Then, there are the Adonis and the Hermaphrodite in the house of Adonis; the sacrarium or domestic chapel in the house of the Mosaic Columns; the wild beasts adorning the house of the Hunt; above all, the fresh excavations, where the paintings retain their undiminished brilliance. But if all these houses are to be visited, they are not to be described. Antiquaries dart upon this prey with frenzy, measuring the tiniest stone, discussing the smallest painting, and leaving not a single frieze or panel without some comment, so that, after having read their remarks, one fancies that everything is precious in this exhumed curiosity-shop. These folks deceive themselves and they deceive us; their feelings as virtuosos thoroughly exhaust themselves upon a theme which is very attractive, very curious, 'tis true, but which calls for less completely scientific hands to set it to music, the more so that in Pompeii there is nothing grand, or massive, or difficult to comprehend. Everything stands right forth to the gaze and explains itself as clearly and sharply as the light of day.
Moreover, these houses have been despoiled. I might tell you of a pretty picture or a rich mosaic in such-and-such a room. You would go thither to look for it and not find it. The museum at Naples has it, and if it be not there it is nowhere. Time, the atmosphere, and the sunlight have destroyed it. Therefore, those who make out an inventory of these houses for you are preparing you bitter disappointments.
The only way to get an idea of Pompeian art is not to examine all these monuments separately, but to group them in one's mind, and then to pay the museum an attentive visit. Thus we can put together a little ideal city, an artistic Pompeii, which we are going to make the attempt to explore.
Pompeii had two and even three forums. The third was a market; the first, with which you are already acquainted, was a public square; the other, which we are about to visit, is a sort of Acropolis, inclosed like that of Athens, and placed upon the highest spot of ground in the city. From a bench, still in its proper position at the extremity of this forum, you may distinguish the valley of the Sarno, the shady mountains that close its perspective, the cultivated checker-work of the country side, green tufts of the woodlands, and then the gently curving coast-line where Stabiæ wound in and out, with the picturesque heights of Sorrento, the deep blue of the sea, the transparent azure of the heavens, the infinite limpidity of the distant horizon, the brilliant clearness and the antique color. Those who have not beheld this scenery, can only half comprehend its monuments, which would ever be out of place beneath another sky.
It was in this bright sunlight that the Pompeian Acropolis, the triangular Forum, stood. Eight Ionic columns adorned its entrance and sustained a portico of the purest elegance, from which ran two long slender colonnades widening apart from each other and forming an acute angle. They are still surmounted with their architrave, which they lightly supported. The terrace, looking out upon the country and the sea, formed the third side of the triangle, in the middle of which rose some altars,—the ustrinum, in which the dead were burned, a small round temple covering a sacred well, and, finally, a Greek temple rising above all the rest from the height of its foundation and marking its columns unobstructedly against the sky. This platform, resting upon solid supports and covered with monuments in a fine style of art, was the best written page and the most substantially correct one in Pompeii. Unfortunately, here, as everywhere else, stucco had been plastered over the stone-work. The columns were painted. Nowhere could a front of pure marble—the white on the blue—be seen defined against the sky.
The remaining temples furnish us few data on architecture. You know those of the Forum. The temple of Fortune, now greatly dilapidated, must have resembled that of Jupiter. Erected by Marcus Tullius, a reputed relative of Cicero, it yields us nothing but very mediocre statues and inscriptions full of errors, proving that the priesthood of the place, by no means Ciceronian in their acquirements, did not thoroughly know even their own language. The temple of Esculapius, besides its altar, has retained a very odd capital, Corinthian if you will, but on which cabbage leaves, instead of the acanthus, are seen enveloping a head of Neptune. The temple of Isis, still standing, is more curious than handsome. It shows[F] that the Egyptian goddess was venerated at Pompeii, but it tells us nothing about antique art. It is entered at the side, by a sort of corridor leading into the sacred inclosure. The temple is on the right; the columns inclose it; a vaulted niche is hollowed out beneath the altar, where it served as a hiding-place for the priests,—at least so say the romance-writers. Unfortunately for this idea, the doorway of the recess stood forth and still stands forth to the gaze, rendering the alleged trickery impossible.
Behind the cella, another niche contained a statue of Bacchus, who was, perhaps, the same god as Osiris. An expurgation room, intended for ablutions and purifications, descending to a subterranean reservoir, occupied an angle of the courtyard. In front of this apartment stands an altar, on which were found some remnants of sacrifices. Isis, then, was the only divinity invoked at the moment of the eruption. Her painted statue held a cross with a handle to it, in one hand, and a cithera in the other, and her hair fell in long and carefully curled ringlets.
This is all that the temples give us. Artistically speaking, it is but little. Neither are the other monuments much richer in their information concerning ancient architecture. They let us know that the material chiefly employed consisted of lava, of tufa, of brick, excellently prepared, having more surface and less thickness than ours; of peperino (Sarno stone), which time renders very hard, sometimes with travertine and even marble in the ornaments; then there was Roman mortar, celebrated for its solidity, less perfect at Pompeii, however, than at Rome; and finally, the stucco surface, covering the entire city with its smooth and polished crust, like a variegated mantle. But these edifices tell us nothing in particular; there is neither a style peculiar to Pompeii discernible in them, nor do we find artists of the place bearing any noted name, or possessing any singularity of taste and method. On the other hand, there is an easy eclecticism that adopts all forms with equal facility and betrays the decadence or the sterility of the time. I recall the fact that the city was in process of reconstruction when it was destroyed. Its unskilful repairs disclose a certain predilection for that cheap kind of elegance which among us, has taken the place of art. Stucco tricks off and disfigures everything. Reality is sacrificed to appearance, and genuine elegance to that kind of showy avarice which assumes a false look of profusion. In many places, the flutings are economically preserved by means of moulds that fill them in the lower part of the columns. Painting takes the place of sculpture at every point where it can supply it. The capitals affect odd shapes, sometimes successfully, but always at variance with the simplicity of high art. Add to these objections other faults, glaring at first glance,—for instance, the adornment of the temple of Mercury, where the panels terminate alternately in pediments and in arcades; the façade of the purgatorium in the temple of Isis, where the arcade itself cutting the cornice, becomes involved hideously with the pediment. I shall say nothing either, of the fountains, or of the columns, alas! formed of shell-work and mosaic.
Faults like these shock the eye of purists; but let us constantly bear in mind that we are in a small city, the finest residence in which belonged to a wine-merchant. We could not with fairness expect to find there the Parthenon, or even the Pantheon of Rome. The Pompeian architects worked for simple burghers whose moderate wish was to own pretty houses, not too large nor too dear, but of rich external appearance and a gayety of look that gratified the eye. These good tradesmen were served to their hearts' content by skilful persons who turned everything to good account, cutting rooms by scores within a space that would not be sufficient for one large saloon in our palaces, profiting by all the accidents of the soil to raise their structures by stories into amphitheatres, devising one ingenious subterfuge after another to mask the defects of alignment, and, in a word, with feeble resources and narrow means, realizing what the ancients always dreamed—art combined with every-day life.
For proof of this I point to their paintings covering those handsome stucco walls, which were so carefully prepared, so frequently overlaid with the finest mortar, so ingeniously dashed with shining powder, and, then, so often smoothed, repolished and repacked with wooden rollers that they, at last, looked like and passed for marble. Whether painted in fresco or dry, in encaustic or by other processes, matters little—that belongs to technical authorities to decide.[G]