Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles
Roman Art Part 2, Pompeii and Herculaneum
I.
POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM Pages 205 – 216 Gardner’s 10th ed.
A. The Eruption of Mount Vesuvius, August 24, 79 CE (First century
CE)
1. Was covered with fertile slopes and vineyards before
the explosion
2. Pompeii was still in process of rebuilding after an
earthquake in 62 BCE
3. Many prosperous towns around the Bay of Naples were
buried in a single day including Pompeii and
Herculaneum
4. Researchers in the 18th century discovered the ruins
which lay uninterrupted for 1700 years.
5. Their discovery permits a reconstruction of the art and
life of a Roman town during the Late Republic and
Early Empire.
B. Pompeii Today
1. Streets are still there with heavy pavement and
sidewalks
2. Stepping stones across the street so pedestrians
wouldn’t step in puddles
3. Enough space between stepping stones for wagon
wheels to go through and make deliveries
4. Tourists visit the concrete vaulted public baths, open air
theater, amphitheater, and indoor concert hall
5. VILLAS – Roman country homes – contain beautifully
painted walls and gardens, some kitchens still have the
utensils in place
6. Called the Living City of the Dead
7. Many of the great works of art have been moved to the
Naples Archeological Museum
C. Architecture
1. The Forum (G-255)
 Center for civic life, built at the intersection of main
roads
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Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles
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Open air structure only for pedestrian traffic,
surrounded by colonnades (Corinthian columns).
Shows the influence of Hellenistic design.
Outside the open-air part, secular and religious
structures
A temple
A BASILICA – a long narrow building used as
courthouse and for government offices
2. An Amphitheater
 Earliest known amphitheater – 70 BCE
 Gladiator battles and wild animal hunts
 Arena (sandy floor) used for soaking up blood
 A fresco shows a brawl that broke out between
Pompeian people and the neighboring Nucerians in
59 CE – many wounded and amphitheater was
closed for a decade
 Notice the velarium (cloth awning) and double stair
case (efficient entrance and exit)
 Major contrast functionally and architecturally with
Greek theaters (G-151)
 STUDY CHART
Location
Appearance/type
Pompeii, Italy
Amphitheater (double
Greek theater, giant oval
Epidauros, Greece
Theater (semicircular
plan, open on one side
Architectural
materials/structure
Concrete, barrel vaults
Stone seats and steps
support under the seating,
barrel vault to enter arena
Function
Mass entertainment,
spectacles
Refined performances of
comedies and tragedies
Treatment of surrounding
area
Subjugation of nature,
make an artificial
mountain to create an
amphitheater
Work with nature, place
the theater on the hillside
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Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles
3. The Roman House (Domus) (G-256, 257)
 Fauces (throat of the house) – a narrow foyer
opened to…
 Atrium – Central reception area, opening in roof
(compluvium) to let light in and allowed rain water
to collect
 Impluvium – basin below the opening in the roof to
catch water, cisterns could be used to store the water
for the household
 Cubicula – small bedrooms
 Triclinium – dining room
 Small kitchen and interior garden (peristyle garden)
in back
 Evidence of similar homes found in Etruscan
paintings
 Roman home was important. Romans entertained
guests and wanted to look important.
 Roman homes had an internal focus. Plain on the
outside, great attention to the interior, shut out the
traffic and noise from the street
 Example: House of the Vettii (G-256)
 A must-see for tourists
 Vettii brothers owned the house
 Example: House of the Faun
 Shows the craze for all things Greek
 Named after Hellenistic-style bronze statue that
stood in one of its two atriums
 Occupied an entire city-block!
 Two huge peristyle gardens!
 Mosaics decorate the floors of many of the rooms
 Alexander Mosaic (Battle of Issus)
 Battling Darius of Persia
 Copy of a Hellenistic panel painting
D. Frescoes
1. Most complete record of changing fashions of interior
decoration in the world
2. True frescoes – pigment was applied on wet plaster, a
painstaking process, applied several layers of plaster
with a trowel, if wealthy enough, mixed marble dust in
with plaster
3. How many homes do you know that have custompainted murals in every room?
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Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles
E. Four styles of Pompeian Frescoes
1. First-Style
 Simulates costly marble panels
 Like using paneling in your home to simulate
expensive wooden panels
 Hellenistic Greek precedent
2. Second-Style
 Creates the illusion of a three-dimensional world
inside the room
 Example: Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii (G-259)
 Use of Pompeian Red
 Used privately to celebrate the rites of Dionysus
 Mystery religion popular with women
 The rites were kept secret by the women
 Walls provide clues
 Women may have role played Ariadne, daughter of
King Minos (Remember when Theseus ditched her
on the island of Naxos?), uniting in marriage to
Dionysus
 Illusion of a shallow ledge on which all the figures
stand
 Figures from different walls interact with each other
 Woman with wings uses a whip that hits the back of
a kneeling woman with a bare back on the right wall
(part of an initiation?)
 Mature Second-Style – creates a three-dimensional
world outside of the room (See example of
reconstructed cubiculum M of House of P. Pannius
at Metropolitan Museum of Art)
 Amazing sense of depth and perspective
 Transformed windowless rooms to “picture
windows”
 Another example – Gardenscape from Villa of Livia
(wife of Caesar Augustus) from Primaporta (north
of Rome)
 Understanding of atmospheric perspective – gives a
sense of depth – as objects recede into the distance,
they appear fuzzier and less distinct, colors may
appear bluish or purple in the distance
 All four walls had gardenscapes
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Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles

Fence, trees, and birds in foreground are precisely
painted, details of foliage in background are
indistinct
3. Third-Style – Delicate linear fantasies on
monochromatic backgrounds
 Not trying to imitate marble panels, not trying to
create illusion of three-dimenionality
 Notice very thin colonnettes, feather-weight canopy,
tiny floating landscape in the center, all on a
monochrome black background – Landscape is like
a painting in a frame
 Does this look like a window into another world?
Which landscape is better – Livia’s or this one?
4. Fourth-Style – Combines some elements of all the styles
 Example: Room for Nero’s Domus Aurea (Golden
House)
 Sea creatures, birds, and other motifs on
monochromatic backgrounds
 Views outside the room as well as some illusions
 Example – Frescoes on Triclinium P of House of
Vettii
 Notice the elements of the other styles placed
together in a crowded manner
5. Still – life with Peaches
 Important example of the Fourth-Style
 Found in Herculaneum
 Roman painters were interested in everyday objects
as well as buildings and landscapes
 Artists paid close attention to shadows and
highlights
 Worked directly from the arrangement
 Fruit, the stem and leaves, and glass jar set on
different shelves – gives the illusion of the casual as
if these objects were in a cupboard.
 Art historians have not found evidence of anything
like these Roman studies of food and inanimate
objects until Dutch still-life paintings of the 17th
century!!
 Not exact in drawing, perspective, or rendering of
light and shade like the Dutch
 Ancients still understood that the appearance of
objects was a function of light – AMAZING!
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Roman Art: Pompeii and Fresco Styles
6. Portrait of Husband and Wife fresco
 Shows diverse tastes of Roman frescoes
 Romans kept imagines (portrait busts) in homes,
why not have painted portraits, too
 Man holds a scroll, woman holds a stylus and wax
tablet – standard in Roman marriage portraits
 Indicates fine education – even if it wasn’t true and
the individuals were uneducated and illiterate
 Roman equivalent of modern wedding portraits in
which brides and grooms wear rented formal clothes
that they will not wear again
 Heads are not of a standard type – Sensitive studies
of the features of the man and woman
F. Mosaics
1. Usually on floors in ancient times but Romans had
mosaics on walls and ceilings, precursor of early
Christian mosaic tradition.
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