Fig. 268.—Group of women, one of whom is sounding two stringed instruments.
The genre paintings are of special importance on account of the light they shed on the life and customs of the ancients. A number have already been described or illustrated in the chapter on the house of the Vettii, and in the part devoted to the trades and occupations. To these we should add the picture of an artist in the house of the Surgeon ([Fig. 133]), and the scenes from the life of the Forum ([Figs. 16], [17]).
Here belong also the groups in which figures are seen with a roll of papyrus or a writing tablet, suggestive of literary pursuits, and figures with musical instruments. A group of musicians is shown in [Fig. 268], in which are four women, one of whom is tuning a couple of stringed instruments to sound in unison.
In the same class are included two small painted busts not infrequently met with, that of a girl with a writing tablet in her left hand holding the end of a stylus against her lips, as if pondering what to write, and that of a young man with one end of a roll of papyrus, in which he has been reading, under his chin. A Pompeian baker, Publius Paquius Proculus, brought these two ideal busts into one painting, substituting for the faces of the youth and maiden those of himself and his wife ([Fig. 269]). The portraits are realistic, but the faces are not unattractive; that of Proculus seems more kindly and ingenuous than the face of Caecilius Jucundus ([Fig. 256]).
Fig. 269.—Paquius Proculus and his wife.
Two ideal painted busts have recently been found, each of a youth with a roll of papyrus. Their chief interest lies in the fact that each roll is provided with a narrow tag or label, of the sort that the Romans called index, on which the names Plato and Homerus can be plainly read. The two types of face well correspond with the trend of taste suggested by the titles: the delicate features and upturned gaze of the one indicate a poetic temperament; the other has a high forehead and an air of meditation, appropriate for a student of philosophy.