Prof: Good morning.
 
As you can see from the title
of today's lecture,
"Habitats at Herculaneum
and Early Roman Interior
Decoration,"
we're going to be concentrating
once again,
at least in the first half of
the lecture,
on domestic architecture in
Campania.
 
We're going to look at several
houses in Herculaneum,
and then we're going to move
from there to begin our
discussion of early Roman
interior decoration,
namely the First and Second
Styles of Roman wall painting.
And what you'll see makes them
particularly relevant to what
we've been discussing thus far
this term is the fact that in
both the First and Second
Styles,
architecture is depicted in
these paintings,
and we're going to see some
very interesting relationships
between that and the built
monuments that we've talked
about thus far this semester.
 
Just to remind you of the
location of Herculaneum,
which is usually called the
sister city of Pompeii,
because of that locale.
 
We see it on the map here.
 
Pompeii is down in this
location.
Herculaneum is to the northeast
of Pompeii, closer to Naples
than Pompeii is,
as you can see.
And note also the city of
Boscoreale,
Boscoreale, which is located
between,
almost equidistant -- a little
bit closer to Pompeii than
Herculaneum --
but in between the two.
And I point it out to you now
because we're going to look at
an important room,
with paintings,
from the city of Boscoreale
today as well.
Here you see a view,
a Google Earth flyover,
of Herculaneum,
as it looks today.
It's very helpful because you
can see a couple of things here
that I want you to keep in mind,
as we look at this city.
One, that although most of the
city of Pompeii has been
excavated,
only about a quarter or
twenty-five percent of the city
of Herculaneum has been
excavated.
 
So we have much less at
Herculaneum than we do for
Pompeii, and what we're missing,
for the most part,
is the public architecture.
 
We don't have a great
amphitheater from Herculaneum.
We don't have a theater and a
music hall complex.
We think we might have part of
the basilica,
but we're not absolutely sure.
 
We don't have the great large
forum space that we have in
Pompeii.
 
So we're missing a lot of that
public architecture at
Herculaneum,
which gives us less of a sense
of what the city was originally
like,
at least in its public face,
although there's no doubt that
that material still lies beneath
the ground.
So we have only a quarter of
the city, mostly the residential
part of the city,
or part of the residential part
of the city.
 
But there are several houses
there that are extremely--
give us, provide information,
especially about what was going
on between the earthquake and
the eruption of Vesuvius,
62 to 79, that are extremely
valuable in terms of giving us a
sense again of the evolution of
Roman domestic architecture.
The other issue that this
particular view raises is the
reason why Herculaneum is less
well excavated than Pompeii,
and the reason for that has to
do--and you can see it well
here--
has to do with the fact that
the modern city grew up on top
of the ancient city.
And they were able at one point
to clear part of it,
for excavation,
but they have not been able to
clear the rest.
 
It's a political nightmare to
have to deal--
you have to relocate all the
people who live in this area and
have lived in this area for a
very long time.
That's politically a very
difficult thing to do.
It also is extremely costly.
 
So thus far only twenty-five
percent of Herculaneum revealed.
Let's all hope that at some
point someday Italy can sort
this out and find a way to
excavate the rest of this
extraordinary city.
 
You can see from this view that
I took as--this is one of the
views that you get as you enter
the site, the current location
today.
 
But I think you can see very
well here again what I'm talking
about: the relationship between
the ancient city,
lower ground level,
that has been unearthed through
excavation.
 
You can see a peristyle court
of one of the houses here,
for example.
 
But you can see the way in
which the modern city rings the
site,
and again what a challenge it
would be to remove that modern
city and to reveal the rest of
Herculaneum.
 
Here's another view where you
can also see some of the remains
of the ancient city,
of these residences and so on,
and their relationship to the
rest of the town.
With regard to the history of
Herculaneum, it is very similar
to the history of Pompeii.
 
One difference is that the city
of Herculaneum was supposedly
founded by Hercules,
hence its name Herculaneum.
But in other respects the
history again is quite
comparable.
 
We know, for example,
that the city of Herculaneum
was overseen for awhile by that
same Italic tribe called the
Oscans,
who were then conquered by the
Samnites,
and the Samnites took over
Herculaneum.
 
And it was during the Samnite
period in Herculaneum that we
begin to see the same kind of
architectural development that
we saw also in Pompeii.
 
We also know that those in
Herculaneum,
the citizens of Herculaneum,
the leaders of Herculaneum,
got involved in the Social
Wars, as did those in Pompeii,
and that the city of
Herculaneum was conquered by
Rome in 89 B.C.,
in 89 B.C.
So Herculaneum becomes a Roman
colony in 89 B.C.
Thereafter we know--and of
course at that point,
just as in Pompeii,
the Romans begin to build
buildings in the Roman manner.
 
From that point on we know
again comparable development.
We know that at Herculaneum
they also witnessed that very
serious earthquake,
an earthquake that also
destroyed significant parts of
the city of Herculaneum,
and they too went through that
frenzied seventeen-year period
of rebuilding.
 
But again, just as at Pompeii,
it was for naught,
because the city of Herculaneum
was also covered by the ash and
lava of Vesuvius.
 
However, there's one major
difference that has to do with
the way that ash and lava fell.
 
We talked about the fact that
at Pompeii there was actually
quite a bit of notice,
that the ash and lava came down
on the city fairly gradually,
and that there was time for
people to escape,
and that most of them did,
except for those foolhardy
souls who decided to wait it
out,
which we discussed a couple of
lectures ago.
 
But in Herculaneum,
it happened much more rapidly,
and in fact it became very
clear, very quickly,
that a huge blanket of lava was
headed toward the city.
And needless to say,
that encouraged people to leave
pronto,
and we thought,
at least for a very long time,
that that's in fact what had
happened,
that everybody had escaped the
onslaught of Vesuvius.
 
What happened after that
blanket of lava engulfed the
city is it hermetically sealed
the city,
hermetically sealed the city,
in such a way that materials
that have been lost at Pompeii
were preserved at Herculaneum.
And the best example of that is
wood.
We have almost no wood.
 
Wood is not a material that
withstands the test of time
terribly well,
and we have almost no wood from
Pompeii.
 
But from the city of
Herculaneum, we have a
considerable amount of wood,
and this just has to do with
the fact again that the city was
so hermetically sealed by that
blanket of lava.
 
And I can show you a few
examples of what survives in
wood.
 
For example,
this bed, or part of a bed,
that's still preserved,
as you can see here,
with the wooden legs.
 
A wooden partition in one of
the houses, to divide one
section, kind of like a modern
pogo wall, to divide one section
of the structure from another.
 
You can see also the wooden
frames around the doors and
around the windows are also
preserved,
as are these wooden beams that
you can see over the doorways
and over the windows--
mostly over the doorways--those
wooden beams also made out of
wood.
And this is the most famous
example,
and one that everybody sees as
you wander the streets of
Herculaneum,
the Casa a Graticcio,
which we see here --
and you can see that even the
balcony,
which is made out of wood,
is extremely well preserved.
 
So this provides evidence that
we don't have from Pompeii
that's extremely valuable in
terms of understanding Roman
building practice.
 
I mentioned already though that
we didn't think anyone--
we thought that all those who
lived in Herculaneum had escaped
from Vesuvius,
but it turns out that was not
in fact the case.
 
As recently as the 1980s,
some archaeologists were doing
some excavating down at the sea
wall of the city of Herculaneum,
and lo and behold,
they came upon a cache of
skeletons.
 
And I show you some of those
skeletons here.
And those skeletons are in the
same kinds of positions as the
bodies that we saw at Pompeii,
in that clearly a number of
them have huddled together for
protection,
futile protection as it turned
out.
And here another one who's
raising himself or herself in an
attempt to survive somehow this
awful event that has occurred.
We find these skeletons--and
they found these skeletons near
the sea wall,
and what they've concluded from
this,
two things: one,
again the difference in the
lava that fell on Herculaneum.
You can see that it not only
preserved wood,
it also preserved bone,
which is why the skeletons are
still visible here,
whereas at Pompeii everything
decomposed,
at Pompeii.
So the situation again quite
different.
But they've also been able to
determine that what clearly
happened here is again because
there was so much notice,
people fled.
 
And where did they flee?
 
They fled toward the water,
because they were right on the
sea,
they had a lot of boats,
and the hope was that they
could ferry everybody out from
the city.
 
And for the most part they were
successful,
but there was a certain group
that unfortunately got left
behind,
and it was their remains that
were discovered in the 1980s.
 
It's amazing what these bodies
can tell us about some of the
people who lived there,
and I'll just give you a little
sense of a couple of the
storylines.
Here is the skeleton of a
woman, and you can see that this
woman has--
if you look very closely at her
left hand,
two of her fingers--you can see
she has rings on two of her
fingers,
and those are larger views of
those very rings.
Two rings with green and red
stones.
The red stone,
you can see,
has a little bird depicted on
it.
These were her rings.
 
Consequently the archaeologists
call her "the ring
lady";
or it should be "the rings
lady."
 
But here she is with her two
rings.
And you can see that she also
had, next to her side,
these two absolutely gorgeous
golden snake bracelets,
sort of à la Cleopatra,
Cleopatraesque,
that she obviously loved and
took with her when she attempted
to escape from the city.
 
And an even more poignant story
is this one.
What we're looking at here is
the head of a woman;
a young woman,
the excavators have determined.
And if you look at the top of
her head, you will see that a
tuft of hair is actually
preserved.
It looks dark in this image but
it's actually blond.
So they've been able to
determine this was a young,
blond woman,
who lived in Herculaneum.
And you can see the small size
of the skeleton below.
This is not hers;
it's obviously her fetus,
the baby.
 
She was seven months pregnant
they've been able to determine,
and so they have found the
bones of the baby as well.
And you can see them here and
the excavators--
the excavation reports -- they
talk about the fact that the
bones of the baby,
of the infant,
of the unborn child,
are so fragile that it was like
picking up eggshells,
when they were trying to piece
this skeleton together.
 
So it's incredible the kind of
information that archaeologists
have been able to glean from
those trying to escape
Herculaneum on that fateful day
in August of 79.
One other sad story is just
that they did actually find the
remains of one child--
this is sort of like the story
of the dog at Pompeii--
one child whose remains were
left in this little crib in one
house.
And again the bones are
preserved, because of this
circumstance of the particular
configuration of the lava;
the bones of that small child
are also preserved in this crib
in one of the houses in
Herculaneum.
To turn to the city itself,
I show you now a plan of
Herculaneum,
or at least the excavated part
of Herculaneum,
that gives you some sense of
what is there.
 
And I've already mentioned that
we simply won't see any big
amphitheater in plan,
or any major forum complex,
and so on and so forth.
 
We simply don't have that
evidence in the excavated part.
But what you do see is
comparable to the residential
area of Pompeii.
 
You can see a series of major
thoroughfares crossing with one
another.
 
We can't be sure,
since we don't have the whole
city,
which is the main cardo
and which is the main
decumanus of the city,
but they are certainly laid out
at a quite regular pattern,
with shops and houses
interspersed with one another,
as you can see extremely well
here.
Again, we don't,
as far as we know,
we really don't--well we're
quite sure we don't have any of
the major public buildings.
 
But there are a couple of
structures here and there that
do tell us something.
 
Here's an arch,
for example,
that may have been on one of
the more important thoroughfares
of the city,
and we certainly have shops and
the like along the way.
 
And I can actually show you a
few views of shops and the city
streets and so on,
that give you a good sense that
Herculaneum was very similar
looking to Pompeii.
If you look at the street
here--it's a street from the
city of Herculaneum--you can see
the same multi-sided stones for
the pavement.
 
You can see the same sidewalks.
 
You can see the same drains in
Herculaneum.
You can see the same rut marks.
 
What you don't see--and I
started a post on this
yesterday--what you don't see
are stepping stones.
There are no persevered
stepping stones in Herculaneum.
There are lots of preserved
stepping stones in Pompeii.
And I was mulling this over
yesterday in a way,
even beyond what I have tended
to in the past about these
stepping stones,
thinking about could I think of
any other examples in any other
Roman city I've ever been,
including Rome itself,
where there's actually quite a
bit of preserved pavement here
and there --
out on the Via Appia,
in the Roman Forum,
and so on and so forth?
 
And I can't think of a single
other site, off the top of my
head, where we find stepping
stones.
So I just put that out as a
thought question for all of us,
to see whether I'm missing
something,
or whether it's conceivable
that Pompeii may have been
exceptional in this regard,
rather than the norm.
Here we see amphoras,
these clay amphoras in which
wine or oil were kept,
so a wine or an oil shop there.
And then, of course,
our favorite,
the fast-food stand,
the thermopolium;
Herculaneum had plenty of
thermopolia,
very similar to those in
Pompeii.
So you can imagine,
for the most part,
a quite similar looking city.
 
I mentioned though that the
evidence that we do have is
mostly for residential
architecture,
and there are three houses in
particular that I want to focus
on,
because they give us
information that goes beyond the
information that I've been able
to give you from the houses that
we looked at in Pompeii.
The first one I want to look at
is the so-called Samnite House
at Herculaneum.
 
It dates to the second century
B.C., and you see it in plan
here.
 
It's a very simple house.
 
So second century B.C.
 
That tells you what?
 
It tells you that it's early,
but it's already in that
Hellenized-domus period,
which began in the second
century B.C.
 
So we look to see which plan it
conforms to.
Does it conform to the Domus
Italica, or the Hellenized
domus?
 
Well at first it looks like it
conforms to the Domus
Italica, because you can see
it's quite simple.
It has the basic core.
 
You come in here,
into the fauces.
There are cells on either side,
the cellae.
These cellae are indeed cellae.
 
They open up only to the house
and not to the outside.
They have not been transformed
into shops.
We see the atrium here.
 
We see the impluvium of
the atrium, and there was,
of course, a compluvium
up above.
We see a very small number of
cubicula,
just a couple over here.
 
And we don't seem to see the
usual wings,
unless this one over
here--although there seems to be
some sort of staircase on that
side--
served in part as the wing.
 
And so and one of those rooms,
probably the left one,
served as the dining room.
 
There's no hortus,
there's no peristyle.
So again at first it looks like
a pretty simple example of
the--an even simplified version
of a typical Domus
Italica.
 
But when we walk into the
atrium, which is very well
preserved today,
we see something quite
different.
 
The focus in this particular
house was the atrium.
You can tell it's an atrium.
 
You can see the
compluvium up above.
We're looking here at the
entranceway, through the
fauces.
 
These are the doors into the
two cells, one on either side.
This is a door into one of the
only two cubicula in this
structure.
 
You can see also that the
patron and designer of this
particular house wanted to--
you can see that this is a
Hellenized domus,
in the sense that they have
incorporated pilasters here,
on either side of the wall,
next to the entranceway.
 
But most interesting of all is
what has happened in what seems
to be a second story for the
atrium.
They have expanded,
they have moved,
they have developed the atrium
even more vertically than has
been the case before,
by adding this blind gallery,
up at the top,
which on three sides is again
closed--
you can see the enclosed
wall--but on the fourth side,
which I don't have an image to
show you,
the fourth side, it's open.
So there's an open loggia,
there's open space between the
columns.
 
So blind gallery on three
sides, open loggia on the other
side;
the open loggia,
of course, bringing additional
light into the atrium.
So a very elaborate treatment
of the atrium,
which shows us not only the
esteem in which this particular
patron held the atrium,
but also this interesting
incorporation of columns in a
different way than we've seen
before,
making them the high point of
this room by placing them in the
second story.
They are Ionic columns.
 
Notice also this sort of
latticework fence that encircles
it.
 
We'll see that kind of
latticework fence also in Roman
painting.
 
You can see,
in fact, the remains of some
paint on the walls.
 
So the walls behind this were
painted.
So a very opulent atrium that
shows again this interest in
building vertically and adding
some interest at the uppermost
part,
to create this sense of two
stories.
 
This is a development--this is
in fact even early for that,
in the second century B.C.
 
The two most important houses,
however, at Herculaneum are the
House of the Mosaic Atrium and
the House of the Stags.
And I want to look at both of
those houses with you today.
I'm going to start with the
House of the Mosaic Atrium.
You can see from this plan,
which comes from the
Ward-Perkins textbook,
you can see from this plan that
they are literally side-by-side;
they essentially share a wall,
as you can see here.
 
They are very important in
terms of the development,
not only of residential
architecture in Campania in the
late first century A.D.,
but also as a premonition of
what's to come in much later
residential architecture.
Again, I'm going to look at
both of them,
and we'll start first with the
Mosaic Atrium.
If you look at the top of the
plan,
the northern most part of the
plan--
and this house,
by the way, does--as you can
see from the Monument List--
does date to A.D.
62 to 79, so at the very end of
domestic architecture
development in Pompeii.
 
If we look at the uppermost
part, the north,
you will see that if you enter
the house at the arrow,
and you look ahead,
you would think--
you look at the vista ahead and
see the atrium and the
tablinum--
you would think you were in a
typical Domus Italica
type house.
It's got those three main
elements.
It's got the fauces;
it's got the atrium with an
impluvium and a
compluvium,
as we'll see;
and it's got a tablinum,
all on axis with one another.
 
But as you're standing in the
atrium looking toward the
tablinum,
you're kind of looking at this
tablinum and saying to
yourself,
"This is not the
tablinum I know,
this is not the tablinum
I'm used to,
this is not the tablinum
in most of the houses that I
know."
 
It's designed in a very
different way.
And what is it that you see in
plan that indicates to us that
it's designed in a different
way?
Does anyone see what it is?
 
Student:  Columns.
 
Prof: It has--are they
columns?
Look closely.
 
Student:  Flat.
 
Prof: Are they round?
 
Student:  No.
 
Prof: No, they're square.
 
So they're either piers,
or they're columns on bases
that are square.
 
But you're right,
there are architectural members
in here.
 
It turns out they're piers
but--so there are piers in here.
Okay.
 
What else?
 
What about the actual plan
itself?
How are those piers--what's the
relationship of those piers to
the room design?
 
Someone over there?
 
Student:  Freestanding.
 
Prof: Freestanding. Yes.
 
What else?
 
Does it remind you of a plan
we've seen in another context?
You're looking at a central
space, divided by two aisles,
by architectural members,
in this case by piers.
A basilica.
 
It's a basilican plan:
central nave,
two side aisles.
 
What's a basilican plan doing
in a house?
Is this a basilica or a law
court?
No.
 
It's actually a winter
banqueting room,
but a winter banqueting room in
the shape of a basilica.
And I make a lot of that,
because we'll see this
happening with increasing
frequency in Roman architecture,
and that is a certain building
type that was developed for one
kind of building--
in this case a basilican plan
developed for law courts--
begins to be used for another
kind of room,
in this case a winter
banqueting hall.
 
And I like to call this the
sort of inter-changeability of
form --
that you can develop a certain
plan for a certain kind of
structure,
but then be creative enough to
realize that you could use that
same plan in another
environment,
in a different but interesting
way.
And that's exactly what happens
here.
Now needless to say the scale
is actually fairly large.
But this does not look like a
huge basilica.
It's brought down to domestic
size scale, as you can see here.
So that's a very interesting
development.
It's very well preserved,
and I'll show it to you in a
moment.
 
So once you get into the
atrium, then you have to take an
abrupt right in order to see the
peristyle court.
And the peristyle court is
very, very large.
We've talked about the fact
that there was an increasing
interest in the peristyle as a
key component of a Roman house,
and we see that very clearly
here;
in fact, the peristyle is
really beginning to take pride
of place away from the atrium.
 
Because the atrium is almost
beginning to go the way of the
tablinum,
in the sense that it's becoming
a kind of passageway;
it's not an end in itself,
it's becoming--or the atrium
and tablinum aren't ends
in themselves,
they are a passageway into this
huge peristyle.
 
If you look at the plan of the
peristyle, you can see that
there are columns,
but those columns are engaged
into the wall.
 
And that's well preserved.
 
I'll show it to you in a moment.
 
And then also extremely
interesting is now on axis with
the atrium and the huge
peristyle, is TR;
TR is the triclinium or
the dining room.
And look at the size of that
triclinium,
and look at the fact that the
triclinium opens both off
the peristyle and also has an
opening on this way,
on this end,
toward the front--toward the
other side,
excuse me--of the house.
And this is the side,
the southern side that faces
the sea.
 
And Herculaneum was very
close--I'll show you a restored
view that makes this clear in a
moment--Herculaneum was very
close to the sea.
 
And these two houses were
probably among the two most
expensive houses in Herculaneum,
because they had the best views
of the sea.
 
They were very high up,
above the sea wall,
and they looked right out at
the sea.
So the way they've designed
this: very large
triclinium,
to benefit from being able to
see both the peristyle and views
out over the sea,
even while you were dining.
 
There seems to have been a
colonnade over here--so views
through columns,
out to the sea--and then these
two rooms at D.
 
These are, as you can see here,
the diaetae;
d-i-a-e-t-a, singular;
d-i-a-e-t-a-e, plural.
These are rooms that are set
aside for sort of summer
pleasure, summer pleasures,
near the panoramic window that
you can look out to the sea.
 
So a place to relax and enjoy
the sunshine on the southern
end;
views of the sea;
a special room set aside just
for that kind of panoramic
viewing and the like.
 
So this move again toward
vista, toward panorama,
that we've been talking about
before.
So some very important changes
here that signal where Roman
residential architecture will go
in the future.
I'm going to wait on the plan
of the Stags until we finish
with the Mosaic Atrium.
 
The Mosaic Atrium,
you can see a view into the
atrium today.
 
You can see why the house is
called the House of the Mosaic
Atrium,
because of the very
well-preserved black and white,
striking black and white mosaic
that we find there.
 
And you can see how well
preserved the impluvium
is, with the mosaic decoration
around that.
You can also see,
however, if you look carefully
at this image--you've probably
noticed it already--that the
floor undulates.
 
Why does the floor undulate?
 
The floor undulates because of
that heavy blanket of lava that
entered into Herculaneum,
that made its presence known
and that distorted the shape of
the floor of the atrium,
but fortunately preserved it,
at the same time,
which is great.
 
We're looking from the atrium
into the tablinum,
and we see that basilican form
that we described already
before: a central nave,
a back wall,
side aisles on either--
you can't see this side,
but the same on this side as on
this side--
side aisles and circulation of
space among them.
And you can also see,
if you look very carefully--
and I have another view in a
moment--
that there are windows here as
well,
windows that allow light into
the system.
When we talked about the
Basilica of Pompeii,
I mentioned to you that the
Basilica at Pompeii did not have
a clerestory--
c-l-e-r-e s-t-o-r-y--did not
have a clerestory,
but that we would begin to see
the development of the
clerestory later.
We see it here;
this use of a clerestory with
the placement of windows in that
second story to allow light into
the structure.
 
It has been developed here.
 
It's a very important
architectural development,
and we're going to see again
the ramifications of that into
the future.
 
Here's another view of this
banqueting hall.
And, by the way,
the technical name for this--
and I have it on the Monument
List for you--
is the Egyptian oecus or
the oecus
Aegypticus;
the oecus
Aegyptiacus,
or if it's easier for you,
the Egyptian oecus:
this particular form of
banqueting hall,
in the shape of a basilica.
This view is helpful,
not only because you can see
the piers better,
but also because you can see
the windows better:
the clerestory system that
allows light into the space.
 
And you can also see this
ubiquitous use of white and red
for the piers in this case,
just as they are usually used
for columns.
 
The uppermost part of the pier
is white, and then they've
painted the bottom red.
 
So very similarly to the kind
of decor we saw also in Pompeii.
This is, of course,
the peristyle court.
You can see it here,
and you can see the way in
which these columns have been
engaged into the wall of the
garden court.
 
You can also see this
interesting use of combination
of stone and tile,
for the construction.
Also interesting,
as you look at the rooms that
line the side of the peristyle,
you can see how opened up they
have become.
 
We don't see that severe wall
that we saw in the very earliest
Domus Italica,
with no windows,
as you'll recall.
 
There are lots of windows here,
and they are large windows,
and they are allowing light
into the structure,
not just on the front,
where the views are,
but on the other sides of the
building.
This is again a very important
change and one that is going to
have again important
ramifications for the future.
Note also that the famous
Pompeian red is used to decorate
the walls.
 
So that's the House of the
Mosaic Atrium.
Now let's turn to the House of
the Stags;
the House of the Stags so
called because of a sculpture
that was found there,
that I'll show you a bit later.
If we look at the House of the
Stags, we see some interesting
things happening as well,
that seem to parallel the
development we've already
described.
This house too,
built between 62 and 79.
The entrance in this case is on
the uppermost right,
right here, and you can see
that you enter in along a
fauces,
along the throat of the house,
into what is designated as the
atrium.
But that atrium is not like any
other atrium we've seen thus far
this semester.
 
What's missing?
 
Student: 
Impluvium.
Prof: The
impluvium;
the impluvium is
missing.
If there's no impluvium,
there's no compluvium,
which means that the room is
not open to the sky.
And we call an atrium that has
no opening--and I've put this on
the Monument List for you--an
atrium
testudinatum;
an atrium
testudinatum is an atrium
that has no opening to the sky.
And that's the case here.
 
That also tends to underplay
the space,
because it's no longer as
interesting as it was when it
had that wonderful basin and the
skylight and so on and so forth.
And if you look at the plan,
you'll see it's very
interesting.
 
It has lots of openings on
various sides.
So this is a really good
example of what I was hinting at
before, and that is the atrium
beginning to go the way of the
tablinum;
the atrium beginning to become
a passageway from one part of
the house to another.
It really is merely a
passageway from the outside,
from the fauces,
into the other rooms of the
house.
 
What has received the greatest
emphasis,
by the patron and by the
designer, is not the atrium,
but is the triclinium or
dining hall,
and you can see that there are
two of them,
and they are placed in
relationship to one another,
axial relationship to one
another.
So they're almost talking to
one another;
there's a kind of dialogue,
an architectural dialogue,
between that smaller
triclinium and this
larger triclinium,
across an open courtyard.
So here we see again the
triclinium beginning to
emerge as the single most
important room in the house,
which obviously signals what's
going on in these houses --
that people are beginning to
use them even more than they did
before,
not only as places of business
but as places to enjoy fabulous
dinner parties,
while you can look out over the
sea.
And, in fact,
if you look at this
triclinium,
the larger one,
you can see again it opens both
off the garden court,
and also opens toward the
south, where you would have seen
the views of the sea;
all of this very deliberate.
We see the diaetae here
as well, these summer living
spaces with views out over the
water.
And here we see an interesting
detail,
which is a kind of kiosk or
gazebo that's located in the
front,
and that actually still
survives, and I'll show that to
you in a moment.
So again quite momentous
changes in residential
architecture in Herculaneum and
in Campania in general in the
late first century A.D.
 
This is a restored view -- very
helpful because we can use it to
illustrate a number of things.
 
We can use it to illustrate how
close to the sea Herculaneum
was.
 
We can use it to look at the
sea wall that I talked about
before.
 
We can use it to look at the
harbor, the small boat dock that
was down here,
with boats waiting.
This was the place that people
ran to in order to escape the
onslaught of the Vesuvius.
 
And this is exactly -- this sea
wall is exactly where those
bodies were found,
so they made it this far but
not far enough.
 
And we can pick out both the
House of the Mosaic Atrium,
right here, and the House of
the Stags, over here:
both of them very large,
as you can see.
You can see in the case--here's
the northern end--
you can see is this case,
for the House of the Mosaic
Atrium,
the compluvium of the
atrium that we described,
the mosaic atrium.
You can see the open court here.
 
You can see the side that faces
the sea and how opened up it is,
how many windows there were,
how open,
the diaetae on either
side, where you could get nice
views.
 
Here, the House of the Stags,
same sort of thing.
You see no opening whatsoever
in the northern end,
no opening in the ceiling,
no compluvium.
You see the two
trinclinia facing one
another across the open court,
and you see that little gazebo
entranceway,
a gazebo that again looks out
toward the sea,
that distinctive detail.
Here are a couple more views,
just to show you quickly.
If you go and visit
Herculaneum, you can still see
those sea walls there,
made out of concrete as you can
see.
 
They're well worth taking a
look at.
And this is a view taken--this
is one of the ways you can enter
into the city--taken across.
 
You can see Vesuvius in the
background, and you can see this
is the House of the Mosaic
Atrium, that we've been looking
at.
 
This is the House of the Stags.
 
And you can tell the difference
because of the little gazebo,
little kiosk in front.
 
And here you can see again so
well the way this is positioned
high up on the wall,
with spectacular views of the
sea, and this opening up of the
wall to allow maximum vista,
maximum panorama,
through those spaces in the
house.
 
Note the kiosk here,
and then note this other
entrance;
I'm going to show you both of
those in detail.
 
This is a little gazebo.
 
As you can see,
it rests on piers.
It was obviously a very
pleasant place to sit,
with marble furniture,
and to have a glass of wine out
here, looking out over the sea.
 
And you can see once again that
the piers have been stuccoed
over: white on top,
red on the bottom,
just as we have seen is so
characteristic also of Pompeii.
And right behind,
that other entranceway,
that I can also show you,
where you can see--
if you look very closely,
you can see not only the red
paint on the pilasters,
but also the very elaborate
decoration in blue and white of
the pediment above.
This gives you some sense also
of the kind of decorative
sculpture there would've been in
buildings like this:
the marble tables,
these wonderful statues--there
are two of them--
of stags being attacked by
hounds, and these stags are what
have given this house its name,
the House of the Stags.
 
I want to turn from Roman
residential architecture in
Herculaneum and the developments
there,
to early Roman wall decoration,
painted decoration,
and as I said at the beginning,
specifically to the First and
Second Styles of Roman wall
painting,
which are particularly
interesting in the context of a
course on architecture because,
as we'll see,
they are so architecturally
oriented.
I want to begin with a wall
from the House of Sallust,
and we'll go back to Pompeii.
 
We'll be looking at examples
both in Pompeii and Herculaneum,
and also Rome.
 
I want to look at the House of
Sallust in Pompeii.
And you can see from your
Monument List that the
tablinum was decorated
with what we call First Style
Roman wall painting.
 
That's obviously a modern,
scholarly designation.
They didn't call it that in
ancient Rome or Pompeii or
Herculaneum.
 
First Style Roman wall painting.
 
This tablinum in this
house was decorated in around
100 B.C., which is when we date
most of the examples of First
Style Roman wall painting.
 
It is very well preserved,
and it gives us a very good
sense of what the Romans,
or what, in this case,
the Pompeians were trying to
achieve.
This style, the First Style of
Roman wall painting is also--
you'll see it referred to in
your books and in your textbooks
and in scholarship in general,
as either the Masonry Style,
or the Incrustation Style.
 
And the reason for this--both
of those are good descriptions--
because you can see that what
is at work here is that the
designers are trying to create a
wall,
they're trying to create the
illusion that what we're looking
at is not a stucco and paint
wall,
which is actually what it's
made out of,
but a real marble wall.
 
We can see that the wall is
divided into a series of zones,
architectural zones,
which are exactly the zones
that were used in Roman building
technique.
We don't quite see it here.
 
I'll show it to you in another
example.
There's usually,
way at the bottom,
a very narrow band,
which is called a plinth,
p-l-i-n-t-h.
 
The plinth has above it what's
called a socle,
s-o-c-l-e, which is a higher,
a slightly higher element.
Then what are called the
orthostats, o-r-t-h-o-s-t-a-t-s;
the orthostats are these blocks
here.
And then the isodomic,
i-s-o-d-o-m-i-c,
the isodomic courses;
you see those here.
And then usually either a
stringcourse,
or more likely,
or in addition to,
a cornice,
what's called a cornice,
a projecting cornice--
c-o-r-n-i-c-e--at the top.
So plinth, socle,
orthostats, isodomic blocks,
and then the stringcourse and
the cornice, which again
corresponds to actual Roman
building technique.
But more important than that
terminology is again what they
are trying to achieve here.
 
It is clear when you look--well
first of all keep in mind that
this is not flat;
it's a relief,
it's a relief wall,
and the wall has been built up
in relief through stucco.
 
They've taken the rubble wall,
they've added stucco,
and they've made that stucco
look like a series of blocks
that are divided by these
stringcourses.
Then what they've done is
painted those blocks,
and they've painted those
blocks not all one color,
not all Pompeian red,
but all different kinds of
colors: green and red and pink
and beige,
and sometimes multicolored,
as we'll see.
What is the implication here?
 
The implication here is that we
are looking--
that they're trying to create
the illusion,
through stucco and paint,
of a marble wall,
of a marble wall that would've
been very expensive to build,
because you would've had to
bring all of these multicolored
marbles,
which you could not find in
Italy, from places very far
away: from North Africa or from
Asia Minor or from Greece or
from Egypt.
You'd have to bring it from
very, very, very far away,
and that would cost a
tremendous amount of money.
So what they are saying here
is, "I'm the owner of this
house.
 
I am wealthy enough to be able
to afford bringing marble from
all over the world and using it
to decorate my
tablinum."
 
Now was anyone fooled that this
was a real marble wall and not a
painted wall?
 
Well probably not.
 
But the idea was to give one
the sense that this was a very
expensive wall.
 
And we'll see one of the
most--well I'll hold that until
later, that thought until later.
 
Here's another example in the
same house.
This is the House of Sallust.
 
We are looking--we have
just--here's the tablinum
wall that we just looked at.
 
We are now in the atrium of the
house, or what survives of the
atrium of the house.
 
We are looking at two of the
cubicula that open off
the atrium.
 
And if you look at the walls,
you can see again the same
effect, that the rubble wall has
been covered with stucco;
that the stucco has been
divided--the stucco has been
built up in relief;
that it has been divided into a
series of architectural zones.
 
And then the individual blocks,
in the orthostat level and in
the isodomic level,
have been painted different
colors,
again to give this illusion
that what we are looking at is a
marble wall,
not a painted wall.
 
So an attempt to make
something, to fictionalize and
make something seem more than it
actually is.
Here's another view,
a restored view,
that gives you a sense perhaps
of what this might have looked
like when the colors were more
vivid.
We do believe that those
cubicula had doors,
probably wooden doors that no
longer survive.
And you can see not only the
architectural courses here,
but the effect that this
would've had.
Here's one of these
multicolored blocks,
again, marble that would've had
to be brought from North Africa
or somewhere like that,
where they had these kinds of
multicolored marbles.
 
But this gives you some sense
of what the appearance would
have been.
 
And perhaps from a distance
your eye really would have been
fooled into thinking that this
was a real marble wall.
You'll remember the restored
view I showed you of the House
of the Faun,
where we stood again in the
atrium,
looking back at the statuette
of the Faun,
and I mentioned that the walls
were decorated with First Style
Roman wall painting.
And so we see that again here.
 
And we see the kind of effect
it would've had if the entire
space was covered with this kind
of wall painting.
You can also see the
relationship between those
paintings and the vista that one
saw as one stood and looked back
through the columns,
on to the additional columns of
the peristyle court.
 
Another example of a First
Style wall,
this one from Herculaneum,
is the so-called Samnite House,
which we saw earlier today,
with that fabulous atrium.
The Samnite House.
 
And this is the fauces
of the Samnite House;
also dates to 100 B.C.
 
And you can see the same scheme
as we already saw.
One additional feature that you
can see better here is the
plinth, this very narrow band
that we see at the bottom,
the plinth.
 
The socle here.
 
The orthostats here.
 
The isodomic courses here.
 
The stringcourse,
and then the cornice.
So exactly the same scheme that
we saw in the other house at
Pompeii we see here in the
Samnite House at Herculaneum,
this one even better preserved.
 
And that's actually a very
washed out view,
but I can show you a better
one, where you can get a better
sense of the coloration of this
particular wall:
the plinth,
the socle, the orthostats,
the isodomics and then a
frieze;
as you can see,
in between the stringcourse and
the cornice, there is a red
frieze.
And look at--this is better
preserved so that you can get a
better sense again of what this
might have looked like in
ancient Roman times--
this wonderful contrast between
the reddish,
porphyry-like stone that
probably would've come from
Egypt;
the multi-grained stone that
might've come from North Africa;
the kind of impact that this
would've had.
But again, most important for
us, is what they're trying to do
is create an illusion.
 
They're trying to create,
make something look like
something it really isn't.
 
They are using again stucco and
paint to make a wall,
to make a very plain wall,
to make a rubble and stucco and
painted wall into a very
grandiose wall,
that looked like walls that
were probably the kinds of
walls--
in fact we're sure they were
the kinds of walls--
that decorated the palaces of
great Hellenistic kings in the
Hellenistic East.
We know that the great kings of
Pergamon, and some of the other
kingdoms, had palaces that had
real marble walls.
And we think it's very likely
that that is the sort of thing
that they are trying to recreate
here.
And then a very,
a particularly important point,
I think, is the fact that even
though I would love to lay claim
to this particular style for the
Romans,
the Romans did not invent the
First Style of Roman wall
painting.
 
They copied it from the Greeks.
 
We know that the Greeks used
this First Style of Roman wall
paint -- it wasn't called the
First Style of Roman wall
painting, obviously,
for them.
But they used something
comparable to the First Style,
which we believe was derived
from these Hellenistic palaces,
ultimately.
 
And you can see here a view of
a wall,
or a drawing of a wall,
that was in--
and it's on your Monument List
-- from the House of the Trident
on the Island of Delos:
late second,
early first century B.C.
 
The Island of Delos was
strategically located between
Italy and Greece and Asia Minor
and so on.
It was one of these crossroads
of trade, and it was a place
where Romans settled in the
first centuries B.C.
especially.
 
And we see houses
there--probably some Greek
owners, some Roman owners--that
have this same kind of style.
It's painted.
 
We see the same zones--I won't
describe them again--
but the same architectural
zones that we see in the First
Style paintings in Pompeii and
in Herculaneum.
And we believe that those are
based on Hellenistic precedents.
But they show us again that
this was used in the Greek East.
It was probably picked up by
some of the traders,
brought back to Italy,
and used there.
The fact that it's a Greek
import is extremely important,
because then we can group it
with all the other Greek imports
that we've been talking about:
the columns,
the peristyles,
the Alexander mosaic;
all of the things that the
Romans, the Hellenizing elements
that we have seen the Romans be
particularly fond of in this
early period and have used
themselves in their architecture
and in their architectural
decor.
So we see that here,
again, the taking over of a
Greek style of organizing and
decorating a wall for these
Roman buildings.
 
This is a house we'll look at
later in the semester at Ostia,
the port city of Ostia,
the so-called House of Cupid
and Psyche,
and we see the two lovers here,
on a pedestal in the center.
 
I show it to you here
only--it's a much later
structure--
but I show it to you only
because you'll see,
when we get to that,
that the Romans do--
and we'll see it much earlier
than that in fact--
the Romans do begin to revet
some of their structures with
marble--
this begins already in the age
of Augustus,
so we'll see it very soon--and
eventually it becomes part of
house design as well.
 
So while this isn't as
grandiose as a Hellenistic
palace would've been,
it does give you some idea of
what a house would look like,
or a palace would look like,
that had marble on the floor
and marble on the walls.
And it's this kind of thing
that they are trying to create
the illusion of--
this is very subtle with
pastels and so on--
but it's this kind of thing
that they are trying to create
the illusion of,
with the Roman First Style.
 
We see First Style Roman wall
painting also in Rome,
and in fact I can show you an
even more spectacular example in
Rome.
 
It's from the House of the
Griffins, and I show you a view
into a great barrel vaulted
room.
We're walking along the
corridor of a great barrel
vaulted room in the House of the
Griffins in Rome,
on the Palatine Hill,
in fact, under the later
imperial palace of the emperor
Domitian.
It dates to 80 B.C.;
this particular room,
which we call Room 3,
dates to 80 B.C.
It's from this room that the
house gets its name.
You can get a glimpse of--and
I'll show you a better view in a
moment--of the griffins.
 
There are heraldic griffins in
a lunette, painted red in the
background.
 
They're made out of--they're
built up in stucco -- and then
the lunette itself is painted
red.
It's from those griffins that
the house got its name.
We are looking down the side of
that house, and we see again
that is built up in stucco,
so it's still a kind of stucco
relief.
 
But if you look at the
paintings on the walls,
and on the back wall,
the side wall or the back
wall--
and I'll show you a better view
here--
you will see that although we
are dealing with something that
looks like a First Style wall--
it's very flat,
it's divided into architectural
zones: the socle,
the orthostats,
the isodomic courses here--
that is all done entirely in
paint,
as you can see.
It's not built up as a relief.
 
The only relief here that we
see is the relief that is used
for the heraldic griffins,
up in the uppermost part.
When this was in better
condition, a painting was made
of it, and I show that painting
to you here.
And I hope this will give you a
better sense than anything else
I've shown you today of how
glorious these things must have
been in antiquity,
and how again if you stood back
from them,
you might have been somewhat
fooled.
 
We see the wall here.
 
We can see all the components
that we've already described:
the plinth,
the socle, the orthostats,
the isodomic courses,
and then the lunette with the
heraldic griffins.
 
And again, the whole idea of
this being to give you the
impression that you are looking
at a real marble wall,
even though you are looking at
a painted wall.
Much more important for the
development of Roman painting is
another house that I'm going to
show you here,
which is Room 2,
in the House of the Griffins.
And this dates a little bit
later;
it was done between 80 and 60
B.C.
And we look at this;
we will see that there are
beginning to be some important
changes here.
As you look at this--you see
we're looking at a
barrel-vaulted room,
once again -- all three walls
well decorated and very well
preserved.
So we can see exactly what's
going on here.
As we look quickly,
we see remnants of the First
Style wall.
 
We see that we have the same
architectural zones--the
plinths, the orthostats,
the isodomic courses--and we
have the same idea of marble.
 
You can see that these
variegated marble blocks and
these red panels are meant to
look again like marble,
although this is done entirely
in paint;
there is no stucco used in this
room whatsoever.
Stucco is not used anywhere
here.
It's completely flat and it is
painted as an illusionistic
view.
 
But as we look at this,
we see although we get a sense
that that First Style wall is
kind of still present,
we also see some again very
important changes.
We see the way in which they've
treated the socle here,
to create these kinds of
illusionistic cubes that look
almost as if they're projecting
out into our space.
Look also at what they've done
by adding columns,
columns that stand on bases,
this colonnade that seems to
encircle the room,
the way a peristyle encircles a
garden court,
this introduction of columnar
architecture.
 
Again clearly under the
influence of Greek architecture
and clearly commensurate with
what they're doing in temple
architecture,
what they're doing in sanctuary
architecture,
and also in house architecture.
So we see those columns.
 
And it looks as if those
columns are resting on bases
that are represented as if
they're receding into the
background.
 
The artist has paid a lot of
attention to trying to render
them perspectivally.
 
So although all of this is done
in paint,
we get the impression that what
we're looking at is a colonnade
that is in front of the wall--
it projects into the
spectator's space--
and that what lies behind it is
a kind of First Style wall.
 
This is the very beginnings of
what we call Second Style Roman
wall painting:
this introduction of columns;
this introduction of elements
that project into the viewer's
space;
this sense that you are looking
at two levels of space,
the level of space that is the
wall, and then the level of
space that projects in front of
it.
 
And look at the columns at the
top of the columns.
You will see they hold lintels,
but those lintels also are
shown as if they're receding
into depth,
and you can sort of barely
see--and you'll see this better
as you study this in the online
images.
You'll be able to see the
actual coffered ceiling that is
represented on the top,
underneath those lintels,
which again indicate that this
is being represented in depth.
And here you can see exactly
what they're trying to do.
They're trying to use paint and
only paint to recreate the sort
of thing that we saw in built
architecture in the oecus
in the House of the Silver
Wedding: these columns that
project in front of a painted
wall.
This is the pièce de
résistance of what we
call Second Style Roman wall
painting.
This is the preeminent example
of mature Second Style Roman
wall painting.
 
It is a scene in the Villa of
the Mysteries.
It's in one of the
cubicula;
cubiculum 16,
at the Villa of the Mysteries
in Pompeii.
 
It dates to 60 to 50 B.C.
 
It's a further development of
what we saw in Room 2 of the
House of the Griffins.
 
We see the First Style wall is
still present.
We see the plinth;
we see the socle;
we see the orthostats;
we see the isodomic blocks,
although they are done entirely
in paint.
Again, no stucco here
whatsoever.
We see the columns have also
been added, as is typical of
Second Style.
 
But here the columns are even
more interesting,
because we can see that the
columns not only project from
the wall themselves,
but they support an
entablature--e-n
-t-a-b-l-a-t-u-r-e--
an entablature which projects
out toward the spectator,
and they tried to make that
look as if it recedes into
depth.
 
We see another set of columns
here that support a straight
lintel.
 
But then look,
the lintel arches up in the
center.
 
This is called an arculated
lintel, an arculated lintel.
We have not seen an arculated
lintel in built architecture.
This is very early,
60 to 50 B.C.
We are seeing it here.
 
Why are we seeing it here and
why are we not seeing it in
built architecture is a very
interesting issue and one we
could debate in the online
forum.
We see that that First Style
wall has been--oh,
and we also see columns that
support one of these lintels,
with a coffered ceiling;
the brown coffered ceiling up
at the uppermost part.
 
The First Style wall--this is a
very complex painting and a very
interesting painting
intellectually.
The First Style wall has
been--it's there,
but it's been dropped down.
 
It's been dropped down,
and now we can see something
that lies behind that First
Style wall.
We see a view of this round
structure, called a
tholos--t-h-o-l-o-s;
a round tholos.
It's like the tholos
that was at the top of the
Sanctuary of Fortuna Primigenia,
at Palestrina.
It's a shrine of some sort,
and that shrine is surrounded
by blue sky.
 
So that's something that's
presumably outside.
So the First Style wall has
been dropped down,
and now we have this vista or
panorama of something that lies
outside the wall.
 
So we, in a sense,
have three zones of space.
We have the columns that
project into the spectator's
space.
 
We have the First Style,
or what's left of the First
Style wall.
 
And then we see a view through
the wall, to something that lies
beyond: a vista,
a panorama, a window.
It's like opening up the wall
as a window, to what lies
beyond.
 
It's fictive again,
in the same way that First
Style wall painting was fictive.
 
It creates an illusion of
something that is there,
that isn't really there.
 
And it coincides certainly with
the kind of development we've
been tracing also in built
architecture:
this opening up of the house;
opening up of the windows;
opening up bay windows,
to views that lie beyond.
There're also these mysterious
things that are called,
that people usually refer to as
"the black curtains"
in Second Style Roman wall
painting.
You can see this black element
that looks almost as if it were
a curtain that's been dropped
down to reveal the scene that
lies beyond.
 
Because of this,
and because of the columns,
the projecting columns,
many scholars have suggested
that there's some relationship
between this and theatrical
architecture--
theatrical architecture that
was probably stage sets and the
like,
that were probably initially
made out of wood,
that don't survive any
longer--and that these may
imitate some of those stage
sets,
and that this may be an actual
curtain used in theatrical
performances.
 
But there are other ways to
think about those black
curtains,
so to speak,
and I think we don't have time
to do that here now,
but we should definitely engage
on that in the online forum.
Oh and I do want to say one
last thing--
we're going to look at one more
example of Second Style Roman
wall painting--
one thing, one distinction that
I want to make between the First
and the Second Style is while
the First Style of Roman wall
painting was a Greek import,
there is nothing like the
Second Style,
as we've just described it,
anywhere in Greek art.
The Second Style of Roman wall
painting is without any question
a Roman innovation,
and an extraordinary Roman
innovation at that,
and one that is very closely
allied with developments in
architecture,
as we've described them.
 
This is another example,
the Villa of Publius Fannius
Sinistor: Second Style painting.
 
Dates to 50 to 40 B.C.
 
It was in that town of
Boscoreale that I showed you on
the map before,
between Herculaneum and
Pompeii, and it was removed from
there at one point and made its
way to New York.
 
It is now in the Metropolitan,
and has been for a long time,
in the Metropolitan Museum of
Art;
it is usually referred to as
The Met Cubiculum.
And if you haven't seen it,
you should go down and see it.
It is most extraordinary.
 
They've tried to recreate--the
paintings are all ancient--
but they've tried to recreate
the ambience by putting a black
and white mosaic on the floor
and giving us a nice,
comfortable,
sort of, bed,
and a footstool over here,
that are just the kind of thing
that you would've seen in that
room,
although they don't actually
belong.
And they've added a window and
so on and so forth.
But the paintings are all
genuine ancient paintings.
And what's amazing is we have
the entire spread of the room.
And actually there are mirror
images, the scenes are mirror
images of one another,
across the two long walls.
I want to show you just a
couple of details.
This is a detail from that room
that shows a tholos seen
through columns.
 
Once again we see here--this is
an example of Second Style,
but it's a little bit more
developed here,
because you can see that the
First Style wall has really been
dropped down now,
and, in fact,
it doesn't even look like a
First Style wall anymore,
it just looks like a red
parapet with a green frieze and
a little cornice at the top.
 
But it doesn't really look like
a First Style wall.
In fact, it looks like a wall
with a gate that doesn't look
like there's any knob or
anything like that;
so we kind of wonder,
can we get into this?
Do we have to jump over it?
 
How do we get from here into
what lies beyond?
We're not absolutely sure.
 
But we see a tholos once
again, one of these sort of
sacred shrines.
 
And here you can see it is
surrounded by a peristyle,
by columns: a peristyle just
like one might find in a house,
or in a villa.
 
So what are we looking at here?
 
We see columns that support a
pediment.
The pediment if you look--a
triangular pediment.
What's interesting about it is
it's broken at the bottom.
The Greeks would never break
their pediments.
The Romans have broken this
pediment to allow space for the
tholos to rise up between
it.
And it's a very interesting
thing to do,
and it shows while on one hand
they respect ancient Greek
architecture,
they're also willing to depart
from it and break the rules,
so to speak.
And we're going to see that's
emphasized by the Romans later
on.
 
So the tholos here.
 
So we have these different
elements.
We have the columns projecting
toward us.
We have the wall of the gateway.
 
We also have this view through
the window, a picture window,
into what lies beyond.
 
And we seem to have these black
curtains again;
in fact, we have three of these
black curtains.
So we ask ourselves again,
what are those exactly?
Another view,
just showing you this in
relationship to the House of the
Faun, and this whole idea of
vista and panorama,
from one part to another.
We see the same thing happening
in painting as we see happening
in that.
 
And then one last detail of the
Publius Fannius Met Cubiculum
over here.
 
A very interesting detail,
and I urge you to explore this
on your own, because it's so
fascinating in detail,
this doorway.
 
And then most interesting of
all this panoply of structures
that seem to be piled,
one on top of another,
in a series of stories.
 
This again is very early.
 
It's 50 to 40 B.C.
 
We don't see anything like that
in built architecture then.
We only see second stories
beginning to be added in
Pompeian structures,
Herculaneum structures,
between the earthquake and
Vesuvius,
between 62 and 79.
 
But here, already,
in the mid-century B.C.,
we see this depicted in paint.
 
Is this fanciful?
 
Is it based on something that
was built in wood that no longer
survives?
 
These are questions,
perhaps unanswerable questions,
but ones well worth pondering.
 
I want to show you,
in the few minutes that remain,
just two more houses,
quickly.
One of them--both of them--are
important though,
because they belong to the
emperor and empress,
to Augustus and to Livia.
 
Augustus purchased some
property on the Palatine Hill.
He wanted to live--as Rome's
first emperor of Rome--he wanted
to live where Romulus had lived
before him, of course.
And he buys some property up
here, builds a house.
He puts a temple to his patron
god, right next door,
Apollo, and then Livia has her
own house right across the
street: his wife Livia.
 
She lives with him in his
house, but she's also got her
own house right across the
street.
And both of these houses were
decorated with paintings.
I want to show you first the
ones in the House of Augustus,
the most famous room in the
House of Augustus,
called the Room of the Masks.
 
And here is where we see most
clearly the possible
relationship between Roman wall
painting of the Second Style--
because this is also Second
Style Roman wall painting--
and the theater.
 
If you look at the restored
view at the top,
of a typical theater
façade,
as we think it would've
looked--a theater stage
building,
as we think it would have
looked early on;
possibly made out of wood,
again, rather than stone--you
can see it has a central section
with a pediment,
and then it has two wings.
And we see the same scheme
here: the central section,
which is called technically a
regia in theater
architecture--
r-e-g-i-a--and then two wings
that are technically called
hospitalia,
h-o-s-p-i-t-a-l-i-a;
hospitalia.
So this tripartite scheme of a
Roman theater.
And if that is lost on us,
note that there are masks,
one on either side,
theatrical masks that also give
us a hint that we are looking at
a theater set.
Here's a more vivid view of one
of the walls,
where you can see that
tripartite division into central
section and two wings.
 
You can see the masks,
and you can see a view into
some sort of landscape.
 
The sky is no longer blue,
it's white, but it does
continue back beyond,
behind the architecture.
So you get the sense that
you're being beckoned into--in
fact, there's no barrier here at
all.
The wall is gone here.
 
There's no gateway.
 
You can walk right in to this.
 
What is this?
 
There's no blue sky,
so it doesn't look as real as
the others did.
 
It's not the sort of thing that
might have been right outside
your window, of a house.
 
It's some kind of sacred
landscape,
some kind of strange sacred
landscape,
with a curved colonnade,
with a tree,
and with a very phallic-looking
shrine here in the center;
some kind of sacred space.
 
We call these sacro-idyllic
landscapes: sort of idyllic and
sacred at the same time that
you're being beckoned into to
explore.
 
Again, this is a stage set of
some sort?
Or is it something else?
 
Is it something that has
religious connotations?
The other interesting thing
about the Room of the Masks in
the House of Augustus is that
some scholars have claimed that,
although it is usually said
that one-point linear
perspective,
in which all lines converge at
a single point in the distance,
was invented in the
Renaissance, a case can be made
that it was invented in Roman
times.
 
And if it happened,
it happened here in this house
where--
and scholars,
even of the Renaissance,
have studied the way in which
these points converge in this
painting,
all the way to a point at the
end.
So if that's true,
the Romans may have done that,
perhaps inadvertently,
perhaps on purpose.
They were very interested in
perspective.
I'll say a bit more about that
in a moment.
But if they invented it here,
they quickly rejected it,
as we're going to see in next
week's lecture.
Just a couple of details:
the mask and the beautiful way
in which this very talented
artist,
probably one of the best
artists of the day,
has built up this mask out of
touches of grey and white and
black;
an extraordinary thing.
And then again I really do urge
you to look at these paintings
in detail, because if you do you
will be very rewarded.
You'll see all kinds of strange
creatures, like winged figures,
this very strange thing lurking
up there.
Is that vegetal? Is it animal?
 
Is it human? What is that?
 
These wonderful,
what look like swans,
golden swans that decorate
this.
When you look very close,
you can see there's a figural
frieze here.
 
And look at that wonderful
representation of the fruit or
vegetables in a bowl,
a bowl that is represented so
magnificently and translucently
by the artist.
In the maybe three minutes or
so that remain,
I want to show you one last
painting,
and it's a very special
painting indeed,
and I think it ties together
everything that we've been
talking about today.
 
It is a painting from,
not the House of Livia,
where there are some preserved
paintings--
we're not going to look at
those--but from a villa of
Livia,
located north of Rome at a
place called Primaporta:
the Villa of Livia at
Primaporta.
 
And it is in a sense the
ultimate example and a very last
gasp of Second Style Roman wall
painting.
The villa was put up in 30 to
25 B.C.
A barrel-vaulted room was
decorated with this gardenscape.
Now as you look at this,
you'd probably say to me:
"That doesn't look like
anything we've looked at today.
There's no architecture there,
there's no remnants of a First
Style wall.
 
There are no projecting columns.
 
There are no black curtains.
 
And so on and so forth.
 
It's very different from
anything we've seen."
But we categorize this as a
Second Style wall.
Why do we do that?
 
Because there's a division
between where we stand as
spectator and the space that
lies beyond the fence.
There is a fence that divides
our space from the space that
lies outside,
but it's a very delicate fence,
a white,
kind of lattice fence,
not unlike the one we saw in
the Samnite House on the second
story.
 
We don't have columns,
we have trees,
a different kind of upright
here.
But what connects this to the
Second Style is that it is the
ultimate example of a Roman
painting as a panoramic picture
window.
 
This is what they hoped you
would see when you looked out of
the rooms of your house,
of your great bay window in the
Villa of the Mysteries.
 
If you didn't see the sea,
you would see some glorious
landscape, a gardenscape,
outside of your window,
with beautiful trees.
 
If you look at these with care,
you will see that this is an
artist who understood nature and
observed it,
who knew the difference among
the fruits that would be on
trees like this--
there are fruit trees here--
who had a sense of the way in
which birds would alight on a
leaf,
if they were headed toward one;
who had a sense of the way in
which leaves would rustle in the
breeze;
who had a sense of the way in
which light can fall differently
on a leaf, so that you sometimes
see the lighted side or the side
in shadow.
This is an artist who has
really observed nature and has
depicted what he saw.
 
And here are a couple of
details where you can see that
very well, of this tree.
 
You see what I mean by some
leaves cast in shadows;
some leaves have light shining
on them.
You get a sense of the breeze.
 
You get this wonderful way in
which this black bird alights on
the edge of a leaf,
this bird over here surveying
this piece of fruit,
deciding whether he wants to
peck it or not.
 
This is very sophisticated
stuff.
And you can also see,
if you explore this painting a
bit more,
that it has and that it
partakes of what we call today
atmospheric perspective,
not one-point perspective,
but atmospheric perspective.
What is atmospheric perspective?
 
If you look at this carefully,
you will see that all of the
items that are in--all the
objects that are in the
foreground have very distinct
outlines;
whereas those in the middle
ground are a little fuzzier;
and those way in the background
are fuzzier still.
And there are actually--you
probably could barely see them--
but there are actually
mountains in the distance,
and those mountains in the
distance are so fuzzy in their
silhouette that you can barely
see them.
But you get this sense of
space, of moving back,
because of this use of
atmospheric perspective.
So this, the ultimate Roman
painting,
Second Style,
the Roman painting as panorama,
that again corresponds so well
to all the discussions we've
been having the last couple of
lectures of this move towards
increased vista,
increased panorama,
both in painting and also in
architecture.
Thanks guys.
 
