Art

Art, and especially domestic art, has of course, been at the center of both popular and scholarly perceptions of Pompeii, and Pompeii, which has lent its name to the default classification system of Roman wall paintings, has been right at the center of discourse on Roman art. The decoration and architecture of Pompeian houses has captivated generations of scholars, and few paintings and mosaics have completely escaped notice. While this is not the place to give a complete overview of all that has been written since August Mau cast the foundations of modern understanding of Pompeian domestic art through his famous Geschichte der decorativen Wandmalerei in Pompeji (1882), a very rough sketch serves as a backdrop for the contributions in this volume. For a long period, the field was dominated by descriptive, stylistic and iconographic approaches, with a strong emphasis on chronological development of the decorative media — by and large independently of each other. In the last decades of the twentieth century, this began to change, and scholars sought to discover the social aspects of domestic space and to investigate the role of architecture, wall-paintings and mosaics in social discourse within the urban community. In the German-speaking world, this debate was stirred by Paul Zanker, who, as early as 1979, discussed how the Roman elite villa helped shape Pompeian domestic space, and published a final synthesis of his views in 1995. In the Anglo-Saxon world, a key role was played by Andrew Wallace-Hadrill, who wrote a series of essays about how patronage and local elite competition perpetrated the design and the decoration of atrium houses. In America, scholars began to address questions about ‘Roman art in the private sphere’, explicitly acknowledging the relevance of studying art beyond stylistic typology (Gazda 1991, 2). The path laid out by these and other people lay at the basis of subsequent and more detailed studies of domestic architecture and decoration by many scholars, including Dickmann (1999), Hales (2003) and Leach (2004). While more traditional and stylistic analyses continued to be published (e. g., Ehrhardt 1987; Archer 1991; Richardson jr. 2000), they were quickly marginalized in the debate. This shift of emphasis not only involved asking different questions of material already familiar; there also has been a tendency to spend more energy in making sense of categories of art and decoration that had been more or less neglected before, including artefacts (Allison 2004; 2006). In general, there also has been less of a focus on the finest qualities of arts and an increased acknowledgement of the significance of decorations of a more everyday quality (see esp. Wallace-Hadrill 1994, 143—174). Indeed, interest in the art and the culture of art of “non-elites” has taken the study of art in new directions, exploring new physical and social contexts for its production and consumption — an area in which much valuable work has been done by John Clarke (1998—1999; 2003).

The papers in this section all use the discussion of the last two decades as a starting point and show how many aspects of Pompeian art that have thus far been left unexplored can actually greatly contribute to our understanding of the way Pompeian social discourse shaped taste and domestic decors (Map 1). The first chapter, by Jessica Powers, focuses on wall ornaments, an unusual and understudied category of decorations. Powers makes clear that the intentional practice of inserting valuable objects into the wall plaster as part of a decorative scheme was much more significant than has usually been assumed. Immured objects include obsidian mirrors, luxury glass, intarsia panels, painted marble, sculptural pieces and the like. In line with recent developments, Powers’ approach goes beyond typology as she re-examines the objects within their architectural contexts. Although immured artefacts have been found in only a few homes, those homes cross a spectrum of domestic environments ranging from elite homes, such as the Casa degli Amorini dorati (VI 16, 7.38), to much less imposing dwellings like the Casa dello Specchio (IX 7, 18—19). The fact some house owners at Pompeii were interested to and could acquire wall ornaments is an interesting point in own right, but Powers goes further to explore some the specific motivations that suggest why they chose to employ this specific variety of decor. In the diversity of objects and their contexts she sees an interest in variety. The unexpected nature of wall ornaments creates an opportunity for interesting or even surprising moments for house owners and visitors alike. Moreover, these wall ornaments reveal a taste for the exotic, an eclectic aesthetic planned for and given prominent position within different decorative schemes.

Francesca Tronchin’s essay, a specific case study of the eclectic sculptural collection from a single house, follows as a natural companion to Powers’ city-wide discussion. The Casa di Octavius Quartio (II 2, 2) was one of the many houses to be rebuilt and redecorated following earthquake damage and it is within the context of its redecoration that Tronchin addresses the sculptural collection from this house. While Tronchin is the first to discuss these eclectic works as a collection, her analysis pushes beyond description to engage with the broader theme she identifies as rus in urbe, a theme which ultimately reunites the diverse subject matter of the sculptures with both the painted and architectural setting of the garden. Where previous discussions of these kinds of heterogeneous sculptural collections have dismissed them as unimaginative kitsch, Tronchin finds purpose; it is variety itself that conveys social meaning. In this interpretation, Tronchin adds her voice to those who challenge the direct link between a patron’s social status and the thematic quality of his or her artistic “tastes”.

Related to the question how such a thematically diverse group of sculptures helped negotiate identities, is the question how they came to serve such a purpose in the Casa di Octavius Quartio. Here again, there is overlap with Powers’ discussion on the origin of wall ornaments, and also with the argument of Michael Anderson (below) who uses the caches of sculptures found stored in several Pompeian houses in his own analysis. On the one hand, it is easy enough to imagine that following the devastation of one or more earthquakes a vast market in damaged and orphaned works of art existed, from which patrons cobbled together a new collection of sculptures. On the other hand, Tronchin argues that such “wilful eclecticism” is a trend that can also be detected before the earthquake, outside of Pompeii, and even in imperial ensembles. Indeed, eclectic collections will produce an eclectic market, which, in turn, will produce an eclectic collection.

Architectural elements, however, are not so easily interchangeable. To the Romans, the colonnade was an iconic architectural element, so representative of high status life that in painting, the colonnaded faqade of a building became shorthand for the luxury villa. There is little doubt that the required structural functions of the column reduced the possibility of eclectic recombinations, but the conventional power of the colonnade’s symbolism was an equally strong force of tradition. Yet, as Mantha Zarmakoupi demonstrates in her discussion of xystus, porticus and cryptoporticus, there also were innovations in the ways colonnades, and covered walkways more generally, were used in domestic architecture. Combining literary references with the four most famous villae from the area destroyed by the Vesuvius, Zarmakoupi attempts to trace the development and purpose of the cryptoporticus among other walkway forms. Through a discussion of the ways in which ancient authors describe the physical qualities and use of the cryptoporticus, Zarmakoupi uncovers some general principles that subsequently enable her to come to a better understanding of the specifics of these individual villae.

The final chapter of this section by Francesco de Angelis is the most explicitly methodologically interested and offers a dramatic new reading of the some of the most iconic paintings from the House of the Vettii. His reinterpretation suggests that the famous frieze of cupids from the triclinium in house of the Vettii should not be read as a metaphorical narrative of the Vettii brothers’ economic life or (especially) as referring to their libertine status, but rather as part of a broader iconographic discourse prevalent in domestic settings of the time. De Angelis begins by discussing the competing trends in classical art and archaeology to classify and to typologize on the one hand and to interpret the particular histories and even personalities of identifiable individuals on the other. His analysis attempts to employ both of these methods in order to exploit the methodological tension they create, a tension which reveals the strengths and weakness of each method (as well as how they can be combined to bolster each others weaknesses, or to ask new questions), even challenging us to ask if the similarities and differences that our methods highlight are those that might have been revealed to the ancient viewer.