The conquest of Egypt by Alexander the Great in 332 bc brought it into the sphere of artistic influence from the kingdom of Macedon, where increasing political power and wealth had created a fertile ground for artistic developments that now feature prominently in the history of Hellenistic art. There, in the generation before Alexander, the art of wall-painting had begun to attain new levels of sophistication and technical accomplishment, as attested in the royal tombs of Vergina and other funerary monuments (Brecoulaki 2006). The influence of contemporary painting is also seen in the later fourth century bc in the fine decorative pavements with figure scenes discovered at Pella, the Macedonian capital - a significant development of the plain or patterned pavements created with pebbles, found at various sites in the Greek world and on its periphery from the late eighth century bc on (Dunbabin 1999: 5-17). In due course these were to evolve, via the introduction of other materials which enhanced the constructive possibilities, into the tessellated mosaic pavements in which cubes (tesserae) and other shaped pieces of stone, glass, and faience made possible pictorial effects which could mimic the finest of paintings.
The new settlement created by Alexander on the coast of the western Delta was to become the premier Greek city of the East, richly endowed with royal, public, and religious buildings whose architecture and decoration were renowned throughout the Mediterranean world. Not only in their buildings but also in the more ephemeral trappings created for processions, shows, and festive occasions, Alexander’s successors, the Ptolemaic dynasty, would have set the fashion, in much the same way that the artistic patronage exercised by the powerful families of baroque Rome, and the events which they staged, both generated creative activity and provided the pattern for others to follow. What little we know of the Ptolemaic equivalents hints at a wealth of artistic production to which the surviving material record barely testifies: the paintings, tapestries, and metalwork with which the banqueting pavilion of Ptolemy II Philadelphos was decorated, the giant floats and walking personifications in his
Dionysiac procession (Rice 1983), and the interior decoration of Ptolemy IV Philopator’s palatial boat with its many dining-rooms. The record of these originally penned by Kallixeinos of Rhodes in the mid-second century bc, and preserved in the lengthy quotations by Athenaios in his ‘‘Learned Banquet’’ (Deipnosophistae 5. 196, 197c-203b, 203c-206) has been minutely analysed for the insight it can provide into Ptolemaic ideology and artistic style, and has generated recreations of the structures and decor described therein (references in McKenzie 2007: 385 n.113, 387 n.180). Particularly significant aspects of the creations described by Kallixeinos are the prominence of the cult of Dionysus and its visual expression, and the innovative combination of Pharaonic and Greek imagery. The former was to feed into the decorative art of Graeco-Roman Egypt in all its aspects, the latter to co-exist with the continuing survival of the two cultures’ independent artistic expression.
The idea ofa distinctive and influential Alexandrian school ofart, the productions of which are mostly lost, has hovered as a persistent ghost behind extant bodies of material, especially that in the campanian towns and villas overwhelmed by the eruption of Vesuvius in ad 79, which have provided the most extensive surviving body of Roman paintings and mosaics in situ. Particular aspects of this material for which Alexandria has been invoked are the relationship of the first two of the Four Pompeian Styles of wall-painting to models in the Greek east; the emergence of the genre of landscape painting in Roman art; and the subject matter and high technical quality of the earliest mosaics found in Italy. When Blanche Brown, aiming at a definition of‘‘Alexandrian style,’’ undertook her survey of the pictorial art of Ptolemaic Alexandria over half a century ago, she worked with a limited corpus of barely 50 items (Brown 1957; some key references to arguments for and against the existence of such a style, p.88 n.16; more recently, Stewart 1996). Her corpus embraced some half-a-dozen mosaics and the decoration ofa handful oftombs, as well as painted vases, and the painted stone panels ( loculus slabs) which were used to seal the recesses in tombs where the deceased were deposited, and typically carried figure scenes from the Greek funerary repertoire, set within architectural frames, or the representation ofclosed gates or doors. Her corpus was also selective, focused on ‘‘pictures,’’ and deliberately omitting the architectural decoration found in a number of Alexandrian tombs, although some of her close analysis was devoted to features such as decorative borders and patterns which might help to date individual works. In the light of the surviving evidence, she also examined the meagre collection of references to Egypt in the classical literature on painting, on the basis of which Alexandrian artists were credited with such innovations as the creation of the landscape genre, caricature, and a kind of impressionist technique. Brown (1957: 88-93) understandably concluded that none of this could be supported by the patchy account emerging from the evidence she had assembled.
We are not much nearer pinning down the elusive ‘‘style’’ now, but other questions have emerged, and are receiving answers; and Alexandria, while the most influential part, is not the whole. By looking at the surviving evidence throughout Egypt in both the Ptolemaic and Roman Periods, as well as widening the range of material examined, we can gain a fuller idea of the role of paintings and mosaics in the society that produced them. This chapter will necessarily be concerned with the function and content of mosaics and paintings in their Egyptian context, rather than the works of great artists and their influence.
World History
