Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Failing to discover any example of domestic architecture in Rome, we turn to Pompeii and Herculaneum, where we find numerous and most interesting examples of houses of all classes, except, perhaps, the best; for there is nothing there to compare with the Laurentian villa of Pliny, or with some others of which descriptions have come down to us. Pompeii, moreover, was far more a Grecian than a Roman city, and its buildings ought to be considered rather as illustrative of those of Greece, or at least of Magna Græcia, than of anything found to the northward. Still these cities belonged to the Roman age, and, except in taste and in minor arrangements, we have no reason to doubt that the buildings did resemble those of Rome, at least to a sufficient extent for illustration.
With scarcely an exception, all the houses of Pompeii were of one storey only in height. It is true that in some we find staircases leading to the roof, and traces of an upper storey, but where this latter is the case the apartments would appear to have been places for washing and drying clothes, or for some such domestic purpose rather than for living or even sleeping rooms. All the principal apartments were certainly on the ground floor, and as an almost inevitable corollary from this, they all faced inwards, and were lighted from courtyards or atria, and not from the outside; for, with a people who had not glass with which to glaze their windows, it was impossible to enjoy privacy or security without at the same time excluding both light and air, otherwise than by lighting their rooms from the interior. Hence it arose that in most instances the outside of the better class of houses was given up to shops and smaller dwellings, which opened on to the street, while the residence, with the exception of the principal entrance, and sometimes one or two private doors that opened outwards, was wholly hidden from view by their entourage.
Even in the smallest class of tradesmen’s houses which opened on the street, one apartment seems always to have been left unroofed to light at least two rooms on each side of it, used as bedrooms; but as the roofs of all are now gone, it is not always easy to determine which were so treated.
It is certain that, in the smallest houses which can have belonged to persons at all above the class of shopkeepers, there was always a central apartment, unroofed in the centre, into which the others opened. Sometimes this was covered by two beams placed in one direction, and two crossing them at right angles, framing the roof into nine compartments, generally of unequal dimensions, the central one being open, and with a corresponding sinking in the floor to receive the rain and drainage which inevitably came through it. When this court was of any extent, four pillars were required at the intersection of the beams, or angles of the opening, to support the roof. In larger courts eight, twelve, sixteen, or more columns were so employed, often apparently more as decorative objects than as required by the constructive necessities of the case, and very frequently the numbers of these on either side of the apartment did not correspond. Frequently the angles were not right angles, and the pillars were spaced unequally with a careless disregard of symmetry that strikes us as strange, though in such cases this may have been preferable to cold and formal regularity, and even more productive of grace and beauty. Besides these courts, there generally existed in the rear of the house another bounded by a dead wall at the further extremity, and which in the smaller houses was painted, to resemble the garden which the larger mansions possessed in this direction. The apartments looking on this court were of course perfectly private, which cannot be said of any of those looking inwards on the atrium.
The house called that of Pansa at Pompeii is a good illustration of these peculiarities, and, as one of the most regular, has been frequently chosen for the purpose of illustration.
248. House of Pansa at Pompeii. (From Gell’s ‘Pompeii’) Scale 100 ft to 1 in.
In the annexed plan (Woodcut No. [248]) all the parts that do not belong to the principal mansion are shaded darker except the doubtful part marked A, which may either have been a separate house, or the women’s apartments belonging to the principal one, or, what is even more probable, it may have been designed so as to be used for either purpose. B is certainly a separate house, and the whole of the remainder of this side, of the front, and of the third side, till we come opposite to A, was let off as shops. At C we have the kitchen and servants’ apartments, with a private entrance to the street, and an opening also to the principal peristyle of the house.
Returning to the principal entrance or front door D, you enter through a short passage into the outer court E, on each side of which are several small apartments, used either by the inferior members of the household or by guests. A wider passage than the entrance leads from this to the peristyle, or principal apartment of the house. On the left hand are several small rooms, used no doubt as sleeping apartments, which were probably closed by half-doors open above and below, so as to admit air and light, while preserving sufficient privacy, for Roman tastes at least. In front and on the right hand are two larger rooms, either of which may have been the triclinium or dining-room, the other being what we should call the drawing-room of the house. A passage between the kitchen and the central room leads to a verandah which crosses the whole length of the house, and is open to the garden beyond.
As will be observed, architectural effect has been carefully studied in this design, a vista nearly 300 ft. in length being obtained from the outer door to the garden wall, varied by a pleasing play of light and shade, and displaying a gradually increasing degree of spaciousness and architectural richness as we advance. All these points must have been productive of the most pleasing effect when complete, and of more beauty than has been attained in almost any modern dwelling of like dimensions.
Generally speaking the architectural details of the Pompeian houses are carelessly and ungracefully moulded, though it cannot be denied that sometimes a certain elegance of feeling runs through them that pleases in spite of our better judgment. It was not, however, on form that they depended for their effect; and consequently it is not by that that they must be judged. The whole architecture of the house was coloured, but even this was not considered so important as the paintings which covered the flat surfaces of the walls. Comparing the Pompeian decoration with that of the baths of Titus, and those of the House of Livia, the only specimens of the same age and class found in Rome, it must be admitted that the Pompeian examples show an equally correct taste, not only in the choice but in the application of the ornaments used, though in the execution there is generally that difference that might be expected between paintings executed for a private individual and those for the Emperor of the Roman world. Notwithstanding this, these paintings, so wonderfully preserved in this small provincial town, are even now among the best specimens we possess of mural decoration. They excel the ornamentation of the Alhambra, as being more varied and more intellectual. For the same reason they are superior to the works of the same class executed by the Moslems in Egypt and Persia, and they are far superior to the rude attempts of the Gothic architects in the Middle Ages; still they are probably as inferior to what the Greeks did in their best days as the pillars of the Pompeian peristyles are to the porticoes of the Parthenon. But though doubtless far inferior to their originals, those at Pompeii are direct imitations of true Greek decorative forms; and it is through them alone that we can form even the most remote idea of the exquisite beauty to which polychromatic architecture once attained, but which we can scarcely venture to hope it will ever reach again.
249. Wall Decoration at Pompeii. (From Rosengarten.)
One curious point which has hitherto been too much overlooked is, that in Pompeii there are two perfectly distinct styles of decoration. One of these is purely Etruscan, both in form and colour, and such as is only found in the tombs or on the authentic works of the Etruscans. The other is no less essentially Greek, both in design and colour: it is far more common than the Etruscan form, and is always easily to be distinguished from it. The last-mentioned or Greek style of decoration may be again divided into two varieties; one, the most common, consisting of ornaments directly copied from Greek models; the other with a considerable infusion of Roman forms. This Romanised variety of Greek decoration represents an attenuated and lean style of architecture, which could only have come into fashion from the continued use of iron or bronze, or other metallic substances, for pillars and other architectural members. Vitruvius reprobates it; and in a later age Cassiodorus speaks of it in a manner which shows that it was practised in his time. The general adoption of this class of ornament, both at Pompeii and in the baths of Titus, proves it to have been a very favourite style at that time. This being the case, it must have either been a representation of metallic pillars and other architectural objects then in use, or it must have been copied from painted decorations. This is a new subject, and cannot be made clear, except at considerable length and with the assistance of many drawings. It seems, however, an almost undoubted fact that the Romans did use metal as a constructive material. Were it only that columns of extreme tenuity are represented in these paintings, we might be inclined to ascribe it to mere incorrect drawing; but the whole style of ornament here shown is such as is never found in stone or brick pillars, and which is only susceptible of execution in metal. Besides this, the pillars in question are always shown in the decorations as though simply gilt or bronzed, while the representations of stone pillars are coloured. All this evidence goes to prove that a style of art once existed in which metal was generally employed in all the principal features, all material traces of which are now lost. The disappearance of all remains of such a style is easily accounted for by the perishable nature of iron from rust, and the value and consequent peculation induced by bronze and similar metals. We are, moreover, aware that much bronze has been stolen, even in recent days, from the Pantheon and other buildings which are known to have been adorned with it.
Another thing which we learn from these paintings is, that though the necessities of street architecture compelled these city mansions to take a rectilinear outline, whenever the Roman architects built in the country they indulged in a picturesque variety of outline and of form, which they carried perhaps as far as even the Gothic architects of the Middle Ages. This indeed we might have expected, from their carelessness in respect to regularity in their town-houses; but these were interiors, and were it not for the painted representations of houses, we should have no means of judging how the same architects would treat an exterior in the country. From this source, however, we learn that in the exterior arrangements, in situations where they were not cramped by confined space, their plans were totally free from all stiffness and formality. In this respect Roman taste coincided with that of all true architecture in all parts of the world.
Each part of the design was left to tell its own tale and to express the use to which each apartment was applied, though the whole were probably grouped together with some reference to symmetry. There is certainly nothing in these ancient examples to justify the precise regularity which the architects of the Renaissance introduced into their classical designs, in which they sought to obliterate all distinction between the component parts in a vain attempt to make one great whole out of a great number of small discordant fragments.