History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

If in Roman art the province of architecture is the most important, and that of sculpture the most richly represented, that of painting is the most charming. In this, as in sculpture, the decorative character predominated. Traces of that monumental art which creates for itself, and for its own sake, are found only in works of the earlier time, and even then in few and isolated instances. Even more than sculpture, painting appears dependent and imitative, vacillating in the first five centuries between the influence of ancient Italy and of Greece; later, in close subjection to the latter, as developed in the Hellenistic period after Alexander.

The earliest notice of monumental painting in Rome relates to the decoration of the temples of Ceres, Liber, and Libera by the Greek artists of Lower Italy, Gorgasos and Damophilos, in 493 B.C., of which mention has already been made. Although they made use of four colors, their method was that of the time before Polygnotos, and their work was little distinguished from the older painting upon vases, such as those of Ergotimos and Clitias in Florence, the surfaces within the outlines being treated in color, without gradation of light or shade. It may therefore be concluded that, in the two chief temples of the last period of the kings, colored ornament, whether upon the plaster itself, or upon a revetment of terra-cotta slabs, as in the tomb at Cære (Fig. 262), was as little wanting as in the temples and tombs of Etruria. It may be judged that in Rome this was specifically Etruscan, since Pliny refers to the ornamentation of the Temple of Ceres only because in this Grecian artists first appear to have taken part, while before “everything in the Roman temple had been Etruscan.” Much as we may be inclined to regard the primitive art of Etruria as dependent upon that of Greece, the difference must have been considerable; and the Grecian wall-paintings in the Temple of Ceres must have been held in great estimation, since, according to Pliny, they were protected when the temple was restored, being removed from the walls with great care, framed upon tablets, and replaced.

It can scarcely be doubted that these wall-paintings opened the way to Hellenic influence, although a guild of Etruscan artists for a long time worked by the side of the Greeks in Rome, for purposes of ordinary decoration. If, according to Pliny, “art came early to be honored in Rome,” and even patricians did not hesitate to devote themselves to it, it would seem that this must have been brought about through Grecian methods. Fabius Pictor, whose wall-paintings, according to Dionysios of Halicarnassos, were carefully drawn, of a fresh, agreeable color, and composed in a grand historical style, acquired his sobriquet and his great fame by his paintings in the Temple of Salus, executed in the year 304 B.C. His rank in regard to drawing may be exemplified by the wonderful sgraffiti of the Cista of Novius Plautius in Rome, although the latter, having flourished half a century later, may take a somewhat higher rank. The paintings of the tragic poet Pacuvius, from 220 to 130 B.C., were still more advanced. Among these a picture, probably upon a panel, in the Temple of Hercules in the Forum Boarium, was very celebrated; and it may be assumed that, in order to obtain renown, the artist adopted with success the technical refinements of the period of the Diadochi. The aged artist, before his death, must have witnessed the extensive robberies which brought to the metropolis, besides the sculptural works, the most distinguished pictures of Greece, it having happened in his prime that the Athenian painter and philosopher Metrodoros was called to Rome by Æmilius Paulus—as a philosopher to educate his children, and as an artist to illustrate his triumphs. Metrodoros, who, in his artistic and scholarly versatility, had written a book upon architecture, gave assistance even in the construction of triumphal arches. Still, Æmilius Paulus may well have wished to glorify his deeds by historical paintings, as had been customary with the conquerors for a century. In 293 B.C., M. Valerius Maximus Messala had placed a battle-scene in the Curia Hostilia, illustrating his victory over the Carthaginians and Hiero of Syracuse—an example which was followed by L. Scipio, in 190 B.C., with a representation of his success at Magnesia over Antiochus of Syria. These, however, must be regarded less as works of art than as realistic delineations of the events, analogous to the Roman historical reliefs in the time of the Empire; at least, great importance was given to details in the picture representing the Conquest of Carthage which L. Hostilius Mancinus, in 146 B.C., exhibited upon the Forum and explained to the people, and which especially showed the Roman preparations for a siege. Such works, the background of which was probably treated more or less as a landscape, like the topographical representations of earlier antiquity, must have been similar in conception and composition to the Assyrian reliefs that represent battles and sieges, and to the pictures of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries of the Christian era.

In the notices of these panel-paintings there are no names of artists to assist in their classification; but it may be concluded that Metrodoros was encouraged in this work, and Serapion, in 100 B.C., really distinguished himself in such historical scenes. The artists of importance in the last century of the republic, like Sopolis, Dionysios, and their pupil Antiochus Gabinius, found themselves forced into portraiture; the specialty of Iaia, or Laia, of Kyzicos was the painting of women upon ivory, and Arellius portrayed his mistresses as goddesses. But in the beginning of the empire, tablet-painting seems to have been entirely abandoned, being supplanted by a new decorative tendency which again, in quite an unmonumental manner, led back to mural painting.

It is clear from the term “Pinacotheca,” applied to certain halls in the city palaces, that the eagerness for collecting among the Roman emperors and nobles extended as well to the paintings of Greece as to the statues. In sculpture copies were substituted when originals were wanting, but this seems to have been rarely the case with panel-paintings. As the statues were employed for decoration, originality in these was not so important; but with paintings preserved in cabinets, genuineness was more imperative. Painting upon panels, however, became less frequent when pictures came to be imitated upon the wall itself and brought into harmony with the remainder of the mural ornamentation, as, according to Helbig, was customary, particularly in Alexandria, even in the time of the Diadochi. This is shown, not only by the new discoveries among the buildings of Tiberius upon the Palatine, but also in the frescos of those subterranean baths of Titus which may be regarded as part of the ruins of the Golden House of Nero. (Fig. 306.) Ornaments, garlands, and architectural designs divide the walls into many spaces, within which groups or single figures (Fig. 307), often dancing or floating, are placed directly against a ground of intense color, sometimes black—the paintings of Campania showing unsurpassed lightness and charm in the lines. (Fig. 308.)