ROMAN AND POMPEIAN PAINTING.
The wall-paintings which have been discovered in Rome and Pompeii furnish us the best examples of Greek and Roman achievement with the brush. The advance which had been made in Roman painting during the Hellenistic period may be clearly seen in the painting from the Palatine representing Io rescued by Hermes from the custody of Argos (pl. 14, fig. 4). In this picture it is possible that we have a replica of the Io painted by Nikias, au artist of the Theban-Attic school famed for his figures of women and for his skill in the use of light and shade. Ile took special care, says Pliny, that his figures should stand out from the background. Here we begin to feel the power of the art of painting to give us true pictures of nature, and we recognize in the diminution of distant figures and in the high lights and deep shadows an instinctive knowledge of perspective and sonic attempt even to suggest atmospheric effect.
These qualities are found in a marked degree in the famous Odyssey landscapes excavated on the Esquilinc and now in the Library of the Vatican. One of the six complete pictures is illustrated on Plate 15 (fig. 4). The whole series represents the adventure of Odysseus in the land of the Lzestrygones, his reception at the palace of Kirke, and his visit to the under-world as described by Homer (Oa'. X. So to XI. 600). In the pic ture before us we witness the descent of Odysseus into " the dank house of Hades, where into Acheron flow Pyriphlegethon and Kokvtos, a branch of the water of the Styx, and where is a rock and the meeting of the two roaring waters." Here Odysseus meets the spirits of the departed—" brides and youths unwed, and old men of many and evil days, and tender maid ens with grief vet fresh at heart; and many there were wounded with bronze-shod spears, men slain in fight, with their bloody mail about them. And there many ghosts flocked from every side." As examples of land scape-painting these pictures stand almost alone in this history of ancient art to tell us of the high degree of skill which lingered in the last clays of the Republic.
Less pictorial in character, but not devoid of charm, is a Roman paint ing in the Vatican entitled The Aldobraudini Marriage (pl. 16, Ay. 9). In the central group we sec the veiled bride upon the nuptial couch, and seated on the threshold the waiting bridegroom. To the left are women preparing the bath; to the right, a group of maidens arranging a sacrifice, with music and song. The picture tells its story with simplicity and quiet dignity, which are its chief merits.
Pomfician Campanian cities, Stabix, Hercu laneum, and especially Pompeii, have furnished considerable material to the history of ancient painting. We find here no little variation in style, although the earliest wall-decorations do not antedate the year 78 B. C., and the great majority must be assigned to the period between the
earthquake in 63 A. D. and the fatal eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A. D.
At first a sober style prevailed, the painter imitating in the stuccoed \Valls the work of the mason, the mosaicist, and the architect.
logical subjects and landscapes, \vhcn attempted, were treated with some regard to the really-existing state of things in nature. But even in the time of Vitruvius, who lived during the reign of Augustus, a fanciful rococo stA le was becoming prevalent. " The objects which the ancients took for their models from reality," he says, "arc despised by the cor rupted fashion of the present day. We nowadays see upon our walls not so much copies of actual things as fantastic monstrosities. Thus, reeds take the place of columns in a design; ribboned and streamered ornaments with curling leaves and spiral tendrils take the place of pediments; diminutive temples are supported upon candelabra; vegetable shapes spring from the tops of pediments and send forth multitudes of delicate stems with twining tendrils and figures seated meaninglessly among them; nay, from the very flowers which the stalks sustain are made to issue demi-figures having the heads sometimes of human beings and sometimes of brutes." Thus, on Plate 13 (j. to) we see a winged Egyptian figure with meaningless cartouches above and below, while Figure > > (pl. I3)and Figures I and 2 (O. i6) show us the reedlike columns with streamered and fantastic ornamentation.
Very frequent arc the light and graceful subjects, such as Pan (pl. 13, 12, 13; pl. fig. 6), or Jfaidens Sporting (p1. i6, Acs. 3, 5), or the spirited bacchante the Captured Cenlanr (fig. 7). Such figures as these appear among the subsidiary forms of decoration. Of greater importance are the wall-paintings Nvhich imitate panel-pictures, such as the Leda and the Swan (A-. 4). These are treated in separate compartments, arc usually mythological in subject, and occasionally, we may suppose, preserve some reminiscence of a masterpiece. Among the larger wall-paintings are also to be found interesting landscapes reflecting the scenery and archi tecture of lower Italy, pictures of still-life preserving the forms of many objects of interest to the antiquarian, and occasionally a caricature.
Thus, painting among the Greeks and Romans had all but freed itself from a dependence upon architecture, and had succeeded in estab lishing new modes of expression not used by the sculptor; but its complete freedom and highest development. had not vet been reached. It was destined to slumber on for centuries, until a new purpose and a new life were given it in the Italian Renaissance.