annali di archeologia e storia antica

UNIVERSITÀ DEGLI STUDI DI NAPOLI «L’ORIENTALE»
ANNALI DI ARCHEOLOGIA E
STORIA ANTICA
DIPARTIMENTO DI STUDI DEL MONDO CLASSICO E DEL MEDITERRANEO ANTICO
Napoli 2010
Stampato con il contributo del
CISA - Centro Interdipartimentale di Servizi di Archeologia - Università degli Studi di Napoli
“L’Orientale” e dell’AIPMA (Association Internationale pour la Peinture Murale Antique)
ANNALI DI ARCHEOLOGIA E STORIA ANTICA
Quaderno N. 18/1
Abbreviazione: AION ArchStAnt Quad.18
ISBN 978-88-95044-81-1 ISSN 1127-7130
Atti del X CONGRESSO INTERNAZIONALE DELL’AIPMA
(ASSOCIATION INTERNATIONALE POUR LA PEINTURE MURALE ANTIQUE)
NAPOLI 17-21 SETTEMBRE 2007 a
Vol. I
cura di Irene Bragantini
MODEL-BOOK, OUTLINE-BOOK, FIGURE-BOOK: NEW OBSERVATIONS ON THE
CREATION OF NEAR-EXACT COPIES IN ROMANO-CAMPANIAN PAINTING
*
John r. Clarke
Al cuore del problema delle copie ‘quasi esatte’ di composizioni trovate tra le pitture della zona vesuviana è l’ipotesi di vari tipi di aiuti usati dall’artista del quadro
(l’imaginarius). In questo saggio, prendo in considerazione quattro possibili strumenti. Il ‘libro di campioni’ (Musterbuch), molto discusso nella letteratura
moderna, avrebbe fornito modelli in miniatura dell’intera composizione, inclusi i dettagli (lo schema dei colori, le fattezze dei protagonisti, ecc.). Invece, la
seconda possibilità, il ‘libro di contorni’—più semplice— avrebbe solo delineato la composizione a mo’ di abbozzo. Il terzo strumento, il ‘libro di figure’,
avrebbe fornito soltanto la resa convenzionale di singole figure oppure di gruppi di figure. Esso poteva essere usato per creare varie composizioni, per cui
l’artista sceglieva le figure consone al tema del quadro. Infine è ipotizzata la possibilità che l’artista abbia memorizzato sia la composizione che la resa delle
figure. Per mettere alla prova quest’ipotesi, ho tracciato i contorni di due paia di copie a Pompei ancora in situ (due nella Casa di Lucrezio Frontone [V 4,
a, amb. h e g]; Casa annessa alla Casa dell’Efebo [I 7, 19, amb. c]; Caupona di Soterico [I 12, 3, amb. 3]). Anche se esse appaiono molto simili nelle
foto, tutte e quattro sono di dimensioni del tutto diverse. Tenendo conto dei quattro aiuti ipotizzati, dall’analisi di questi quadri si capisce che l’artista poteva
comporre le copie usando solamente il ‘libro di figure’. Questa possibilità, tuttavia, non spiega come e con quali mezzi l’artista potesse far vedere l’effetto di
una composizione al commitente. Infine, un papiro egiziano tardo-ellenistico, assieme ad uno schizzo in ocra gialla della Villa A di Oplonti (del II stile),
tutti e due coperti da una quadrettatura, suggeriscono che almeno alcuni artisti abbiano usato il metodo dei “quadri proporzionali” per ingrandire le
immagini tratte dai ‘libri-modelli’ qui ipotizzati.
One of the most fascinating phenomena in the study of Romano-Campanian painting is the existence of near-exact copies of
1
specific pictures . Here I use the term “near-exact copies” to distinguish paintings that faithfully replicate a composition with all its details,
including the figures, the architectural setting, and even the colors. The literature on these near-exact copies is uneven, since
no one has undertaken a study of the entire corpus. The recent discovery that two of the three center pictures in the
Third-Style triclinium in the House of the Chaste Lovers replicated known paintings from the Vesuvian area rekindled dis2
cussion of copies . How was an artist able to replicate a composition with such precision? Most scholars posit some sort of intermediary
image,
*
1
The University of Texas at Austin. Bergmann 1995, pp. 94-98.
and here the speculation begins.
Did the artist present the patron with some sort of book with sample pictures (called the Musterbuch, or “model-book”, in the
scholarly literature) -a book that showed what the finished product would look like? Since none of these model books has come
down to us- nor do we find any mention of them in ancient literature-their existence must remain hypothetical. Yet without either a
sample or a sketch, a patron would be hard put to understand what a center picture would look like on his or her walls.
We do have some evidence that these center pictures were the work of specialists. A late source, the Edict of Diocletian on
Maximum Prices, distinguishes between the pictor parietarius and the
2
Varone 1993, pp. 617-640; Id. 1997, pp. 149-152; Clarke 2003, pp. 227-233.
Fig. 1. Tracings of the four center pictures at the same scale: a) Mars and Venus, House annexed to House of the Ephebe (I 7, 19), c, north wall;
b) Mars and Venus, House
of Lucretius Fronto (V 4, a),
h, north wall; c) Ariadne and
Theseus,
Caupona
of
Sotericus (I 12, 3), (3), west
wall; d) Ariadne and
Theseus, House of Lucretius
Fronto (V 4, a), g, west wall
(digital rendering Onur
Öztürk).
pictor imaginarius; the parietarius, who gets half the
wages of the imaginarius, is the worker responsible
3
for the decorative portions of the wall . Room
decorations left incomplete at the time of the eruption of
Vesuvius show that work of the parietarii proceeded
from the upper zone, to the median zone, to the
socle -just as Vitruvius prescribes (Vitruvius, De
4
architectura 7.3.3-5) . The parietarii then left spaces
for the individual cen
ter pictures unfinished- that is, lacking the fresco
layer. In oecus 5 of Pompeii IX, 12, 9 (posticum), for
example, the picture painter (the imaginarius) had
only begun his work. He had sketched the
outlines of figures on the penultimate plaster
5
layer . These guidelines, painted in red or yellow ocher,
are very much like the sinopie that conservators find
when they remove medieval or renaissance
6
frescoes from their plaster support . For our
near-exact copies, we have to ask what guided the
picture-painter not only as he made these
outline sketches but also as he filled in the details
to make the finished painting.
Because I had discovered that at least in one case
at Pompeii a mosaicist had used a one-toone
tracing to guide him in laying out mosaics in two
7
different houses , I determined to find out whether
the picture-painter responsible for near-exact
copies used such an aid. Such one-toone models
could be called “cartoons” by analogy with the use
of pounced paper or parchment
3
4
Graser 1940, pp. 338–339.
For example, in the Casa del Sacello Iliaco (I 6, 4),
triclinium c shows the upper and median zones finished, but the
socle incomplete; cubiculum h is completed only in the upper zone:
Bragantini 1990, pp. 308-309, figs. 47–48 (cubiculum h); pp.
282-83, figs. 2-3 (triclinium c); on the dating: Strocka 1984, pp.
125-140.
5
6
Varone 1995, pp. 124-139, figs. 13-14.
For sinopie of the Second Style, see Clarke 1991, pp. 46-47,
nn. 23-24. A more direct approach than the sinopie appears in the
period of the Fourth Style: painters incise guidelines di
rectly into the final fresco layer, adding the details of the figure in
secco; a good example is the figure of Euripides from exedra 23 of
the House of the Menander: Clarke 1991 pp. 188-191, fig.
106 (tracing of the guidelines and secco fragments). Cfr. Allag,
Barbet 1972.
7
Clarke 1994, pp. 91–95.
drawings (cartoni or cartoons) in laying out paintings and tapestries in the early modern period. I
traced the outlines of four center pictures, all of
the same date (late Third Style, A. D. 30-45). I
deliberately chose pictures that were still in situ to
study their relationship to the all-over decoration
of the rooms they adorned . There are two near-exact
copies of a composition of Mars and Venus in a
crowded bedchamber, one in the House of
M. Lucretius Fronto ; the other in the House annexed
8
9
10
to the House of the Ephebe ; and two near-exact copies
of Ariadne Giving Theseus a Ball of String to Lead him
out of the Labyrinth, one in the House of M.
Lucretius Fronto ; the other in the Caupona of
11
12
Sotericus . It turns out that -unlike the mosaics laid out
with cartoons- each of the paintings is of a different size.
It is clear that the artists could not have used one-to-one
tracings to reproduce them (Fig. 1).
If the artists did not use cartoons, how did they
create these near-exact copies of different sizes?
There are four ways that they could have reproduced center pictures with this kind of exactitude:
1) from a model-book (the Musterbuch) that captured
all the details of a particular painting; 2) from an
outline-book that was like the model-book but
recorded only the outlines of figures and
backgrounds; 3) from a figure-book with
sketches of individual figures or simple groups;
4) from memory. I would like to examine these
possibilities in reverse order.
From memory. Although this hypothesis is impossible to prove, it remains a tantalizing one.
Accustomed as we are to mechanical reproductive devices, from the photograph to digital
technology, we have little need of memory to
reproduce images. We can imagine that ancient
Roman wall painters, like sculptors,
apprenticed at a young age and devoted
considerable time to
I also traced two other pairs of near-exact copies
for which we have only one painting still in situ: (1) Couples at
8
an Outdoor Drinking Party, one from the House of the Chaste
Lovers; the other of unknown provenance, Naples inv. 9015
(Varone 1997, pp. 149152); (2) the so-called Suicide of Sophonisba,
one from the House of the Blacksmith (I 10,7); the other from
the House of Giuseppe II (VIII 2, 38-39), Naples inv. 8968
(Roller 2006, pp. 49-61). For the first pair, see my remarks at the
end of this article.
Mars and Venus, House of Lucretius Fronto (V 4, a), tablinum
h, north wall: Peters-Moormann 1993, pp. 214-216; de Vos 1991,
pp. 1017-1018, fig. 94.
Mars and Venus, House annexed to House of the Ephebe (I
7, 19), tablinum c, north wall: de Vos 1990, p. 766, fig. 28 («probably Fourth Style»).
9
10
learning how to make a host of standard figures
and backgrounds from memory. If we look at the
evidence for the use of the pointing machine, it is
clear that it provided only general guides to set a
figure in its proper proportions, with the details
left to the sculptor’s memory. A well-trained
imaginarius, like the trained sculptor, must have had
a sizable repertory of more-or-less detailed pictures
that he could call up from memory.
From figure-books. Two fragments of papyrus
have survived of a second century B.C. figureguide; they probably originally belonged to a large
13
sheet or roll and come from Upper Egypt . The
larger fragment contains eight drawings including birds,
deities, and architectural details; the smaller
fragment depicts the seated figure of a Pharaoh.
Both fragments are gridded in reddish-brown ink.
Whereas most scholars believe that the grid is a
tool to allow the figures to be executed according
to the Egyptian modular canon, this same grid
could guide artists to enlarge the images using the
“proportional squares” method described at the
end of this essay.
Could our Pompeian artists have used a similar
source for figural and architectural motifs? Using
our tracings of the four Pompeian paintings, we
can immediately test the hypothesis that the
painter had access only to sketches of individual
figures or groups. If we increase the size of the
figures in the Ariadne and Theseus painting from the
House of the Lucretius Fronto to match that of
the painting from the Caupona of Sotericus, it
turns out that the silhouettes of the two figures of
Theseus match quite closely (tAv. XX, 3). The
Ariadne from the House of Lucretius Fronto also
matches her counterpart in the Caupona of
Sotericus, but less precisely, since the Ariadne in
the Caupona of Sotericus is somewhat taller. This,
and the fact that the artist put more dis
Ariadne and Theseus, House of Lucretius Fronto (V 4, a), cubiculum g, west wall: Peters-Moormann 1993, pp. 207-208, where
they note the iconographical similarities with the lost painting
from House VI, 14, 38; de Vos 1991, p. 992, fig. 50.
11
Ariadne and Theseus, Caupona of Sotericus (I 12, 3), cubiculum (3),
west wall: Menotti 1990, pp. 712-721, figs. 21-22. Menotti, following
Bragantini, Parise Badoni 1984, pp. 123-124, fig. 16, claims that the
same hand that painted this Theseus and Ariadne painted the
Theseus and Ariadne from the House of M. Lucretius Fronto;
convincingly refuted by Peters, Moormann 1993, pp. 208, 260, 271.
12
Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
Ägyptisches Museum, Papyrussammlung, inv. P 13558:
Scheller 1995, 91-93, figs. 5-6.
13
tance between the two figures in the Caupona of
Sotericus suggests -but does not prove- that he was
working from outline drawings of each in
dividual figure rather than from the composition
as a whole. Otherwise he would have kept the
figures at the same distance from each other and
would have represented both Theseus and Ariadne
at the same relative scale.
Both renditions of Ariadne Giving Theseus a Ball of
String to Lead Him Out of the Labyrinth rely on a
two-figure, paratactic formula. Theseus is completely nude, having dropped his cloak on the rock
between the couple. Ariadne, on the right and fully
clothed, proffers the ball of string with her right
hand. To communicate the erotic nature of their
relationship-and above all the Ariadne’s sexual
obsession with Theseus-the artist has focused our
gaze (as well as Ariadne’s) on the hero. He stands
with his right arm crooked over his head, an
14
age-old gesture signifying sexual readiness .
If it is relatively easy to imagine the artists of the
two paintings of Theseus and Ariadne using a
figure-book, it is because it is a simple composition. The figure-book seems a less likely option for
composing the two near-exact copies of the
Mars and Venus, with their greater number of
figures and many details of furniture, drapery,
and architectural background. Even so, we can
find three sure instances of figural congruence.
The group of Mars and Venus, the Cupid, and
the woman seated at right on the same plane as
Cupid correspond in their outlines if we superimpose the two paintings, enlarging the
painting of Mars and Venus from the House of
Lucretius Fronto to fit over the painting from
the House of the Ephebe (tAv. XX, 4). We find
the greatest correspondence in the group of
Mars and Venus. This figural group is
essentially the same in its outlines in both
paintings, despite the differences in size—and
the obvious difference in each artist’s approach.
Like the image of the nude Theseus with his arm
crooked over his head, the motif of the helmeted
Mars standing behind Venus
14
Clarke 1998, pp. 68–70 n. 18; artists also use the
gesture of erotic repose for a later moment in the story of
Theseus and Ariadne to depict her on Naxos, abandoned
by Theseus yet about to be discovered by Dionysus. Ling
2004, p. 597, convincingly argues (but on the basis of
drawings of two lost paintings) that this gesture is not
erotic; Theseus is raising his arm to remove his sword belt
so that he can confront the Minotaur in naked, bare-fisted
combat.
with his hand on her breast seems to have been a
conventional, stand-alone composition that telegraphed its meaning to a Roman viewer. Mars and
Venus appear in the same pose in a painting from
tablinum f of the House of the Punished Cupid
(VII, 2, 23), but without the additional figures . The
15
repetition of this representation of Mars and Venus brings
to mind Hölscher’s discussion of the elements of the
Roman semantic system, and—indeed—his description of
the ways that Roman artists and patrons employed Greek
sculptural types of Mars and Venus to carry new
16
meanings .
The second congruent figure is that of Cupid, itself
a painted rendition of a well-known sculptural type
17
attributed to Lysippos . Although both Cupids stand
on the central axis, effectively dividing the painting
vertically into two equal halves, the painter of the Mars
and Venus from the House of Lucretius Fronto chose to
make the figure of Cupid large and important,
whereas the artist of the picture from the House of
the Ephebe makes him small and relatively unimportant. Still we see that the model for Cupid’s
pose is the same—despite the artists’ decisions
about his relative size in the two compositions.
The third congruent figure in the two paintings is
that of the woman seated in the right foreground.
And with minor changes, we might even add the
woman to the right in the background of each
painting, who appears in profile, turning her head to
the left to gaze at Mars and Venus. However, in the
painting from the House of Lucretius Fronto she is
the right-hand figure of a tightly-knit triad placed on
the same central axis as Cupid; in the painting from
the House of the Ephebe the artist has detached her
from the other two figures and placed her over to the
right-hand side of the picture.
We find the greatest differences between the two
paintings in the other two figures: a male, probably
Hypnos, sprouting wings from his forehead, and a
second female figure depicted frontally, looking
18
out at Mars and Venus . The
15
Sampaolo 1996, pp. 674-676 notes that this and the
painting from the House of M. Lucretius Fronto «derive
from the same model».
16
Hölscher 2004, pp. 63-65.
17
Hermary 1986, pp. 878-881.
18
Curtius 1929, p. 251, interprets this figure as Sol (Sun), a
spy of Hephaistos; Mariette de Vos 1991, pp. 1017–1018, fig. 94,
suggests that it could also be Hypnos (Sleep); Arnold de Vos 1990,
p.
Fig. 3. Pompeii, House of the Ephebe: Mars and Venus
Pompei, C1514).
(excavation photograph 1926, Soprintendenza Archeologica di
Fig. 2. Pompeii, House of M. Lucretius Fronto: Mars and
Venus (photo Michael Larvey).
artist of the House of the Ephebe switched the
positions of Hypnos and woman looking out. Illogically, it seems, he reversed the direction of
Hypnos’ gaze so that he looks to the right rather
than looking at Mars and Venus.
Surprisingly, the correspondence of these figural motifs suggests that the artist could have
put together the composition using the
figure-book: a sketchbook with drawings of
individual figures and figure-groups. However,
there are many details that make us wonder
whether the artist had at his disposal either our
second option (the outline-book, with a drawing of
the whole composition) or our first (the
model-book or Musterbuch)-both able to spell out
the details of the entire composition. In addition to
the composition itself, most details match: the bed,
the clothing, the drapery, the architecture, and
even the colors (Figg. 2-3).
There is another consideration that argues in
favor of the outline-book and model-book. Although a figure-book with a repertoire of standard
figures and figure-groups would have served the
artists responsible for our four pictures well
enough-provided he could call up the composition
that those figures fit into-he could not use it to sell
a picture to a potential customer. For that he
would need either the outline-book or the
sample-book: both would have provided a more
766, fig. 28, identifies this figure as Hypnos and the two women as
Charites (Graces); Peters and Moormann 1993, pp. 214-216,
conclude that the figure with wings on his temples is Hypnos and
that the other figures are ancillary onlookers with no role
or-less accurate replica of the picture he was proposing to paint. If the outline sketch allowed the
patron to judge what the finished picture would
look like in general terms, the model-book picture
would permit the patron to see details such as color
scheme, background, and perhaps even facial
expressions. But there is yet another possibility:
directly viewing and copying existing paintings. The
patron and the artist could have visited public
buildings -or even the houses of individuals willing to
admit them- to see and appraise center pictures. The
artist could then sketch the painting or paintings that
the patron wanted him to reproduce, making notes
on details.
Even if the artist had at his disposal all three
of our hypothetical sketchbooks (the figurebook, the outline-book, and the model-book), it is
unlikely that any of them dictated the style
of the finished picture. As comparison of the
two paintings of Mars and Venus clearly demonstrates, each was the creation of a different painter.
The artist of the House of Lucretius Fronto makes
his figures thin and stiff19; his counterpart in the House
of the Ephebe renders them much
in the story.
19
The same painter worked on the Third-Style decorations
of the House of L. Caecilius Iucundus: de Vos 1983, pp.
231-247.
Fig. 4. Pompeii, House of Lucretius Fronto, tablinum h,
north wall (photo Michael
Larvey).
Fig. 5. Pompeii, House of
Lucretius Fronto, cubiculum g,
west wall (photo Michael
Larvey).
full-bodied and supple.
Finally, if we step
back and look at the
function of our center
pictures within their
decorative schemes, it is
clear why the paintings
are of different sizes
and
have
different
height-to-width
proportions: they have to fit into a framework de-
termined by the proportions of the room itself.
The work of the parietarii, concerned with divid
20
Clarke 1991, pp. 57-61.
ing the wall into the three horizontal zones, the
pontate, and the vertical divisions (usually three,
but sometimes five compartments defined by
thin architectural elements), set up the size and
position of the center picture. Whatever models
the imaginarii might have had, they had to make
their center pictures fit within the space left for
20
them by the parietarii .
Fig. 6. Pompeii, Caupona of Sotericus, cubiculum (3) west
wall, late Third-Style decoration (photo ICCD,
77GFNN36621).
The painting of Mars and Venus from the House
of Lucretius Fronto is small and square in format. It
forms
the
focus
of
an
ornate
and
exquisitely-painted late Third Style decorative
scheme for tablinum h, (dated to about A.D. 45). It is
a small room with intricate details: the dado painted
with an enclosed garden; the predella; the landscapes
on ornate easels flanking the center pictures in the
median zone; and the miniature scaenae frons with xenia
in the upper zone (Fig. 4). All of these details-like the
center pictures themselves-require close viewing21.
The same could be said for the contemporane
21
For a discussion of how Third-Style paintings respond
to their architectural setting and the dynamics of close
viewing,
ous decorative scheme of cubiculum g, where the
painting of Theseus and Ariadne is but a small part
of an exuberant decorative scheme begging the
viewer to tarry to enjoy their inventive
permutations-examples, par excellence, of the
“monstrosities” decried by Vitruvius when the
Third Style was just beginning to come into fash-
ion (ca. 20 B.C.; De Architectura 7.5.3-4). Here, too,
the center picture is square in format (Fig. 5).
In the much simpler Third-Style decoration of
cubiculum (3) of the Caupona of Sotericus, the artist
has enlarged the center picture of Theseus and
Ariadne (Fig. 6). He has adapted the picture
see Corlàita Scagliarini 1974-76, pp. 3-44, elaborated in Clarke
1991, pp. 49-54.
Fig. 7. Pompeii, House of the Ephebe, tablinum c, north
wall (photo Michael Larvey).
original setting, and above all the
rationale for its size and proportions.
However, in one case, at least, we
have evidence for the
use of a figure-book. The two
near-exact copies
to fit the tall aedicula that frames it, so that the
Theseus and Ariadne group have about a figure’s
height of space above their heads and nearly the
same below their feet. Although massive losses
to the lower part of the wall and to the surface
of
the painting itself make it difficult to determine
what the decoration looked like when fresh,
there is no doubt that-unlike the tablinum and
cubiculum from the House of Lucretius
Fronto-this simple scheme needed a bigger
22
center picture to hold a viewer’s attention .
We could say the same for the largest picture
of the four: the Mars and Venus from the
House of the Ephebe (Fig. 7). Although, like its
counterpart in the House of Lucretius Fronto, it is
part of the Third-Style decorative scheme of a
tablinum, the surrounding ornament is simpler. It
may be for this reason that the patron asked the
imaginarius to make his copy of the Mars and Venus
composition large enough to dominate the wall.
Although we can directly check the relation
22
Bragantini 2005, pp. 135-140, proposes that the
workshop of the House of M. Lucretius Fronto produced
the decoration of cubiculum (c) of the Caupona of Sotericus on
the basis of two observations: (1) that the upper zone of fauces a
of the House of
M. Lucretius Fronto is nearly identical to that of cubiculum (3) of
the Caupona of Sotericus; (2) that the iconography of the two
center pictures of Ariadne handing the ball of string to Theseus
(cubiculum g of the House of M. Lucretius Fronto; west wall of
ship between center picture and the whole of the
room decoration for these four examples because
the paintings are still in situ, most other pairs of
near-exact copies have been cut from their original
decorations. This leaves us to suppose or try to
reconstruct the role the center picture had in its
of a symposium scene, one from the
1986 excavations of the House of the
Chaste Lovers, the other from an
unknown excavation before 1819, are of
different sizes and have different heightto-width ratios (Chaste Lovers: h. 73 x
w. 63 cm; Naples, MANN, inv. 9015: h.
23
51 x w. 48 cm) . The painting still in situ
graces the rear wall of an elegant late
Third-Style triclinium in the House of the
Chaste Lovers; in this position it is arguably the most important painting in the
room, the thematic centerpiece of the
decorative ensemble. When we enlarge
the Naples inv. 9015 to superimpose the
painting from the House of the Chaste Lovers upon it,
the figures are remarkably congruent-especially the
figures and furniture in the left half of the two paintings
(tAv. XXI, 1). It is in the right half that the congruence
breaks down. There artist of the painting from the
House of the Chaste Lovers enlarged both the table
with the drinking vessels and the mixing bowl; he
moved them to the right, adding the figure of the
servant pouring from an amphora. This addition
suggests that the artist had
recourse to a figure-book for this stock figure.
At any rate, it is clear that the patron or the artist
wanted an extra figure for the painting in the late
Third-Style scheme of the House of the Chaste
Lovers.
It is fitting that I close this little investigation
where it began: with the question of the relative
sizes of the near-exact copies. Despite their widely
divergent measurements and slightly different
height-to-width ratios, they appear to be
near-perfect copies-especially when one is look
cubiculum (3) of the Caupona of Sotericus) is rare. She pursues the
argument that a workshop could simplify or “step down” to
lower-quality production -but using the same rare center picturescomparing the near-exact correspondence of two center pictures
from the wealthy House of the Tragic Poet (VI 8, 3) that appear in
two modest houses (VII 12, 26 and VII 12, 28).
23
Varone 1997; Clarke 2003, pp. 227-233.
ing at a photographic reproduction rather than the
picture in situ. Since my direct tracings rule out the
use of the kind of one-to-one cartoons that some
mosaicists used at Pompeii, the three
aids that I propose (figure-book, outline-book,
and model-book) assume that the artist could easily
enlarge or diminish the figures or compositions
recorded in these books. How would he have done
this ?
The most likely method would have been to
trace a grid on the model and then make a grid
containing the same number of squares on the
wall. If an artist wanted to double the size of the
original, each square would be twice as large as
each square in the model. By simply drawing what
he saw in each square, the artist could accurately
and easily enlarge the model. It may be that the
purpose of the grid on the Berlin papyrus
fragments mentioned above served just such a
procedure in the late Hellenistic period.
24
For the period of the mature Second Style (ca. 50
B.C.) we have evidence that wall painters used the
“proportional squares” method; excavators found
two drawings of architecture on the east wall of
24
Bragantini 2005, pp. 140-142, demonstrates in an
overlay drawing (fig. 10) the near-exact congruence of parts of
the cityscape from the oecus of the House of the Labyrinth with
that of the cubiculum from Boscoreale in the Metropolitan
Museum, suggesting that artists had models for architectural
elements. Perhaps my “figure-books” were not limited to figures
but -at least in the period of the Second Style- contained
architectural renderings as well.
25
De Franciscis 1973, p. 15; the artist who painted the
Second-Style walls of the triclinium of the House of Ceres
(Pompeii I, 9, 13) made a sketch of a capital in yellow ocher
but without the grid of squares: cfr. de Vos 1976, p. 64;
overview of evidence: Clarke 1991, pp. 45-47.
26
For a recent approach to programmatic painting, cfr.
Bergmann 1996, with previous bibl.
27
For workshops in Roman wall painting, see the essays
collected in Moormann 1995.
the atrium of Villa A at Oplontis (the so-called Villa
of Poppaea). Carried out in brown paint and divided
into squares with red paint, they are sketches of
Second-Style architectural perspectives that the
artist would develop at full size .
25
Study of Pompeian wall paintings, including
near-exact copies like the four that have been the
main focus of this paper, has centered primarily on
their iconography and to a lesser extent on their
significance within the iconographical program of
26
the building as a whole . I hope that this little study
will help to turn the spotlight for a moment back upon the
artists who left us these fascinating demonstrations of
their skills at copying and adapting pictures to suit their
patrons’ fancies. Building on investigations like this, future
research could shed light not only on techniques for
producing copies, but also on the workshops or groups of
decorators that have left us such a lively record of their
27
accomplishments .
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eine
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1. Roma, Museo di Palazzo Massimo: villa di Castel di Guido, ambiente 35, campo centrale della parete sinistra (foto
S.T.A.M. Mols).
2. Roma, Museo di Palazzo Massimo: villa di Castel di Guido,
ambiente 35, campo centrale della parete destra (foto
S.T.A.M. Mols).
3. Ariadne and Theseus from the House of Lucretius Fronto
enlarged (in red) and superimposed on the Ariadne and Theseus
from the Caupona of Sotericus (in black. Digital rendering Onur
Öztürk).
4. Figures of Mars and Venus, Cupid, and Seated Woman from the House of Lucretius Fronto enlarged (in red) and superimposed on the
painting of Mars and Venus from the House of the Ephebe (in black. Digital rendering Onur Öztürk).
1. Outdoor Drinking Party, unknown provenance, Naples, Archaeological
Museum, inv. 9015 enlarged (in red) and superimposed on Outdoor
Drinking Party, Pompeii, House of the Chaste Lovers (IX 12, 6-7) triclinium
g
,
n
o
r
t
h
w
a
l
l
(
i
n black. Digital rendering Onur Öztürk).
3. Pompei, Casa della Parete Nera, esedra (y), parete ovest, tratto centrale della
zona mediana.
2. Pompei, Casa dei Pittori al lavoro, ambiente (12), parete est, tratto centrale della zona mediana: architetture dipinte.
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