POMPEII
AS AN ART CITY
BY
E. v. MAYER
New York :
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
Printed in Great Britain.
Jr.-'
All rights reserved.
CONTENTS
Introductory Origins of Pompeian Culture Influence
of Hellenism Peculiar character of Pompeian Art-
The Pompeian House Evolution of its internal arrange-
ment Roman and Greek family life Their effect on
the formation of character The Pompeian art of
mural decoration The place of Man in Hellenic and
Hellenistic Art Pompeian Painting Influence of the
Dionysian and heroic legends, and of Greek history, on
Pompeian Art Pompeian Sculpture Portrait busts
The Artemis The "Dancing Faun The Narcissus The
Pompeian art of common things Joyousness the key-
note of Pompeian Art Centres of Pompeian life
Pompeian Architecture The Thermae The Bath as a
factor in social life Street of Tombs Conclusion.
45677-
ILLUSTRATIONS
NARCISSUS (Photogravure) . . . , Frontispiece
GENERAL VIEW OF FORUM fadgp. 4
VESTIBULE, HOUSE OF PANSA , ... .
ATRIUM, HOUSE OF CORNELIUS RUFUS . , . . 12
PlFISTYLl, HOUSE OF THE VETT1I . . . . 1 6
RECONSTRUCTION, HOUSE OF TRAGIC POET . . . 20
MURAL DECORATION IN STUCCO-RELIEF AND FRESCO . 28
CENTAUR CHIRON INSTRUCTING ACHILLES . . . 36
ZEUS AND HERA . ,,44
ARES AND APHRODITE ......* 52
DANCING FAUN . . ....,, 60
TEMPLE OF AFOLLO ,,64
DRESSING-ROOM, STABIAN THERMAE ....,, 68
PALISTRA, STABIAN THERMAE ,,72
STREET or TOMBS ........ 76
INTRODUCTORY
BESIDE the Java-strewn shores of the Bay of
Naples there lies a shattered city a- laby-
rinth of ruins, the legacy of a Past from
which twice ten centuries divide us, yet
fraught with interest and significance to the age
in which we live, and with potential influence upon
its joys and sorrows.
Pompeii, the finest antique treasure-trove of
modern times, possesses for ourselves a living value
that is unique, unparalleled ; and the secret of this
importance lies in her Art.
But if this be true of Pompeii, why is it not so
in equal measure of many other Art Cities of the
past whose treasures also have descended to us ?
The Philistine in Art may be indifferent to the
character of the curios adorning his drawing room a
Tanagra figure may jostle a statuette of Buddha, or
a cup from Mycenae form the incongruous pen-
dant to a Louis XV. snuff-box ; but those to whom
Art conveys the pulsations of humanity's deepest
heart-throbs are speedily brought, into such intense
personal sympathy with her works that they cannot
AS AN ART CITY
endure the presence of objects that discourse to
them in foreign tongues of alien gods. Greatly as
the mature and refined art of Japan may fascinate
and stimulate us, we must nevertheless recognise
that our own life and our own art is rooted in that
Caucasian civilisation whose birthplace was the
Mediterranean shore. Between ourselves and a true
conception of the genius of Mongolian life there
is a great gulf fixed ; and our guiding principle
must be found in the matured culture of nations
bordering the great inland sea. Such an example
once existed in Pompeii.
POMPEII
AS AN
ART CITY
NOT favoured Hellas, with its alternating
climatic conditions of invigorating severity
and glowing, intoxicating heat, but the re-
laxing, enervating Campania saw the rise
of Pompeii. Its original inhabitants were no proud,
hardy Dorians or versatile lonians, but Oscans and
Etruscans, agricultural Latins, whose servile spirit
found its satisfaction in sinister religious rites.
The Golden Age of Hellas, from the tenth to the
fifth century B.C., when, almost unaffected by the
archaic civilisation of the Semitic and Egyptian
races, she was developing her own culture in undis-
turbed isolation, was already long past ere Pompeii
reached her zenith.
Pompeii, sharing the rate of all Samnite cities,
had been for two centuries incorporated in the
growing world-empire of the Romans, when Sulla's
mercenaries, hardened in the wars of Spain and
Asia, razed its towers and walls and converted it
into an open town a town which subsequently
acquired Roman civic rights, and became a popular
summer resort of wealthy Senators.
-A'S 'AN ART CITY
But what, after all, was this triumphant Roman-
ising influence but the bastard product of ancient
Latin boorishness and Etruscan, Egyptian, Asiatic,
and, above all, Hellenic civilisation.
Partly the product of Greek and Roman in-
fluences, and also to some extent indigenous, the
growth of Pompeian culture is only partially Hel-
lenistic. But the value of Pompeii to ourselves lies
not in that which she either never spontaneously
produced or had long since lost, but in that which
she assimilated of Greek culture ; or, rather, in that
with which Greek culture was able to endow her.
Pompeii supplies a test of the intrinsic living value
of Hellenism. The conditions of Pompeii were
essentially unfavourable to culture a languid cli-
mate, the hybrid population of a sea-port town,
and the near example of the capital, Rome, And
yet Hellenism was able to stimulate this its offshoot
to a high pitch of cultured refinement a proof of
its own intense vitality, of its own peculiar energy.
Granted that every revival of that culture can be
but a picture and artificial view in perspective of
the past, still the ideality of a condition of life finds
its measure in the lasting progressive force of its idea.
If we think out the aims of Hellenic life to their
conclusion, if we set forth in detail the aspirations
of genuine Hellenism, we find that everywhere the
directing lines converge into a common focus of
animated sensuous beauty. With us, on the other
hand, they diverge in all directions. Our culture
is therefore unideal, because its ideals and its aims
are so very different. With us every object attained
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 5
implies an open breach with all other aims, and it
is only thanks to the conflict that the life of our
world is prolonged.
Thus, in an ethical sense, the small Campanian
provincial town, in all its ruin and incompleteness,
is a picture from the Hellenic world, and an anti-
type of our own age.
Pompeii possesses all the greater significance for
us inasmuch as it was one of the most unimportant
transplantations of Greek culture indeed, it was
not even Hellenistic, but merely Hellenised not
a Hellenic city in a foreign land, but only a Hellen-
ised barbarian town. Leaving out 5F the question
the world-renowned Alexandria, whose existence
was a continual process of development, it was quite
otherwise that the refinement of Hellenic life
flourished in Capua or Baiae. Had Baiae instead
of Pompeii been preserved to us, we should doubt-
less have possessed a greater abundance of the best
productions of Hellenic art ; we should have beheld
a second, and still more luxurious, Palatine covered
with imperial palaces ; we should have seen all the
arrogant splendour of the worthy Trimalchio ; but,
on the other hand, we should never have known
what was the influence of Hellenism on the life of
the masses. Not even Herculaneum which yet
reserves in its volcanic sepulchre many an enchanting
surprise for future generations not even wealthy
Herculaneum itself, .for all its Hellenic origin, is of
more vital importance to our knowledge of antique
life than Pompeii.
6 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
Pompeii was a provincial city of about 30,000
inhabitants a busy town, but of very moderate
opulence. The sea-breezes for which it was
indebted to its situation on the coast, it is true,
allured Cicero to the acquisition of a villa there ;
but in Pompeii houses of any pretension to grandeur
were few and far between. The city possessed
two theatres and an amphitheatre, which, however,
paitially depended on the support of the neighbour-
ing inland towns, whose sea-port Pompeii was.
Existence may have been easy and comfortable in
Pompeii, but luxury found no place there. Its
worthy citizens had no money to spare for costly
works of art, but Art as a whole was dear to their
hearts.
The art of Pompeii is distinctly an art of tri-
vialities, not the colossal art that twined the frieze
of Phidias, a garland of immortality, around the
Parthenon, or raised the Olympic altar at Pergamos.
It was not in mighty works such as those that stood
in the sanctuaries of Greece, a prey beyond the
reach of any but the greatest robbers, but in the
smaller appliances of domestic life, articles within
the reach of all, that Pompeii displayed the Hellen-
istic distinction of her characteristic art. She did
not aspire to the possession of original creations by
artists of renown, but entrusted her modest com-
missions to minor craftsmen capable of fashioning,
at a moderate recompense, artistic objects calculated
to be a continual joy to their owners.
Thus Pompeii continued to create in the spirit
of the great works with which Rome was adorning
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 7
herself; but this was only possible inasmuch as
her own exuberant impulses carried her more than
half-way upon the road along which her great
model beckoned her. Every individual experienced
the desire to see his own sentiment crystallised into
palpable shape, and it lay within the means of
many minor artists to embody these emotions in
plastic form. Many of these were only master-
craftsmen ; but in Greece, as in the time of the
Renaissance, the creative artist remained nominally
a tradesman. Perhaps it is to that very fact that
the vigorous sense of Nature which distinguishes
those artists is due, as well as the loftiness of such
artistic craftsmanship. Since Art did not disdain
to take her stand upon the fast foundation of trade,
the latter was less apt to lose touch with Art.
A glimpse of an artistic industry of matured
refinement, then, is what Pompeii offers us. In
the direct pleasure with which those miniature
works of art inspired, and still inspire, the beholder
the spirit of Hellenism declares itself ; in this un-
pretentious art of everyday life lies a weightier
testimony to that age and its worth than in many
a lofty creation. The art of Pompeii is not an art
of great achievements, commissioned by wealthy
buyers, possibly merely desirous of the notoriety
conferred by their outlay, but of patrons of modest
station and limited means. Its productions were
not the works of individuals whose personalities
stand out far above period, environment, or race,
but of far humbler artists, in whom, nevertheless, the
spirit of their blood, their world, and their times is
8 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
manifest. The fact that these humble and even
insignificant workers universally aspired towards
Art, and attained it, is the one essential feature that
commands our admiration and invites our imita-
tion.
The learned collector Athenaeus has bequeathed
to us innumerable descriptions of the usages and
conditions of life prevalent among the ancients ;
but where the dead text confronts us with many
an obscure enigma, the ocular evidence that
Pompeii provides assists us to a living comprehen-
sion. To the receptive mind, the character of
Hellenic life, and of that of its immediate offshoots,
is no longer strange. Its profound source, the
Olympian theory of the universe, has been pre-
served to us in the works of the Greek poets ; it
was reserved for Pompeii to afford us tangible
evidence of its direct operation.
The mature Hellenistic art-industry whereon
the value of Pompeii is based continually diverts
our attention from fascinating details, to fix it upon
the entire scheme of the Pompeian life to which it
bears witness. This Pompeian life is concentrated
into one focus, small but absolutely perfect, in the
Pompeian home. Pompeii, the City, as our fancy
restores it, overflows with charms. Its position
on a rising shore of the Bay of Naples, girdled and
yet not dominated by the mountains around ; its
picturesque gates, approached through avenues of
imposing tombs ; its stately colonnaded squares ;
its fine public buildings temples, theatres, baths,
courts of justice ; in its streets the unconstrained
Photo. Sotnmer
VESTIBULE OF THE HOUSE OF PANSA
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 9
life of the South on all sides the receptive mind
is subject to the stimulus of Nature's own art.
But all these attractions pale before the grace of
the Pompeian House. A penetrating aroma of the
life of yore yet clings to its ruined walls and faded
pictures ; for the house in those days was of higher
importance to the social life of the community
than in our own age. The animated and more
comprehensive social life which was the outcome
of Pompeian culture did not stifle domesticity ;
rather does the latter supply the principle of the
former, but in a more concentrated and therefore
more fruitful form. Collectivity can claim no
prerogative when its pressure is exerted from
without and above upon the individual. It is only
when it develops from minute and spontaneous
formations, expanding upwards from below and
from within, that social life can be welded from a
many-headed monstrosity into richly proportioned
and natural homogeneity. Thus alone can it
afford the individual an object commensurate with
his existence a complete utilisation of his glowing
energies. The absorption of smaller States by
larger, if carried too far, paralyses all independence,
and is intolerant of all combination, unless for
economic purposes. Boundless world-empires, by
the irresistible weight of their component masses,
have deprived the direct creations of mankind of all
value, strength, and cohesion. Yet primaeval
civilisation grew organically out of primitive life ;
the State was little more than a municipal area ;
want of room set a natural limit to the preponder-
10 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
ance of the community, and the social constituents,
Personality, Family, Friendship, remained alive and
independent.
It is the social condition that the ancient world
embodied in its conception of the House ; and it is
this ancient world that we learn to know in the
Pompeian dwelling, whose plan is a plan of life.
The House, in its Pompeian form, is an organic
building. A clear fundamental idea here finds
architectural expression, and creates a genuine
style logical, characteristic, and therefore impor-
tant. It is the jftrium that groups all the other
apartments around it, and forms the theoretical,
though not the actual, centre of the whole. The
dark, unpartitioned interior of the ancient peasant's
hut has now developed greater freedom and com-
fort. No longer bed-room, dining-room, and living-
room in one, the atrium still remains sentimentally
and ethically the principal apartment, with its Al
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POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 17
his attention to the inscriptions, still extant,
roughly scratched or painted on the stucco, which
served as a pathetic, humorous, or serious commen-
tary on public life neighbourly chaff, witticisms,
election notices, appeals for assistance.
But these manifestations were confined to the
outer walls of the house. The door-porter turned
away every importunate intruder who sought
shelter in the porch not solely, perhaps, on account
of the rain ; while a chained dog in mosaic " Cave
canem " also gave unmistakable expression to the
desire of the household for quiet. A revered sym-
bol of life, the phallus, carved in the plaster, let into
the wall, or painted in red the lucky colour beside
the door, afforded protection against the black
magic of the malignant wish or the evil eye. Or
a painted altar adorned with snakes placed the
dwelling under the guardianship of those ancient
and mysterious divinities, while a graceful youth
personified the Genius loci.
Like blood through the veins, the stream of
public life pulsated along the streets of Pompeii
towards the market, the theatres, and the
temples, whence the ebbing tide of humanity
recoiled to surge about the threshold of the house.
As he stepped across that threshold the citizen
once more retired into himself, his faculties stimu-
lated and developed by contact with the events
and occurrences of the outer world, and, safe in the
peaceful stronghold of his home, was able to collect
and arrange his thoughts. Whether his atrium
was of the simplest, or girt with gorgeous and
B
1 8 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
brightly painted columns ; whether his peristyle
rose in artistic terraces, like that of Marcus
Lucretius, adorned by cool ponds and lovely plants,
or whether he contented himself with a garden
painted in one corner of his court and a tiny shell-
fountain ; whether he possessed special dining-
rooms for summer heats and winter chills, or
whether the stone bench of his triclinium stood in
the middle of the court the citizen of Pompeii in
his own house was ever the monarch of his modest
realm, lord in his own right of a domestic system
that use had converted into nature, which not
merely provided for the needs of the moment, but
was in itself an elevating influence a homogeneous
education to its members. In truth every Pom-
peian house was a centre of culture.
The Pompeian house is no longer entirely
Hellenic, but Greco- Roman in type. The concep-
tions of life characteristic of the two races were
nearly akin, and the distribution of the interior
chambers is consequently similar in all essential
points ; but their domestic uses, which were de-
termined by the position of woman in the social
system, differed widely.
That women in general occupied a position of
inferiority in the antique world is a myth. The fact
that they filled the office of priestesses is proof to
the contrary. But, after all, it is a question of
proportion. In the honest world of the ancients
body, soul, and intellect were all of equal value*
It was in no spirit of depreciation, then, that the
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 19
functions of mistress, wife, and mother were
esteemed the most important of woman's duties.
Nor was it out of contempt that she was expected
to busy herself in cooking and needlework, instead
of dulling her fresh intelligence by learning.
Women with whom intellect would have its way
had no difficulty in finding an outlet for it :
Corinna, Sappho, Diotima, Aspasia, Hypatia, are
only a few among many such names. The exi-
gences of our state of over-population may in these
days stimulate a girl to the acquisition of every
available accomplishment, as a matter of policy ;
in olden times it would have been a waste of her
powers, a detriment to her attractions.
But between Hellas and Rome there is a finer
distinction in the appreciation of woman, which is
at base a type of the difference prevailing in educa-
tional ideals, an expression of divergent objects in
life. This we find clearly defined in the contrasts
of the Hellenic and the Pompeio-Roman house.
The tablinum, or reception-room, formed the
inner boundary of the Pompeian house. The
laws of hospitality made visitors free of the apart-
ments situated on the hither side of this point,
but all that lay beyond the narrow side-passage, or
fauces, was sacred from the intrusion of the outside
world.
This line of demarcation existed also in the Hel-
lenic house ; but in this case it did not separate the
family life from that of general society, but served
as a barrier between the male and the female mem-
bers of the household. Woman 1 s domain lay in
20 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
and around the larger garden-court in the rear ;
while in the front of the house man reigned supreme,
and formed the sole point of contact between public
and private life.
When a boy, at the age of seven, was received
from the gyn&ceum into the andrelon he cast off
feminine influences, and became a man among men.
Brought at an early age into contact with social life
at the palestra, the boy was still subject during a
lengthy period, first of all to the tutelage and advice
of the pedagogue, and then, in the bond of friendship,
to his intimate companion. The girl, whose sports
and aspirations were for the most part bounded by
the walls of the gynseceum, owed her education
to the ties of female friendship, and at Sparta even
shared in gymnastics. Then when the young
people of opposite sexes, their characters formed,
were brought into contact, they sought and found
in one another's society companionship and friend-
shipas d stinguished from the alternate comedy
of master and female slave, bondsman and mistress.
Amoi g th* Latin races individual character was
less marked, and friendship consequently less es-
teemed and valued : family ties formed the sole
basis of social intercourse. Thus, there being no
separation of the sexes in domestic life, the boy
remained until a late period under feminine control ;
he was not hardened by contact with men. If this
system of education did not result in moral disaster,
it is to the natural freshness of the universal con-
ception of life that the credit must be attributed.
But is it due only to chance that among the Latins
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 21
that unfettered flight of the Hellenic character is
nowhere perceptible ?
Now Pompeii, it is true, added no illustrious
names to the roll of fame ; but the Pompeian house
is all the more eloquent of the natural comfort of
average Pompeian life. The very existence of ex-
ceptional personalities is more or less a martyrdom.
Their genius can neither be transferred nor imitated ;
but at the same time their share in the common task
of humanity is also exceptional. The lesser and
attainable happiness, on the other hand, is com-
pounded of the everyday forces of the world.
Shattered and crumbling though it be, the Pompeian
house yet proves that it is practicable that it is
at least possible to bring intelligence and beauty
into the daily existence.
From a purely architectural point of view, the
Pompeian house is a work of genuine art ; but its
value is enhanced by the fact that it became in its
turn the medium of a still higher form of human
achievement. The spirit that had inspired its walls
and chambers had not exhausted itself in the effort ;
rising ever to fresh heights of living feeling, it gave
expression to the latter in fresh forms. It clothed
the interior of the house with a garment of beauty
floors, ceilings, and especially walls though with a
brilliance less audacious than that of the Renaissance.
The walls, to which the gaze involuntarily directs
itself without effort or constraint, became the field
upon which decorative art blossomed forth into
blithe and luxuriant vigour.
22 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
To the Pompeian his wall was no dead blank of
masonry, but was transformed into a mirror of his
sentiments. The wall entered into his life, and its
decoration drew therefrom its deepest inspiration
This was only partially a matter of architectural
principle. Such a style is, in truth, rooted in the
general conception of life, and the latter, again, in
the unfathomable depths of the individual nature.
It is only natural that the ancient world, which
recognised the body as the highest proof of the
existence of a soul, should have nourished especially
lofty sentiments with regard to the receptacle in
which that body moved, as well as to those physical
actions of which that receptacle was the principal
scene. It was no arid, meticulous symmetry of the
foot-rule which in every art revealed to the Greek
the secret proportions of the parts ; the harmony
that grows from the co-operation of all the senses
was the infallible touchstone of his creations.
The epic of the Iliad, like the frieze of the Par-
thenon, was a complete and perfect symphony. In
measured rhythm rises and falls, waxes and wanes,
the part allotted to each figure, each movement, each
action. On a foundation of minor details and com-
monplace events there is built up a structure of
lofty and imposing narrative, which in its turn cul-
minates in supreme flights of genius : the jubilant
procession at the banquet of the Olympian
divinities ; the ever-changeful fight, and its holo-
caust of victims, with which Achilles honoured
the obsequies of his friend before Troy on the one
side the din of battle and the pathos of unhappy love.
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 23
on the other valour and beauty carrying out the
behests of the gods all the parts are inexorably
grouped around one living centre into foreordered,
imperishable form. It is especially characteristic of
every product of Greek plastic art that it is instinct
with that vitalising energy which, emanating from
the artist, so inspired the dull marble and brass that
the reposeful harmony of limbs proclaims nothing
but latent and expansive power. The Hellenic
temples and theatres, in their purely sensuous
features, prove that beauty of form merely reveals
the excellence of the essential idea. And the same
applies to the Hellenic art of mural decoration.
In its early stages, before it commences to scale
its own steep path, even lofty religious art is but a
form of the decorative. In its maturity it rewards
its ancient foster-mother by the bestowal of its own
treasures of form upon her airy trifles. In the hey-
day of Hellenic art artistic mural decoration was
reserved for temples and public buildings, the walls
of houses and chambers remaining plain, even if
colour-washed ; and it was reserved for the wealthy
Greek bourgeoisie to effect a change in this respect.
But the spirit of Hellenism, breathing its inspiration
into Hellenistic Greco-Roman art, owned but a
transient allegiance to mural splendours in costly
marble, and, harking back to Nature, set the walls
aglow with scenes that spoke of life to their living
beholders, bestowing upon man what had hitherto
been sacred to the Deity an only too intelligible
retrograde movement of the social instinct in times
of social laxity.
24 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
Greek architecture reached its zenith in the
temples of the sixth and fifth centuries B.C., when
the community was the most powerful factor of
social life ; Greek painting attained its perfec-
tion between the middle of the fifth and the
close of the fourth century B.C., when the develop-
ment of individualism was at its height ; but Greek
domestic art did not reach its high-water mark
until mighty Hellas had crumpled into ruin ; and it
is in a foreign land, and in the Greco-Roman
mural art of Pompeii, that we have to admire this
autumnal luxuriance of the Hellenic genius.
The most ancient of the Pompeian styles of
mural decoration still shows leanings towards the
opulent splendours of Alexandria, and strives to
emulate its glittering marble panelling by means of
veneer. The demand for such works of ostenta-
tious elegance was enormous, but the costly
material was not easy to procure, and thus the
brush was called into requisition to imitate the
variegated markings and veinings of the genuine
marble. The entire wall might then be made to
appear as though it were formed of real blocks, set
obliquely, and this artificiality pose as art. But
before long a healthy reaction set in, and mural art
aimed at attaining its results by means of colour
alone, preferring simple contrasts, such as red
against green, yellow against blue, or relying on
monochrome red or black. And it is on the
basis of this severe and reposeful style that the
genuine and characteristic, in short the Pompeian
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 25
art of mural decoration arose. The feeling for
space developed in a new direction, and began to
include the wall-surfaces.
The spectator's point of vision naturally deter-
mined the very centre of the wall-space as the key
to the whole scheme of decoration ; all that lay
above or below, to right or left of this point, was
utilised for the accessories and setting. The wall-
space did not fall perpendicularly and horizontally
into a symmetrical double range of triple panels, but
was multiplied, as it were, into nine fields, which,
again, were not defined by cold straight lines, but
whose borders themselves fell into the scheme of
decoration. Here and there the side fields were
also subdivided affording a wealth of artistic
opportunities. That these opportunities were but
seldom abused, that artistic effect is but seldom
spoilt by overcrowding, is not the least tribute to
the mature refinement of Hellenic and Greco-
Roman culture.
The object of that culture was not the display
of skill, but the realisation of its own aims to
stimulate and refresh the senses, not to blunt them ;
not to disintegrate by want of proportion, but to
blend together in harmony. And hence the eight
marginal fields of the Pompeian wall produce the
effect of only four separate component parts base,
cornice, and two pillars, all throwing into relief the
central subject.
By an easy transition, this architectural style of
Pompeian interior mural decoration repeatedly
makes excursions into the province of outdoor
26 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
architecture, and imitates or even reproduces its
forms ; such was also the aim of earlier decorative
art. Endeavours were made to reproduce in stucco
the white splendour of marble, and the whole wall
was thus transformed into the bas-relief representa-
tion of a palace. Lofty columns, dividing the
wall, frame glimpses into stately vaulted saloons,
pavilions, and halls. Flights of stairs appear to
afford access to these scenes, and open doors show
the coming and going of the servants. But even
the realism of this sham architecture is enhanced by
the aid of painting, and galleries, terraces, staircases,
and arches are piled up in a bold barocco style by
the fantastic brush. This, the characteristic style
of the last days of Pompeii, is but an active reflection
of the riotous architecture of the Caesars, as it
flourished on the other side of the bay, at -Baiae,
and culminated in the tastelessness of the Golden
House of Nero. Just as the splendour of the mid-
Renaissance merged directly into the barocco^ so did
Hellenic art towards the end repeatedly expend itself
in exuberant tours deforce, such as the " Laocoon "
or the " Farnese Bull, " until the consciousness of
its own loftiness was blunted and lost in the ser-
vice of the gaudy courts of the usurper and the
Roman.
Absolute perfection of artistic medium leads to
misguided attempts at reproducing the substance of
one art with the forms of another the technical
artificiality of an over-ripe period. At the same
time the satiated and wearied senses yearn for the
abnormal and startling : unconsciously they follow
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 27
a retrograde impulse leading them in the direction
of the childishly barbaric the earliest stages of art,
when, still unschooled and undifferen dated, its aim
was decoration pure and simple. The glorifica-
tion of the humours of a Maecenas : the playthings
of a moment : glittering spectacles adapted to the
narrow point of view of the spectator such are
the theatrical glories of the barocco art of all time.
i This style of architectural painting occurs fre-
quently, though not to an excessive extent, at
Pompeii ; but it often conveys, perhaps unintention-
ally, an impression of irony of a smile of superio-
rity. The arches curve into huge flourishes ; the
figures on the cornices engage in the maddest
dances and combats ; the pillars are indescribably
slender (possibly there were just such golden
columns in the Roman palaces) : here they no
longer rest upon the solid ground, but spring from
the heads of genii and fabulous sea-monsters, from
plants and grotesque ornaments. In some of the
most striking instances they represent elegant
candelabra. Whereas Rome degraded serious art
to mere decorative purposes, Greco-Roman Pompeii,
with a distant echo of Attic wit, took her decora-
tive art with genuine seriousness. After all, her
great ambition was mockingly to trump the
artistic extravagances of the capital ; and thus she
flung a joyous network of dazzling decoration
athwart her walls, to the exhilaration of her own
senses. And the airy grace of this sportiveness
proves that it was not the sheer exaggeration of
28 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
provincial copyists, but the result of originality of
conception and refinement of technique.
But this mastery of the language of form also
teaches us that it is not prudent to regard every ac-
cessory detail of an antique work of art as necessarily
true to life. This is a fashion with many enthusiasts,
who, reversing the procedure of the naturalist, are de-
sirous of interpreting the life of the ancients by the
light of such contemporary representations, pictorial
or plastic, as may survive. It is true that the crea-
tions of the Greek artists, high priests of Nature,
emanated directly from the precincts of reality ; but
these works were also of the nature of religious acts,
and it is consequently an ideal aspect of life that they
present to us. They hallowed Nature, instead of
transgressing against her, by perpetuating the rich
natural beauty of contemporary humanity only in
its choicest forms. If they rose superior to chance
which is nowadays idolised as the only real fidelity
to Nature it was in the pursuit of lofty objects.
But the external accessories of civilised life gar-
ments, utensils, buildings exacted no such scrupu-
lous conscientiousness, and thus we may take
unfettered delight in the architecture created by
Pompeian imaginations ; since, belonging neither
to the naturalistic nor to the classical school, it
testifies to freedom of artistic feeling and the merry
sportiveness of unfettered humour.
The main divisions of the Pompeian wall were
designed to facilitate free and unconstrained con-
templation. Next followed the ornamental framing
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 29
of the main subject. Unfettered by any serious
function, this ornamentation was free to spin the
bright threads of its sparkling tale. It follows the
sportive law of its being, and now soothes by its
regularity, now excites by its fickleness ; while the
arrangement of the wall-spaces lends to it a facile and
pleasing symmetry, calming and peaceful in its effect.
The perpendicular lines, whether of columns
overtopping one another or of slender tree-trunks
towering into the sky, carry the eye easily upward ;
while the horizontal forms lead the spectator through
rural landscapes, or hunting scenes sweep past him.
Not even the angles of intersection remain un-
utilised, but are pressed into the service of a rhyth-
mically flowing fancy which sees life in every-
thing.
Here a winged boy bears upon his head a plant,
which higher up becomes a column and bursts
afresh into bright foliage ; the foot of the winged
genius, however, merges into the graceful spiral of
a half-open acanthus leaf, which masks with its con-
volutions the stiffness of the angle, and diverts the
attention of the observer from the perpendicular
to the horizontal lines of the composition. The eye
is then caught by a rollicking procession of marine
monsters, until the eel-like prolongation of the body
of sea-horse or dolphin once more carries it up-
wards. Everywhere it encounters fresh surprises.
Here the projection of a feathery side-branch ; or a
coloured riband, borne in the beaks of birds, invites
to a rope-dance. There a tree is transformed into
a candelabrum, whose manifold knobs and flutings
30 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
are so many steps enticing the unwearied gaze
onwards and upwards.
Only actual vision can convey an adequate idea
of the infinite variety of these creations, and of the
innumerable combinations of groups and scenes ;
any written description can be but a halting one.
Thus one single door-frame displays a bordering
garland of acanthus spirals, and, of thirty-four, all
are different ! And, besides this, there dwells
among the leaves, stalks, and thorns a merry little
world of birds and beetles, hares, mice, lizards, and
snails flying, hopping, and crawling, pecking,
gnawing, and snarling, hunting and hunted in no
case repeated, amid the labyrinths of the multiform
foliage.
Fantastic, perhaps ! but, still more than that, a
primitive fellowship of Man with Nature, which
brought him such unsought treasures of spontaneity,
grace, and humour. It is only an eye so richly
endowed and responsive, only a sensibility so finely
strung as this, that would venture to outvie Nature,
(and to unite forms that she has kept severely apart.
It is only a mind imbued with a reverence for
Nature, to which every form is but the manifestation
of an inward force, and every force finds embodi-
ment in form, that could fashion from the shapes of
man and beast Fauns, Centaurs, Tritons, and
Nereids, could call sea-horses and sea-griffins into
being, could conjure the tender forms of lovely
children out of flower-bells, and conceive human
limbs terminating in the tendrils of plants. Pom-
peian art converted these impossibilities into realities.
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 31
This world of fable came to life upon the walls of
Pompeii, and transformed its bare rooms into an
enchanted bower of garlands, woven from all that
was fair and bright and joyous.
Compare the modern treatment of wall-spaces
with that of Pompeii ! The Middle Ages saw their
walls hung with weapons and armorial bearings. It
was reserved for the Renaissance to recognise once
more, during a limited period, the decorative value
of these walls, and to adorn them with its most
brilliant conceptions. The Gobelins of a subsequent
period was at best a makeshift, and then the
modern wall-paper ! With what tastelessness of
perverted ornamentation has the past century and
a half often presumed to torture us, in a nightmare
of casual caricature, grinning forth from a mono-
tonous wilderness of distorted posies ! Even gloomy
panelling and cold whitewash were not so hopeless,
for they could always be brightened by a fine
picture. Even the fresh energy of the latest
artistic industry devoted to mural decoration is still
occupied in feeling its way : the threefold harmony
of its scroll-work, the purer style manifested in its
employment of forms of life, has still to find an
outlet into the realms of art not, by the way, in
mere imitation of either Pompeian or Greek forms,
but in a comprehensive grasp of our own conditions
of life and of our mental processes. When that
time arrives our dwellings will no longer be taste-
lessly ornamented, but really adorned.
To the Pompeian his decorated wall was by no
means an optional piece of ornamentation, but a
32 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
second skin, sensitive to the impression of his
feelings : no inanimate generator of dulness, but
the reflection of his soul, and at the same time its
guiding influence. This cultured decorative taste
of the Pompeians bears witness to the fact that
under the sway of Greco-Roman and how much
more of Hellenic ? art human achievement once
walked hand in hand with culture.
Had it, however, remained the sole manifestation
of the sensuous joyousness of Pompeii, the decora-
tive art that ornamented Pompeian walls would be
of but secondary importance. The call cf full-
blooded life would have been weak indeed had it
awakened no other echo than the airy play of mere
decoration. But the Pompeian walls bear witness,
in the subjects depicted upon them, to the senti-
ments, aspirations, and ideals that animated those
who once dwelt within them.
Pompeian painting has been occasionally stig-
matised, with a contemptuous shrug, as purely
" illustrative," as consisting, to some extent, of cold
and insignificant object-lessons in the religious
history of the Hellenic world. It would indeed be
no small credit to Greek painting to have " illus-
trated " and " illuminated " contemporary life ; but,
at any rate, cold and insignificant it is not. Its best
works speak for themselves, even without the
necessity of referring to the original fables for
enlightenment. Those fables, and the subjects of
many of the pictures, have given rise to lengthy
controversies ; but even when first revealed to the
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 33
world these striking works excited an admiration
in which there was no discordant note.
Naturally the different technique of modern
painting attains, and strives to attain, other effects ;
but Greek painting came to maturity in the glowing
light and free air of the South, hand in hand with
sculpture each the mirror of that nude art which
drew its inspiration from the Palestra.
The chief subject of their art being the human
form that exact likeness of the Deity, and his
noblest Temple the painters of those days had no
reason for refining their colouring into the hundred
nuances of tone that^mingle in the drapery and flesh-
tints of figures seen in the damp shade of trees,
or the chiaroscuro of a glazed apartment. In the
misty Netherlands the task of the soft oil-medium
was to reproduce vague and dissolving contours,
and the native land of oil-painting was also that of
Rembrandt. In Venice, the City of Waters, Titian,
Tintoretto, and the Veronese carried the art of
warm diffused colouring to its highest pitch : hence
we acclaim them as masters of colour. In bright
Hellas the function of colour was not to dazzle,
but to depict limbs of splendid physical beauty.
That which in a Northern atmosphere would have
appeared stiff, wooden, and lifeless was transformed
by the clear light of the South into free and natural
simplicity. The severest school of Greek art
admitted only red, yellow, white, and black as
artistic colours, rejecting violet, blue, and green ;
and yet it was to the works of these artists that the
fullest measure of appreciation was accorded.
c
34 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
The painters of the early Renaissance, somewhat
like Van der Goes and the inventor of oil-painting,
Van Eyck, himself, aimed at fulness of colouring, at
resonance of vivid tone. Michelangelo, sculptor
and painter of the nude, despised oil-painting as
effeminate and amateurish ; while Leonardo, a
master of the magic of chiaroscuro, carried his re-
searches into the technique of the art of Polygno-
tus just as Bocklin later on succeeded in drawing
new power from the old mediums.
Undoubtedly Pompeian painting had its limits,
and its peculiarities proceed in part from the fact
that it was executed neither upon canvas or wood,
nor yet upon the hastily prepared surface of the
more modern fresco, but that, owing to the pre-
liminary apportionment of the available space,
almost the entire wall admitted of treatment in
colour at the artist's complete leisure. But, after
all, the severer style of technique is only the tool
of a master spirit. Greek painting is the art of
line, as far as line can convey form, and by means
of form the workings of the life within ; but it is
at the same time the art of colour, for the blue of
the heavens, the green of the trees, the rose on a
maiden's cheek were too dear to the Greeks to be
altogether renounced as subjects for their art.
Their brightly coloured draperies, brilliantly
decorated temples, and painted statuary testify to
their high appreciation of colour, which even the
weather-beaten condition of the Pompeian colour-
tones cannot altogether disguise.
It is only when wan listlessness, anaemic spiri-
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 35
tuality, and Northern mysticism are to be galvanised
into life and interest by the tremulous play of
broken light and colour that the art of Greek
painting fails to convince ; but it is by no means
on that account debarred from the representation of
those vague, inchoate, and shadowy sentiments
which pass in these days for the true, because the
only tolerated spiritual life.
Pompeian painting includes the whole range of
subjects treated by later art, with the exception of
portraiture, which was relegated almost entirely to
the sculptor, and is therefore in this connection of
relatively little importance ; though the portraits
ofPaquius Proculusand his wife may be mentioned.
Apart from this branch of art, we have still-life .
and genre, landscape and animal subjects ; but the
^ principal place is taken by descriptive painting,
and that chiefly of a religious character. The
architectural arrangement of the walls, on whose
surfaces all these arts are represented, classifies
them according to their respective intrinsic values
judged by human standards. Still-life, genre^
landscape, and animal studies, so far as they consti-
tute independent subjects, are almost entirely con-
fined to the border spaces, and even the two large
side compartments to the right and left are reserved
for more important themes. In the majority of
cases it is thus the horizontal decorative framework,
such as the representations of cornices and pediments,
which, in intimate connection with the rich orna-
mentation, provide a base for the still-life and the
36 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
genre, the beasts and the trees. This differentiation
in values is still further accentuated by the less
careful execution of these secondary paintings.
Man is undoubtedly the central figure in Greek
art, the rest of Nature having no essential claim to
consideration, except as the environment of Man.
But, encompassing Man, she derives from him also
his sense of vitality, and beasts as well as plants in
the Pompeian scheme of Nature lead a conscious
existence, whereby their human interest is enhanced.
It is thus incorrect to deny to the art of the Greeks
a comprehension of " landscape " : their belief in
the (jentus loci, in the nymphs of the springs, in the
Dryads of the trees, in the deities of the forest and
the stream, are proof to the contrary. But the
humanised, polytheistic attributes with which such
fancies invested it prevented its ever becoming a
subject of art for its own sake. Here again Dutch
genius was the first to reveal to modern mid-
European fog-chilled culture the artistic values
that lay in meadow, wood, and copse, and the
sentimentality of a Pantheism shrinking from the
haunts of men served to enhance the reverence
evinced for Nature's solitudes.
The deck, however, child of the South, regarded
Nature simply as a setting to the figure of Man, and
it was through and by the latter that the landscape
derived its awesome grandeur or disclosed its joy-
ous grace. Thus, in Homer, the storm at sea
redoubles its living fury that it may lash Odysseus
on his wreck ; while Theocritus makes the fragrance
of the earth, of the vineyards and olive trees, ascend
*M
Photo. Alinari
THE CENTAUR CHIRON INSTRUCTING ACHILLES IN THE
ART OF PLAYING THE LYRE
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 37
mingled with the joys and sorrows of the peasant
folk.
Painting, as we know it in Pompeian examples,
is content in its more important compositions simply
to indicate the landscape. Yet it is in truth merely
a matter of condensation, when a mountain range is
represented by a single rock, or a forest by two or
three trees. For the human interest, the true sub-
ject of the picture, requires but a limited space for
its development, and any delineation of the distant
landscape would only distract the observer's atten-
tion and depreciate the human value. In the less
ambitious works, however, landscape stands, as is
reasonable, on a footing of its own. Perchance a
traveller is represented passing a rustic sanctuary ; an
antique Hermes indicates the road, a sparse grove of
cypresses clings to the steep sides of the mountains,
cleft by ravines, which enclose the valley just such a
woodasBenozzoGozzoli's "Procession of the Magi,"
in the domestic chapel of the Medici, shows upon the
Tuscan hills. Or we are shown an altar with two
stone pillars ; the sturdy limb of a forked oak-tree
has grown through the cross-piece forming the
frieze, in like manner that picturesque holm-oaks
are frequently represented in well-executed studies
of foliage, r arther on, embosomed mid a distant
range of hills, we catch a glimse of an arm of the sea,
into which projects a peninsula bearing a small
temple. Chapels, temples, images of the Gods, are
not infrequent, and there is also no lack of ruins
broken columns, ruined halls and causeways a
legacy of the civil wars ; in short, all the elements
38 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
of genuine romantic landscape ! We encounter
characteristic rustic dwellings, stately buildings, or
even the whole of an opulent seaport town, with
just such effect as the Bay of Naples might be ex-
pected to exercise upon the rendering of such a
subject.
Animals are frequently depicted in a setting of
landscape, to the mutual advantage of both subjects.
Was it not in the animal studies of Jordaens that
his collaborator Rubens proved his worth as a land-
scape-painter ? Thus on the Peristyle wall of the
Casa della Caccia the scene of the hunt is laid in a
forest. But where the artist has drawn upon his
imagination for the landscape the animals also are
unconvincing at all events, in cases where the
possibility of ocular experience was precluded ;
such as the Nile scenes, in which dwarfs engage in
combat with hippopotami and crocodiles. On the
other hand, animals indigenous to the country are
genuinely true to Nature the cat killing a quail,
the hare nibbling grapes, the fish, the dogs, wolves,
deer, and wild boars. The chargers in the mosaic
of the " Battle of Alexander " are full of life, and
even the lion in a large picture of Orpheus, although
in spite of all the baiting of wild beasts at the
amphitheatre hardly convincing, at least possesses
the naturalness of the conventional lion of Greek
statuary.
Granting that the renderings of animal life are
thus occasionally inadequate or conventional in
effect as, for instance, the serpents on the domestic
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 39
altars, the explanation is generally to be found in the
fact that the aesthetic and religious needs of the
generality of Pompeians depended for their expres-
sion solely on the artistic skill of worthy artisans.
But it is at least more pleasing to see animals ren-
dered with artificiality and man depicted with
animation and truth, than to find beasts and flowers
portrayed, as in Japanese art, with astonishing
fidelity, while the human figure remains at a dead
level of stiff and sprawling conventionality.
Animal life is, however, most widely drawn upon
for the higher order of decorative work, and in this
connection one of the most popular subjects is the
flying swan also occurring in pairs, as companion
figures. But theirs is no stretching flight, but
rather a soaring ascent, calculated to carry the eye,
by way of the long, curving necks, up to the
garlands fluttering above.
Later on the representation of animal life passes
almost directly into the region of genre hunting
scenes, battles, and races between beasts and Genii
frequently occur ; but in these studies the Genii
soon become the central figures. Excellence in
execution and fidelity to Nature distinguish these
studies in genre, or, rather, in Genii. The idea
which our imagination clothes with the forms of
withered gnomes or bearded cobolds, Pompeian
fancy invested with the charming attributes of
charming children.
The spirit and the joy ousness of boyhood breathes
in all these youthful forms that people the Pompeian
walls akin, indeed, to the putti of the Renaissance,
40 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
but frequently a shade older, freer, more mature.
We surprise these gleesome spirits m the full swing
of their blithe progress. They dance along, making
music as they go, in ever-changing poses, astounding
in their variety, yet unstudied and free as Nature
herself. It is only in the playground that the eye
could seek to accustom itself to such poetry of
motion. A stucco ceiling from neighbouring Grag-
nano affords the highest manifestation of this art.
Elsewhere we encounter these youthful Genii,
often of both sexes, gathering flowers and grapes.
We find them, like their faraway kiri in old
Cologne, working in wood and metals, at the
fulling-mill and the wine-press, or engaged in
burlesque combats with monsters. In a similar
capacity to the guardian angels of the present day,
they are interwoven with the whole life of the
Pompeian, peopling his walls with silent asso-
ciates in his joys and sorrows. Whither have they
vanished, these friendly gnomes ? The inquisitive
wife of the Burgomaster of Cologne is a parable !
Decadent ourselves, and incapable of creating
living forms, we have dissected and resolved all
things into their constituent elements, until we
have proved the ultimate atom to be but an aggre-
gation of negations ! Blind to the real kernel
of our own being, we have lopped off as useless
the flower-decked branch from whence the tiny
divinities of the beneficent powers of Nature
smiled upon us. Now, impoverished through our
own covetousness, we one and all languish in
bondage to the sole god, Mammon.
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 41
Hellenism although in the Olympian religion of
morals it had scaled a human heaven, never wan-
dered far from Nature, and the earth which formed
the complement of that heaven rested on the ancient
reverence for Nature, which recognised on all sides
independent vital forces. It was to these that the
Pompeian paid his tribute of gratitude and reverence
when he summoned youthful Genii their brightest
manifestation into his presence in his pictures and
the decorations of his walls. And even if this
faith had done nothing more than rejoice the eye
and refresh the senses by the Anacreontic sweetness
of its conceptions, it would still have conferred a
blessing and a benefit on life which we might well
envy.
Reared on deeply-rooted foundations, the genre-
painting of Pompeii casts aside those paltry and
trivial qualities which are characteristic of the style.
The insignificance of pictures owing their origin to
the mere accident of circumstances gives place to a
network of more refined and definite personal
relations; while the subjects chosen approach more
nearly to the severity of the religious, the heroic,
and the erotic. The boy now becomes a full-grown
youth, the sportings of the Genii wax into the
heroic deeds of the mighty Past, and the lax bond
of their influence is replaced by an earnest inter-
change of sentiment between Gods and men. In
this manner does the Pompeian art of Genii-paint-
ing serve as an immediate stepping-stone to a
higher plane of achievement*
42 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
On entering this fresh phase we are at once
greeted by the same Genii ; but they are now God-
like youths, who skim through the blue heavens
bearing torches, like incarnate beams of light, or
sit, in the form of their lord and master Eros, by
the waterside, and aid the Goddess of Love in her
Jishing. Or they pace along in the guise of the
Muses, or form the retinue of Apollo the Sun God
the sun-disc in his hand and a flaming corona
about his brow. In proportion as the Genii thus
rise towards the level of the high Gods, they give
place at the other end of the scale to lesser spirits
to that hardy race of elves and water-sprites, the
Fauns and Tritons, wild sprigs of Nature ; or there
are Bacchantes, cradled in the intoxicating maze of
the Dionysian mysteries, and followed by a heavy
cavalry of male and female Centaurs, curvetting
and prancing in lickerish wantonness ; or Nereids,
borne along on foam-crested sea-horses, represent
the meaner, older, more mundane deities.
Very frequently, however, the lesser powers are
but the retinue of a greater deity, and in that case
find their allotted position in the side spaces of the
wall, the place of honour being reserved for the
mightier divinity. Thus the Fauns, Hermaphro-
dites, Satyrs, and Bacchantes of the accessory pic-
tures are only apparently independent compositions,
and in reality form the retinue of Dionysus, supreme
in the central picture. In the same manner,
priestly youths and virgins are depicted in the imme-
diate vicinity of the deity whose ministers they are ;
while the decorative portions of the wall become as
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 43
it were the wings of the scene, behind which the
remaining actors in the incident portrayed are
gathered in plastic groups.
There is nevertheless a well-defined boundary
line, beyond which these forms cease to be mere
generic types, and, assuming a personality of their
own, enter, duly provided with names and cha-
racters, the great Pantheon of Mythology thus
speaking to the observer of personal life and expe-
rience, even though its purport be one of eternal,
universal application. However captivating and
full of charm the effect of the figures and pictures
of the earlier phases may be in the freshness of their
rendering, still it is far outweighed by the thrill
with which the more personal interest of these later
compositions grips the imagination ; as though
actual life radiated from these fading colours and
lines which are rapidly vanishing beneath the hand
of Time. A melancholy glamour steals over the
solitary beholder, a feeling of awe pervades his
senses, which empty words could never convey ;
but on the wall of a small lonely house, that of
Lucius Cornelius Diadumenos, in the Vicolo del
Ealcone Pensile, there is a priceless but little-known
picture which inspires these sensations in a peculiar
degree.
The circular olive - green background, from
which the smiling, sunburnt, curly-headed flageolet-
player meets our gaze, harmonises well with the
red of the wall. But it is not merely a comely
Campanian shepherd-boy, playing a reed-pipe, that
we have here before us ; nor yet the portrait of
44 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
some contemporary dear to the artist or his patron.
To the Pompeian it was the picture of the beauti-
ful Olympus, once wooed by Marsyas, or even by
Pan himself a story immortalised by the fine
marble group at Naples. Here he is alone, but
the whole cycle of legend to which he belongs was
a living reality to the minds of the age which
created the picture, and the man whose wish it was
to have it ever before his eyes. And yet, again, this
is not merely the hero of an ancient fable, but the
incarnate roguishness ofjoie de vivre^ rejoicing in its
glamour of love, and seeking in the play of Art
a higher revelation a resonant affirmation of its
existence.
The comprehensive significance of these mythi-
cal representations must not be lost sight of. Half
poesy, and as such a gospel of natural religion, and
half primordial human life, celebrating every day
its own regeneration, and in the joy which it begets
finding its own nobility such was the function of
mythology in Greek art, and all Art is comprised in
it. And there is no essential difference in the
manner in which the artists of the Renaissance
genuine children of Nature in their freshness of
perception transfused the blood of their own per-
sonal experience into the sacred legends that had
been taught them ; ever and again transferring the
pious drama to the stage whereon their own parts
were played ; transforming the Holy Family into
Italians, in a setting of Italian landscape, and casting
their own mistresses for the part of the Madonna,
and their bosom friends for those of youthful Saints.
Naples, Museo Nazionale
ZEUS AND HERA
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 45
But genuine Art can do no other. What has
once been divinely established as a profound truth
of human existence must ever again in fresh form
confirm the ancient mystery ; that is the ultimate
essence of Art. As symbols of Eternity, compre-
hending all human nature, and reflecting it back to
ultimate primordial causes, these myths do not by
any means support the one-sided logic of the brain.
The latter may, in its receptivity, here too observe
and anticipate, but has not the task of reconciling
deep primaeval associations with the short-lived
mosaic of its own ideas.
It is only when viewed in this light that Art
becomes anything more than mere technical facility,
truly undeserving of the sympathy which Humanity,
wiser than either practical or abstract book-learning,
has ever bestowed on her. Art is either a living
natural religion or nothing.
An especially prominent part is played in
Pompeian art by the Bacchic legendary cycle.
Although pre-Olympian, the cult of Bacchus
survived under Greek influence even in its older
form, which not only exalted joyousness as the true
Dionysian spirit, and created for itself important
functions in the drama, but also celebrated it in the
intoxicated exaltation of humanity to an enraptured
union with Divinity itself by wine, by the dance,
by music, and by the joys of love. Naturally this
older range of emotions, ever resurgent in mystics,
from the Persian Sufi to the Christian monk, ac-
quired renewed force when the Olympian religion,
46 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
with the decline of Greek influence, decayed at its
roots.
But as all religions were represented in the
Roman world-empire, every single cult was inspired
with apprehension at this Bacchanalian recru-
descence, and even the arid spirit of the Capitol
stamped as an orgy what had hitherto been simply
a festival procession : Bacchanalian sensualities
were evolved from the commemorative sports of
inspired servants of the God. Nevertheless, that
which in actual life had so completely lost its
significance was re-invested at the hands of Art
with all its ancient splendour, its ancient glamour,
and shines upon us in untarnished brilliance from
the Pompeian walls. Not that there was any lack
in Pompeii of that class of minor incidental pictures
the object of which is frankly the titillation of the
senses ; but, even then, they were almost entirely
confined to the places in which we find them
houses of ill-fame, long ago transformed from
temples of joy, served by priests and priestesses of
pleasure, into semi-clandestine abodes of ignoble de-
sires. Widely different is the spirit that animates
the genuine pictures of the Bacchanalian-erotic cult,
and only prudery in search of a pose could take ex-
ception to a naked Silenus, or could even consign to
seclusion, on the plea of indecency, a painting of
such natural refinement as that of Priapus, the God
of generation, with his fruit-laden scales, so jealously
confined under lock and key in the entrance to the
House of the Vettii.
The principal hero of these Bacchic paintings i&
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 47
naturally Dionysus himself. We encounter his
youthful flower-crowned figure either alone or ac-
companied by his panther, and perchance ministering
to its thirst ; or leaning upon his favourite Ampelos;
or erect in hermaphroditic beauty, while Silenus
plays the lyre. Then again we see him approach
the sleeping Ariadne, whilst audacious Fauns draw
aside her veil ; or else the God and his beloved
sweep by in joyous procession. The numerous
pictures of Ariadne, which usually depict the boy
Eros pointing out to the abandoned maiden the ships
of Theseus upon the high seas, also belong, strictly
speaking, to this cycle.
Around these two principal figures there groups
itself the entire Bacchanalian pageant, the Fauns
and Bacchantes whose pictured forms mark the
elevation of the art of Genii-painting to a higher
plane. Rising above the jubilant throng we recog-
nise the figures of Pan and Olympus, of whom
Pompeii has yielded us two fine representations ;
with frank tenderness the youth approaches his lover,
sits near him receiving instruction upon the flute, or,
as in the marble group at Naples, listens to his words
of affection. One picture of Pan and Olympus pos-
sessed a pendant, and both adorned a quite ordinary
house ; the latter represents the Centaur Chiron in-
structing the youthful Achilles in playing the lyre.
And this external similarity of form is not the
only connecting link between the two pictures ;
there is a deeper current of ethical sentiment.
Silenus and Dionysus, Pan and Olympus, Chiron
and Achilles . . . Socrates and Alcibiades all
48 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
illustrate that great double chord of love and
learning which re-echoes through the ages both of
myth and of history.
The picture of " Achilles and Chiron " is said to
have had its origin in an Hellenic marble group
which actually stood in Rome opposite to that of
" Pan and Olympus." Now it is true that the
background of our picture (originally at Hercula-
neum) is architecturally conceived as the wall of
some interior, before which the two figures stand.
But that it could be a mere copy is out of the
question. The idea of treating anew a familiar
theme may well have been suggested both to artist
and patron by the celebrated Roman group, and the
execution may also have been influenced by re-
miniscences of that group ; but the figure of
Achilles is so essentially a creation direct from life,
so thorough in perception, and in itself such an
excellent artistic achievement, that it could not
possibly owe its origin to the brush of any cool,
clever copyist, but must undoubtedly be the work
of a genuine artist. Farthest removed from the
spirit of Hellenic art are those who attempt to
flatter it by imitating its external characteristics,
when it is only artistic feeling, operating from
within, that could ever hope to accomplish kindred
work. The easy pose, the graceful attitude of the
youth, the turn of the head and the soulful gaze,
tell of unbounded affection and trust ; they suggest,
and are themselves suggested by, deep feeling.
That gaze alone should be sufficient to dispose
once for all of the stupid and time-worn assertion
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 49
that Hellenic art created purely physical, and
Christian art moral, beauty.
If the soul be not in the body, where is it to be
found ? And if it were not expressed in the more
refined motions of the limbs and features, how should
we know that our fellow-men were not all soulless
automata ? But the soul is more than mere intellect,
or intellectual expression. It is, beyond all, that
which gives form, and an attractive, well-propor-
tioned, and therefore beautiful figure, in its graceful
freedom of movement, indicates a soul full of power
and worth, even though it may not be adapted to
all relations of life ; such a form, however, is the
type and the measure of beauty. The only
element of truth in the contention we have men-
tioned is, that Christian art was compelled to de-
vote a one-sided attention to the soul, because it
had been taught to regard the body as an abomi-
nation, and thus a soul torn by sorrow, a body
shattered by pain, became its fixed criterion of
beauty. Hellenism never recognised this unnatural
and profane distinction, and the great artists of the
Renaissance, taking a lofty standpoint, declined to
acknowledge it to our salvation. But the world
is still haunted by the mediaeval delusion that beauty
of form is but superficial, and ugliness alone is real ;
a self-passed encomium on our chaotic, anti-cosmic
want of culture.
In divers other fashions is the great theme of
passion, sacred in the eyes of the ancient world,
celebrated in Pompeian paintings. First we have
So POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
Zeus seated upon Mount Ida, Hera approaching
him 5 the picture is unfortunately so mutilated,
that the figure of Hera alone testifies to the life
and spirit of the whole. Then we see the God in
the form of an eagle perched upon a tree, above
the beautiful sleeping Ganymede ; or in the likeness
of a swan caressed by Leda. As a pendant to the
Ganymede, we see another comely sleeper, Endy-
mion, approached by crescent-crowned Artemis,
descending from the mountains ; a theme frequently
repeated. Here Apollo pursues the flying Daphne,
or is seated beside his favourite Cyparissus, who
laments his wounded stag. Aphrodite stands dis-
consolate behind the bleeding Adonis, whose arm
is supported by Cupids, who are elsewhere seen
binding up with lamentations his wounded thigh.
The inward anguish, the consciousness of ap-
proaching death, the growing torpor induced by
loss of blood, and the innate tender sensibility of
the beautiful youth find living expression in his
features. The Goddess who here sued in vain we
find elsewhere wooed by the caresses of Ares,
whom Cupids are despoiling of his weapons. In
the " House of Adonis " there was yet another
picture expressly representing Adonis as a her-
maphrodite, with Aphrodite and her retinue in the
act of performing his toilet. His coy repugnance
to the advances of the Goddess thus rested on a
deeper foundation, at once mystic and biological.
And this picture of the hermaphrodite Adonis is
in intimate connection with another myth which
was especially dear to the Pornpeian that of Nar-
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 51
cissus. This warning, and at the same time ethi-
cally significant, legend of the youth who, deaf to
all wooing, and fascinated by his own beauty, pined
away in self-adoration, and was turned into a
flower this admonition against the exclusion of
fertile and glowing love, and also loftiest tribute to
the supremacy of beauty over the senses, this in-
tensely Greek conception of Life, which is so
inexhaustible we find it again and again mate-
rialised upon Pompeian walls ; rendered in one
place with consummate art, and in another without
the slightest aesthetic pretensions : in the homes of
rich and poor alike : from the hand both of the
artist and of the mere mechanic. There sits the
beauteous youth upon the rocky shore, gazing
down at his own reflection, or leaning upon a stafl,
amid clumps of dead-green rushes, he stoops with
longing gaze over the water. Occasionally from
behind the rocks there peeps the nymph Echo, who,
shunned by Narcissus, pursued him with vain ap-
peals, and was mocked by the echo of her own
voice as he by his own reflection. Or perchance
a votive column, entwined with a bright riband,
and decked with pious offerings, intensifies the im-
pression of loneliness possibly because it reminds
the modern observer of the silent, crumbling em-
bellishments of Roman villas or ancient castles.
He is filled with infinite sorrow for a world that is
dead, and at the same time with the conviction that
beauty of form is the loftiest and most comprehen-
sive ideal, the true cosmic life-object of both Man
and Nature, like Eternity so near, and yet so far.
52 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
To the Pompeian the Hellenic world was very
much alive. This is proved, quite apart from those
subjects taken from sacred mythology, by the
numerous representations found on Pompeian walls
of scenes out of the great heroic age.
The Hellenic legendary cycle reached the Latins
at an early date by means of the trade in Greek
vases. The pottery of Apulia and Campania re-
peated and diffused Hellenic designs, and schooled
the Latin idea to the free flow of line characteristic
of Hellenic conceptions. The clumsy cinerary
urns of the Etruscans show how conversant even
they had become with the story of the heroes.
Later on, the influence of imported Greek poetry
deepened the impression already created, and thus
we have small cause for wonder that in a country
so strongly Hellenised as Campania the deeds of
the heroic age were sufficiently familiar to find a
place among the subjects of mural decorations.
We encounter Hercules as a child strangling the
serpents, bringing the Erymanthian boar to the
cowardly Eurystheus, or standing beside Deianira
and threatening with his club the Centaur Nessus,
who vehemently protests his innocence. Orpheus
sings his lays in the mountains, and the wild beasts
listen, spell-bound. Theseus stands beside the slain
bull-headed Minotaur, and the released victims kiss
his hand a picture often repeated ; or else he is
finding his father's sword. Hermes puts Argus,
the watcher of lo, to sleep (at Herculaneum) ; lo
lands in Egypt, received by Isis. Perseus frees
Andromeda. Medea meditates the murder of her
Photo. Brogi
Naples, Museo Nazionale
ARES AND APHRODITE
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 53
children, who are playing beside her, or broods
over her lot, the sword pressed to her breast, while
her features are distorted by conflicting emotions
gnawing resentment, dark forebodings of the
crime which obtrudes its horrid suggestion upon
her, and terror at her own dread resolve. We
see the torment of Ixion, the cruel punishment
of Dirce, and the fate of Icarus. Actaeon is torn
to pieces, Pasiphae with Daedalus admires the bull,
and Leda shows Tyndareus a nest with the infant
children of Zeus.
But above all the Iliad, with its related sagas,
bears evidence of the personal interest taken by the
Pompeians in the Hellenic past. One of their
finest paintings depicts the departure of Chryseis
from the tent of Agamemnon. The latter sits with
averted countenance, while the maiden's gaze is
fixed on the distance, and her cheeks reflect the
inward anguish aroused by the cruel necessity of
deciding between the conflicting claims of her
lover and the father to whose arms the ship now
waiting at the shore is to bear her. Had nothing
else been preserved to us of Greek painting but the
charming flush of modesty mantling this maiden's
cheeks, and the head of Achilles in the picture of
Chiron, we should still possess sufficient evidence
of the loftiness of its spiritual conceptions.
Another picture, once a companion work to the
last in the so-called " House of the Tragic Poet,"
shows Briseis carried away from Achilles. Then
we have a fragment apparently representing Patro-
clus beseeching Achilles for permission to fight :
54 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
the only portion completely preserved is the seated
figure of the latter, but the expression of those
noble features, surveying the world with a gaze of
such profound penetration, endows the picture with
a high degree of merit. Once more we encounter
Achilles, as he is being recognised by Ulysses in
female attire in the company of Deidameia 5 the
identity of the youthful hero is indicated by the
figures of himself and Chiron upon the shield which
he has grasped. We see Ulysses himself, unrecog-
nised by Penelope, giving the latter news of her
missing spouse. In conclusion, since it is impos-
sible to enumerate all, only the legend of Orestes
need be mentioned. Here we have Iphigenia
sacrificed and rescued, Orestes recognised by Elec-
tra, Orestes and Pylades in the presence of Thoas,
whose hands are rendered with intelligence and
refinement. In this picture one of the youths,
with woebegone, downcast gaze, resigns himself
to the death that will bring him deliverance ; while
his companion, daring and indomitable, still clings
to the hope of saving both himself and his friend.
And the great Mosaic of Alexander shows not only
how the prehistoric myths of Hellas had established
a firm hold upon Pompeian sentiment, but also
that the latter brilliant episodes of her history were
regarded by the Pompeians with sympathy and
veneration. Like that momentous day, big with
the fate of nations, when the Macedonian decided
the issue of the heroic struggle carried on for ages
against the Persian yoke by the Greeks whom -he
had brought under his sway, and diffused Hellenic
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 55
culture throughout the barbarian world ; to the
ruin of Hellenism itself for its life-blood ebbed
away with the glories of its heirs and successors,
far from the heart of its parent land, amidst the
court ceremonial of lesser nations but to the inex-
haustible blessing and advantage of the rest of
humanity.
The art which confers such especial value upon
Pompeii in the eyes of our own age is that of her
mural paintings. There, on the spot that gave them
birth, and with which their existence is almost inex-
tricably interwoven, they provide ocular demonstra-
tion of that which was near and dear to the spirit of
the Pompeians. Nevertheless this reflection of their
artistic sense would be incomplete apart from the
plastic creations which found their home at Pompeii.
These, it is true, unlike the wall-paintings, are
movable, and there can thus be no conclusive evi-
dence that the origin of any single " find " was in
any way connected with the spot on which it may
have been discovered ; it would be as easy to bring
it thither as it has been to remove it. Neverthe-
less, collectively, this treasure-trove proves wherein
the pleasures of Pompeii consisted, and it is in a
people's pleasures that its essential character is re-
vealed.
The works of plastic art that have come to light
at Pompeii are almost all of small dimensions. The
beautiful life-size bronzes of " Mercury Reposing,"
the " Drunken Faun," and the " Runners," and
also the marble group of but also to the ethical sentiment
74 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
of the ancients, it was inevitable that the build-
ings devoted to the purpose should be artistically
decorated ; but with graceful refinement not with
ponderous magnificence. Thus in one of the men's
baths the niches for depositing clothes are separated
by athletic figures of Atlas. Thus, too, in the
Frigidarium of the Terme del Foro, beneath the
vaulting there runs a frieze in white stucco on a
red ground, representing a race ; upon the walls
flowers are painted, and birds flutter amongst the
rushes, as though the place were in the open
greenwood. In the damper apartments pictures
are judiciously replaced by stucco reliefs, and we find
the vaulting of the vestibules, dressing and bath
rooms adorned with charming figures of Genii.
The perpendicular portions of the wall display, as in
the private houses, architectural designs, which are
here in relief; while between the pillars, garlands,
and trophies we encounter Fauns, or a Prometheus
in chains, or Ganymede with the Olympian Eagle.
But the Palestra once the scene of merriment
and the arena of feats of strength, now but a quiet
court is of the highest charm. The sanded floor
is there, but no joyous figures now animate it, as
they vie one with the other at putting the weight.
The altar of Hermes still stands there, but the image
of the God has vanished, and were it still in its
place there would be none to deck it with garlands.
The anointing-chamber now hears no boasting of
triumphant athletes, and in the swimming-bath the
splashing and the laughter are stilled. The bright
and animated paintings upon the walls are fading
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 75
under exposure to the weather, and in the colon-
nades the dreamer only catches a ghostly echo of that
lively camaraderie, which here disported itself wisely,
untrammelled by deceptive clothing. It was here
that the body was developed, and together with it
the soul, in healthy freedom of sentiment, and that
fresh spirit of earth which finds its affinity in the
blue sunlit sky. It was from the spirit here incul-
cated that the ancient world derived the serenity it
displayed in living and dying. He who had spent his
life thus his spiritual personality untrammelled, his
physical beauty cultivated and developed quitted
this life as though leaving the dinner-table when the
meal was over. u Stoicism" is an inadequate name
for this spirit of the ancients. Although some tyrants
may have quailed at the prospect of dissolution, the
death of the voluptuary Petronius shows that even
such late votaries of Bacchanalian revelry knew how
to die with dignity : how much more, then, might
it be expected of the great majority, whose lives
had been marked by no such excesses ? To them
the fear of Death was unknown, because they had
never been afraid of Life. And when the bitterness
of existence had been subdued into cheerfulness by
an heroic moderation an honoured grave awaited
the dead without the gate.
In Life the Pompeian was his own master ; in
Death he belonged to the community. When his
feet no longer trod the familiar path homewards
from the Theatre, the Forum, or the Baths, his
resting-place was by the public highroad. With
76 POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
awed solemnity were the dead sequestered from
the neighbourhood of the living ; but before long
the living themselves invaded their quiet solitudes.
The city outgrew her walls, and the bustling life
of the outside world the traffic with the green
country and its fields and plantations passed be-
tween the serried ranks of graves. There stood the
monuments of notable citizens, the stately tombs
of the wealthy, the family sepulchres, where the
urns of a whole generation and its retainers found
a resting-place ; while immediately above ground
appeared those memorial stones to which the
ancients gave the name of Cippus, shaped like a
human head, but devoid of features one of the
most primitive forms of sculpture. A walled court
is the property of a College of priests the modern
Italian arclconfraternita. In front of some of the
graves stands a semicircular stone bench for the use
of surviving relatives ; but it also invites the wander-
ing stranger to repose, if the large public shelters
should happen to be occupied. And these tombs
are eloquent of that living tide of humanity which
ebbed so long ago of the offices it once filled, the
honours it bore, the benefits it conferred. It is re-
corded in relief upon one seat that the dead man
once possessed the distinction of the biselliurn^ or
double seat of honour, at the Theatre ; a vessel with
swelling sails is perhaps a memento of bold com-
mercial venture; an inscription by Naevoleia Tyche
dedicates the grave to herself and her freedmen, and
testifies to the humane spirit prevailing even in
a slave-holding " times. Among ourselves, indeed,
POMPEII AS AjF'ART -Cl-TY'
77
there are now none but free men, who may do as
they will except honestly live their own lives.
And yet no ghosts of famine-stricken souls rise from
Pompeian tombs to rail against a hard-hearted world ;
the Street of Tombs without the gates of Pompeii
is no standing reproach, but, rather, a becoming
finish to that life which wrought and enjoyed amidst
cheerfulness and beauty within its walls, which
added to the treasures of Art and of Life, and
piously offered them upon the altar of the Powers
of Nature.
Deeply as we commiserate the tragic fate of the
Pompeians so suddenly annihilated, we can still,
with the egotism of the living, analyse the course
of events which terminated in the utter destruction
of Pompeii, overwhelmed by oceans of ashes and
mountains of pumice-stone in the latter part of the
first century of our era.
Two centuries earlier the greater portion of the
treasures of Greek art still remained on its native
soil ; but very shortly after that date, as the result
of great forays for plunder and of voyages for trad-
ing purposes, there began to arrive in Italy those
Greek sculptures which brought with them the
true Hellenic spirit, and therewith speedily fer-
tilised Latin life. Manifested in Rome, where
Art never really took root, merely in works of
superficial brilliance, Hellenism inspired the art of
rugged, but characteristic, Etruria to achievements
of a more pleasing type and in later ages the
Renaissance at least joined hands with the ancient
, AN ART CITY
tradition of technique. Hellenic influence, how-
ever, was most beneficial in the almost purely
Greek district of Neapolis Parthenopeia, where it
had already long operated, and which thus became
the field of all the progress made by civilisation
during the last century before Christ.
Had Pompeii perished then, in the time of
Augustus, we could have formed no opinion as to
whether Hellenism, at all events on the spot
where it had once taken root and undergone
modification by Roman and local influences, could
survive the heavy test of Roman Caesarism. We
can now be certain upon this point, for Pompeii
displays in all its average relations the joyous con-
ception of Life characteristic of the Antique to use
once more that inaccurate collective term, in describ-
ing Greek and non-Greek civilisation in organic
connection.
Already the death-watch was ticking in the
patched-up walls of the Roman State : behind the
religious Carnival of all the faiths the spectre of
the Christian Ash Wednesday arose. Not far
from Pompeii, where the Temple of Apis and
Osiris stood in Puteoli, near the Serapeum of
Puzzuoli, there had landed the great Scribe of
Tarsus, Paul the Loyola of primitive Christianity,
who transformed the original tidings of great joy,
newly born with Christ, proclaiming Man as the
child of God, back into a tyrannical ordinance of
self-abnegation a Pretorian of religion. At Rome
the first Christians speedily fell victims to a frenzied
orgy erf persecution. Another hundred years, and
POMPEII AS AN ART CITY 79
Pompeii would have possessed Churches and
Catacombs, Bishops and Martyrs, and the spirit of
Christianity would here too have commenced to
depreciate by imitation the works of joyous Pagan
Art ; from depreciation would have passed to
disfigurement, and from disfigurement to libel.
But, as it is, Pompeii offers us the picture of an
original Civilisation, untouched by Christianity;
which, however many worldly imperfections and
human defects it might display, was nevertheless
free from the great inward reproach that is the
canker of our own age.
Pompeii calls back to us a day in the late summer
of the ingenuous ancient world. When she vanished
from the face of the earth that ancient world yet
lived, and the humane Emperor Titus held sway
therein. But the mixture of civilisation and blood
which formed the atmosphere of the Roman Empire
was already far too widely diffused to admit of the
maintenance of more than a mere phantom of the
harmonious life of old. Precisely fifty years later,
with the days of Hadrian, the history of that ancient
world drew to its close. Antinous was its last real
Divinity, and that less by Imperial decree than
owing to the melancholy charm of his youthful
figure. As a matter of fact, Theodosius was the
first ruler to close the temples, but Marcus Aurelius
was almost a Christian. How melancholy is the
expression of all his portraits ! how weary is his
hair-splitting self-introspection ever questioning,
and despairing at the answers ! The Roman Empire
had effectually prepared the way for that of Jehovah j
go POMPEII AS AN ART CITY
blind obedience was now the instinct of a world
from which individuality had been eliminated.
As in all periods of transition, the ancient spirit
once more flared up passionately in revolt this
time in the Bacchic worship of the hermaphrodite
upon the Imperial throne, Heliogabalus, of whom
only lately has an impartial estimate been formed.
Next, Decius saw in Christianity a foe to be en-
countered on equal terms, and Constantine signed,
together with his decree of toleration, the abdication
of defeated Paganism.
Of all this turmoil, of all this strife, Pompeii has
naught to tell us. Within her shattered walls we
see neither the Christian idea distorted into carica-
ture nor Paganism in its dotage. Her resurrec-
tion reveals the calm serenity of an ingenuous
and a beautiful world. A ruin, indeed perhaps
a mere torso ! but, shattered and crumbling, still a
work of the highest art of that Art which is Life.
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