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REALITY, ARTIFICE, AND CHANGING LANDSCAPES IN THE HOUSE OF MARCUS LUCRETIUS IN POMPEII

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 March 2019

Summer Trentin
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Extract

In the 1855 edition of his guide to Pompeii, the French artist and archaeologist Ernest Breton begins a chapter on the city's houses and shops with a print showing tourists in a grand Pompeian residence (figure 1). At the rear of an atrium with an enormous impluvium, a man contemplates a raised garden while a well-dressed couple approaches from the right. Behind them, in the roofless remains of the house, the garden's ancient sculptural display remains in situ; animals and deities inhabit a landscape dominated by a shrine-like niche, a pool, and pillars painted with trees. Deep shadows and encroaching vegetation set a romantic, melancholic mood. This is the House of Marcus Lucretius (IX.3.5), excavated less than a decade prior and, at the time, one of the ancient city's most famous sights. As is typical of nineteenth-century illustrations of Pompeii, the size of the house is exaggerated: while the decorative scheme and arrangement of the rooms is accurate, the garden is too highly elevated and too large in proportion to the figures. The atrium's disproportionate impluvium is a complete fabrication, the actual impluvium having been dismantled in antiquity. Despite the artistic licence, Breton and his imagined tourists follow the same path as ancient visitors to the house, drawn toward the garden and its sculptures by the manipulation of space and decoration.

Type
Research Article
Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 66 , Issue 1 , April 2019 , pp. 71 - 92
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2019 

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Footnotes

I am grateful to the American Philosophical Society for providing funding for this project through the Lewis and Clark Fund, the anonymous Greece & Rome reader for very helpful suggestions for revision, and Michael McComb and Jade Christensen for assistance with the digital models.

References

1 Breton, E., Pompeia. Décrite et dessinée (Paris, 1855), 187Google Scholar.

2 The impluvium seems to have been under repair at the time of the eruption. See Bechi, G., ‘Relazione degli scavi di Pompei da agosto 1842 a gennaio 1852’, Real Museo Borbonico 14 (1852), 3Google Scholar; Breton (n. 1), 299; Falkener, E., ‘Report on a House at Pompeii Excavated under Personal Superintendence in 1847’, in Falkener, E. (ed.), The Museum of Classical Antiquities. Being a Series of Essays on Ancient Art (London, 1860), 43Google Scholar; Dwyer, E. J., Pompeian Domestic Sculpture. A Study of Five Pompeian Houses and Their Contents (Rome, 1982)Google Scholar. For restoration works in the house at the time of the eruption, see Maiuri, A., L'ultima fase edilizia di Pompei (Rome, 1942), 128Google Scholar.

3 See von Stackelberg, K. T., The Roman Garden. Space, Sense, and Society (London, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 This concept originates with Heinrich Drerup's Durchblick, or ‘view through’. See Drerup, H., ‘Bildraum und Realraum in der römischen Architektur’, MDAI(R) 66 (1959), 147–74Google Scholar; Bek, L., Towards Paradise on Earth. Modern Space Conception in Architecture. A Creation of Renaissance Humanism, Analecta Romana Suppl. 9 (Odense, 1980), 182–3Google Scholar; Clarke, J. R., The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 b.c.–a.d. 250. Ritual, Space, and Decoration (Berkeley, CA, 1991)Google Scholar; Hales, S., The Roman House and Social Identity (Cambridge, 2003), 107–22Google Scholar.

5 On the same effect in Pompeian houses with full, colonnaded peristyles, see A. Anguissola, ‘The Dynamics of Seclusion: Observations on the Casa del Labirinto and the Casa degli Amorini Dorati at Pompei’, in A. Anguissola (ed.), Privata Luxuria. Towards an Archaeology of Intimacy. Pompeii and Beyond (Munich, 2012), 31–47. For the same principle in villa architecture, see B. Bergman, ‘Art and Nature in the Villa at Oplontis’, in C. Stein and J. Humphrey (eds.), Pompeian Brothels, Pompeii's Ancient History, Mirrors and Mysteries, Art and Nature at Oplontis, & the Herculaneum ‘Basilica’, (Portsmouth, RI, 2002), 87–120; on secondary views, see Hales (n. 4), 104–34.

6 The house's owner is generally believed to have been the same Marcus Lucretius named in a wall painting in Room 20. CIL IV 879; G. Minervini, ‘Nuove osservazioni, e compimento della descrizione della casa di M. Lucrezio in Pompei’, Bullettino Archeologico Napoletano 81 (1855), 52–6; P. Castrén (ed.), Domus Pompeiana. Una casa a Pompei (Helsinki, 2008), 27.

7 Recent examples include Anguissola (n. 5); Z. Newby, ‘Myth and Danger in Roman Domestic Landscapes’, CJ (2012), 349–89; C. Barrett, ‘Recontextualizing Nilotic Scenes: Interactive Landscapes in the Garden of the Casa dell'Efebo, Pompeii’, AJA 121 (2017), 293–332; F. Jones, ‘Roman Gardens, Imagination, and Cognitive Structure’, Mnemosyne 67 (2014), 781–812.

8 See Falkener (n. 2), 66–7; Bechi (n. 2), 1–23; Minervini (n. 6), 52–6, 65–6, 79–87. Both Bechi (12) and Minervini (65) noted the clear relationship between the garden and its surrounding rooms.

9 Recently, following restoration and the reopening of the house to the public, replicas of the statuettes have been placed in the garden.

10 See Bechi (n. 2), 1–23; Minervini (n. 6), 52–6, 65–6, 79–87. F. Niccolini and F. Niccolini, ‘Casa di Marco Lucrezio’, in Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei. Disegnati e descritti, vol. 1 (Naples, 1854); Breton (n. 1), 298–307; Falkener (n. 2), 66–7; T. H. Dyer, Pompeii. Its History, Buildings, and Antiquities, 3rd edition (London, 1871), 455–61.

11 Falkener (n. 2), 38.

12 Minervini (n. 6), 54; I. Kuivalainen, ‘Le sculture del giardino’, in Castrén (n. 6), 136.

13 Minervini (n. 6), 65; Falkener (n. 2), 73. Minervini describes paintings of ‘green plants arranged as if inside a pluteus with playful little birds among them’. See also W. F. Jashemski, The Gardens of Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villas Destroyed by Vesuvius (New Rochelle, NY, 1993), 231, 366 (cat. no. 92); G. L. Pugliese Caratelli (ed.), Pompei. Pitture e mosaici, vol. 9 (Rome, 1998), 289 (figs. 219–20); A. Tammisto and I. Kuivalainen, ‘Pitture e pavimenti della Casa di Marco Lucrezio’, in Castrén (n. 6), 76.

14 These are visible in Pugliese Caratelli (n. 13), figs. 219–20.

15 Tammisto and Kuivaleinen (n. 13), 77, identify this as Egyptian blue.

16 E.-M. Viitanen and J. Andrews, ‘Storia edilizia e architettura della Casa di Marco Lucrezio’, in Castrén (n. 6), 69.

17 A bench, for example, was found in Room 16; see Bechi (n. 2), 9.

18 Hales (n. 4), 107–12.

19 Jashemski (n. 13), 366.

20 Ibid.; Dwyer (n. 2), 47.

21 Virgil (Ecl. 6.) tells us that Silenus was associated with caves, making the setting an appropriate one.

22 Dwyer (n. 2), 43–4, 47–8, interprets the herms as depictions of a bearded and unbearded Bacchus; see also G. Fiorelli, Pompeianarum antiquitatum historia nunc primum collegit indicibusque instruxit, vol. 2 (Naples, 1862), 463–4. Falkener (n. 2), 74, believes that they depict Bacchus and Ariadne.

23 E. Bartman, ‘Decor et Duplicatio: Pendants in Roman Sculptural Display’, AJA 92 (1988), 222. On eclecticism in sculptural style, see also J. Elsner, ‘Classicism in Roman Art’, in J. I. Porter (ed.), Classical Pasts. The Classical Traditions of Greece and Rome (Princeton, NJ, 2006), 271–97; E. Bartman, ‘Sculptural Collecting and Display in the Private Realm’, in E. K. Gazda (ed.), Roman Art in the Private Sphere. New Perspectives on the Architecture and Decor of the Domus, Villa, and Insula, 2nd edition (Ann Arbor, MI, 2010), 71–88; F. C. Tronchin, ‘Introduction: Collecting the Eclectic in Roman Houses’, Arethusa 45 (2012), 261–82.

24 B. S. Ridgway, ‘Greek Antecedents of Garden Sculpture’, in E. B. MacDougall and W. F. Jashemski (eds.), Ancient Roman Gardens (Washington, DC, 1981), 12; P. Zanker, Pompeii. Public and Private Life, trans. D. L. Schneider (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 151.

25 Bettina Bergmann, ‘Staging the Supernatural: Interior Gardens of Pompeian Houses’, in C. C. Mattusch (ed.), Pompeii and the Roman Villa. Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples (Washington, DC, 2008), 55, notes that the spacing of the herms creates an optical illusion that increases the perceived size of the space.

26 K. Meinecke, ‘Antike Dornausziehergruppen’, Babesch 91 (2016), 129–60.

27 M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (New York, 1955), 148 n. 97, suggests that the sculptor was ill-versed in natural history, while Dwyer (n. 2), 42, argues that the role reversal was meant to be humorous.

28 Kuivalainen (n. 12), 133.

29 Falkener (n. 2), 78; Dwyer (n. 2), 42–3.

30 Tammisto and Kuivalainen (n. 13), 77–8.

31 Falkener (n. 2), 77. Dwyer (n. 2), 45, proposed that this sculpture was originally part of a series of herms designed for a larger peristyle, indicating possible reuse.

32 Dwyer (n. 2), 44–5, believes that the statuette was once repurposed as a table-top support. Falkener (n. 2), 77, notes some oxidization on the satyr's shoulder, possibly from contact with iron, which may suggest an ancient repair or reuse.

33 Dwyer (n. 2), 45–7. The hares are sometimes interpreted as panthers, and some believe that there were three hares. See Kuivalainen (n. 12), 135.

34 Kuivalainen (n. 12), 135; Falkener (n. 2), 77–8, simply states that the sculptures were found ‘around the piscina’.

35 Compare Cicero's description of statues in his villa that appear to come to life in the landscape setting (Cic. Q Fr. 3.1.5). For a discussion of this passage as it relates to the transformative power of the garden, see Jones, F., ‘Roman Gardens, Imagination, and Cognitive Structure’, Mnemosyne 67 (2014), 789–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36 Zanker (n. 24), 169–70, refers to such statues in the House of the Golden Cupids (VI.16.7) as ‘“excerpts” from a “marble paradeisos”’.

37 Unless, of course, we interpret the hares as panthers (see n. 33).

38 Recent analysis has determined that a great variety of meats, poultry, and seafood was consumed in the house. See M. MacKinnon, ‘I pranzi luculliani di Marco Lucrezio’, in Castrén (n. 6), 146–8.

39 Bergmann (n. 5), 90. See also Giesecke, , The Epic City. Urbanism, Utopia, and the Garden in Ancient Greece and Rome (Cambridge MA, 2007), 111–13Google Scholar; Bergmann, B., ‘The Concept of Boundary in the Roman Garden’, in Coleman, K. (ed.), Le jardin dans l'antiquité (Vandœuvres, 2014), 259Google Scholar.

40 On Egyptian motifs in Pompeian gardens, see Tybout, R. A., ‘Dwarfs in Discourse: The Functions of Nilotic Scenes and Other Roman Aegyptiaca’, JRA 16 (2003), 505–15Google Scholar; Tronchin, F. C., ‘The Sculpture of the Casa di Octavius Quartio at Pompeii’, in Poehler, E., Flohr, M., and Cole, K. (eds.), Pompeii. Art, Industry, and Infrastructure (Oxford, 2011), 33–59Google Scholar; Barrett (n. 7), 293–332.

41 On decorum in Roman art, see T. Hölscher, The Language of Images in Roman Art (Cambridge, 2004); E. Perry, The Aesthetics of Emulation in the Visual Arts of Ancient Rome (Cambridge, 2005).

42 Falkener (n. 2), 55, states that the garden ‘resembles…a Marionette theatre more than anything else’. See also Jashemski (n. 13), 232. On the theme of the theatre in the house, see Pugliese Caratelli (n. 13), 142. Perhaps this illusion was enhanced by curtains, which could also have been used to control the amount of sunlight from the garden into Room 15. On rooms closed off by curtains, see R. A. Tybout, ‘Malerei und Raumfunktion im zweiten Stil’, in E. M. Moormann (ed.), Functional and Spatial Analysis of Wall Painting (Leiden, 1993). On the use of curtains in Roman theatre, see R. C. Beacham, The Roman Theatre and Its Audience (Cambridge, MA, 1991), 171–2. Some Pompeian garden paintings, such as the one in the House of the Ceii (I.6.15), are placed in an almost stage-like setting with a curtain-like opening.

43 Zanker (n. 24), 174.

44 Falkener (n. 2), 56.

45 See Newby (n. 7), 349–89.

46 Bergmann (n. 5), 107.

47 On blurring and boundaries between art and reality, see Bergmann (n. 5); Jones (n. 7); Jones (n. 35).

48 Falkener (n. 2), 60; J. R. Clarke, Looking at Laughter. Humor, Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual Culture, 100 b.c.–a.d. 250 (Berkeley, CA, 2007), 177.

49 Falkener (n. 2), 60–1; Pugliese Caratelli (n. 13), 262–3; Clarke (n. 48), 177.

50 On interactions among decorative elements in Pompeian houses, see K. Lorenz, Bilder machen Räume. Mythenbilder in pompeianischen Häusern (Berlin, 2008).

51 Bergmann (n. 25), 56, has noted this correspondence between the actual garden and a panel painting.

52 On pendants, see Bartman (n. 23, 1988), 79–82.

53 Kuivalainen (n. 12), 132, notes the tie between the young and old versions of Bacchus in the garden and Room 16.

54 R. Ling, ‘The Decoration of Roman Triclinia’, in O. Murray and M. Tecuşan (eds.), In Vino Veritas (London, 1995), 241.

55 Pugliese Caratelli (n. 13), 257.

56 On landscape painting, see H. Kotsidu, Landschaft im Bild. Naturprojecktionen in der antiken Dekorationskunst (Worms, 2007); E. La Rocca, Lo spazio negato. La pittura di paesaggio nella cultura artistica greca e romana (Milan, 2008); J.-M. Croisille, Paysages dans la peinture romaine. Aux origins d'un genre pictural (Paris, 2010).

57 For example, in the House of the Ceii (I.6.15, garden h), the House of Apollo (VI.7.23, garden 24), and the House of the Old Hunt (VII.4.48, garden 13).

58 La Rocca (n. 56), 34–8; see also Giesecke (n. 39), 121–2.

59 Plin. Ep. 5.6.13; A. R. Littlewood, ‘Ancient Literary Evidence for the Pleasure Gardens of Roman Country Villas’, in E. B. MacDougall (ed.), Ancient Roman Villa Gardens (Washington, DC, 1987), 23.

60 Vitr. De arch. 7.5.2; see also 7.5.4.

61 Bergmann (n. 5), 88; on the function of these rooms, see also Viitanen and Andrews (n. 16), 63.

62 Minervini (n. 6), 55, in fact refers to the two rooms together as a fauces or corridor.

63 This recalls Zanker's ‘marble paradeisos’: see Zanker (n. 24), 169–70, also 184–7.

64 On Pompeian fishponds as a status symbol and form of villa emulation, see J. Higginbotham, Piscinae. Artificial Fishponds in Roman Italy (Chapel Hill, NC, 1997), 30–3, 55–64. On fish in the Pompeian garden, see Jashemski (n. 13, 1979), 108–12. On the keeping of fish by the wealthy, see Plin. HN 9.80–1; Varro Rust. 3.17.

65 The effect would have been very similar to passing through a peristyle colonnade or walking past a series of landscape paintings; see D. Spencer, Roman Landscape. Culture and Identity (Cambridge, 2010), 144–53.

66 On voyeurism and the gaze in Roman art, see V. Platt, ‘Viewing, Desiring, Believing: Confronting the Divine in a Pompeian House’, Art History 25 (2002), 87–112.

67 Pugliese Caratelli (n. 13), 290.

68 On walking as a mark of status, see O'Sullivan, T. M., Walking in Roman Culture (Cambridge, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

69 CIL IV 2331; Minervini (n. 6), 55.

70 Vitr. De arch. 6.5.1. Although Vitruvius was probably referring to larger, colonnaded peristyles, this example helps to demonstrate that his assumptions are not universally applicable to wealthy houses.

71 On boundaries, transgression, and exclusion in the Roman house and gardens, see Pagán, V. E., Rome and the Literature of Gardens (London, 2006), 10–14Google Scholar; Berry, J., ‘Boundaries and Control in the Roman House’, JRA 29 (2016), 125–41Google Scholar. On privacy in the Roman house, see Anguissola, A. Intimità a Pompei. Riservatezza, condivisione e prestigio negli ambienti ad alcova di Pompei (Berlin, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72 Dwyer (n. 2), 41.

73 On a similar dialogue between a viewer and an artist's signature in the House of Octavius Quartio (II.2.2), see Platt (n. 66), 89–90.

74 Bergmann (n. 5), 112.