A small number of Graeco-Roman papyri preserves evidence for the activity of mosaicists and painters, and the process of commissioning and paying for work; the examples known up to the 1970s were collected in an article by Maria Nowicka (1979). They also confirm and extend our knowledge of the Greek terminology used for various aspects of both crafts. Most celebrated amongst them are the documents preserved in the mid-third century bc archive of Zenon, estate-manager at Philadelphia in the Fayum, regarding the execution of work in the house of the tax-official Diotimos. One (P. Cairo Zenon IV 59665) is a contract for two pavements to be laid in a bath-building and has been much discussed in the literature of mosaics for its detailed specifications of layout, dimensions, and motifs (Dunbabin 1999: 23, 278, 318). It implies that at this date, at any rate, mosaics are an Alexandrian speciality, with the instructions for these particular pavements coming from a workshop associated with the royal palace. Two other documents (P. Cairo Zenon III 59445, PSlIV 407; Nowicka 1984) concern the painter Theophilos from Alexandria who is being employed on the interior decoration of three rooms in the same house, but is also being asked to paint a number of pictures (pinakes) for hanging therein.
Amongst the various genres of painting, the portrait (eikon) was a particularly important one, required in various areas of Graeco-Roman public life. Commissions for portraits of officials, rulers, and members of the gymnasium, to be displayed in public buildings or temples, have been preserved in several papyri (Nowicka 1979: 23-4). A set of accounts from Oxyrhynchos (P. Oxy. LV 3791, published in 1988) includes payment to a painter named Artemidoros for the materials and execution of ‘‘divine features.’’ The date is the turn of ad 317-18, so the features could have been those of Constantine and some or all of his associates, the occasion for this municipal commission by the prefects, which may have been a mural or a panel-painting, possibly being the elevation of the three junior partners.
There is also a body of graphic art executed on papyrus, both drawings and paintings, which can extend our knowledge of the range of artistic activity in Graeco-Roman Egypt, as well as the manner in which work was draughted and transmitted - a resource for the study of ancient drawing which is unparalleled in its scope and quantity. Most of the material published so far has appeared intermittently in the standard papyrological series, rather than in specific monographs; one such, Ulrike Horak’s republication (1992) of part of the collection of the Papyrus-sammlung in Vienna also includes a useful checklist of published illustrated papyri up to 1990, and other fragments in this collection, plus some in Berlin, have recently been published by Froschauer (2008). There are limitations to this body of drawings (which also includes pieces of paintings): the fragments have most commonly survived in rubbish dumps, with the more recent, higher layers holding the better-preserved pieces, so that the material is often very scrappy, and late Roman or Byzantine in date. Larger pieces retrieved from the papyrus stuffing of mummified animals, or cartonnage (the papier-mache-like medium used for the manufacture of funerary masks and other coverings) are less common. The description ‘‘book illustration’’ has often been restrictively applied to these fragments, but pieces from illustrated texts seem in fact to be in the minority, and most of the surviving drawings seem to have been made for a variety of other purposes, some perhaps as student exercises, many as the preparatory designs for larger compositions, or the models for work to be executed in or on another medium, such as woven textiles or wooden artefacts, or shown to a client. In the Zenon papyri cited above just such a model or pattern (paradeigma) has been supplied for the mosaic and part of the interior decoration, and recently a comprehensive study of those fragments that can be specifically identified as patterns for woven textiles has been published by Annemarie Stauffer (2008).
Textile patterns present a particularly well-defined category, and there is no doubt that many of the surviving drawings can similarly be identified as preliminary sketches for work in other media: this is most clear in the case of those draughted on square grids, in the traditional Egyptian manner. A number of these have been published, mostly depicting subjects of Pharaonic type, for execution in relief and freestanding sculpture (figure 44.2; Whitehouse with Coulton 2007: 299-301, 304, pl. xxix), but there is no clear evidence amongst this material that would indicate the nature or existence of an ongoing compilation, a pattern book for repeated use in a workshop, which could be consulted by would-be patrons (Froschauer 2008: 13-14) - rather, the papyri suggest that drawings were often prepared ad hoc in a very sketchy form.
The existence of ancient pattern-books, particularly in the field of mosaics, where a degree of replication in pavements, sometimes at considerable distances apart, is not uncommon, continues to be debated (Froschauer 2008: 10-11) - not least in the wake of the excitement aroused by the exhibition and publication of the ‘‘Artemi-doros papyrus’’ (Gallazzi and Settis 2006; Gallazzi et al. 2008; and Settis 2008, for a
Figure 44.2 Preparatory drawing for a sculpted figure of the god Bes: red and black ink and red wash; P. Oxy. LXXI 4841. Courtesy of the Egypt Exploration Society.
Well-illustrated overview, with revisions to the dating suggested in 2006, and more information on the circumstances of retrieval). This large papyrus, now a series of reconstructed fragments but originally a roll some 2.55 m long, was retrieved from a compacted bundle that included unrelated documents concerning Alexandrians with property in the area of Qau el-Kebir (Antaiopolis). It takes its name from Artemi-doros of Ephesos, the second book of whose Geography, written at the end of the second century BC, is inscribed on the papyrus in a hand which has been dated to the early first century ad, a date which accords with the dating of the other documents in the bundle (ad 70-100) and sits comfortably within the date range obtained by radiocarbon dating of samples of the papyrus. The text is accompanied by an incomplete map of Spain; when this enterprise was apparently botched and abandoned, the reverse of the papyrus was subsequently used for a series of drawings of animals (including some fantastic creatures) accompanied by their names written in Greek, and the blank spaces on the recto were filled with drawings of feet, hands, and heads, possibly drawn from plaster casts of sculpture. Both sets of drawings are quite accomplished, not entirely unparalleled in this respect but rare amongst other surviving drawings on papyrus. In the exhibition catalogue of 2006 an essay by Salvatore Settis analyzed at length the implications of these ‘‘workshop’’ drawings (Gallazzi & Settis 2006: 20-65), and the animal drawings have been invoked in discussions of the particular problem of mosaic pattern books (Settis 2008: 90), with specific reference to the labeled animals of the Nile mosaic of Palestrina (see below). In addition to returning to these questions, the more recent publication by Settis (2008) vigorously rebuts some keenly voiced arguments that have been raised against the authenticity of the papyrus; the questions posed by its contents, at least, will undoubtedly continue to stimulate further comment.
World History
