from all quarters. At the taking of Volsinum (now Bolsena) alone, they
removed two thousand to their own city; and the practice of setting up
statues, even in the public places, must have become a nuisance, before
the senate made a decree that they should all be removed, excepting
such as had been erected by public vote in honour of great personages.
Thus, when the streets and market-places were cleared of the nameless
crowd, the bronze portraits of Poplicola and of Cornelia became of
double importance.
Among the most ancient of the monumental bronzes were several
equestrian statues in honour of women as well as men. That of Clelia
was especially prized, and there was another of the daughter of
Poplicola held in the highest reverence.
Of colossal figures, there was an Etruscan Apollo, of fifty feet
high, placed in the library of the Temple of Augustus; of which Pliny
says, “But the bigness thereof is not so much as the matter and the
workmanship; for hard it is to say, whether is more admirable the
beautiful figure of the body, or the exquisite temperature of the
metal[48].”
There was also the colossal Jupiter of the Capitol, cast by Corvillius
out of the brazen armour taken from the dead bodies of the conquered
Samnites.
Besides this taste for statues, the Romans were not slow to acquire a
love for ornamented cups and bowls and dishes of the precious metals;
nor were there wanting among the spoils conveyed to Rome from the
Etruscan cities, lamps and candelabra and other furniture of elegant
design, which the more rigid citizens looked upon as tending to the
corrupting of the manners of the ancients, the moderate and aged
dedicated to the gods, but the multitude used and enjoyed.
With all these examples of beautiful forms daily before them, and
familiar enough with the sight of pictures in the neighbouring towns,
the inhabitants of Rome could not long be without painters; indeed,
painting seems to have been highly esteemed at one period, for the
great and noble family of the Fabii cultivated it so fondly, that one
of their distinguishing surnames was Pictor.
Fabius Pictor, the father of that Fabius Pictor who was sent to Delphos
to consult the Oracle of Apollo, on the fate of his country, after the
disaster at Cannæ, appears to have dedicated the first picture publicly
to the gods in Rome. He himself painted the Temple of Salus, in such a
manner as to be esteemed even after the introduction of Greek pictures;
but the painting with the Temple itself was destroyed by fire in the
reign of Claudius Cæsar[49].
Pacuvius, the poet and tragedian, is named as another great painter in
the time of the Republic. He lived about sixty years later than Fabius
Pictor, and was a native of Brundusium. As the nephew of Ennius, his
works would have been sure of a favourable notice from all the wise
and polished Romans of his time; but, by what we are told of them,
they do not appear to have required indulgence. He painted the Temple
of Hercules in the cattle market in Rome, and the pictures are said to
have given dignity to the art itself.
But a singular use was made of painting by the Roman heroes. Their
inordinate love of military fame discovered a mode of feeding that
ruling passion by means of this charming art; and it appears that
Valerius Maximus Messala was the first to adopt a practice of
exhibiting pictures of his own actions, which became afterwards pretty
common, though condemned by some of the chief men of the Republic.
Messala then caused a picture to be hung up in the Portico Hostilia,
representing the Battle of Messana[50], where he had vanquished both
the Carthaginians and Hiero of Syracuse, who had joined his former
enemies to resist the invasion of his country by the Romans.
By means of this picture, Messala kept himself before the eyes of the
people, in the situation best calculated to further his views whenever
he should be a candidate for the magistracy. Instead of sitting himself
in the market-place, dressed in the white robe of humility, and
pointing to his wounds, as Coriolanus says, to
“Show them the scars that I would hide,
As if I had received them for the hire
Of their breath only,”
the picture told the story of his achievements to the best advantage,
and perhaps placed his personal and party enemies in doubtful
situations or in disgrace.
That some injurious effects were occasionally produced by the practice
is certain, from the displeasure entertained by Scipio Africanus
against his brother Lucius Scipio, for placing in the Capitol
a picture of the battle near Sardes, which won him the title of
Asiaticus, but in which, his nephew, the son of Africanus, was taken
prisoner.
Again, Scipio Emilianus was highly offended at the display of a picture
of the taking of Carthage, exhibited in the market-place by Lucius
Hostilius Mancinus. It appears that Mancinus was the first to enter
Carthage on the taking of that city: and, on his return to Rome, being
desirous of the consulship, he had a picture painted representing the
strong situation of the town, with its fortifications, and all the
machines employed in the attack and defence, besides the actions of the
besiegers, in which care was taken that those of Mancinus should be
most conspicuous. This he hung up in the Forum, and, seating himself
by it, he explained to the people all the parts of the picture,
particularly those in which he was concerned, in such a manner, that
he won their good will, and gained the consulship at the very next
election.
The lawyers of Rome also made use of pictures in their pleadings, as we
learn from Quintilian, who censures the practice of hanging pictures
of murders or other atrocious crimes, over the statue of Jupiter, in
the Forum, for the purpose of moving the judges. As an example of the
bad effects of such machinery, he relates the story of a pleader, who,
having undertaken the cause of a young woman whose husband had been
murdered, had a picture of the murder painted, in order to produce it
at the proper moment, and thereby to affect the judges and the audience
in her favour. But his design failed, and the painting produced
excessive mirth instead of tears; for they who had received directions
for showing it, not properly comprehending them, displayed the picture
as often as the orator looked their way. This notice, attracted at a
wrong moment, was mischievous enough; but when the lookers on perceived
that the husband was an ugly old man, the contrast between his figure
and the representation of the pleader was so ludicrous, that the
pleading lost all its merit, and the young woman her cause.
It appears also that pictures of their disasters were hawked about, by
shipwrecked mariners, persons whose houses had been burnt, and other
unfortunate men, in order to move compassion and obtain assistance; and
that painted tablets were also hung up by such persons in the temples
in thankfulness to the gods for their escape.
It is probable that these pictures were but coarse; yet there must
have been in them sufficient individual likeness for the people to
recognise the portrait, and the painters must have had skill enough in
grouping to have rendered their subjects intelligible.
To the early scene-painters the birds of Rome are reputed to have paid
as great a compliment as those of Greece did to the grapes of Zeuxis;
for when Claudius Pulcher, during his edileship, exhibited dramas
publicly in Rome, the scenery representing houses and other buildings
was so natural, that the ravens and other birds, deceived by their
verisimilitude, came to perch there.
But by this time all Italy was merged in Rome the conqueror; and
the posterity of the Etruscan artists was confounded with her other
military Helots. Yet one last compliment was paid to painters in Rome
by Augustus himself. The nephew or grandson of that Pœdius, who had
been appointed by Julius Cæsar his coheir along with Augustus, was born
dumb; and the Emperor consulting with Messala, the child’s maternal
grandfather, determined that he should be brought up a painter. He
displayed considerable talent, but died while yet a youth.
I mention this the more particularly, because some writers have
asserted, that after the time of Pacuvius painting became disreputable,
if not infamous, in Rome. Had that been the case, Augustus would
not have chosen it as a profession for one so nearly allied to
him. Nevertheless, centuries passed before native Italians again
distinguished themselves in the fine arts.
From the time of the Consul Mummius, foreign pictures were daily
brought to Rome. The first publicly exhibited was a Bacchus and
Ariadne, painted by Aristides of Thebes, for which King Attalus had
offered so large a sum, that Mummius suspected there must be some
secret charm attached to the picture, and so broke off the bargain and
took it himself to Rome, where he dedicated it in the Temple of Ceres.
After this example every general seems to have been ambitious of
adorning the city with the finest pictures and statues from Greece,
Asia Minor, and Sicily. Julius Cæsar enshrined the two exquisite
pictures of Medea and Ajax[51] in the temple of Venus, where he had
hung up the shield covered with British pearl.
Augustus hung his forum with pictures of the horrors of war and the
glories of a triumph; and in the temple, which he dedicated to the
deified Julius, he placed many choice pictures, the first and most
beautiful of which was the Venus Anadyomene of Apelles.
Another work of the same painter, namely, Alexander in triumph leading
War bound and manacled, was defaced by Claudius, who caused the face
of Alexander to be erased, and that of Augustus to be painted instead.
Among many pictures of note in the same temple was one of Castor and
Pollux, of especial value.
In the Comitium also Augustus placed some excellent works of Nicias of
Athens, and Philochares his friend, less attractive for their subjects
than for the execution and beauty of the design.
The Temple of Peace was rich in pictures of the highest class. There
was placed the most valued of all the works of Protogenes, namely, the
hunter Ialysus with his dogs and game.
It is said that when Demetrius laid siege to Rhodes, and was upon the
point of taking the city, he abstained from an attack that must have
been successful, on learning that the picture of Ialysus was in the
quarter of the town he might have carried, lest in the confusion the
picture should be injured; and the workshop of the painter, being just
without the walls at that point, was another reason for sparing it.
In the Temple of Peace also were the Cyclops of Timanthes, and the
sea-monster Scylla by Nichomachus.
In the Temple of Concord there was a precious picture by Zeuxis, of
Marsyas bound to a tree; and in private hands, the Muses and the Helen
of the same painter adorned some of the villas of Rome.
In that shrine of Ceres, where Mummius had placed the Bacchus and
Ariadne of Aristides, there were several other pictures by the same
painter, which, having been trusted to a restorer that they might
appear to advantage in some public procession, were utterly ruined. So
ancient was the practice of consulting quack restorers for works of
art!!
In the Temple of Minerva on the Capitol was the Theseus of Parrhasius,
with the Rape of Proserpine and a victory by Nichomachus.
The portico of Octavia was adorned by pictures of Greek Mythology
and History, painted by that finished artist Antiphilus; and that of
Pompey boasted of a rare fragment by Polygnotus. It was a soldier upon
a scaling ladder, and possibly stolen from some of the great battle
pieces which he painted in honour of his countrymen[52].
The Romans were not more ceremonious than modern conquerors in their
robberies; witness the conduct of the general who permitted the tombs
of Corinth to be broken open, and in the sight of the people the urns
containing the ashes of their forefathers torn from their sacred
asylum, and publicly sold to the highest bidder among the Romans, who
became for a time so passionately fond of them, that not a grave was
left unviolated for miles round Corinth; and it was only when the
market was glutted, and the fashion had passed away, that Corinthian
vessels were laid aside.
A new school, if I may so express myself, of pottery was then
established in Italy, where formerly the Etruscan workmen had excelled
all others. But as fashion is all-powerful in all ages, a new rage
for earthen dishes and bowls of enormous size grew to such a pitch,
that the nickname of Patinarius was given to Vitellius, on account
of one large platter which he had made for him, and which cost more
than a fine wrought vessel of chalcedony would have done[53]; and the
satirical poets of that age have named not a few of the lovers of large
dishes.
But to return to our imported pictures. The portico of Pompey was still
farther adorned with pictures by Nicias. There was a large portrait of
Alexander, a figure of Calypso, and some animals painted by him which
were much prized. The same Nicias painted that beautiful picture of
Hyacinthus, which Augustus valued so highly, that, after his death,
Tiberius consecrated it to his memory, in the temple dedicated to him.
But the greatest influx of Greek pictures at any one time into Rome
was during the edileship of Scaurus; when, on account of a real or
pretended debt owing by the people of Sicyon to Rome, the whole of the
pictures of that city were seized and conveyed to Italy. Among these
the most precious appears to have been a sacrifice by Pausius, the
greatest painter of his native town, and one whose playful disposition
and agreeable qualities we may gather from even the short notices we
can at this distance of time collect[54].
Such were a few of the many pictures, the prizes of war, which were
brought to adorn the temples, palaces, and public places of Rome;
not to speak of those with which taste or fashion decorated private
houses[55].
It is not to be doubted that such an influx of excellent statues and
pictures caused a revival of the taste for the arts. And accordingly
there grew up new schools of painting in Italy as a matter of course.
But no name of note has been preserved. Pliny, to be sure, tells us of
one Ludius, in the time of Augustus, who first devised the decoration
of the walls of houses with rural scenery; and nearly at the same time
lived Arellius, a man of talent, but of dissolute manners. These were
followed by Aurelius, Cornelius Pinus, and Actius Priscus, who were
employed by Vespasian to decorate some temples which he rebuilt; but
their pictures are said scarcely to have attained mediocrity, much less
excellence.
In sculpture there is proof still existing that great manual dexterity
had survived the genius that produced the ideal Jupiter of Phidias,
and the Venus of Praxiteles. That dexterity was happily applied to
portraits.
There is an individual expression, notwithstanding some hardness, in
the Roman portraits in marble down to a very late period, that must
satisfy us that they are genuine likenesses, and that enables us to
read the characters of the men as truly as if we sat in their company.
But the artists that wrought in and for Rome were now Greeks, and with
the exception of some of those who engraved gems[56], their works are
universally of an inferior character.
Under the magnificent Hadrian there was indeed a temporary revival
of art. All that the patronage of a Roman Emperor, ambitious of
distinction as the reviver of art and elegance could do, was done.
The portraits of Antinoüs, which he caused to be executed, whether
with a flowery garland, and beautiful as Adonis, or in the character
of an Egyptian priest, or as a Greek huntsman, rival the youthful gods
and heroes of the sculptors of Greece[57]. But with Hadrian and the
Antonines this prosperity ended[58].
The arts could not flourish where tyranny, vice, and civil war
alternately reigned. They withered almost to death; and had Constantine
not pillaged the monuments of his predecessors his own would have
remained mere masses of deformity, to mark the degradation of art[59].
While such was the fate of sculpture, that of painting was little
better. Some of the Roman conquerors had introduced, from the eastern
provinces, a taste for that gross kind of painting, Mosaic. One of the
finest pieces executed in Italy was the great pavement in the Temple
of Fortune, at Prænesti[60], by Egyptian artists in the service of
Sylla the dictator; and, as a pavement, the coolness and cleanliness
of that kind of work must have had strong recommendations, besides
whatever merit the designs might possess. This luxury soon became so
general, that, even in the remote province of Britain, specimens of
mosaic pavements, of no common beauty, are from time to time discovered
in the neighbourhood of Roman stations. To the workers in mosaic we
are probably indebted for part of what little art outlived the five
dull ages preceding the twelfth century; and for a larger part to the
illuminators of books, whose miniatures certainly preserved much that
was afterwards used to great advantage by the revivers of painting in
Italy and Germany.
Pliny mentions Aterius Labeo, a man of prætorian rank, who in his time
was very skilful in small works of painting, which I conceive to have
been miniature. He exercised his art in Gallia Narboniensis, where he
was vice-consul; and I have sometimes fancied that his works might
have assisted to form the early illuminators of missals in the southern
provinces, nay, perhaps, the Monk of the Golden Isles himself.
I cannot omit to mention here, that the first persons who illustrated
books appear to have been Varro and Atticus. In the books of their
noble libraries, they each of them inserted small portraits of the
authors at the head of their works. This was within a century of our
era; and so diligent had they been in seeking out the portraits of
authors, that M. Varro published a collection of seven hundred[61].
Cornelius Nepos says, that under each of the heads in his collection,
Atticus wrote four or five verses, describing the deeds and honours of
the original. Had but a few of these miniatures come down to our times,
how precious they would have been to the artist and the antiquary.
Among the last names of ancient Italian painters given us by Pliny, is
that of Turpilius, a noble Venetian, who painted at Verona in the first
century, with considerable reputation; and it is remarkable that some
of the earliest of modern painters appear at Verona, and that many of
the most beautiful miniature illuminations extant were executed by very
ancient monks of that city[62].
It was in this first century that the great catastrophe, which buried
several ancient cities in one of the most cultivated parts of Italy,
occurred. It proved fatal, too, to the extraordinary man to whom we
owe not only the greatest part of our knowledge of the painters of
antiquity, but all that is to be depended upon of the practice of
the art. Pompeii with other towns was covered with ashes from Mount
Vesuvius; and in them such works of art as were not portable, remained
fresh as at the day of their disappearance, to gratify our curiosity:
and it was in a visit to Pompeii to observe the phenomena connected
with the eruption that Pliny lost his life.
Every one must be struck with the great disparity between the bronzes
and marbles, and the pictures of Pompeii. Some of the bronze figures
and most of the furniture of that metal are exquisite in taste and
execution, and many of the marbles are not far behind them. But the
pictures are of a very inferior character, generally speaking. Single
figures there are indeed of great beauty, and some arabesques elegantly
designed; but the groups are for the most part more like sculpture than
painting; and the few landscapes are little better than those of the
Chinese.
To account for this in some measure, I would suggest, that the pictures
we have found are merely the decorations of small private houses, and
that they must have been executed late in the decline of art, because
the great earthquake which had destroyed the temples of Pompeii, but
a few years before that eruption of the mountain which buried the
town, must have shaken the stucco from the walls, and with it whatever
specimens of art of a better time might have then existed[63]. Besides,
the inhabitants of Pompeii had most of them time to escape with their
most precious moveables. Now, if any of the residents in that small
provincial town, which was to Rome as Folkestone may be to London,
possessed any Greek pictures, or others of value, they were painted
on light wooden pannels (larch or sycamore), and were easily removed,
so that, if not saved, they must have been consumed in the fields by
the fiery showers, that destroyed more persons without the gates of
the town than within them. Hence I cannot think that the pictures of
Pompeii furnish a fair criterion by which to judge of the real nature
of antique painting, any more than the arabesques that have been found
in the Roman baths and the subterranean chambers of the palaces, which
we cannot suppose to have been the places where the choicest works of
art were placed.
Two very beautiful pieces of antique painting, now in London, which
were found near Rome, seem to corroborate my opinion that the pictures
scattered through the Italian provinces were generally inferior to
those belonging to Rome itself and the immediate neighbourhood. One
of these is the half figure of a boy, with a double flute; broad in
colour and effect, and round and fine in form, reminding one of the
Venetian frescoes, particularly those of Paul Veronese. The other is
a Ganymede, very beautiful in form, and remarkable for the effect of
light and shadow. The light is principally on the body of the Ganymede,
in the centre, and carried into the blue sky on the left; but a low,
light stone altar on the right balances it. Over the altar, the eagle,
with outstretched wings, is dark; and the dark is continued behind the
lower part of the figure of the boy by a purple mantle.
These two pictures have none of the stiff, sculpture-like look of
almost all the other antique pictures I have seen. They are real
pictures, in which the artist has attended to light and shadow, and to
general effect, as well as to colour and form. Whether they were the
works of Greeks settled in Rome, or of their Italian scholars, they
give me the notion of much more skill in painting, as an art quite
distinct from sculpture, than any other antique picture I ever saw[64].
By the existing statues we perceive that the ancient writers did not
exaggerate the merit of their sculptors; why therefore should we doubt
their judgment as to their painters?
But to whatever perfection the art of painting might have arrived in
the bright days of Greece, it is certain that, when Pliny wrote, it
had sunk down to a very low degree in that country: and there is good
reason to believe that under the Empire there were no great Roman
painters; but this was not for want of encouragement. In the towns
preserved by the ashes of Vesuvius there is scarcely a house where some
apartment is not painted, where the precious red walls, varnished with
wax[65], are not decorated with dancing figures and arabesques; and
certainly not one where the doorways or the kitchens are not adorned or
disfigured, as it may be, with portraits of all manner of utensils and
articles of food.
I confess I have been charmed to observe that glass decanters, pretty
like our own, were used for water, wine, and sherbet, at the drinking
houses in those ancient fishing towns; that their sirloins were cut in
true English fashion, as in the picture in what is called the surgeon’s
house, that dog who is gnawing the bones of one could tell; and that
hams and legs of mutton, to say nothing of broiled eels, must have
looked just like our own when brought to table. But above all was my
fancy diverted, when I perceived, by the sign over the school-master’s
door, that the same remedies for dulness were prescribed eighteen
centuries ago, as are found beneficial now.
Numerous, indeed, must the painters of the first century have been to
supply such demands! But not even one name have they left for posterity
to dwell upon.