And that tree again is surrounded by blue sky.
But I think you can see that it is not a window into something that lies beyond.
Because the scene is contained within this frame
and what the artist has done is outline
the frame with a very black, dark black outline.
Now whether this has anything to do with those old curtains that
we talked about in the second style, might be interesting to speculate.
But it looks to us like it's basically just a
frame that is making it clear that this is flat.
But what we are dealing here with, what we are dealing with
here is a flat wall onto which a panel picture has been attached.
It is hung.
It seems to be hung on that flat wall.
It is not meant as a, as a window or a panorama into something else.
Besides the black frame you see there's also a molded frame.
Very nicely painted here.
And in this detail you can see that again what look like
stripes, white stripes on the flat wall, from a distance, are indeed columns.
You can see that they support capitals and a lintel up above.
But from a distance again they don't look that way.
And they are capitals that are, they
are columns and capitals very different from what
we've seen before because again they are
very, very, very, attenuated, very def-, very delicate.
They don't have any of the substance of the columns of the second-style.
Look up above the panel picture of Hercules, and you'll see,
and I have a better detail of this in a moment.
A series
of figures that are located in the yellow zone,
and I can show them better to you perhaps here.
Where you're looking also at a view of the socle.
This side of the wall you may have noticed
this in the general view, is actually a niche.
Is actually a niche a rectangular fairly shallow rectangular niche there
so the painting continues into that niche which gives it a little
sense of depth a little more sense of depth then it would have otherwise.
And above above the niche is a soffit, which you can see is
also painted and I show you a detail of that soffit up above.
If you look at what's right above the pict-, the
painting of Hercules, you will see, and I'll show you
these in detail in a moment, a citharist, that is,
a man who plays a cithara, who is seated there and
is playing his instrument.
On either side of him we see panel pictures.
And then on top of those panel pictures, peacocks.
Peacocks that are represented frontally and look out toward us.
And if you look at both, and we'll look
at them in detail again momentarily, if you look
at the citharist and if you look at the
peacocks, you see that they are standing on ground lines.
The ground lines that don't look like they have any depth in fact they're standing
somewhere where you couldn't really stand which
is one of the interesting features of
3rd style, again, this desire to move and to respect the flatness of the wall.
If we look at the soffit we see that that to is painted
in red and gold that it is divided into a series of panels.
That in those panels we see floating mythological figures.
A woman on a bull, I'll show you a detail of her in
a moment, just floating in the center.
Which doesn't seem to be in any space at all, she's just floating there.
And then on either side, a niche with a shell at the top with standing figures and
then strangely enough pictures of still life paintings right below those.