27. The winter Triclinium. A large square room, corresponding to the Thalamus. The walls are white, with deep red dado. Ceiling coved, and with a round aperture similar to the one in Thalamus. On the wall opposite the door are two beautiful floating Bacchantes, one with thyrsus and tympanum, the other dressed in pink and blue, holding a thyrsus in her left hand, and a floating scarf with the other. They are engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 4, and in Zahn. vol. ii., pl. 13. The Bacchante next the door is the same as in [cubiculum 16]; her dress here is pale blue; she holds the tympanum and thyrsus; a nebris crosses her breast.

On the left hand wall may be seen a most charming group, exquisitely coloured, of a Faun supporting a Bacchante. The faun holds a bunch of grapes in his right hand, and with the other encircles her waist; his drapery is red, and her delicate form is surrounded by a transparent veil, apparently of gauze. The drapery enveloping the lower part of her figure is purple, heightened with white, shoes blue. The effect of the painting of this group is perfectly fascinating, and entirely realises the treatment required for cheerful subjects. The group is engraved in Mus. Bor., vol. xiii., tav. 16, where the background is described as yellow. The paintings in this room are copied from the House of the Female Flute-player and the House of the Bacchantes. The group last described is in the original of unusually large proportions for such subjects, being three-fourths of life size.

Thus, then, we have completed the gíro of the Pompeian house. The ancients, although they have provided the graceful salutation for comers on their threshold in the word SALVE, do not afford the corresponding word VALE to “speed the parting guest.” Their manes, probably gratified by the interest now manifested in these monuments of their habits, requirements, and enjoyments, desire us to linger within these fairy walls, and to indulge in the thoughts of those who would, ages ago, have found nothing strange and nothing amiss here, excepting the appearance of the thronging visitors, whose costume and manners could never have been anticipated. The house, as we see it, is really a house such as the excavations might reveal. We have already shown that every part has its prototype at Pompeii.

The style of decorative painting during the earliest times of the empire merits attention. It is here exhibited on a larger scale and in a much more extensive series than ever before attempted in England; affording, in fact, the sole method by which such decorations can be fully understood. The subjects of the small central wall panels, and a few of the grotesque devices, have been often published, and are familiar to us through the medium both of prints and coloured copies; isolated portions, however, cannot suffice to give an idea of the harmonious effect that may be produced in mural decoration, by masses of even crude colour, when conjoined in proper proportion with others equally crude.[61] The eye at Pompeii is never offended by a want of balance in arrangement; and the system of confining the heaviest colours to the lower part of the room has been already noticed. Even copies of the same picture that come to England, on comparison, exhibit variations which destroy all feeling of confidence in their accuracy. They are for the most part so small as to conceal many important peculiarities of style, and can only serve as souvenirs. Here we see nothing on a reduced scale (except in Thalamus, [No. 27]), the paintings are not only of the same size as at Pompeii, but even the exactitude of the outlines is guaranteed to us by the fact of their having been traced from the originals.

[61] These colours could not appear equally crude to the ancients on account of the necessary darkness that pervaded their apartments. See ante, [p. 31].

The scale and finish of the patterns have to a great extent been regulated by the size of the rooms which they adorn; and it will be seen that in the smaller rooms patterns must necessarily be more minute, and the form of the wall itself less regarded than in a larger apartment where they are viewed at a greater distance. The lightness of the architectural representations and their connection has been already mentioned. The painters seem to have delighted in representing every variety of pavilion, colonnade, balcony steps, rooms and corners, in short, all the ins and outs and ups and downs peculiar to buildings erected to form upper floors. They are, in fact, at variance with the ground stories actually remaining at Pompeii, where all columns and piers of brick and stone are comparatively massive, without any traces whatever of intermediate supports of wood or metal, such as are represented in the paintings. The arabesque devices which occupy so much of the wall space of Pompeii are replete with imagination and ingenious variety. There is, notwithstanding the censures of Vitruvius, which are inserted in [page 69], such a playfulness and elegance in the combination of objects so unexpectedly brought together, that we tolerate incongruities, and regard the whole as a dreamlike succession of images, passing easily from one to the other, without any consideration of that which has gone before. The children rising out of flowers are charming; and the living lions, rushing through scroll work of the brightest hues, such as no living lions ever saw, are purely ornamental conceits. Again, the reeds for columns, with all the botanical details, of nodes and internodes, are extremely graceful; and with their rich colour and firm appearance, notwithstanding an extreme slenderness, they should be very suggestive to our metal workers as means of support. The monsters sometimes perched upon them, in perfect illustration of the words of Vitruvius, excite our surprise, and being frequently ugly in themselves, incline us to agree with the illustrious architect in wishing them away; but at the same time, without such paintings before us, how impossible it would be to comprehend the passages in his book relating to such matters, and depending for their effect upon the eye alone. The beautiful devices of the stanza nera, [cubiculum No. 1], are sufficient illustrations of the grace with which incongruities may be combined, and how in a very small apartment, where minute decorations are appropriately introduced, each portion is to be read, as it were, by itself, or, if regarded generally, to seem merely a playful arrangement of colours relieving the monotony of the wall.

Landscapes as seen in [cubicula 3] and [15] are said to be peculiarly the invention of Ludius, who lived in the early period of the empire. His conceits, as described by Pliny, have something almost Chinese about them, and his chief desire seems to have been to amuse and occupy the spectators. Extensive landscape views were found in the House of the Dioscuri in the four cubicula on the extreme right, seen in plan ([No. 8], on [page 39]). An extensive painting of a sea-port was discovered in the House of the Small Fountain ([plan No. 6]). Some very quaint coast scenes, with enormous gallies, are engraved as vignettes in Pitture d’Ercolano, vol. iii., pp. 7 and 13. An extensive scene of a crowded mole, adorned with statues and arches, with a distant town and crowded boats on the water, is engraved at page 47 of the same vol. At page 279 of the same, is a curious representation of various figures on a wet, slippery ground, as described by Pliny in the paintings of Ludius. An extensive scene of a port, with shipping, numerous statues raised on columns, houses, gardens, people in boats and angling on the shore, was found at Stabiæ; it is engraved in vol. ii., page 295, of Pitture d’Ercolano. Eight small circular views of land and sea, animated by numerous figures, were also found at Stabiæ. They are engraved in the same volume at pp. 277, 281, 285, and 289, and form very important illustrations of ancient life and scenery. Curious buildings may be seen in vignettes on page 105 of same volume. A remarkable painting of a creek with four large ships filled with armed soldiers, with three rows of oars, is engraved in vol i., page 243. The gallies filled with armed troops are seen also in page 239. A curious latticed window in a landscape in page 229. These landscape views are all admirably engraved, in a faithful imitation of the masses of light and shade, and with careful attention to the smallest detail. In the Museo Borbonico, on the contrary, the style of engraving fails to render any one of the peculiarities of their execution. Many vignette landscapes are characteristically copied in vol. ii. of Gell’s Pompeiana, but they have not the completeness or richness of the Pitture d’Ercolano. Some curious illustrations of the social life of the Pompeians may be found in a series of pictures representing the ancient Forum of that city, thronged with the same variety of people that may be seen in the market places of Naples and other Italian cities, all occupied in similarly varied occupations of buying and selling, talking and idling; they supplied Bulwer with several incidents for his description, and have been engraved in vol. iii., page 213 to 231 of Pitture d’Ercolano.

Notwithstanding the frequent occurrence elsewhere of ancient paintings inscribed with the names of persons they are intended to represent, scarcely any instances have been met with in the cities overwhelmed by Vesuvius. The word DIDV is written in one picture in white characters near the head of a figure. The fragment was found at Stabiæ; it is engraved in vol. iii., page 231, of Pitture d’Ercolano. On the celebrated marble slab, monochrome drawings by Alexander of Athens; the artist has not only inscribed his own name, but those of the five females in his composition. It represents the visit of Niobe and her daughters to Latona. This picture was found at Herculaneum, May 24, 1746. A very beautiful little mosaic was inscribed with the name of Dioscorides, of Samos, as the artist; thus:

ΔΙΟΣΚΟΥΡΙΔΗΣ ΣΑΜΙΟΣ ΕΠΟΙΗΣΕ.

There is great diversity of opinion amongst antiquarians as to the meaning of some of the most important pictures discovered at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which might have been obviated had the names of the characters been written upon them, as we see upon the ancient Greek vases, and upon the paintings of Polygnotus, and the chest of Cypselus, described by Pausanias, and, to descend to later and very different times, the well-known Bayeux tapestry, illustrating the history of William the Conqueror. In default of inscription, the Pompeian pictures can only be interpreted by their similarity to the descriptions of other ancient paintings left us by Pausanias, Lucian, Ælian, and Philostratus. The following extract from Vitruvius, book vii., chap. 5, affords a most important view of what innovations took place in his time, showing also, that even before the time of Augustus, mural decorations were composed of extensive architectural fancies, as well as harbours, landscapes, and sea-pieces.