for the eyes, and are so still. They divided the walls into five or six
panels, developing themselves between a socle and a frieze; the socle
being deeper, the frieze clearer in tint, the interspace of a more vivid
red and yellow, for instance, while the frieze was white and the socle
black. In plain houses these single panels were divided by simple lines;
then gradually, as the house selected became more opulent, these lines
were replaced by ornamental frames, garlands, pilasters, and, ere long,
fantastic pavilions, in which the fancy of the decorative artist
disported at will. However, the socles became covered with foliage, the
friezes with arabesques, and the panels with paintings, the latter
quite simple at first, such as a flower, a fruit, a landscape; pretty
soon a figure, then a group, then at last great historical or religious
subjects that sometimes covered a whole piece of wall and to which the
socle and the frieze served as a sort of showy and majestic framework.
Thus, the fancy of the decorator could rise even to the height of epic
art.
Those paintings will be eternally studied: they give us precious data,
not only on art, but concerning everything that relates to
antiquity,--its manners and customs, its ceremonies, its costumes, the
homes of those days, the elements and nature as they then appeared.
Pompeii is not a gallery of pictures; it is rather an illustrated
journal of the first century. One there sees odd landscapes; a little
island on the edge of the water; a bank of the Nile where an ass,
stooping to drink, bends toward the open jaws of a crocodile which he
does not see, while his master frantically but vainly endeavors to pull
him back by the tail. These pieces nearly always consist of rocks on the
edge of the water, sometimes interspersed with trees, sometimes covered
with ranges of temples, sometimes stretching away in rugged solitudes,
where some shepherd wanders astray with his flock, or from time to
time, enlivened with a historical scene (Andromeda and Perseus). Then
come little pictures of inanimate nature,--baskets of fruit, vases of
flowers, household utensils, bunches of vegetables, the collection of
office-furniture painted in the house of Lucretius (the inkstand, the
stylus, the paper-knife, the tablets, and a letter folded in the shape
of a napkin with the address, "To Marcus Aurelius, flamen of Mars, and
decurion of Pompeii"). Sometimes these paintings have a smack of humor;
there are two that go together on the same wall. One of them shows a
cock and a hen strolling about full of life, while upon the other the
cock is in durance vile, with his legs tied and looking most doleful
indeed: his hour has come!
I say nothing of the bouquets in which lilies, the iris, and roses
predominate, nor of the festoons, the garlands, nay, the whole thickets
that adorn, the walls of Sallust's garden. Let me here merely point out
the pictures of animals, the hunting scenes, and the combats of wild
beasts, treated with such astonishing vigor and raciness. There is one,
especially, still quite fresh and still in its place, in one of the
houses recently discovered. It represents a wild boar rushing headlong
upon a bear, in the presence of a lion, who looks on at him with the
most superb indifference. It is divined, as the Neapolitans say; that
is, the painter has intuitively conceived the feelings of the two
animals; the one blind with reckless fury, the other supremely confident
in his own agility and superior strength.
And now I come to the human form. Here we have endless variety; and all
kinds, from the caricature to the epic effort, are attempted and
exhausted,--the wagon laden with an enormous goat-skin full of wine,
which slaves are busily putting into amphoræ; a child making an ape
dance; a painter copying a Hermes of Bacchus; a pensive damsel probably
about to dispatch a secret message by the buxom servant-maid waiting
there for it; a vendor of Cupids opening his cage full of little winged
gods, who, as they escape, tease a sad and pensive woman standing near,
in a thousand ways,--how many different subjects! But I have said
nothing yet. The Pompeians especially excelled in fancy pictures.
Everybody has seen those swarms of little genii that, fluttering down
upon the walls of their houses, wove crowns or garlands, angled with the
rod and line, chased birds, sawed planks, planed tables, raced in
chariots, or danced on the tight-rope, holding up thyrses for balancing
poles; one bent over, another kneeling, a third making a jet of wine
spirt forth from a horn into a vase, a fourth playing on the lyre, and a
fifth on the double flute, without leaving the tight-rope that bends
beneath their nimble feet. But more beautiful than these divine
rope-dancers were the female dancers, who floated about, perfect
prodigies of self-possession and buoyancy, rising of themselves from the
ground and sustained without an effort in the voluptuous air that
cradled them. You may see these all at the museum in Naples,--the nymph
who clashes the cymbals, and one who drums the tambourine; another who
holds aloft a branch of cedar and a golden sceptre; one who is handing a
plate of figs; and her, too who has a basket on her head and a thyrsis
in her hand. Another in dancing uncovers her neck and her shoulders, and
a third, with her head thrown back, and her eyes uplifted to heaven,
inflates her veil as though to fly away. Here is one dropping bunches
of flowers in a fold of her robe, and there another who holds a golden
plate in this hand, while with that she covers her brows with an
undulating pallium, like a bird putting its head under its wing.
There are some almost nude, and some that drape themselves in tissues
quite transparent and woven of the air. Some again wrap themselves in
thick mantles which cover them completely, but which are about to fall;
two of them holding each other by the hand are going to float upward
together. As many dancing nymphs as there are, so many are the different
dances, attitudes, movements, undulations, characteristics, and
dissimilar ways of removing and putting on veils; infinite variations,
in fine, upon two notes that vibrate with voluptuous luxuriance, and in
a thousand ways.
Let us continue: We are sweeping into the full tide of mythology. All
the ancient divinities will pass before us,--now isolated (like the
fine, nay, truly imposing Ceres in the house of Castor and Pollux), now
grouped in well-known scenes, some of which often recur on the Pompeian
walls. Thus, the education of Bacchus, his relations with Silenus; the
romantic story of Ariadne; the loves of Jupiter, Apollo, and Daphne;
Mars and Venus; Adonis dying; Zephyr and Flora; but, above all, the
heroes of renown, Theseus and Andromeda, Meleager, Jason, heads of
Hercules; his twelve labors, his combat with the Nemæan lion, his
weaknesses,--such are the episodes most in favor with the decorative
artists of the little city. Sometimes they take their subjects from the
poems of Virgil, but oftener from those of Homer. I might cite a whole
house, viz., that of the Poet, also styled the Homeric House, the
interior court of which was a complete Iliad illustrated. There you
could see the parting of Agamemnon and Chryseis, and also that of
Briseis and Achilles, who, seated on a throne, with a look of angry
resignation, is requesting the young girl to return to Agamemnon--a fine
picture, of deserved celebrity. There, too, was beheld the lovely Venus
which Gell has not hesitated to compare, as to form, with the Medicean
statue, or for color, to Titian's painting. It will be remembered that
she plays a conspicuous part in the poem. A little further on we see
Jupiter and Juno meeting on Mount Ida.
[Illustration: Exedra of the House of Siricus.]
"At length" says Nicolini, in his sumptuous work on Pompeii, "in the
natural sequence of these episodes, appears Thetis reclining on the
Triton, and holding forth to her afflicted son the arms that Vulcan had
forged for him in her presence."
It was in the peristyle of this house that the copy of the famous
picture by Timanthius of the sacrifice of Iphigenia was found. "Having
represented her standing near the altar on which she is to perish, the
artist depicts profound grief on the faces of those who are present,
especially of Menelaus; then, having exhausted all the symbols of
sorrow, he veils the father's countenance, finding it impossible to give
a befitting expression." This was, according to Pliny, the work of
Timanthus, and such is exactly the reproduction of it as it was found in
the house of the poet at Pompeii.
This Iphigenia and the Medea in the house of Castor and Pollux,
recalling the masterpiece of Timomachos the Byzantine are the only two
Pompeian pictures which reproduce well-known paintings; but let us not,
for that reason, conclude that the others are original. The painters of
the little city were neither creators nor copyists, but very free
imitators, varying familiar subjects to suit themselves. Hence, that
variety which surprises us in their reproductions of the same subject.
Indeed, I have seen, at least ten Ariadnes surprised by Bacchus, and
there are no two alike. Hence, also, that ease and freedom of touch
indicating that the decorative artists executing them felt quite at
their ease. Assuredly, their efforts, which are of quite unequal merit,
are not models of correctness by any means; faults of drawing and
proportion, traits of awkwardness and heedlessness, swarm in them; but
let anybody pick out a sub-prefecture of 30,000 inhabitants, in France,
and say to the painters of the district: "Here, my good friends, just go
to work and tear off those sheets of colored paper that you find pasted
upon the walls of rooms and saloons in every direction, and paint there
in place of them socles and friezes, devotional images, _genre_
pictures, and historical pieces summing up the ideas, creeds, manners
and tastes, of our time in such sort that were the Pyrenees, the
Cevennes, or the Jura Alps, to crumble upon you to-morrow, future
generations, on digging up your houses and your masterpieces, might
there study the life of our period although it will be antiquity for
them."... What would the painters of the place be apt to do or say? I
think I may reply, with all respect to them, that they would at least be
greatly embarrassed.
But, on their part, the Pompeians were not a whit put out when they came
to repaint their whole city afresh. Would you like to get an accurate
idea of their real merit and their indisputable value? If so, ask some
one to conduct you through the houses that have been lately exhumed, and
look at the paintings still left in their places as they appear with all
the brilliance that Vesuvius has preserved in them, and which the
sunlight will soon impair. In the saloon of the house of Proculus notice
two pieces that correspond, namely, Narcissus and the Triumph of
Bacchus--powerless languor and victorious activity. The intended meaning
is clearly apparent, and is simply and vividly rendered. The ancients
never required commentators to make them understood. You comprehend
their idea and their subject at first glance. The most ignorant of men
and the least versed in Pagan lore, take their meaning with half a look
and give their works a title. In them we find no beating about the bush,
no circumlocution, no hidden meanings, no confusion; the painter
expresses what he means, does it quickly and does it well, without
exaggerating his terms or overloading the scene. His principal
personages stand out boldly, yet the accessories do not cry aloud, "Look
at me!" The picture of Narcissus represents Narcissus first and
foremost; then it brings in a solitude and a streamlet. The coloring has
a brilliance and harmoniousness of tint that surprises us, but there are
no useless effects in it. In nearly all these frescoes (excepting the
wedding of Zephyrus and Flora) the light spreads over it, white and
equable (no one says cold and monotonous), for its office is not merely
to illuminate the picture, but to throw sufficient glow and warmth upon
the wall. The low and narrow rooms having, instead of windows, only a
door opening on the court, had need of this painted daylight which
skilful pencils wrought for them. And what movement there was in all
those figures, what suppleness and what truth to nature![H]
[Illustration: Exedra of the House of Siricus (See p. 195).]
Nothing is distorted, nothing attitudinizes. Ariadne is really asleep,
and Hercules, in wine, really sinks to the ground; the dancing girl
floats in the air as though in her native element; the centaur gallops
without an effort; it is simple _reality_--the very reverse of
realism--nature such as she actually is when she is pleasant to behold,
in the full effusion of her grace, advancing like a queen because she
_is_ a queen, and because she could not move in any other fashion. In a
word, these second-rate painters, poor daubers of walls as they were,
had, in the absence of scientific skill and correctness, the flash of
latent genius in obscurity, the instinct of art, spontaneousness,
freedom of touch, and vivid life.
Such were the walls of Pompeii. Let us now glance at the pavements. They
will astonish us much more. At the outset the pavements were quite
plain. There was a cement formed of a kind of mortar; this was then
thoroughly dusted with pulverized brick, and the whole converted into a
composition, which, when it had hardened, was like red granite. Many
rooms and courts at Pompeii are paved with this composition which was
called _opus signinum_. Then, in this crust, they at first ranged small
cubes of marble, of glass, of calcareous stone, of colored enamel,
forming squares or stripes, then others complicating the lines or
varying the colors, and others again tracing regular designs, meandering
lines, and arabesques, until the divided pebbles at length completely
covered the reddish basis, and thus they finally became mosaics, those
carpetings of stone which soon rose to the importance and value of great
works of art.
The house of the Faun at Pompeii, which is the most richly paved of all,
was a museum of mosaics. There was one before the door, upon the
sidewalk, inscribed with the ancient salutation, _Salve!_ Another, at
the end of the prothyrum, artistically represented masks. Others again,
in the wings of the atrium, made up a little menagerie,--a brace of
ducks, dead birds, shell-work, fish, doves taking pearls from a casket,
and a cat devouring a quail--a perfect masterpiece of living movement
and precision. Pliny mentions a house, the flooring of which represented
the fragments of a meal: it was called _the ill-swept house_. But let us
not quit the house of the Faun, where the mosaic-workers had, besides
what we have told, wrought on the pavement of the œcus a superb lion
foreshortened--much worn away, indeed, but marvellous for vigor and
boldness. In the triclinium another mosaic represented Acratus, the
Bacchic genius, astride of a panther; lastly the piece in the exædra,
the finest that exists, is counted among the most precious specimens of
ancient art. It is the famous battle of Arbelles or of Issus. A squadron
of Greeks, already victorious, is rushing upon the Persians; Alexander
is galloping at the head of his cavalry. He has lost his helmet in the
heat of the charge, his horses' manes stand erect, and his long spear
has pierced the leader of the enemy. The Persians, overthrown and
routed, are turning to flee; those who immediately surround Darius, the
vanquished king, think of nothing but their own safety; but Darius is
totally forgetful of himself. His hand extended toward his dying
general, he turns his back to the flying rabble and seems to invite
death. The whole scene--the headlong rush of the one army, the utter
confusion of the other, the chariot of the King wheeling to the front,
the rage, the terror, the pity expressed, and all this profoundly felt
and clearly rendered--strikes the beholder at first glance and engraves
itself upon his memory, leaving there the imperishable impression that
masterpieces in art can alone produce. And yet this wonderful work was
but the flooring of a saloon! The ancients put their feet where we put
our hands, says an Englishman who utters but the simple truth. The
finest tables in the palaces at Naples were cut from the pavements in
the houses at Pompeii.
It was in the same dwelling that the celebrated bronze statuette of the
Dancing Faun was found. It has its head and arms uplifted, its shoulders
thrown back, its breast projecting, every muscle in motion, the whole
body dancing. An accompanying piece, however, was lacking to this little
deity so full of spring and vigor, and that piece has been exhumed by
recent excavations, in quite an humble tenement. It represents a
delicate youth, full of nonchalance and grace, a Narcissus hearkening
to the musical echo in the distance. His head leans over, his ear is
stretched to listen, his finger is turned in the direction whence he
hears the sound--his whole body listens. Placed near each other in the
museum, these two bronzes would make Pagans of us were religion but an
affair of art.[I]
Then the mere wine-merchants of a little ancient city adorned their
fountains with treasures like these! Others have been found, less
precious, perhaps, but charming, nevertheless; the fisherman in sitting
posture at the small mosaic fountain; the group representing Hercules
holding a stag bent over his knee; a diminutive Apollo leaning, lyre in
hand, against a pillar; an aged Silenus carrying a goat-skin of wine; a
pretty Venus arranging her moistened tresses; a hunting Diana, etc.;
without counting the Hermes and the double busts, one among the rest
comprising the two heads of a male and female Faun full of intemperance
and coarse gayety. 'Tis true that everything is not perfect in these
sculptures, particularly in the marbles. The statues of Livia, of
Drusus, and of Eumachia, are but moderately good; those discovered in
the temples, such as Isis, Bacchus, Venus, etc., have not come down from
the Parthenon. The decline of taste makes itself apparent in the latest
ornamentation of the tombs and edifices, and the decorative work of the
houses, the marble embellishments; and, above all, those executed in
stucco become overladen and tawdry, heavy and labored, toward the last.
Nevertheless, they reveal, if not a great æsthetic feeling, at least
that yearning for elegance which entered so profoundly into the manners
of the ancients. With us, in fine, art is never anything but a
superfluity--something unfamiliar and foreign that comes in to us from
the outside when we are wealthy. Our paintings and our sculptures do not
make part and parcel of our houses. If we have a Venus of Milo on our
mantel-clock, it is not because we worship beauty, nor that, to our
view, there is the slightest connection between the mother of the Graces
and the hour of the day. Venus finds herself very much out of her
element there; she is in exile, evidently. On the other hand, at Pompeii
she is at home, as Saint Genevieve once was at Paris, as Saint Januarius
still is at Naples. She was the venerated patroness whose protection
they invoked, whose anger they feared. "May the wrath of the angry
Pompeian Venus fall upon him!" was their form of imprecation. All these
well-known stories of gods and demigods who throned it on the walls,
were the fairy tales, the holy legends, the thousand-times-repeated
narratives that delighted the Pompeians. They had no need of explanatory
programmes when they entered their domestic museums. To find something
resembling this state of things, we should have to go into our country
districts where there still reigns a divinity of other days--Glory--and
admiringly observe with what religious devotion coarse lithographs of
the "Old Flag," and of the "Little Corporal," are there retained and
cherished. There, and there only, our modern art has infused itself into
the life and manners of the people. Is it equal to ancient art?
If, from painting and sculpture, we descend to inferior branches,--if,
as we tried to do in the house of Pansa, we despoil the museum so as to
restore their inmates to the homes of Pompeii, and put back in its place
the fine candelabra with the carved panther bearing away the infant
Bacchus at full speed; the precious _scyphus_, in which two centaurs
take a bevy of little Cupids on their cruppers; that other vase on which
Pallas is standing erect in a car, leaning on her spear; the silver
saucepan,--there were such in those days,--the handle of which is
secured by two birds' heads; the simple pair of scales--they carved
scales then!--where one sees the half bust of a warrior wearing a
splendid helmet; in fine, the humblest articles, utensils of lowest use,
nay, even simple earthenware covered with graceful ornaments, sometimes
exquisitely worked;--were we to go to the museum at Naples and ask what
the ancients used instead of the hideous boxes in which we shut up our
dead, and there behold this beautiful urn which looks as though it were
incrusted with ivory, and which has upon it in bas-relief carved masks
enveloped in complicated vine-tendrils twisted, laden with clusters of
grapes, intermingled with other foliage, tangled all up in rollicking
arabesques, forming rosettes, in the midst of which birds are seen
perching, and leaving but two spaces open where children dear to Bacchus
are plucking grapes or treading them under foot, trilling stringed
lyres, blowing on double flutes or tumbling about and snapping their
fingers--the urn itself in blue glass and the reliefs in white--for the
ancients knew how to carve glass,--ah! undoubtedly, in surveying all
these marvels, we should be forced to concede that the citizen in old
times was at least, as much of an artist as he is to-day. This was
because in those times no barrier was erected between the citizen and
the artist. There were no two opposing camps--on one side the
Philistines, and on the other the people of God. There was no line of
distinction between the needful and the superfluous, between the
positive and the ideal. Art was daily bread, and not holiday pound-cake;
it made its way everywhere; it illuminated, it gladdened, it perfumed
everything. It did not stand either outside of or above ordinary life;
it was the soul and the delight of life; in a word, it penetrated it,
and was penetrated by it,--it _lived_! This is what these modest ruins
teach.[J]
[Footnote F: See note on page 198. (The Footnote J of this
book.--Transcriber.)]
[Footnote G: The learned Minervini has remarked certain differences in
the washes put on the Pompeian walls. He has indicated finer ones with
which, according to him, the ancients painted in fresco their more
studied compositions, landscapes, and figures, while ordinary
decorations were painted _dry_ by inferior painters. I recall the fact,
as I pass on, that several paintings, particularly the most important,
were detached, but secured to the wall with iron clamps. It has ever
been noticed that the back of these pictures did not adhere to the
walls--an excellent precaution against dampness. This custom of sawing
off and shifting mural paintings was very ancient. It is known that the
wealthy Romans adorned their houses with works of art borrowed or stolen
from Greece, and all will remember the famous contract of Mummius, who,
in arranging with some merchants to convey to Rome the masterpieces of
Zeuxis and Apelles, stipulated that if they should be lost or damaged on
the way, the merchants should replace them at their own expense.]
[Footnote H: "And how the ancients, even the most unskilful, understood
the right treatment of nude subjects!" said an eminent critic to me, one
day, as he was with me admiring these pictures; "and," he added, "we
know nothing more about it now; _our_ statues are not nude, but
undressed."]
[Footnote I: Recently, Signor Fiorelli has found another bronze
statuette of a bent and crooked Silenus worth both the others.]