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Forgotten Fragments of Ancient Wall Paintings in Rome I.–The Palatine
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 09 August 2013
Extract
Students of ancient painting are apt to bestow exclusive attention upon the long series of pictures in the Museum of Naples recovered from Pompeii and Herculaneum, and to forget the many and excellent specimens of the art still extant in Rome. Yet these often surpass in quality anything found in the buried Campanian cities, since it is only natural that painters of ability and talent should have sought for work in the capital rather than in Pompeii and other holiday resorts. The neglect of the paintings discovered in Rome is of comparatively recent date. In the seventeenth century Pietro Santi Bartoli (1635–1700) had inaugurated a systematic series of publications of the figured monuments of Rome, including paintings engraved after his own drawings. A host of draughtsmen and engravers followed in his steps, and down to the middle of the nineteenth century appeared volume after volume of illustrations of Roman paintings, admirably calculated to please the cultivated traveller and amateur, but as a rule totally wanting in accuracy.
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- Copyright © British School at Rome 1914
References
page 115 note 1 See p. 215 ff. and Figs. 63 to 70 of the monograph cited in n. 4. The original drawing of the ‘Coriolanus’ is often attributed to no less a draughtsman than Annibale Carracci (see Weege, loc. cit.), but accurate copying is a modern acquirement, influenced by photography. Many of these old engravings, like the drawings upon which they are based, have a beauty of their own, but they are of little value for the style of the originals.
page 115 note 2 Nogara, Bartolomeo: Le Nozze Aldobrandine; i paessaggi con scena dell' Odissea ed altre pitture muriali antiche conservate nella biblioteca Vaticana e nei Musei Pontifici, Milan, 1907 Google Scholar.
page 115 note 3 M. Rostowzew: ‘Die hellenistisch-römische Architektur-Landschaft’ in Röm. Mitth. 1911, pp. 1–186, and Plates I. to XI.
page 115 note 4 Fr. Weege: ‘das Goldene Haus Des Nero’ in Jahrbuch des Archäol. Instituts, 1913, pp. 127–244; Plates 4–22 (many in colour), and Denkmaeler, 1913, Plates 13–18 (coloured) with text. The coloured reproductions are after water-colours by the Roman artist Cartocci.
page 116 note 1 They were fully published by Lessing and Man, Wand und Deckenschmuck eines römischen Hauses aus der Zeit des Augustus, 1891.
page 116 note 2 They were published by E. Brizio, Pitture e sepolcri scoperti sull' Esquilino, with poor plates. A careful and long description in Helbig's Führer, 3rd ed., 1913, Nos. 1451–1454 (Fr. Weege). So mutilated are the paintings that photography alone is inadequate. Nothing but carefully executed aquarels reproduced in colour can place on record these precious relics, which are fast vanishing.
page 116 note 3 These six paintings from the Tomb of the Nasoni were purchased in 1883 from the late George Richmond, R.A. One could wish that some English scholar had been tempted to publish them. As it is I understand that Dr. Rodenwaldt has had them photographed in view of a publication, which will likewise include what paintings still remain in the tomb itself.
page 116 note 4 The details from these decorations given in the monograph by the Russian architect Ronscewski (Gewölbeschmuck im Altertum), show the importance of these Latin tombs for artists and architects.
page 117 note 1 Papers of the British School at Rome, vol. v. (1910), pp. £464–471 (Ashby, T.)Google Scholar; Plates 37–44 (F. C. Newton); the short description of the paintings on p. 470, notes 2 on p. 468, and 1, 2, 3 on p. 469 were contributed by me.
page 117 note 2 In an article shortly to be published in the Journal of Roman Studies.
page 118 note 1 For these chambers, which rise in two stories to the south of the Clivus Victoriae, and for the Flavian date of the brickstamps, see Jordan-Huelsen, Topographie der Stadt Rom., p. 76 ff.; for the traces of decorations in the lower chambers ib. p. 78, n. 95. For the stuccoes on the soffits of the ground floor chambers and at the side of the ‘bridge’ ‘all once covered with gold and coloured decoration,’ see J. H. Middleton, Remains of Ancient Rome, 1892, p. 192; and for the ‘coloured stucco, and relief paintings on the flat’ of the first floor—presumably our loggia—ib. p. 194; cf. Lanciani, Ruins and Excavations, 1897, p. 153; O. Marucchi, Le Forum romain et le Palatin, 1902, p. 378, describes our loggia and its paintings as follows: ‘une loggia étroite et longue, supportée par d'élégants arceaux et ornée de peintures et de reliefs en stuc, qui représentent des figures très jolies de femmes et de génies.’ Marucchi and others still consider these chambers to have been ‘part-of the decoration of the façade of the Palace of Tiberius, which ended here and was later marked by the constructions of Caligula.’ Lanciani on the other hand (loc. cit.) once considered these rooms as part of Caligula's Palace, and to have been built round an open court afterwards cut through by the Clivus Victoriae. A careful examinations of these constructions by Dr. Ashby, with the help of Dr. Esther Van Deman, has shown that the façade of the house which may be attributed, approximately at least, to the time of Tiberius, ends at a line of brickwork immediately back of the chambers with which we are here concerned. These chambers are clearly of Flavian, and probably of Domitianic, date. The long balcony or gallery (the ‘Bridge of Caligula’) which ran along the front of the pillars of the first story, was open on the side towards the Nova Via and the Forum, but it was protected by a covered or hooded projection of the second story. This projection, which has been clearly made out by Dr. Ashby, is not indicated in Mr. Newton's plan. Its object was to afford shelter to those on the balcony, and also to protect the stuccoes of the façade. The whole of the vast substructures in front of this Domitianic building are of the period of Hadrian.
Dr. Ashby informs me that Dr. Hülsen, in a lecture delivered in December, 1897, and unpublished, was the first to detect the true façade of the house which is either the Domus Tiberiana, or a honse of approximately that date.
page 120 note 1 Dr. Ashby considers that the whole series of these chambers was so painted.
page 120 note 2 Le Forum romain et le Palatin, 1902, p. 333, ‘Si en revenant on traverse la grande rue qui allait vers le Septizone, on voit vis-à-vis 5 chambres déblayées recemment, basses et voûtées, avec quelques traces de peintures. Dans la Ière vers le Stade, dans une niche, il y a la figure d'un génie avec le cornucopia.’ The chamber was probably cleared of rubbish during the operations of the year 1902 mentioned in Jordan-Huelsen, p. 99, n. 132, cf. also Deglane, ‘Le Stade du Palatin’ in Mélanges de l'École Française de Rome, 1889, p. 224, where the adjacent larger chamber with coffered ceiling is mentioned.
page 120 note 3 For Lares and Lararium see G. Wissowa's article ‘Lares,’ in Rosscher's, Lexikon, ii. pp. 1867–1897 Google Scholar, to which should be added A. de Marchi's exhaustive treatment in Culto Privato di Roma Antica (1896); i.p.27ffGoogle Scholar; and J. A. Hild's article ‘Lares’ in Daremberg and Saglio (1904); Wissowa Religion u. Kultus der Römer, 2nd ed., 1912, p. 168 f.
page 122 note 1 A. de Marchi, loc. cit.
page 122 note 2 Mr. Bradshaw's plan reveals four periods of brickwork. An examination by Dr. Ashby and Dr. E. Van Deman shows on the evidence of the bricks that the brickwork of the first period in A, where our paintings are, belongs approximately to the time of Nero, a satisfactory corroboration of what the paintings themselves tell us from their style. It will be seen from the different hatchings on the plans that there are at least four periods of brickwork to be made out here. Some is Domitianic, and the later brickwork appears to be of two different periods, both subsequent in Dr. E. Van Deman's judgment to Septimius Severus. It seems evident that, since the style of the decoration and of the brickwork of A alike point to the period of Nero, we have here the remains of a house of the first century A.D., which we may compare with the remains of Julio-Claudian mansions recently discovered by Commendatore Boni under the peristyle of the large domus Flavia, and that this house was afterwards utilised, perhaps as early as Domitian, for the foundations of the Thermae and other vast constructions which from the Flavian period to Septimius Severus were built and repeatedly altered and enlarged on this part of the hill. The confused ruins under these Thermae are referred to by Deglane, ‘Le Stade du Palatin,’ in Mélanges de l'École de Rome, 1888, p. 228.
page 122 note 3 The real entrance through a gate on the north is now kept locked and is said to be unsafe.
page 123 note 1 Dr. Ashby's theory being still unpublished, he kindly contributes the following brief note in illustration of his meaning: “A comparison between the paintings of Pomponius Hylas which belong to the Time of Tiberius (cf. the columbarium in the Via Appia described by Fornari, in Studi Romani, 1913 (i.), p. 355 ffGoogle Scholar. and those of the Golden House, seem to show that the smallness of these sepulchral paintings which was well enough adapted for the decoration of little chambers with their tiny niches, was imitated by the artists of the time of Nero in the decoration of the lofty rooms of which they were fond, where however, it was most unsuitable. Some of the details of the decoration of the ‘Coriolanus’ room, which is at least 8 metres high, while it is only 6 long and 5·3, wide can hardly have been visible from the floor; and the same would have been the case with the paintings we are now considering.—T.A.”