ART IN POMPEII.
The Homes of the Wealthy.—The Triangular Forum and the Temples.—Pompeian Architecture: Its Merits and its Defects.—The Artists of the Little City.—The Paintings Here.—Landscapes, Figures, Rope-dancers, Dancing-girls, Centaurs, Gods, Heroes, the Iliad Illustrated.—Mosaics.—Statues and Statuettes.—Jewelry.—Carved Glass.—Art and Life.
The house of Pansa was large, but not much ornamented. There are others which are shown in preference to the visitor. Let us mention them concisely in the catalogue and inventory style:
The house of the Faun.—Fine mosaics; a masterpiece in bronze; the Dancing Faun, of which we shall speak farther on. Besides the atrium and the peristyle, a third court, the xysta, surrounded with forty-four columns, duplicated on the upper story. Numberless precious things were found there, in the presence of the son of Goethe. The owner was a wine-merchant.(?)
The house of the Quæstor, or of Castor and Pollux.—Large safes of very thick and very hard wood, lined with copper and ornamented with arabesques, perhaps the public money-chests, hence this was probably the residence of the quæstor who had charge of the public funds; a Corinthian atrium; fine paintings—the Bacchante the Medea, the Children of Niobe, etc. Rich development of the courtyards.
The house of the Poet.—Homeric paintings; celebrated mosaics; the dog at the doorsill, with the inscription Cave Canem; the Choragus causing the recitation of a piece. All these are at the museum.
The house of Sallust.—A fine bronze group; Hercules pursuing a deer (taken to the Museum at Palermo); a pretty stucco relievo in one of the bedchambers; Three couches of masonry in the triclinium; a decent and modest venereum that ladies may visit. There is seen an Acteon surprising Diana in the bath, the stag's antlers growing on his forehead and the hounds tearing him. The two scenes connect in the same picture, as in the paintings of the middle ages. Was this a warning to rash people? This venereum contained a bedchamber, a triclinium and a lararium, or small marble niche in which the household god was enshrined.
The house of Marcus Lucretius.—Very curious. A peristyle forming a sort of platform, occupied with baubles, which they have had the good taste to leave there; a miniature fountain, little tiers of seats, a small conduit, a small fish-tank, grotesque little figures in bronze, statuettes and images of all sorts,—Bacchus and Bacchantes, Fauns and Satyrs, one of which, with its arm raised above its head, is charming. Another in the form of a Hermes holds a kid in its arms; the she-goat trying to get a glimpse of her little one, is raising her fore-feet as though to clamber up on the spoiler. These odds and ends make up a pretty collection of toys, a shelf, as it were, on an ancient what-not of knick-knacks.