Pompeii, Its Life and Art

by August Mau

The painting upon Pompeian walls, as shown by the painstaking investigations of Otto Donner, was fresco, that is, executed in water colors upon the moist stucco of a freshly plastered surface. The method of preparing the wall was less elaborate than that recommended by Vitruvius, who advises the use of seven coats of plaster, first a rough coat, then three of sand mortar and three of stucco made with powdered marble, each coat being finer than the one preceding. In the better rooms, however, we find upon the walls at least one, often several, layers of sand mortar, and one or more coats of marble stucco; the entire thickness of the plastering varies from two to three inches. In unfinished or neglected rooms walls are sometimes found with a single coat of sand mortar. Occasionally powdered brick was used in the stucco as a substitute for marble dust.

Plastering so thick as that ordinarily used must have remained moist for a considerable length of time, much longer than the plastering of our day; yet it could not have retained its moisture long enough to complete the painting of an entire wall as one piece. Walls which are elaborately decorated sometimes show traces of a seam, where a moist section was laid on next to one that had already become partially dry. When the decorative design included pictures, usually the divisions and borders and other decorative elements were finished rapidly while the surface was moist; then a square or round hole was cut where a picture was to be inserted, and filled with fresh stucco, on which the picture was painted. In this way a carefully executed painting could be set in a wall already dry.

In the last years of the city pictures were sometimes painted on the dry surface of a wall that had previously received its decorative framework; some of the figures seen in the middle of the large panels furnish examples of this method of work. A size of some kind must have been used in such cases, but chemical analysis thus far has failed to determine its nature. The distemper painting was much less durable than the fresco, the colors of which became fixed with the hardening of the wall.

Sometimes, as in the house of Lucretius, the place of paintings upon stucco was taken by paintings upon wood, the wooden panels being let into the wall. As these panels were thin and lacked durability, we may perhaps believe that the paintings which they contained were of inferior quality.

The artistic value of Pompeian painting varies from the routine work of indifferent decorators to pictures of genuine merit, such as those found in the house of the Tragic Poet, the house of the Vettii, and the house of Castor and Pollux. Viewed as a whole, the wall decoration has a peculiar interest for us; it not only richly illustrates the application of painting by the ancients to decorative uses, but also affords a striking example of the evolution of decorative designs from simple architectural motives to intricate patterns, in which the scheme of coloring is hardly less complicated than that of the ornamental forms.

The four styles of wall decoration were briefly characterized in the Introduction, in connection with our survey of the periods of construction. It now remains to illustrate these by typical examples and to trace their inner connection. We are here concerned only with the decorative designs, or ornamental framework of the walls; the paintings, which formed the centre of interest in the later styles, are reserved for consideration in a separate chapter.

The development of ancient wall decoration came comparatively late, after the art of painting, in the hands of the Greek masters, had reached and passed its climax. Yet we know almost nothing in regard to the earlier stages. Apparently the system which we find at Pompeii originated in the period following the death of Alexander the Great, and received its impulse of development from the contact of Greece with the Orient. But whatever the origin, from the time to which the earliest specimens at Pompeii belong—the second century B.C.—to the destruction of the city, we can trace an uninterrupted development, which, nevertheless, comes to an end in the latter part of the first century A.D.

The decline is characterized by increasing poverty of design, with feeble imitation of past styles. Just as it is setting in, however, extant examples become rare. Some specimens of the wall decoration of later times, as of the period of the Antonines and the reign of Septimius Severus, are preserved, but they are isolated and not sufficient in number to enable us to follow the stages of the decline. Thus it happens that the only period in the history of ancient wall decoration in regard to which we have the materials for a full and satisfactory study, is the period exemplified in the remains at Pompeii, the chronological sequence of which extends over two centuries.

The oldest houses, those belonging to the Period of the Limestone Atriums ([p. 39]), have preserved no traces of wall decoration beyond the limited application of white stucco.

The remains of the decoration of the Tufa Period are fairly abundant, and are well preserved on account of the excellent quality of the stucco to which the colors were applied. They belong to the first or Incrustation Style. A good example has already been given, the end wall of a bedroom in the house of the Centaur ([Fig. 122]); we present here, for more detailed examination, the left wall of the atrium in the house of Sallust ([Fig. 261]).