Prof: Good morning.
 
The title of today's lecture is
"Exploring Special Subjects
on Pompeian Walls."
 
And that's exactly what I'm
going to do today,
to explore a number of scenes:
a frieze of figures,
a landscape scene,
portraits on Pompeian walls,
and also still life painting.
 
And we're going to look at them
both in the context of the
architectural style walls that
we've been discussing thus far
this term,
especially the Second,
Third, and Fourth Styles,
but we'll also look at them as
interesting in their own right.
 
We ended last time with a
discussion of Fourth Style Roman
wall painting,
and I want to show you again
what I consider the
quintessential Fourth Style
wall.
 
It's the Ixion Room in the
House of Vettii,
in Pompeii, and you see it here
once again in all its garish
glory.
 
It's an amazing painting.
 
We talked about the fact that
it is a kind of compendium of
all the styles that went before.
 
We described,
for example,
the socle,
which attempts to imitate
marble incrustation in paint,
which of course makes reference
to the First Style of Roman wall
painting.
We talked about the fact that
the Second Style elements could
be seen in the substantial
columns that are located in the
second tier,
or in the main tier of the
painted wall --
columns that support a lintel
above and a coffered ceiling.
 
We see those here;
we see them over here as
well--those, again,
elements of the Second Style.
We talked about the Third Style
features in this particular
painting,
the mythological landscape in
the center that has a frame,
a black frame around it,
to make it abundantly clear
that this is not a window to
something else but rather meant
to look as if it is a flat panel
painting hanging on the wall--
Third Style element.
Over here, another Third Style
element,
the floating mythological
figure, in the center in this
case,
of a white panel with a border
that is made up of floral or
vegetal motifs--
again elements of the Third
Style.
With regard to Fourth Style,
the introduction of
architecture,
once again, on either side of
the main panel in the main zone.
 
These are not representations
of complete buildings but
rather,
as we discussed,
fragments of buildings depicted
in illogical space,
and then in the uppermost tier
we see the architectural cages
that we also described as
characteristic of the Fourth
Style.
 
So all of these elements,
as I said,
a compendium of all of these
painting styles,
all in one place,
is where Roman painting ends up
right before the destruction of
Mount Vesuvius.
We also have looked--in fact,
I want to return at the
beginning of today's
presentation to the Villa of the
Mysteries in Pompeii.
 
We've looked at it twice
already.
We looked at it from the
standpoint of its architectural
evolution.
 
We looked at the two phases,
first and second phases,
of the Villa of the Mysteries,
and you'll remember the plan.
This is the second phase plan,
which I show to you again,
and you'll recall the design of
the villa, where you enter at
the top.
 
You enter into the peristyle,
then into the atrium,
then into the tablinum;
this unusual sequence of rooms
that is more in keeping with
villa design,
according to Vitruvius,
than to house design.
And we looked at a room,
a Second Style wall painted
room, called Cubiculum 16,
and I can show you where
Cubiculum 16 is on this plan.
 
You see it right over here.
 
And you'll remember that this
was an outstanding example of
mature Second Style Roman wall
painting --
this idea of opening up the
wall illusionistically.
Remnants of the First Style
wall still here.
That wall is dropped down.
 
We do have substantial columns,
with projecting entablatures,
a coffered ceiling above and,
in this case,
a lintel, and then an arcuated
lintel;
all of these elements typical
of the Second Style,
and especially the opening up
of the wall to see a vista that
lies beyond,
in this case a tholos or
round shrine,
surrounded by blue sky.
So quintessential Second Style,
in Cubiculum 16.
The room that I want to turn to
today, also in the Villa of the
Mysteries, is Room 5.
 
Room 5 is located over here.
 
You see it right to the right
of the tablinum,
and close to the southern side,
close to the great bay window
that was added in Phase Two to
provide magnificent views out
over the sea.
 
Room 5, it's a plain
rectangular room,
or so it looks in plan,
fairly large in scale--not as
large as the atrium but fairly
large.
And while the plan is on the
screen,
I just want to point to the
entranceway,
to the room,
this very small entranceway
here--
it's actually very important in
terms of our decoding of these
paintings that we find in
there--
this small entranceway.
And then what you see in plan
here are actually windows,
rather than additional
doorways.
And we're going to see that the
designer of this particular
room,
the painter,
took the corners,
took the location of the door
and also the corners of the
room,
and the location of the
windows, into great
consideration when he painted
the scenes on this wall.
This is a view of Room 5 as it
looks today.
It's often also referred to as
the room with the Dionysiac
Mystery Paintings,
mystery paintings that we'll
see feature the god of wine,
Dionysus.
You can see from looking at
this general view that the
paintings are quite
well-preserved.
We'll see that they cover all
four walls of the room,
except for the space--except
for where the windows are,
obviously.
 
And you can also see that this
is like nothing we've looked at
thus far this semester,
in that what we have here are a
series of very large,
monumental figures that seem to
walk around the room in a kind
of procession,
and you see those extremely
well here.
With regard to the style of
wall that it is,
I show you another view over
here where you can see those
same large figures walking from
the doorway along the side of
the left wall.
 
But you can also see the design
of the wall as a whole,
and if you look at it carefully
you will note that the figures
are,
of course, placed against these
large red panels.
 
Between those red panels,
what look -- they're clearly
not columns, but kind of like
flat pilasters here;
that resting on a socle,
down below;
and then above,
a meander pattern frieze;
and above that another,
a course that represents,
in paint, what looks like
variegated marble --
variegated marble,
the implication being again it
would have been very expensive
to bring from somewhere else.
So as we look at this,
we think, "Well it's kind
of like a First Style
wall."
But you can see that it's not a
relief wall, it's not built up
in stucco, it's flat,
because it was done entirely in
paint.
 
And yet, as you look at these
very large figures,
you see that they are standing
on a ground line that projects
into the spectator's space,
and that suggests to us that
what we are dealing with here--
if we have to categorize this
and put it into First,
Second, Third,
or Fourth Style -- we're going
to call it a Second Style Roman
wall painting,
because it has,
again, residual from the First
Style,
but it's done entirely in
paint, but it has this
projecting element at the
bottom,
this baseline on which the
figures stand and on which the
figures process.
 
So a Second Style Roman wall
painting with monumental
figures.
 
And those monumental figures
tell a story,
and it's a very interesting,
very intriguing,
very mysterious story indeed.
 
And it is from the mystery
scenes here, by the way,
that the Villa of the Mysteries
got its name.
This is a view over here,
an excellent view of the small
doorway that you need to take to
enter into the room.
And as you enter into the room
and you make a sharp left--
well first, of course,
you enter in the room and you
get a glimpse of the entire
space --
but as you turn to your
immediate left,
you begin with the beginning of
the story.
And the artist again has
orchestrated this in such a way
as to make it look like this
woman,
who is standing here,
has actually entered through
the doorway of the room,
and is now beginning to process
from that doorway,
along the side of the room.
If we look at the woman,
we see that she is wearing
quite a heavy garment,
over here.
But it's a very jaunty
representation of this woman,
because you can see she has her
right hand on her hip,
in an interesting way.
 
And then, most interesting of
all, is the fact that she wears
a veil over her head,
and it's a kind of diaphanous
veil, as I think you can see.
 
It's over her head,
protects her hair,
and then it wraps around
her--she wraps it around her
chest.
 
She's holding one corner of it,
with her left hand,
and the rest cascades down her
back.
The artist has paid a great
deal of attention to that veil,
because he wants to identify
her for us, and to tell us that
she is a bride.
 
Brides were often depicted with
voluminous veils,
like that, as you see her here.
 
And she is a bride--as we're
going to find out as we
interpret these scenes--
she is a bride,
probably a young Pompeian
woman,
who is about to enter- who is
about to participate in these
religious rites that are going
to allow her--
it's kind of like a fraternity
or sorority initiation that
she's about to undergo:
let's say a sorority initiation
that she's about to undergo,
because she's about to go
through something that's going
to enable her ultimately to
enter into a mystical marriage
with the god of wine,
Dionysus.
 
She enters here.
 
Then she comes upon two other
figures.
There's a seated woman,
as you can see,
who holds in her left hand,
a scroll.
She has her right hand on the
shoulder of a little boy.
Note that the little boy is
completely naked and completely
oblivious to the fact that he is
naked.
He holds in his hand a scroll,
which he has--
another scroll--which he has
unfurled,
and it looks as if he is--well
there's no question,
he's very intent on looking at
the text on that scroll--
and it looks as if he is
reading from the text of that
scroll.
 
And we interpret that scroll,
or we interpret his
participation in this scene,
as probably the fact that he is
reading the liturgy,
the liturgy that has to do with
this cult of Dionysus and with
the mystical marriage of women
with the god Dionysus.
 
It's a wonderful depiction of
that boy.
And I also show you here the
rest of that particular side of
the room.
 
We're going to look at all the
figures in order,
but I just wanted you to get a
sense of the rest of the wall as
it unfurls --
this left wall as you first
come into the room.
 
And I wanted to point out,
using this image,
that again about how
sophisticated this particular
artist was,
because he takes into
consideration,
as I mentioned before,
the corners of the room,
and they become part of the
narrative.
 
As you can see here,
there's an empty space,
but the story line,
as we'll see,
continues across the corner,
and the figures over here
interact with the figures on the
other side of the bend in the
wall,
in again a very,
very sophisticated and
interesting way,
and we'll follow that through.
 
Before we do though,
I just want to show you a head
detail of the seated woman,
to give you a sense of the
extraordinary talent of this
artist,
whose name, unfortunately,
has not come down to us.
We see this head here,
and you can see the way in
which the artist has captured
the moment: what this woman is
going through,
what she's thinking about.
She's seated.
 
She's listening to the liturgy
that's being spoken by this boy.
You can see that the artist has
paid a great deal of attention
to her eyes, which are wide open
and very nicely painted.
But one gets the sense,
or at least I get the sense as
I look at this,
that she is not only wide eyed
at what's going on,
but you also have a sense that
she's kind of almost jaded.
 
She's kind of seen it all.
 
She has a sense of what the
moment is and what is about to
occur.
 
Notice also the way in which
her lips are slightly parted,
and especially the hair.
 
The artist, as we'll see,
who was responsible for
painting this--and it may have
been more than one artist;
it may have been a designer who
worked with obviously others in
a workshop.
 
But whether it's a single
individual or several,
it is very clear that this
person or persons have a very
good sense of what hair,
real hair, is actually like.
It's the same as I mentioned
when we talked about the
gardenscape of Livia,
and I said that that artist had
clearly looked at nature and was
actually depicting what he saw
and knew about nature.
 
Here is somebody,
I believe, who has really
looked at human beings,
who has really looked at the
way in which hair grows from the
scalp,
because you can see the way in
which he has shown that hair
growing from the scalp,
and he understands that when
you part your hair in the
middle,
there may be a certain part of
the scalp that you actually see
through the hair,
and he has represented that
extremely realistically here.
 
So although we don't know the
name of this particular artist,
we can acclaim his talent here,
as we look at details such as
this one.
 
The story continues from the
boy reading the liturgy to the
figure that you see here.
 
It is a figure,
again, of a woman.
She is holding some kind of a
dish,
and she has on that dish
probably--it's very hard to
identify exactly what's there--
but she has probably some items
that have something to do with
this cult,
with this mystical marriage of
these Pompeian women with
Dionysus.
 
She is dressed in--she has a
light colored top and a purple--
there's a lot of purple in this
scene--
a very vividly purple skirt,
as you can see down here.
She is the first woman of the
group to wear a laurel wreath
over her head,
as you can see.
And she and all of them,
by the way, wear bracelets.
You can see bracelets around
her lower arm.
Some of them wear these arm
bracelets up higher on their
arms, as we'll also see.
 
And she's one of the only
figures that actually looks out
at us, the spectators.
 
She really is basically
confronting us.
We link eyes with her when we
look at this particular
painting,
and the artist is obviously
trying to establish fairly early
on a connection between the
viewer and what is happening in
this scene.
The beginning of another scene
here, with a series of
women--and I have a better view
of it here--where you can see
what's happening next.
 
Here we have three women who
are standing at some kind of a
table,
and one of the women,
the woman on the right,
has a pitcher from which she's
pouring some kind of liquid.
 
Whether it's water or wine or
what, we're not absolutely sure.
It might well be wine,
given that this is the
Mysteries of Dionysus.
 
She may be pouring wine.
 
But whatever it is,
it has been interpreted as a
purification scene,
in which something--and we
can't see what it is that's
underneath this purple piece of
cloth that one of the women is
holding up and revealing.
They are purifying that or
either an object or a series of
objects on this table.
 
It's a wonderful depiction of
these three women,
one woman holding the edge of
the table over here,
and looking to her compatriot
who is pouring the liquid on
this side.
 
And a real tour de force--it's
not so easy to depict a figure
from the rear and make it work,
but this artist has done so.
A very monumental woman,
seated on a wonderful throne
here, with a purple hem,
as you can see down below.
But look at the way he's
depicted her garment.
It's tight in some places and
molds her body,
and cascades in others.
 
She's also wearing a scarf
that's tied back behind her
head, and she too wears a laurel
wreath over that scarf.
This woman has a laurel wreath
as well.
So they're purifying;
as part of this rite,
they are purifying.
 
Women, three women,
are participating and purifying
this object or objects here.
 
This woman has her--she's not
really looking as you--well she
isn't looking at what she's
doing, as you can see.
She's doesn't seem to be
watching the purification,
but rather is looking at this
fellow over here,
and given what he looks like,
I guess that's not surprising.
Her glance is caught by him.
 
Now who is he?
 
He is what we call a Silenus,
S-i-l-e-n-u-s,
and a Silenus is an older
satyr, s-a-t-y-r.
Who were the satyrs?
 
The satyrs were the compatriots
of Pan, P-a-n;
compatriots of Pan.
 
And so a young Satyr grows up
into an old Silenus,
and you see that Silenus here,
and he's a very interesting
figure.
 
You can see that he's
completely naked,
and in fact,
well there are naked men and
naked woman in this,
as we'll see.
But it's interesting to see
which ones are and which ones
aren't.
 
He is, and you can see that
this great purple mantle that he
had draped around his body has
completely, or almost
completely, fallen off.
 
He is playing a lyre,
as you can see here,
and probably singing,
along with his lyre playing.
And not only has his garment
fallen off,
but you can see that he is
not--one foot is on the
pedestal,
on which the--or on a base,
on which the pedestal that
supports the lyre is located.
But another leg has slipped off
that pedestal.
Why is that?
 
He's quite tipsy.
 
We know that the Silenuses and
the satyrs did a lot of
drinking, very serious drinking.
 
He has clearly imbibed,
and he is not very much in
control of himself any longer.
 
So he's probably pretty
oblivious to the fact that his
clothing has fallen off and that
he too has slipped off the base,
as he sings.
 
So it's not surprising that
this woman casts her glance
towards the goings on next to
her.
Here are the--I mentioned the
satyrs, and we see two of the
young satyrs right next to that
older man.
And the satyrs again are
associated with Pan.
And goats are also associated
with Pan, and you can see one of
them is feeding the goats here.
 
These young boys--and it's true
of the men too;
I neglected to mention it--all
have sort of Pan or animal ears,
as you can see very clearly
here, the pointed animal ears.
And this one is playing a flute.
 
So one playing a flute,
one feeding the goats,
both of them seated on a kind
of rocky area over here.
This figure is of particular
interest.
It's a woman clothed with a
white garment that is
sleeveless.
 
She has one of these bracelets
on the upper part of her arm.
It is clear that she is afraid
and she is fleeing from
something.
 
You can see that she holds up
her left hand,
she holds up her left hand,
as if she is trying to ward
something horrific off.
 
And you can see that she is --
by the way,
while she's holding up her hand
to ward it off,
you can see that she's
absolutely mesmerized by
whatever it is that she's
seeing.
Her eyes are staring straight
ahead--
wide eyed, staring straight
ahead--to look at whatever it is
that is on one hand fascinating,
and on the other horrific.
She is clearly in a rush,
because you can see that the
purple mantle that she wore has
been caught in the breeze;
as she tries to escape,
the breeze is caught in that,
and it almost serves the
purpose of a kind of parachute
that's about to rescue her from
whatever it is that she has seen
and that has frightened her.
 
We are now at the first corner
of the room.
So again, the artist has taken
the corner into consideration
and created this dramatic
interaction between this woman
and whatever it is that she's
afraid of on the other side of
the corner.
 
And before I show that to you,
I just wanted to show you a
close-up of her face,
to again give you a sense of
how talented,
how extraordinarily gifted this
artist was in capturing the
moment,
in capturing the feelings that
this woman must have been going
through.
 
Once again, the very wide eyes,
fascinated by what she sees,
but seemingly all knowing.
 
She's seeing something that she
doesn't quite expect,
but you get the sense that
perhaps she did know all along
that she was going to see
something of this nature.
The parted lips,
once again, and the expert way
in which the artist has shown
the way hair naturally grows out
of the scalp of the head,
again achieved magnificently in
this head detail.
 
Now the object of her fear is
what we now see over here.
Here again we see the corner
itself, an empty red space,
the woman fleeing on this side.
 
What is she fleeing from;
what is she afraid of?
This horrific mask that is
being held by one of the satyrs.
We see another set of two young
satyrs here,
and an old Silenus again,
and one of the satyrs holding
up this horrible mask,
and that seems to be what has
put fear into the eyes of this
particular woman.
With regard to the scene of the
satyrs,
you can see that--the Silenus
and the satyrs--
the Silenus is seated on some
kind of marble block,
as you can see here.
 
He looks very similar to the
one that we saw before.
An older man with those animal
ears, as you can see,
one of the satyrs holds a mask.
 
All of these figures,
by the way, do not have
any--are semi-naked.
 
You can see that they have bare
chests, in all cases,
and the mantle's only covering
the lower parts of their bodies.
And the Silenus,
while looking back toward the
woman, is holding a large cup
from which one of the satyrs is
drinking.
 
It's a kind of--I always think
of this as a kind of Mory's
cup--and you see that the
Silenus is holding it,
the younger satyr is drinking
from it.
So again, this has a lot to do
with drinking and getting drunk,
this mystery and--at least from
the male point of view,
because it actually seems to be
the men who are drinking,
and not the women who are
drinking,
in this particular instance.
 
It's a wonderful--let me also
show you a detail of the young
satyr drinking out of the cup,
and you can see how gifted
again this particular artist is.
 
I don't think this artist
always gets the hands right.
He tries.
 
They're sometimes a little bit
awkward,
but on the other hand he really
has made an effort to show the
way in which hands and fingers
grip something,
both from the bottom and also
from the top.
He's very good with the eyes.
 
Again you get--it's just
wonderful the way he has
achieved showing this satyr on
one hand greedily drinking from
the cup,
but at the same time with one
eye--you can see one eye,
and that one eye is very much
on what it is that he's doing.
 
He's looking at that liquid
quite intently,
as he drinks it,
and I think that's very well
achieved here.
 
And again this extraordinary
way in which the artist has
depicted the hair of this young
man as it grows out of his
scalp.
 
Particularly talented;
you don't see that very often
in Roman painting.
 
The center--we're now on the
back wall;
we've turned the corner,
it's the back wall,
the wall that you face when you
come into the room and look
ahead.
 
And we see that the scene that
follows the Silenus and the
satyrs with the mask is the
scene that you see here,
and it is the most important
scene in the painting,
because it is a scene that
represents Dionysus himself,
this man with whom all of these
Pompeian women are anxious to be
initiated into his rites,
and to enter into mystical
marriage with him.
 
Here he is, and he is wasted,
clearly.
Look at him.
 
Despite the fact that he's
about to enter into marriage
with all these attractive young
women, he's completely out of
it.
 
He is lying in the lap of
Ariadne, his mortal lover;
you see her here.
 
And look at his eyes,
they're sort of rolled up into
the top of his head.
 
He couldn't possibly support
himself, without Ariadne's help.
His arms are outstretched
behind him;
in fact, she has to put her arm
around his chest in order to
protect him.
 
And I think it's interesting to
see the way in which women are
represented as protective
beings, in these paintings.
The woman earlier on who puts
her hand around the boy who's
reading from the liturgy,
and now Ariadne who drapes her
arm around Dionysus:
Dionysus,
the god of wine.
 
You can see again that he had a
mantle--and that's about it--on,
but that is slipping off.
 
And you can also see that he's
so drunk that although he's kept
one sandal on,
he's lost the other sandal.
You can see his bare foot over
here.
You're looking at the bottom of
the foot.
That sandal is gone,
and if you look for it,
you can find it;
here it is, it has fallen off
and it is located closer to
Ariadne.
Look also at the staff that
Dionysus usually carries:
the thyrsus,
t-h-y-r-s-u-s,
the thyrsus of Dionysus.
 
It's there and it helps to
identify him,
as does the ivy wreath that he
typically wears.
Note the yellow ribbon that is
tied around the thyrsus.
But one wonders how that
thyrsus is being
supported,
because you can see I guess
it's just leaning slightly
against the chair on which
Dionysus sits,
but one wonders how it is being
supported.
 
But it crosses his body here,
and is meant again as an
identifying attribute for the
god of wine.
The fact that we see Dionysus
in this state and also on the
lap of Ariadne is interesting,
especially the lap of Ariadne.
Because again,
she was his mortal--she herself
was a mortal--his mortal lover.
 
And I think one of the ways of
interpreting this as--
a scene like this--seeing that
Dionysus could unite with a
mortal woman gave hope to the
women of Pompeii who were hoping
to be initiated into this
mystical religion,
and to embark on a mystical
marriage with Dionysus.
This gave them hope that if
another mortal woman was allowed
to enter into a relationship
with Dionysus,
then they too would be able to
follow in Ariadne's footsteps.
And so this is a very important
message, I think,
of hope to those women who were
hoping to become initiates of
this particular cult.
 
The next scene that we see is
also a very interesting scene
and a very important one.
 
It's the one that comes right
to the right of the scene of
Dionysus and Ariadne.
 
And we see here the discovery
of the most important cult
object in this scene,
which is the phallus.
We see a woman kneeling.
 
Her arms are wonderfully
depicted, as they seem to barely
touch whatever it is that lies
beneath this purple cloth.
We see down below a basket that
is certainly the basket in which
the phallus,
the secret ritual--the most
important but secret ritual item
in the Dionysiac religion--
was kept.
 
And there's been a lot of
speculation, what was behind the
purple cloth.
 
Is it an erect phallus?
 
Very possibly,
that's exactly what it is,
that would have been kept again
in this basket,
but is underneath here.
 
Although the speculation has
been so wild that we even have a
scholar who has written an
article suggesting that the
profile of this particular cloth
here is so similar to the
profile of Mount Vesuvius that
what we have here is a reference
instead to Mount Vesuvius and to
the fact that this scene takes
place in Pompeii.
 
It's a very intriguing idea.
 
I can't imagine that it's
correct, but nonetheless it
gives you some sense of the kind
of scholarship and some of the
speculation there has been about
what is actually going on here.
But it seems to be the
covering, in this particular
case, and possibly about to
reveal the secret--the most
important secret item in this
cult.
Over here we see another
fascinating figure.
We've gotten to another corner
and we can see that she
straddles the empty red space in
that corner.
A figure of a woman who is
winged;
the only winged figure that we
see in these scenes.
You can see her large
outstretched wings behind her.
She is naked from the waist up.
 
She's wearing a fantastic
skirt--I love this skirt--
with purple around the waist
and purple at the hem,
and then a wonderful--it flips
out,
it's brown, and it flips out,
and it matches these great tall
boots,
brown boots,
that she also wears.
 
And she's sort of on her
tippy-toes as she herself puts
up one of her hands,
perhaps again to ward something
off;
we don't know what.
But with the other hand what's
most important,
she has her hand behind her
back and she's about to bring a
whip,
which you can see,
down on the back of one of the
initiates.
And as we look across the
corner--again the artist
masterfully taking the corner
into consideration in his design
vis-à-vis the content and
the execution--
we see the way in which that
whip is about to come down on
the back of one of these
initiates who's kneeling and has
her head in the lap of a woman
who protects her.
Here is the scene.
 
So again we see the figure,
the winged figure with the
whip.
 
We see the object of the
whipping, this initiate here.
She is kneeling.
 
She is in the lap,
in part, of a woman who seems
to protect her,
or try to protect her.
The woman who is trying to
protect her, her eyes are very
wide.
 
She is staring up at the winged
figure, imploringly it seems,
almost imploring her,
"Please,
enough, enough,
please stop."
And she is very nurturing to
the young girl who is undergoing
this initiation,
as she pats her on the head,
as you can see here.
 
An incredible view of this
woman, the way in which the
upper part of her body is
exposed for the whipping,
the rest of it covered in a
voluminous purple mantle,
as you can see here.
 
Also figures to her right,
a naked woman who is placed in
front of,
interestingly,
a very heavily clothed woman,
in a dark garment,
which only serves to accentuate
the lightness of this woman's
flesh.
 
This sort of contrast or
tension between clothed and
unclothed also seems to play a
very important part in this
particular painting.
 
But this woman is incredible.
 
Again, the artist has enjoyed
trying to represent figures from
the rear, as well as from the
front.
And you see he has also shown
her on her tippy-toes,
as she is--well she has cymbals
above her head and she's
crashing those cymbals,
and then she is dancing on her
tiptoes,
down here.
But it's an incredible feat
because she also has this gold
mantle that is over her shoulder
and between her legs,
and somehow she's keeping this
mantle balanced as she is
dancing and as she is playing
her music.
And then there's another
thyrsus of Dionysus that
seems to be located--
that is located between these
two women,
and one wonders again how in
the world that thyrsus is
being held up,
as this woman is participating
in this dance and music-making
over here at the right.
 
To get back to this figure,
I just want to show you a
detail,
because I think in this detail
you really get,
almost more than anywhere else
in this painted frieze,
the extraordinary talent of
this particular artist.
 
Here the artist gets these
hands really right.
You can see this,
the limp hand of the woman
being whipped almost says it
all--
it's an incredible detail--as
does the more nurturing hand of
the woman who is trying to
protect her.
And I think you can get a sense
of what she must be going
through by the way in which the
artist has represented her face.
He has cast her eye--her eyes
are--this is one of the only
closed eyes;
it may be the only closed eye
in the scene--
her eye is closed,
or almost closed,
and it is sunken,
it seems to be sunken in a
darkness here,
that gives you some sense of
the pain that this woman must be
going through:
pain that she obviously feels,
however, is worth it.
 
And look also at the way in
which the hair has been depicted
here.
 
You really get the sense of
sweat drenched hair,
of this woman again who's going
through what is almost certainly
the most difficult moment in her
life,
but one that she hopes is going
to be well worth it,
at the end of the day.
 
It's an incredible detail,
I think.
After that scene,
there is a window,
and then at the very end of
that wall--
we're now facing the room on
the right wall of the room--
there is one last corner,
and we see here what is
represented across that one last
corner.
It is a very young woman,
seated on a kind of a throne
here.
 
She has an attendant standing
next to her,
and then there's a small winged
cupid at the left,
and then across the corner we
see another cupid,
standing on a base,
leaning on a pedestal,
winged again,
his head resting on one of his
hands,
and he is looking across the
corner at what is going on,
on the other side.
And he looks very,
very admiring.
And in fact whom is he admiring?
 
He's admiring another one of
these young initiates,
a young woman who seems to be
readying herself to become a
bride,
who's getting ready for her
initiation.
 
She wears a glorious golden
garment that is wrapped,
and wrapped around her waist is
a purple tie,
a purple ribbon or tie,
as you can see here.
She is again accompanied by
another woman,
an attendant,
and the two of them together
are actually fixing her hair,
to get her ready again for her
mystical marriage--
I have a detail of her to show
you in a moment.
 
And then this wonderful
anecdotal detail here,
where we see the other cupid,
winged again,
holding up a mirror in his
hand, a rectangular mirror.
And if you look very,
very closely--
and you can study this detail
on your own as well--
if you look very closely you
can see that there is a
reflection of the young woman's
face in that mirror.
So a lot of attention being
paid to the readying of this
woman, to be a bride,
to enter into the mystical
marriage with Dionysus.
 
And we see a detail here where
we can see her;
see how pretty she is;
see how her--again the artist
has shown this extraordinary
ability to depict hair as it
really is, growing out of her
scalp.
You can see the part of her
hair, the scalp showing through,
the way in which the hair grows
from that.
And then you can see that not
only is she working on arranging
it, but she's getting help from
the attendant.
The attendant also has a
section of her hair in her hand,
and the two of them together
are trying to get her ready for
her mystical marriage.
 
Her arm is up.
 
You can see both of her
bracelets: one around her wrist,
and then another bracelet up on
the upper part of her arm.
Then we have another window,
and then the last figure that
we see is this woman here,
a woman who is seated on a very
elaborate throne.
 
She too is veiled.
 
She has again a combination
gold and purple garment:
bracelets, she's wearing
bracelets.
But she is veiled.
 
So again the implication is she
too is a bride.
She seems very placid.
 
She seems somehow a little bit
older than some of the other
brides.
 
And what has been
speculated--she's very pensive;
you can see she leans her chin
on one of her hands.
She seems to be sitting there,
right at again the doorway of
the room.
 
She seems to be seated there,
basically surveying everything
that's happening in front of
her.
And because she looks a little
bit older,
because she looks a little bit
wiser,
because she is looking out at
the panorama of what's happening
in front of her,
it has been speculated,
and I think quite convincingly,
that the woman we see here is
probably the matron of the house
--
probably the wife of the man
who owned and built the Villa of
the Mysteries in Pompeii,
who was herself an adherent to
the cult of Dionysus,
and has set aside this secret
room in her house for the cult
of Dionysus in which she can
help initiate other young women
into this mystery cult.
Just one, a couple of quick
words about religion and cults
during this period.
 
The Roman religion was the
Roman state religion.
Everyone essentially adhered to
the Roman state religion,
which was very closely allied
with the government of Rome.
So Church and State very
closely allied in Roman times.
But as time went on,
a number of religions had
emanated from other parts of the
Empire, especially the Eastern
Empire.
 
The cult of Dionysus,
the cult of the Egyptian
goddess Isis,
began to take hold,
both for men and women.
 
Women had a particular
predilection for the Egyptian
goddess Isis and for the
Dionysiac mystery religions.
And initially,
because they were not accepted
by the state--
the only religion that was
considered legitimate was the
Roman state religion--
since they weren't accepted by
the state--
and this included
Christianity--these religions
had to be celebrated in,
or the rites had to be done in
secret.
 
And so we see underground
rooms, underground buildings
being built for this purpose--
I'll show you one a bit later
in the course--
but we also see rooms in houses
being set aside for these kinds
of rites.
And that seems to be what
happened here.
The woman of the house,
the matrona,
the materfamilias of
this particular family,
who lived in the Villa of the
Mysteries,
has set aside Room 5 as this
secret chamber in which she can
practice the Dionysiac rituals,
and she can also encourage
other women,
in Pompeii, to partake of those
same rituals.
 
I put on your Monument List,
you'll see an image,
a drawing of all of these
scenes that I've now gone
through,
in order, and I think it's
helpful for you to have that as
a reference,
just to be able to follow along
again the narrative and where
each of the scenes that we've
described comes up.
And then just one last view of
the room as a whole.
I bring it back because I just
wanted to end our discussion of
this particular monument with
the point that this is really
quite unique in terms of the
paintings that we've seen thus
far this semester;
that is, to have a painting
with such monumental figures
that tells the story that this
particular painting does.
 
And it's such a famous set of
paintings that I think because
people know it so well,
they think, "Well that
must be comparable to other
things from Roman times."
But this is the only painting
that we have like this.
It doesn't mean that there
might not have been others,
but I think it probably means
that there weren't a lot of
others,
that this was truly an
exceptional work of art,
that is preserved in the Villa
of the Mysteries at Pompeii.
 
I want to show you in the half
an hour that remains a number of
other paintings,
in much less detail,
but paintings that also are of
special subjects,
that also belong to Second,
Third or Fourth Style walls,
and are particularly
interesting in a variety of
ways.
 
The first of these is also
mythological in subject matter.
I'm going to show you the
so-called Odyssey paintings.
We're moving back to Rome.
 
These are located in a house on
the Esquiline Hill,
one of Rome's original Seven
Hills, in Rome.
And while--I think I neglected
to give you a date for the
Mystery paintings,
but those are 60 to 50,
and these paintings are a
little bit later,
50 to 40 B.C.
 
They are also extremely
interesting, because they seem
to represent scenes from the
tenth and eveventh books of
Homer's Odyssey.
 
And Vitruvius,
the architectural theorist,
writing in the age of Augustus,
Vitruvius tells us that the
Greeks were particularly
interested in representing the
wanderings of Odysseus in
landscapes.
So he tells us--that's very
important for us to know because
it means that the Greeks painted
paintings like this,
illustrations of Odysseus'
wanderings.
And yet we see one of these
paintings in this house on the
Esquiline Hill in Rome,
between 50 and 40 B.C.
Books X and XI focus on
Odysseus' coming upon the
Laestrygonians--
I put that name on the Monument
List for you--
the Laestrygonians,
and what happens when he meets
the Laestrygonians.
And we see one of the scenes
here.
We see, in fact,
that several scouts,
working for Odysseus,
get off their boats on an
island and they come across this
beautiful young woman who has
just fetched--
you can see she's holding a
pitcher--
she has just fetched water from
a well,
and she's walking down this
mountain and she comes upon
these scouts of Odysseus.
And being a friendly sort,
she says to them:
"I'd like to invite you
back to my father's house for
dinner."
 
Well her father is a man-eating
giant, as are the other
Laestrygonians.
 
And the scouts fall for it,
and they come with her to meet
her father, and the father
immediately cooks up one of the
three for dinner.
 
And various other adventures
happen on this island,
but what's particularly
interesting for us is the fact
that these scenes again are from
a well-known work of literature.
But the figures are very small
in relation to the landscape.
It's clear that the artist,
whether originally Greek
artists were particularly
interested in the landscape and
the telling of a narrative
across that landscape,
a landscape that is
magnificently rendered,
as you can see,
by these artists.
There are a number of scenes
still preserved.
After that dinner,
by the way, where one of the
scouts gets consumed,
after that the Laestrygonians
decide that they don't want any
more of Odysseus and his crew.
And they take boulders,
as you can see in this scene
here,
and they begin to attack the
ships of Odysseus,
destroying most of them,
and only the one with Odysseus
himself is able to escape,
and he makes his way,
at that point,
to another island,
to meet up with the enchantress
Circe.
 
So we see all of this very
carefully described here.
But as we look at these scenes,
I think we're particularly
struck--
or at least I'm particularly
struck,
and I would imagine you'll
share this--
by the interest of this artist
in depicting the landscape.
 
We have an artist again,
whether it's the original Greek
artist,
but certainly copied here by an
artist in Rome,
we see an incredible interest
in landscape,
by someone who is clearly not
only looking at earlier models,
but looking at landscape
itself, and is very interested
in depicting all kinds of
anecdotal details:
inlets of water,
as you can see here;
rocks and the way in which the
rock is cast in shadow on one
side and is lighted on the
other;
the way in which branches bend,
both when people pull on them,
or when they are buffeted by
the breeze or by the wind,
as you can see with that tree
at the uppermost part of the
peak.
So again the artists here are
particularly interested in
nature and in the display of
nature,
and in that way very comparable
to what we saw in Livia's
gardenscape at the Villa at
Primaporta.
I mentioned already that it is
believed that these paintings on
the Esquiline Hill are based on
Hellenistic Greek models that
probably were made in about 150
B.C.
So a copy, and in that regard
should strike you as very much
the same trend,
as we've seen so often in the
beginning of this semester,
of the Romans looking back and
admiring Greek art,
and incorporating it -- a kind
of Hellenization of Roman art
and architecture,
because of this reverence and
because of this incorporation of
earlier Greek scenes and
prototypes.
And so we see that here.
 
And there are three reasons
that scholars believe that what
we're looking at here is based
very closely on a Greek model.
One of those is that passage in
Vitruvius that I already
mentioned.
 
Vitruvius tells us that the
Greeks were particularly
interested in representing
scenes from the Odyssey against
a landscape background.
 
So that certainly tells us that
it's likely these are based on
earlier Greek originals.
 
The second has to do--you've
probably noticed this--
with the fact that many of the
figures in these paintings are
labeled,
and those labels are--if you
look very closely you will see--
in Greek, and not only are they
in Greek,
but some of the words are
misspelled.
 
So since those words are
misspelled,
it has been speculated--and I
think again quite convincingly--
that those who are misspelling
them don't really know Greek,
and may be Roman artists,
who are not familiar with that
language,
are copying it and making
mistakes in the process.
 
So that also suggests to us
that earlier Greek models are
being looked at,
absorbed, and even copied here.
But most interesting of all,
for us aficionados of the
Second Style,
is the fact that very
careful--the archaeologists,
who have looked at these with
great care,
have determined that the
landscape scenes that we've
studied are continuous beneath
the columns,
that when they copied these,
they copied--
perhaps they had a scroll that
they had from somewhere else,
a Greek scroll,
that came from a library that
had images on it,
and they unfurled that scroll
and they copied it here.
They did that first,
they copied--so we had a
continuous landscape scene,
and it was only after that
landscape scene was painted that
the artists went back and
painted the columns on top.
 
They put these Greek paintings,
or copies of these Greek
paintings of Odysseus'
wanderings,
based on this Greek prototype
of the mid-second century B.C.,
they put it into a Roman
context by providing these
Second Style columns or
pilasters--
pilasters, I
believe--pilasters,
by creating these Second Style
pilasters and making this into a
vista or panorama that would
have been seen through the
window,
in a sense, of a Second Style
painting.
 
So it's a Romanization of an
original Greek painting,
in an extraordinary way that
tells us a good deal about how
the Romans were thinking about
these Greek prototypes at this
particular juncture.
 
I showed you last time the
Villa at Oplontis,
the Caldarium 8,
and we looked at the soffit of
Caldarium 8,
and we saw these floating
mythological figures,
and we saw women in niches with
shells at the top.
 
And I pointed out to you,
at that time,
that we also have a number of
small panel pictures,
representing still lives,
with fruit and the like.
And these in a sense get lost
in the overall scheme of these
Second,
Third, and Fourth Style walls,
but they're very interesting,
if we look at them in greater
detail.
 
And I want to show you just two
examples today.
This is a--it's blown up,
obviously, way beyond the size
that it was--but it gives you
some sense of what these look
like in detail.
 
It's a still life painting that
comes from the Villa of Julia
Felix, in Pompeii,
which dates to around 50 B.C.
And it probably--we do believe
that it is a detail from a
Second Style wall.
 
And we look at that detail
here, and we see that these--
for those of you who enjoy
modern art,
for example,
I think you'll agree that this
is- tends to be as modern as
Roman Art gets,
because we see it has a very
contemporary appearance,
I think, this particular still
life painting.
We see that the artist has
shown a striking penchant for,
or a sensitivity for
composition, for light,
the way in which light falls on
objects that are made of
different materials,
be it metal or stone.
The artist has shown that kind
of sensitivity,
I think, here,
as well as to composition,
the way in which a group of
objects are composed in
relationship to one another.
 
If we look at this painting,
I think we'll agree it's quite
a tour de force.
 
We see some interesting things,
which are not that easy to
decipher.
 
We see over here,
for example,
a cloth with fringe that hangs
on a nail on the wall.
We see over here,
also hanging on the wall,
four dead birds.
 
We see a plate,
an oval plate of what seem to
be eggs.
 
We see a pitcher over here,
which again looks like a metal
pitcher, bathed in light on one
side, with a handle.
And then we see here what looks
like some kind of a beaker,
with something that may have
been used to stir whatever
liquid was inside.
 
All of this on a stone pedestal.
 
And then leaning against that
stone pedestal we see one of
these clay vessels,
which seems to have an
inscription on that clay vessel.
 
So what is this still life
painting?
Is it just meant to be a mix of
objects that would be found in
the kitchen of a house?
 
Or is it something more than
that?
Do these have meaning beyond
that?
Is there some religious
symbolism here,
for example?
 
This is not easy to decipher,
and no one really has done that
satisfactorily,
up to this point,
but it's something that one
would want to keep in mind,
as one thinks about the meaning
of these still life paintings.
And keep in mind again,
if you think back to a room
like the Ixion Room,
there are a number of these
small panel paintings in the
Ixion Room.
When you look at the room as a
whole, these are not easy to
see.
 
They're so small that they're
lost in the overall scheme.
So you'd really have to go up
very close to these,
if you could even reach them,
if they're way up in the top it
would be difficult,
but if they're down below,
go up close,
look at them,
and try to figure out for
yourself exactly what is going
on here.
 
Another one from,
in this case,
from Herculaneum,
which is not so ingeniously
called Still Life Painting
with Peaches and Glass Jar--
but that's very descriptive,
that's exactly what it
depicts--
which is later in date,
around 62 to 79,
and probably was a panel in
either a Third or a Fourth Style
Roman painting.
We see two tiers here.
 
We indeed do see peaches,
and the artist again has really
looked at peaches to depict
this--
shows the peaches on the vine,
with the leaves,
as you can see here--and wants
to make sure that we know what a
peach looks like inside,
as well, so has cut a section
off one of these and shows the
pit inside,
just to make sure that we get a
full sense of how peaches grow,
and of what happens when you
open a peach.
And then down here,
below, a glass vase,
and you can see that the artist
has filled that vase halfway
with water,
so that he can explore the
effects of light on that water,
and the reflection of that
water on the glass vase itself.
 
So clearly again artists
that--there may be other reasons
that they juxtaposed these
particular items,
reasons that may be beyond our
comprehension today.
But while they may do that for
ritual or other reasons,
they also are clearly very
concerned with just exploring
composition,
light, and so on and so forth,
as I said before,
which is a very modern thing to
do.
 
We also see among the paintings
that I've called "Special
Subjects"
today,
genre scenes,
scenes that represent daily
life in Pompeii or Herculaneum.
 
I'll show you just one of those
here.
It is a painting of--it's
usually called Painting of a
Magistrate Distributing Free
Bread,
and it comes from House
VII.3.30 in Pompeii,
a wall painting from VII.3.30
in Pompeii --
dates to around A.D. 70.
 
And what's depicted
here--whether the magistrate is
distributing free bread or it's
bread being sold,
we're not absolutely sure--but
what you can see here is piles
and piles of round breads that
are being distributed to those
who stand in front of the bread
stand.
And I can show you a detail
also of the same,
where you can get a better
sense of the shape of the
breads.
 
You remember the petrified
bread that we looked at from
Pompeii, and the division into
shapes that make it resemble
pizza.
 
The same kinds of breads can be
seen here, and it's that bread
that is being distributed to
these people down below.
While this painting comes from
a house, and it may have just
referred to the particular
profession of someone who lived
in that house.
 
But paintings like this we
believe--
and it may or may not have been
the case with this one--
could also have--were also used
as shop signs,
to advertise what was being
sold in one of those
tabernae,
that often opened off houses in
places like Pompeii and
Herculaneum,
and that may have been the case
here as well.
Just a few words about what we
might call history painting,
among the Romans.
 
This is a fascinating and very
famous painting of the
Amphitheater at Pompeii.
 
You see it on the left-hand
side of the screen.
It comes from House I.3.23 in
Pompeii, and dates to between 59
and 70 A.D.
 
And it purports not only to
represent the Pompeii
Amphitheater,
which I remind you of here,
and you'll recall the very
distinctive staircase of the
Amphitheater at Pompeii,
and you can see how carefully
that is rendered here by the
artist to make sure that we know
this is indeed the Amphitheater
at Pompeii.
It purports to represent a very
famous historical event,
at least in terms of local
history,
and that is a brawl that broke
out between the Pompeians and
another group of individuals who
lived in the area called the
Nucerians,
N-u-c-e-r-i-a-n-s.
The Pompeians and the
Nucerians, a brawl broke out
between them.
 
You can see that brawl being
represented in the oval arena
there.
 
The brawl was so serious that
the local magistrates decided to
punish both the Pompeians and
the Nucerians,
and they did something quite
extraordinary,
and that is that they decided
to close down the Amphitheater
in Pompeii,
for ten years: count them.
Can you imagine the city of
Pompeii without an amphitheater
for ten years?
 
That was a very brutal
punishment.
But it seems to have happened,
and it is memorialized,
that very event is memorialized
in this painting,
in this house at Pompeii.
 
This painting is also very
valuable--
I think I've mentioned this to
you before--
is also very valuable,
not only for showing us the
shape of the amphitheater--
which, of course,
as you know,
still survives--
the oval shape and the seating,
but for a detail that doesn't
still survive,
and that is the awning.
I mentioned to you that in
amphitheater design,
they put poles at the very
uppermost part of the
amphitheater,
and they were able to put an
awning on those poles to protect
people in inclement weather.
And we see the representation,
our only preserved
representation in paint,
of one of these awnings.
So again, it is very valuable
in terms of helping us
understand amphitheater design.
 
The last two paintings I want
to show you today are both
portrait paintings,
and you have to think of these
portrait paintings,
like the mythological panel
pictures,
as paintings that were inserted
into walls,
inserted into probably mostly
Third and Fourth Style Roman
walls.
And when those treasure hunters
hit Pompeii and Herculaneum,
these were the ones they went
to first,
and they cut a fair number of
these out of their original
contexts and made off with them.
 
But some of them fortunately
have found their way into,
especially into the Naples
Archaeological Museum.
This is the first one that I
want to show you,
an absolutely fetching portrait
of a young woman from Pompeii,
that dates to around the middle
of the first century A.D.,
that is, 45 to 50 A.D.
 
And we see it here,
and it's an incredible painted
portrait by clearly once again a
very talented artist who's done
an extraordinary job of
capturing this woman.
It's a very appealing portrait.
 
We see her, she's a quite
attractive young woman,
with wide, sort of hazel
colored eyes,
sharp, straight brows,
straight nose,
sort of Cupid's lips.
 
As you can see down below,
the hair is magnificently
rendered.
 
You can see that she has a bevy
of corkscrew curls.
Those in the front,
toward the front of her face,
are highlighted,
and match very well the color
of her eyes.
 
She wears gold hoop earrings
that also mimic the curlicues of
her locks.
 
And then you can see also that
she wears something that appears
to have been fashionable to
wear,
among Roman and Pompeian women,
and that is a gold hairnet,
at the very apex,
which adds shine and glimmer to
the hair;
but also you can see the hair
beneath it through that.
 
Down below you can see she
wears a green garment and a sort
of purple or brownish mantle
over her shoulder,
and she holds a stylus to her
lips.
And she has in her other hand,
as you can see,
a tablet, in front of her,
and it is clear,
as she puts that stylus to her
lips,
she is deep in thought,
very pensive,
figuring out what it is that
she's going to write on her wax
tablet,
because these were wax and they
would write into the wax
tablets.
Because she is caught in this
moment of deep thought,
a number of scholars have
suggested that she must
represent the Greek poetess
Sappho;
which is why I've put that
painted portrait of Sappho on
your Monument List.
 
But you can see I've put Sappho
in quote marks.
I think this is almost
certainly not Sappho.
It is probably a Pompeian
woman, and she may not be
thinking about the poetry that
she's about to write,
but perhaps the shopping list
that she's putting together
before she makes her way down to
the central market of the city
of Pompeii,
or sends her slave to go down
to the central market of the
city of Pompeii.
But it may also be that she was
literate, and that she wants to
underscore the fact that she was
literate.
It may also be that this was
just a set way of representing
women in portraiture in Pompeii.
 
Because this is not the only
portrait we have of a woman with
her stylus to her lips and her
tablets in her hands.
Here's another portrait that we
have, also from Pompeii,
with a woman represented in
exactly the same way.
This portrait is from House
VII.2.60, and dates to around 62
to 79 A.D.
 
-- the portrait of a woman,
and presumably her husband by
her side.
 
She again has the stylus to her
lips;
she has the tablet down below.
 
You can see that he holds a
scroll, which has a red place
marker up above.
 
So this portrait of the two of
them may either allude to the
fact that they are both
literate, that they can both
read and write.
 
It's also possible that the
scroll that he holds may
indicate that he's a magistrate.
 
Or lastly, and one of the more
popular solutions,
is that this may--he may be
holding the marriage
certificate, the marriage
between the two.
The portraits are very
interesting.
You can see that she isn't
quite as gorgeous as her other
counterpart.
 
Her hair is not arranged in
those wonderful golden locks,
but is kind of fizzy over her
forehead and down her neck.
As you can see here,
her ears stick out.
She has a uni-brow.
 
But she's more than happy to be
represented, as she was,
preserved for posterity,
as she was, along with her
husband over here.
 
And if you look at the
portrait, you will see again
that it has a black frame around
it,
and then a maroon frame,
which tells us again that this
was inserted into a wall,
a Third or Fourth Style wall,
just like the mythological
paintings were inserted into
those walls,
as a painting that was located
in the center of that wall,
and in this case emphasized the
owners of this particular house,
and their undying love for each
other--
their relationship honors their
marriage--
and served as a kind of
counterpart to a portrait of the
loving couple that one might put
on a mantelpiece,
or on a piano,
in one's house today.
 
So you have to think of it as
quite comparable to that.
Again, when you wander through
Pompeii,
you don't see many of these
portraits in situ,
in large part because they were
so popular with treasure
hunters.
 
But fortunately we do have a
few preserved from both Pompeii
and Herculaneum,
and those can be seen in
museums like Naples today.
 
Thank you.
 
