THE ROMAN PROFUSION OP ART
[Illustration: FIG. 114.--THE DYING GAUL.]
[Illustration: FIG. 115.--A "CANDELIERA" OR MARBLE PILASTER OF THE
BASILICA AEMILIA.]
[Illustration: FIG. 116.--FRAGMENTS OF THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE REGIA.]
It would be a more than agreeable task to deal at some length with the
art of the Roman world of this period, but the subject is vast, and
demands a treatise to itself. How general was the love of art--or at
least the recognition of its place in life--must be obvious to those
who have seen the great collections in Rome, gathered partly from the
city itself and partly from the towns and country "villas" of Italy,
and those in the National Museum at Naples, acquired mainly from the
buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Nor are we amazed merely at
the quantity of statues, statuettes, busts, reliefs, paintings, mosaic
gems and cameos, and artistically wrought objects and utensils, which
have been preserved while so many thousands of such productions have
disappeared in the conflagrations of Rome, the vandalisms of the
ignorant, or the kilns and melting-pots of the Middle Ages. The
quality is still more a source of delight than the quantity. This last
sentence, of course, contains a truism, since art is no delight
without high quality. If we had only preserved to us such masterpieces
as the Capitoline Venus, the Dying Gaul, the Laocoon, the Dancing
Faun, the so-called Narcissus, and the Resting Mercury, we should
realise something of the exquisite skill in plastic art which had been
attained in antiquity and has never been attained since. But we might
perhaps imagine that these were altogether exceptional pieces and the
choicest gems possessed by the world of the time. Yet the preservation
of these is but an accident, and there is no reason to believe them to
be more than survivals out of many equally excellent. On the contrary,
our ancient authorities--such as the elder Pliny--prove that there was
a multitude of similar creations contained in public buildings alone.
Pompeii, it has already been said more than once, was a provincial
town in no way distinguished for the high culture of its inhabitants;
yet there is scarcely a house of any consideration which has not
afforded some example of fine art in one form or another. We know that
several of the Roman temples--such as those of Concord in the Forum
and of Apollo on the Palatine--were veritable galleries of
masterpieces; and that the rich Romans adorned both their town houses
and country villas with dozens of statues, colossal, life-size, or
miniature, by distinguished masters. But still more striking is the
fact that the comparatively small homes of Pompeii often possessed a
work for which no price would now be too large, and of which we are
content even to obtain a tolerably good copy. At Herculaneum there
evidently lived persons of greater literary and artistic I refinement
than at Pompeii, and the discoveries from that only very partially
excavated town make an incalculably rich show of their own. What then
would be the case with Naples, Baiae, the resorts all along the coast
as far as the Tiber, the luxurious villas on the Alban Hills, and the
great metropolis itself?
Yet the fact of this universal recognition of art is scarcely made so
impressive by these collected specimens of perfect taste and perfect
execution, as it is incidentally by observing the delicate and
graceful finish of some moulding on a chance fragment from a building,
such as the Basilica Aemilia or the office of the Pontifex in the
Forum, or the exquisite chiselling of trailing ivy upon a cup from
Herculaneum (FIG. 56), or the dainty pattern wrought on no more
important a thing than a bucket (FIG. 58), or the graceful shape
imparted to a household lamp (FIG. 54). Water could hardly be
permitted to spout in a peristyle or garden without doing so from some
charming statuette, animal figure, or decorative mask or head. When
fine art is sought in things like these, we may guess how
uncompromisingly it was sought in things more avowedly "on show."
The age with which we have been dealing fell within the most
flourishing period of Roman, or rather Graeco-Roman, taste and
craftsmanship. A hundred years later both taste and execution were
declining, and by the age of Constantine--two centuries and a half
after Nero--not one artist could pretend to achieve such work as had
belonged to a multitude between the reigns of Augustus and Hadrian.
It is not indeed probable that, even at our date, the large and noble
simplicity of the older Greek masters could be rivalled. It is not
probable that most of the former creations of art still preserved
could have been wrought as originals by any Greek or Roman artist
living in the time of Nero. Nevertheless technical craftsmanship was
still superb, and while the contemporary artist could not create a
splendid original, he was at least able to create an almost perfect
copy. The Roman public buildings and private houses were enriched with
a host of such copies, or, when not exact copies, with modifications
which, though not improvements, were at least such as could not offend
by displaying a lack of technical mastery. Let us grant that it was
for the most part Greeks who were the artists; nevertheless the Greek
is an active member of the Roman world and of its metropolitan life,
and he executes his work to the order of the Roman state or the Roman
patron; and therefore the art of the time deserves to be called Roman
in that sense. There is little doubt that the Romans, if left to
themselves, would have developed only the solid, or the gorgeous, or
the baroque. But influences which penetrate a society are part of that
society, and the Greek influence accepted by the Roman becomes a Roman
principle.
Perhaps it is also true that many a Roman who possessed fine works of
art, and even exquisite ones, was not in reality a true connoisseur;
that, even if he were, he lacked instructive and ardent appreciation
of art for its own sake; and that, like his cultivation of
intellectual society or learning, his cultivation of art was rather
that of a man determined to be on a level with the culture of his
times. Nevertheless the fact is palpable, that the cultivation was
there, and was displayed in public architecture and in household
embellishment in a way which puts the modern world to shame. With us
art is a luxury for the few, and a keen enjoyment for still fewer; in
the age of Nero it penetrated the life of every class.
In architecture the native Roman gift was for the practical combined
with the massive and grandiose. The structures in which they
themselves excelled were the amphitheatre, the public baths, the
triumphal arch, the basilica, the bridge, and the aqueduct. Their
mastery of the arch, their excellent concrete, and their engineering
genius, enabled them to produce works in this kind which had had no
parallels in the Greek world. Nor had the Greeks felt the same need
for such buildings. They had been innocent of gladiatorial shows, and
they had been unfortunately too innocent of large conceptions in the
way of water-supply. When an amphitheatre or aqueduct of the Roman
kind was to be found in the graecized half of the empire, it was
constructed under Roman influence. The modern may well afford to
wonder at and envy the profusion of such structures in the ancient
world. How noble and at the same time how strong was the work of the
Romans when they undertook to supply even a provincial town with
abundant and adequate water, is manifest from such aqueducts as are
still to be seen at Nîmes (FIG. 1) or at Segovia. In other
architectural conceptions the Romans of the time of Nero mainly
followed the Greek lead and employed Greek artists. The architectural
"orders" were Greek, with sundry Graeco-Roman modifications,
particularly in the way of more ornate or fantastic Corinthian
capitals; the notions of sculptural decoration were equally of
Hellenic origin. Their theatres also were of the Greek kind adapted in
non-essentials to the somewhat different conditions of a Roman
performance. The Greek taste in decoration was the simpler and purer:
the Roman cultivated the sumptuous and the ornate, sometimes, with
conspicuous success, often with an overloaded effect. As Friedlander
(who, however, deals with a much longer period than ours) puts the
matter: "Nowhere, least of all at Rome, was an important public
building erected without the chiseller, the stucco-worker, the carver,
the founder, the painter, and mosaic-maker being called in. Statues,
single or in groups, filled gables, roofs, niches, interstices of
columns, staircases in the temples, theatres, amphitheatres,
basilicas, public baths, bridges, arches, portals, and viaducts. . . .
Triumphal arches generally had at their summits equestrian figures,
trophies, chariots of four or six horses, driven by figures of
victory. Reliefs and medallions bedecked the frieze, and reliefs or
paintings the walls; ceilings were gay with stucco or coloured work,
and the floors with glittering mosaics. All the architectural
framework, supports, thresholds, lintels, mouldings, windows, and even
gutters were overloaded with decorative figures."
It was above all in plastic art that the contemporary world was
enormously rich. Not only could no public building dispense with such
decorations as those above mentioned; no private house of the least
pretensions was without its statues, busts, statuettes, carved
reliefs, and stucco-work. Never was statuary in marble or bronze so
plentiful in every part of the empire, in public squares, or in the
houses of representative people--in reception-hall, peristyle court,
garden, or colonnade. Portrait statues in the largest towns were to be
counted by hundreds, and sometimes by thousands. Men distinguished in
war, in letters, in public life, and in local benefactions were as
regularly commemorated by statues or busts as they are in modern times
by painted portraits. Sometimes--unlike the modern portraits of
course--these were paid for by the recipient of the compliment. In the
comparatively unimportant Forum of Pompeii there stood five colossal
statues, between seventy and eighty life-size equestrian statues, and
as many standing figures, while the public buildings surrounding this
open space contained their dozen or twenty each. As has been said
already, most of the best work in sculpture--apart from these bronze
and marble portraits of contemporaries--was reproduction of Grecian
masterpieces dating from the time of Pheidias onward. Particularly did
the Roman affect the more elaborate work of the period of the later
"Macedonian" kings. Where the actual work was not exactly copied it at
least supplied the main conception or motive. It followed naturally
that there would be in existence many copies of the same piece, and,
in procuring these, both the public and the householder would feel
relieved of any danger of betraying the wrong taste. The workshops or
studios of Greek artists turned out large numbers of a given
masterpiece--a Faun, a Venus, or a Discobolus--at prices from £50 or
so upwards. It followed also that there were numerous imitations
passed off as originals, and many a wealthy man boasted of possessing
an "original" or a genuine "old master"--a Praxiteles or a
Lysippus--when he owned but a clever reproduction. The same remark
applies, not only to the statues, but to the genre-groups and animal
forms of which such fine examples can be seen in the Vatican Museum,
and also to silver cups by "Mentor" or to bronzes of Corinth.
Petronius, the coarse but witty "arbiter of taste" under Nero, mocks
at the vulgar _nouveau riche_ who imagined that the Corinthian bronzes
were the work of an artist named Corinthus.
[Illustration: FIG. 117.--WALL-PAINTING. (Woman with Tablets.)]
[Illustration: FIG. 118.--WALL-PAINTING FROM HERCULANEUM. (Women
playing with Knuckle-Bones.)]
Next to sculpture came painting, and in this art Romans themselves
appear to have often acquired a technical skill which rivalled that of
the Greeks. There is also plenty of evidence that among the pictorial
artists there were no few women. For us practically the only painting
of the time which has been preserved is that upon the walls of private
houses, and it is probable that we see some of the worst specimens of
the kind as well as some of a high order of excellence. It is not
difficult to distinguish between the truly artistic design and
colouring of wall-pictures in the House of Vettii or of the "Tragic
Poet" and the crude journeyman work in sundry other Pompeian houses
which must have belonged to anything but connoisseurs. Paintings, it
must be remembered, were the ancient wall-papers, as well as the
ancient pictures. Here, as in sculpture, we find the same or similar
motives and groupings repeated in a way which shows that the
painter--or rather the collaborating painters--must have been
reproducing or adapting an original which was particularly admired or
had obtained a fashionable vogue. The wall-pictures, done in fresco or
distemper and in various dimensions, fall into four main classes.
There are landscapes, from a pretty realistic garden scene to a
fantastic stretch of sea and land diversified with woods, rocks,
figures, and buildings. There are subjects from mythology and from
poetical "history" or legend, chiefly representing "moments of
dramatic interest." There are genre-pictures, such as those of the
Cupids acting as goldsmiths, oil-dealers, or wine-merchants. Finally
there are pictures of still-life--of fishes, birds, fruits, and other
objects--often admirable in their kind. Serving as frame or setting to
many of the scenes there are architectural paintings--sometimes in
complicated but highly skilful perspective, but often extremely unreal
and confusing in conception--representing columns and pediments of
buildings. It must here suffice to offer one or two characteristic
examples out of the multitude of wall-paintings which have been found
(see also Figs. 43, 44).
Though Romans themselves, and even persons of standing, sometimes
dabbled in the fine arts, it is unquestionable that they commonly
regarded the professional artist as only a superior tradesman. They
admired his skill, but rendered little esteem to the man. A Roman
knight or a Roman lady might occasionally paint for pleasure; Nero
himself might model a figure or handle a brush; but so soon as art
ceased to be dilettante and became a calling, so soon as its work was
produced for payment, the artist ranked with other hirelings, however
superior he might be in kind. Seneca expresses an open contempt,
although he is perhaps, here as elsewhere, judging by a standard more
severe than that of his contemporaries in general. To some extent this
attitude is explained by the very abundance of objects of art, and by
the immense number of artists, now nameless, belonging to the period;
it is also to some extent excused by the fact that the craftsmanship,
however consummate, was not at this period accompanied by the
originality of the great Greek times from which it borrowed. Much of
the work--particularly perhaps in painting and metal-chasing--was done
by slaves. Apart from this consideration, the studios were so numerous
and taught so well, that there must have been thousands of persons
working either alone or co-operatively, whose position, however
excellent the performance, became analogous to that of a
house-decorator. On a wall to be painted in fresco a number of
painters would be employed together. Throughout the Roman world,
wherever works of art were wanted, the professional would travel,
often with his assistants, and take up a contract. In modern parlance,
the communities requiring some monument of art "called for tenders"
and were prone to accept the lowest.
Whatever abundance of art the Roman world cultivated and possessed;
however indispensable to a public place was a wealth of buildings with
lavish decoration of sculptured pillars, of statues, or of triumphal
arches; however necessary to a private house were originals, supposed
originals, and copies in the way of statuary, paintings, bronzes,
mosaics, and other means of artistic adornment; it is very doubtful
whether any large number of Romans entertained that spontaneous
enjoyment of the beauty of art which is known as genuine "artistic
feeling." In their literature we look in vain for any expression of
enthusiasm on the subject. There are many references to works of art,
but none which possess any intense glow of warmth. Doubtless art was
so abundant that, as has already been said in reference to the
appreciation of natural beauty, the absence of "gush" need not
indicate absence of real enjoyment. Enjoyment there was, but it was
apparently for the most part the enjoyment either of the collector or
of the man who realises that an appreciation of art demands a large
place in culture, and who is determined to be as well supplied and as
well informed as his neighbour, while his judgment of a piece of work,
though far from unintelligent, and often excellent in regard to
principles of design and technical execution, is mainly the result of
a deliberate training and cult, and is in consequence somewhat chill
and detached.
[Illustration: FIG. 119.--LYRE AND HARP.]
Of music the Romans were passionately fond, but the music itself was
of a description which perhaps would hardly commend itself to modern
notions, particularly those of northern Europe. The instruments in use
were chiefly the harp, the lyre, and the flageolet (or flute played
with a mouthpiece). To these we may add for processions the straight
trumpet and the curved horn, and, for more orgiastic occasions or
celebrations, the panpipes, cymbals, and tambourine or kettledrum.
Performers from the East played upon certain stringed instruments not
greatly differing from the lyre and harp of Greece and Italy. Women
from Cadiz used the castagnettes. Hydraulic organs with pipes and keys
were coming into vogue, and the bagpipes were also sufficiently
familiar. In the use of all these instruments the ancients knew
nothing of the harmonisation of parts; to them harmony and concerto
implied no more than unison, or a difference of octaves. Whatever
emotions may have been evoked by the music so produced, it cannot be
imagined that they were of the intensity or subtlety of which the
modern art and instruments are capable. Apart from the professionals,
many Roman youths and the majority of Roman girls learned both to play
and Sing, the instrument most affected being the harp, and the teacher
of harp-playing being held in the highest esteem and receiving the
highest emoluments. Sacrifices were regularly accompanied by the
flageolet; processions by this and the trumpet; the rites of Bacchus
by pipes, tambourines, and cymbals; performances in the theatre by an
immense orchestra of various instruments; the more elaborate dinners
by flute, harp, concerto of the two, singing, and such coarser and
more exciting performances as were to the taste of the host or his
company. The greatest houses kept their own choir and orchestra of
slaves; the less wealthy hired musicians as they needed them. As for
the Romans themselves, certain religious ceremonies called for singing
of boys and girls in chorus; and in a purely domestic way the women of
the house played on the harp and sang. Where there was singing, the
words dominated the music and not the contrary, but snatches from
recent popular pieces were sung and hummed in the streets for the sake
of their taking air, just as they are in modern times. We cannot
conceive of any Roman festivity without abundance of music. When in
spring at Baiae on the Bay of Naples the holiday frequenters of that
resort were rowed about the Lucrine Lake in their flower-bedecked
gondolas or boats with coloured sails, the musicians were no less in
evidence than they are now at every opportunity on the waters of the
same bay or in the evening on the Grand Canal at Venice. In the truly
Greek portion of the empire music, though no more advanced in method,
was for the most part of a finer and severer kind; but at
Alexandria--where it amounted to a mania--the influence of the native
Egyptian style, blent with the more passionate among the Greek modes,
had produced a music extremely exciting and highly demoralising.
On the whole, it may reasonably be held that music played at least as
important a part both in the houses and the public entertainments of
the ancient Romans as it plays in modern Italy. The artists were as
carefully trained, the audiences as critical or as receptive, the
personal affectations of the musicians as characteristic, and their
effect on emotional admirers of the opposite sex as great, as they are
at the present day. The difference between the two ages consists in
the nature of the music itself, and in the instruments through which
it is respectively delivered; and in these respects the advantage is
entirely with the modern world.