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Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption

October 22, 2005 - March 26, 2006

The Field Museum of Natural History
1400 S. Lake Shore Dr.
Chicago, IL 60605-2496
tel.: 312-922-9410
hours: Hours: 9a-5p daily; last admission at 4p
http://www.fmnh.org

In Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption one may look into the eyes of the survivors, who saw all, and still exist to tell the tale: the frescoes, sculptures and small figures ranging from personal ornament to household gods that were preserved in the cataclysmic volcanic surges that swept Pompeii, its sister city Herculaneum, and nearby areas Oplontis, Terzigno and Moregine on the morning of August 24, 79 A.D. Plaster and resin casts of the remains of the inhabitants, empathetically presented, serve as reminder of the many individuals who perished in the path of the destructive force of Vesuvius's huge surge of superheated volcanic material; but above all, Pompeii seeks to re-create a sense of the life and thriving luxury, the sharply divided social strata, and the rich variety of artistic embellishment common to the society that lived and worked there up to the point of its fateful last days. Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption presents several significant art treasures, most notably a number of 2,000-year-old frescoes, including a full re-creation of all three walls of a triclinium, or Roman dining room, unearthed in a wealthy villa in Moregine. All show the ancient art that accompanied the ancient life of these Classical ancestors of Western culture.

Seven frescoes or partial frescoes are included in the exhibition, all actual wall paintings excavated from Pompeii and its neighboring areas. Three are full-wall installations showing the organization of elements as they would have appeared in the actual room of the home or villa. They show the Romans' delight in realism involving a significant influx of trompe l'oleil or three-dimensional illusion, as well as a delightful range of architectural follies, mythological subjects, and appealing objects of everyday life. The fresco technique involves pigment being painted directly onto damp plaster; when the plaster dries, the image is rendered more or less permanent.

The striking feature of the Fresco from the House of the Cryptoporticus, one of the largest and most complete, is its realistic presentation of both figure and architectural element. Fresco from the House of the Cryptoporticus presents a series of six herms (human figures on pedestals), poised beneath a coffered ceiling, their placement interspersed with small portals, or pinakes, whose open shutters reveal a variety of scenes. Dating to around 40 B.C., the work reveals that artists of the time were highly sophisticated in their illusion of three-dimensional realism and in its many tricks and small treats for the eye. Though not true 'perspective' as it would eventually develop, the Cryptoporticus fresco serves as a vivid reminder that the rendering of three dimensions which forms the basis for traditional Western painting was a re-discovery, not a discovery.

Pre-Christian in both time and place, the fresco may appropriately be termed 'pagan', with an earthiness to its content, especially in the pose and features of some of the herms, that show a Roman pleasure in grotesques which reappears in other items in the exhibition. The composition presents much to look at and enjoy: the illusion of the columns, the varying personalities depicted in the semi-human herms both male and female, and the clever handling of the extended 'beams' of the coffered ceiling, beneath which runs a rhythmic border of stylized griffin-like figures. The tiny inset scenes and views of the pinakes are miniature works of art in themselves, portraying scenes that range from Ariadne in her chariot, to a homely image of a rooster perched next to bread loaves in a basket, partially covered with a white cloth. With so many disparate parts, the composition seems less something to be enjoyed as a whole and rather, a series of pleasing elements cleverly fitted together.

Earth-toned and warm, the pigments remain vibrant even after two centuries' passage. The mustard-yellow of the wall, and the dramatic use of a velvety black to offset the scenes visible through the open 'shutters' of the pinakes, have proven more durable than the more fugitive greens and blue of the garland and small details of reeds or riverside (visible in one of the pinakes scenes of Athena preparing to board a boat). But the strong linearity of the work, and its multiple rhythms of herms, garland, coffers, and beams, are all still clearly delineated. The flaking and wear attributable to two centuries time also reveals part of the order of painting, showing that the coffered scene was painted first, the herms added last, overlaid on the original scene. There's nothing challenging or demanding about these images. They are merely there to delight and confound the eye, and this in itself is telling. The frescoes of Pompeii are evidence of that which Romans of significant wealth, power and luxury put on their walls, and here, despite the cultivated nod to mythological references, for the most part, the Cryptoporticus fresco is a work intended primarily for lively, visual pleasure.

The Cryptoporticus fresco was not actually contemporary with Pompeii as it fell in 79 AD: it had been painted about 100 years earlier, and therefore represents an earlier style, in this case preserved through the disuse of the room in which it was painted. A more formal austerity is seen in another of the large fresco installations, which features the three complete walls of the triclinium (the fourth wall would have consisted of a sliding wooden door) of a luxury villa unearthed in Moregine, south of Pompeii. Painted some time in the 1st century AD, Fresco from Moregine, Building A is more contemporary with Pompeii at the time of its last days.

Unlike the modern usage of the home as 'cocoon', intended for rest and privacy, the Roman home was a thriving center of social power, where important guests were received and important business transacted on a daily basis. The triclinium, or dining room, so named for the three couches on which diners reclined around a central table of edibles, was instrumental in this area, serving as a principal room in which the host might display his wealth and taste in the form of the artistic decor of the walls. Furthermore, the region in and around Pompeii, which includes Herculanum, Terzigno, Moregine, and other towns, was an area of considerable luxury and wealth in 79 AD. Pompeii was in its day more cosmopolitan even than Rome; other areas, such as neighboring Terzigno, were the site of thriving agricultural operations, based out of villas and supporting wealthy landowners. In all of these, the home served as social base; and the fresco adorned the home.

Fresco from Moregine, Building A is more rational and unemotional in its formal presentation than the fresco of the Cryptoporticus, and correspondingly, less earthy and welcoming. In it, a sophisticated construct of architectural illusion floats on a saturated red-ochre background. Consisting of slender columns in gray-blue and yellow and small alcoves with coffered ceilings, the architecture is wiry rather than airy due to its strict geometry, something a slight curvilinear festoon of very thin garland does little to relieve. The seven Muses appear, each with her characteristic attribute, some on pedestals, others simply floating on the ochre field, counteracting the perception of the ochre as 'space' by employing it as 'ground'. The central figure on the rear wall is Apollo Citharoedus (Apollo of the Lute). The features of the Apollo are said to resemble the emperor Nero, indicating a potential source of the building's luxury: it may have been one of the way stations built for the emperor's use when traveling. Including the Muses would have suggested cultivation and taste: it was a mark of cultivation to be familiar with mythological subjects and references. Portraying Nero as Apollo, foremost among the gods, was, of course, its own type of vanity. Despite the rather severe formality, the delight in trompe l'oleil illusion may still be seen in the realistic steps which link the image with the triclinium's floor, and in the details which pop out to delight, here and there, the longer one looks at the work: a peacock, a shield, a theatrical mask are among those which provide a counterpoint of human liveliness to the rational structure. A variety of other frescoes and fresco fragments in the exhibition give further testament to the culture and sophistication of Roman tastes of the time, and the artist's ability to carry out such commissions with skillful handling of sculptural modeling and details of depth and shadow. Given the wealth of the area's inhabitants, as well as the tendency to adorn the triclinium as a reflection of the host's taste and social status, the Cryptoporticus and Moregine frescoes, and these other works, may be taken as showing characteristics of the highest achievements in artistic endeavor of the time.

One smaller fresco provides a piquant contrast to these flights of taste, showing wall-painting in the vernacular. The Caupona of Salvius, or Inn of Salvius, located in Pompeii, hosted all the usual services of a Roman tavern at the time, which included drinks, gambling, and prostitution. It too had at least one wall painting. The fresco panels retrieved from the walls of the inn show little of the illusionistic sophistication of the villa paintings. The bawdy, cartoonlike figures are markedly more primitive in execution than the villa frescoes. Four panels illustrate, left to right, a prostitute kissing a client, two men competing to be the first served by a tavern wench with a wine jug, two others getting into an argument while dicing at a low table, and the same two being thrown out of the tavern by the owner. The figures are flat, unmodeled areas of flat color, their spatial relationships moderately realistic, the color itself more garish. To give a three-dimensional effect, the artist employed a convention of making a small diagonal mark indicating a shadow; while this works acceptably on individual figures, the results are unintentionally humorous in the third panel, where the legs of chairs, tables, and the two figures each sprout their own small flying shadow. The faces of the figures are crudely modeled, and captions or word-balloons are painted on directly above the figures, underscoring the comic-book quality.

Here too there is wealth, being lavishly spent on prostitutes, drink, or gaming. Culture was less of a premium here. What was at stake was getting drunk and having a good time. Inns such as the Inn of Salvius would have served the youths of the wealthy villa owners. As Paul Veyne notes in the compilation A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, Eds.; Belknap Harvard: 1987), it was customary, and accepted, for such young Roman men of good family to roam freely and get into trouble. Far from the cultivated mythological references of the triclinium frescoes, the inn's illustrations have a practical, as well as a humorous, bent for their intended audience. Their scenes would doubtless have served simultaneously as advertisement, distinct amusement to the patrons, as well as a cautionary tale: both the pleasures of the caupona, and the perils of misbehavior.

Sculpture, the decorative arts, tools, implements and coins, and lastly, casts of many of the victims round out the exhibition. The decorative arts in particular are well-represented, in part because of the nature of the cataclysm which destroyed Pompeii: residents, fleeing, grasped their small, portable valuables as they fled. Necklaces, rings and earrings, snake-shaped bracelets, cosmetics containers and hand mirrors all show that personal adornment has remained essentially the same since the 1st century -- many of these would not look out of place if worn today -- while also giving evidence of the Roman artisan's facility in creating fine work in gold, and cunning, small work in semiprecious stones. The sculptures, in both marble and metals, include high-quality copies of Greek originals, as well as lively work in bronze, especially the Bronze statuette of a Satyr with wineskin (1st century A.D.). Tools, such as a doctor's scalpel set, or a soldier's sword, implements such as great storage vases, a massive ironbound strongbox, and a broad selection of coins all complete the fascination of this nearly perfectly preserved record of a busy area of wealth, agriculture and trade. In keeping with the Field Museum's focus on the natural sciences, the exhibition also includes a study of volcanism, giving a complete picture of the violence and rapidity of the natural cataclysm of the Vesuvius eruption. Finally, the casts of the victims serve as reminder, on the one hand that these were everyday humans, thriving in Roman daily life until the time of the tragedy; on the other hand that artistic endeavor, even in the humblest of decorative arts, transcends mortality in its commemoration of the lively interests of a people.

A 205-page, full-color catalog, also titled Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption (Electa: 2005), accompanies the exhibition and is available at the Field Museum. The three opening essays discuss, respectively, Pompeii and its preservation, literary references to Pompeii from its first discovery onward, and Pompeii as represented in the popular cinema. The remainder of the catalog follows the museum presentation, grouping objects to maintain the context in which they were found, and positing theories as to who the owners were, and their intents and routes while fleeing the destruction. The only regret of this lavishly-illustrated volume is that in aiming for an artistic presentation the authors sacrifice a measure of reference value. Although many of the items are fully depicted, the frescoes are represented as partial images or details, frustrating those who wish to have a pictorial reference to the image as a whole.

Generous in its offerings of well-preserved art and artifact, Pompeii gives vivid impressions of the culture and sophistication of the Roman nation's most wealthy inhabitants. The frescoes especially, several presented as full-scale recreations of actual rooms, are a revealing glimpse into Roman artistic interests, the skill of their artists, and what they valued as imagery: architectural follies, scenes and characters from mythology, mythical creations and adornments, and depictions of charming realism. Perhaps because works such as these served as the foundation of many of the conventions of Western art, the art of Pompeii, created two thousand years distant from our own time, is unexpectedly appealing and accessible to modern tastes. Frescoes, sculpture, the decorative arts and more are on exhibition. Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption is at the Field Museum through March 26, 2006.

--Katherine R. Lieber

Katherine R. Lieber has edited ArtScope.net's Visual Arts reviews since 1998. Ms. Lieber is Editor and Associate Producer for ArtScope.net.

Editorial Note: A History of Private Life, Volume I: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium, by Philippe Ariès and Georges Duby, Eds. (Belknap Harvard: 1987) and other books mentioned in www.artscope.net reviews, may be purchased through this site's Amazon.com link or by clicking on the link above. The catalog for Pompeii: Stories from an Eruption is currently only available at the Field Museum of Natural History or via the Field Museum web site.