Porta
 Some roles were to turn rooms of the house into pinacothecae – rooms of picture galleries/panel
pictures such as in the sanctuaries in Greece (e.g. Propylaea on the Athenian Acropolis)
 4th Style well-off householders such as Vettii brothers were collecting reproductions or
adaptations of Greek old masters as fixtures on their walls – nouveaux riches could show culture
 Choice of subjects in a given decoration unmistakeably reflects the function of the room –
Bacchic motifs and still-lifes of food in the dining rooms, myths of Venus and symbols of love in
the ‘bedroom’
 136 - Even if not so specific there was general tendency that reception rooms would display
grand and heroic themes and bedrooms more intimate ones, and in bath-suites the most popular
themes were aquatic and athletic (House of Menander baths show athletes, female bathers and
riverine scenes and also mosaic pavements showing dolphins and oil jars and strigils)
 Schefold suggests that from Pompeian evidence the subjects within a decoration were normally
linked in a consistent programme embodying deep-felt moral or religious ideas
 On decoration might show Venus and Bacchus, the next contrasting the exploits of a divinely
favoured hero against the sufferings of an offender against the gods
 Landscapes considered invariably sacred and still life as offering to the gods
 Thompson argues rather that they were all on a theme like Achilles, or Thebes, or love
 Many truths in this as religious Roman murals everywhere – Mysteries frieze in Villa of the
Mysteries, deities round the house of the Dioscuri in the atria in 1/3 life-size
 Thematic links = left ala of House of Menander shows Trojan cycle – paintings of wooden horse,
death of Laocoon, Priam watching Menelaus seize Helen and Ajax assaulting Cassandra
  Tablinium of House of Dioscuri shows discovery of Achilles in court of Lycomedes on right,
Achilles vs Agamemnon on left
 138 - BUT such cases are exceptions to the rule and more usually it is hard to find evidence for
widespread interest for theme, and still less for any sensitivity to moral and religious implications
 Actually most evidence suggests that there were no consistent programmatic links – among the
known decorations in Herculaneum and Pompeii there are hardly any rooms employing the same
combinations of subjects and even when subjects do recur the changes in composition and
colour suggest it may have been more aesthetic
 House of Gavius Rufus at Pompeii – painting of Pirithous and centuars opposite Theseus and
Minotaur (subjects match as the men were friends and both exploits with half-human beasts)
 BUT rather similarities in composition emphasised – common scale of figures, central motif of
hand being kissed and crowd of figures receding into background right
 Third picture in room shows dispute between Venus and Hesperus which has no subject or
compositional links, but symmetricity makes it aesthetically perfect for centre back wall
 139 - Picture of courtship of Mars and Venus from House of the Punished Cupid shows a similar
scene to the boudoir Mars and Venus in the House of Lucretius, but instead of being set in a
boudoir it is transplanted into the country to reflect the outdoor scene of Punished Cupid on
opposite wall – entirely incongruous
 Fatal Love paintings the compositions and settings are closely harmonised
 House of the Vettii, Pentheus room - three pictures show Death of Pentheus, Hercules strangling
snakes and punishment of Dirce
 All may have been based on originals of different date and pedigree, but all have been made in
equal shape and size, all with closely matched composition, style and colour scheme
 Correspondence in form more important than in subject matter

Toynbee, J. (1955). “Review of Schefold, Pompejanische Malerei,’ JRS 45: 192-5.

 The eras in which we are based were concerned with genuine religious belief and practice, and
the instinct that a well-spent, successful and cultivated life here could favourably affect the
afterlife (can be seen in literature, on funerary monuments and more)
 Tries to links the Ixion Room and Horace Odes 3.4 – criminals in paintings are Ixion and Pasiphae,
criminals in Horace are Gyges and Orion, and the part played by the latter is always ‘unmystic’
and straightforward

Wallace-Hadrill, A. (1994) Houses and Society in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Princeton), 149-174
 149 – painted walls and mosaic floors tell us the owner was wishing to project an image of luxury
(which occasionally produced outrage – Cato boasted that none of his walls had stucco (fr175)
 Even in Flavian era they thought that wall paintings were excessive – could not save them in a
fire and lawyers said they should not allow damage compensation for such paintings
 Ulpian in 3rd C said that they should not pander to luxury BUT it was generally ceded that it could
increase the value of a house and be bought for the things inside
 Function of decoration not just to show wealth but rather to discriminate and render the house
fit for the pattern of social activity within it, and reflects the reception to it from the outside

For images and plans of the Casa dei Vettii:

 Allison, P. M. http://www.stoa.org/projects/ph/house?id=18 - an incredibly useful resource that

includes summaries of many excavation projects at Pompeii. Also gives a valuable overview of
the house – a good place to start