The museum was formerly at Portici, but was removed to Naples some years
ago and is now called the Musæo Borbonico. The best statues, busts,
vases, and in short, whatever was supposed, from its materials or
construction, to have a superior value, were packed in fifty-two chests,
and conveyed from Portici to Palermo, at the time the court sought
refuge in that city, on the French penetrating into the Neapolitan
territory. What still remains, however, in the museum, has a high
intrinsic value; since no one can behold, without the strongest emotions
of admiration, the relics of the most transitory things, which for
nearly eighteen hundred years, have braved the ravages of time. Here are
to be seen bread, corn, dough which was about to be placed in the oven,
soap which had been used for washing, figs, and even egg-shells
perfectly white, and in as good a state as if the cook had broken them
an hour before. Here a kitchen presents itself provided with everything
requisite: trivets and pots stand on the hearth; stew-pans hang on the
wall; skimmers and tongs are placed in the corner; and a metal mortar
rests on the shaft of a pillar. Weights, hammers, scythes, and other
utensils of husbandry, are here blended with helms and arms. Sacrificing
bowls and knives; a number of well shaped glasses; large and small glass
bottles; lamps; vases; decorations for furniture; a piece of cloth;
nets; and even shoe soles; all sorts of female ornaments—necklaces,
rings and ear-rings; a wooden chess-board, reduced, indeed, to a cinder:
all these things are more or less injured by the fire; but still are
distinguishable at first sight.
Every apartment of the museum is laid with the most charming antique
floors, which are partly mosaic, from Pompeii, and partly marble, from
Herculaneum. Statues, vases, busts, chandeliers, altars, tables of
marble and bronze, are all in as good a state as if they had just come
from the hands of the artist. The coins which have been collected are
very numerous, and fill several cases. Medallions of marble, containing
on each side a bas-relief, are suspended by fine chains from the ceiling
of one of the apartments, and are within the reach of the hand, so as to
be conveniently turned and examined.
Most of the pictures found at Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiæ, and now
deposited in the museum, have been sawed from the walls of the edifices
they adorned. These unique relics of ancient art form an extensive
gallery of genuine antique pictures, the only one in the world, and may
on that account alone, be considered as an invaluable treasure. They are
placed in a range of apartments on the ground floor, and are suspended
against the walls in plain frames. Their size varies from a foot square,
to whole-length groups, nearly as large as life. Beside the injury they
have sustained by having been exposed to the heat of burning cinders,
they have been impaired by the modern varnish which was intended to
protect them: it would, therefore, not be right to subject their
coloring to the rigid rules of art; but the grouping of the Minotaur, of
the Telephus, of the sitting Orestes, and of the Bacchus and Ariadne, is
admirable. In their paintings, as well as in their sculptures, the
ancients were influenced by that love of simplicity which distinguishes
their works from those of the moderns, and the result is, that in them
the chief merits of composition are combined, unity of subject, and
unity of interest. When, again, it is considered that the paintings
collected in the museum at Naples were taken from the provincial towns,
it must be inferred, that those which were admitted in the chief seats
of art corresponded in excellence with the Laocoön and the Apollo. Such,
at least, was the judgment of the ancients themselves, and their taste
is not to be disputed.
[Illustration: PAPYRI.]
The museum at Naples excels all others in ancient bronze, a substance
which, although dearer, more difficult to be wrought, more inviting to
the rude grasp of avarice, and less beautiful than marble, forms the
greater proportion of the statues. The larger of them had been
originally composed of pieces connected by dove-tail joints; and these
promiscuous fragments have been recompiled into new figures, as in the
instance of the single horse made from four, in the center of the
court-yard of the museum. Those fragments which had escaped fusion, were
rent, inflated, or bruised, by the burning lava. In addition to these
misfortunes, they have been made up unhappily; for the eye of an artist
can sometimes detect two styles of art, evidently different, the large
and the exquisite, soldered together in the same statue. The figures the
most admired are, the drunken Faun, the sleeping Faun, the sitting
Mercury, the Amazon adjusting her robe, and an Augustus and a Claudius,
both of heroic size.
The most remarkable objects in the museum at Naples are the manuscripts,
found in two chambers of a house at Herculaneum. Although they have been
so frequently described, they must be seen, to furnish a correct idea of
them. Before they are unrolled, they resemble sticks of charcoal, or
cudgels reduced to the state of a cinder, and partly petrified. Their
general appearance before they are unrolled may be seen on the previous
page. In color they are black and chesnut-brown: and they are
unfortunately so decayed, that under each of them, as they lie in glass
cases, a quantity of dust and detached fragments may be perceived. Their
characters are legible in a certain light only, by a gloss and relief
which distinguishes the ink, or rather black paint, from the tinder.
Cut, crushed, crumbled on the edge, and caked by the sap remaining in
the leaves of the papyrus, they require in the operator great sagacity
to meet the variety of injuries they have received; since, in gluing
rashly the more delicate parts, he might reach the heart of a volume,
while working at the outside. At first, it appeared almost impracticable
ever to decipher a syllable of them; but to the industry and talents of
man nothing is impossible, and his curiosity impels him to the most
ingenious inventions.