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7.3 The Mature Third Style at Boscotrecase
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Del curso dictado por Yale University
Roman Architecture
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Gilding the Lily: Painting Palaces and Villas in the First Century A.D.
Third Style Roman wall painting in villas belonging to elite patrons. Third Style painting is characterized by departure from perspectival vistas and return to a flat wall decorated with panel pictures and attenuated architectural elements. The Fourth Style is a compendium of all previous styles. Both coexist in Nero’s Domus Aurea.
Conoce a los instructores
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
So this room, this very important room called Darian Eight in the Villa at
Atlantis, seems to be a good example of this transition from second style
which is also in the house to some new cycle of fashion in Roman painting.
An example of the mature third style
can be seen in two rooms, the red room and the black room, so called for
obvious reasons, and this is the red room.
That belong to the villa of Agrippa Postumus at Boscotrecase.
That dates to around 11 BC, we believe.
This house, we think, also had imperial connections, that is,
we think that we think that this house was put up in honor of
the first emperor of Rome, Augustus's only child, his daughter Julia.
The marriage of Julia to Tiberius T-I-B-E-R-I-U-S,
the man who was to become the second emperor of Rome.
The marriage of Julia to Tiberius may have been the occasion for
the decoration of this house.
It bears the name of one of Julia's sons by a different man by Marcus Agrippa.
Her son, her last son, his name was Agrippa Postumus, because he was born
after she was impregnated obviously by Agrippa before he died.
But the child was actually born after the death of Agrippa,
hence his name Agrippa Postumus.
There's some speculation that he may have lived in this villa at some point.
But what's important to us is the likelihood seems to be
that just as with the villa at Aplantis,
this villa seems to have been owned by someone in the imperial family.
Which is very important because it suggests to us not only that the finest
artists of the day must have been working on these, as they did in Rome for
the House of Augustus or in Prima Porta, for the Villa of Livia.
But also leads me, at least, to speculate that it's possible that these interesting
transitions from second to third style and
third style to fourth style may have come at the behest of the artists.
Who were these very high level artists who were working In the Imperial employ,
it makes a certain amount of sense to speculate that that might have been
the case.
So, here we have the red room of the villa of Agrippa posthumous at
Boscotrecase, and we can see some of the same features
that we saw in caldarium eight of the villa at a Oplontis.
We see once again that those substantial columns and
that opening in the wall is gone.
Forever banished, in fact the Romans never returned
to their quest after one point perspective for example.
Respect for the integrity of the wall, the flatness of the wall,
the wall as a surface to be decorated.
We see that they have decorated it with a system of tiers.
A black socle at the bottom, then a red central zone and a red upper zone.
And by the way, we can still get some sense that they have
looked at earlier second style wall paintings.
Because if you look at the structure, the overall structure of this wall for
example.
There still seems to be a central panel flanked by wings, this whole idea of and
that we talked about that goes back to theater design.
There's certainly a hint of that still here in the general arrangement or
formatting of the wall.
But it is completely flat, black zone, red zone.
And then although we will see in detail that we have a column
here with a capital at the top.
From a distance again it looks like a white stripe on a flat wall and
that's deliberate on the part of the artists.
Again here there's a panel in the center, but
is not a panel that serves as a window to what lies beyond.
It is a panel that is meant to be just that, a panel.
It's meant to imitate perhaps a marble painted panel that would have actually
hung on a wall in a house or villa like this, but depicting that here in paint.
So it is meant to be.
We are meant to see it as a panel picture that hangs
on a flat wall in the red room at Busco Tre Caze.
We can see also some vegetal decoration, very, very delicate,
doesn't occupy space at all decorates the flat wall above.
So, very similar to what we saw again in Caldaria Mate.
Here's a detail of the Red Room,
where we can see the sacro-idyllic landscape better.
You can see that it follows in the line of other sacro-idyllic
landscapes that we've seen.
It has a shrine, in this case a column,
that supports an urn at the top with a tree.
Behind that, some sort of wall with windows over here, and
in this case, a group of shepherds with their flocks and
other figures possibly involved in some kind of ritual.
Located in and around the shrine.
And you can also see here extremely well in detail,
the way in which they have outlined this panel with a black frame
to make it very clear that this is contained within a frame.
That beyond that, you can now see that this is a column, a very attenuated,
very delicate column or a columnette we might call it, with a capital at the top,
but it is meant here not to occupy any real space.
Not to project into the viewer's face.
But to serve as a second frame for
the panel picture that is placed on the flat wall.
I think it's instructive to compare this to what we saw in the room with the masks,
House of Augustus, mature second style.
So mature second style commissioned by an imperial patron, mature,
third style, commissioned by, we think, an imperial patron.
Both sacro-idylic landscapes with white backgrounds, but
you can see the main difference here, not only the substantial architecture, but
the fact that the white background continues behind the architecture, right?
It continues behind the architecture here, here, here.
Which gives us the sense, again, that this is something that's a misty
landscape of some sort that one could, at least with one's eye, but
also perhaps one's self, could actually enter into and wander around.
That's the sense you get here.
But here you are stopped from doing that.
There's nothing more here than a panel picture that hangs on a wall.
Now you might say to me that if we're going back to respecting the wall and
to having a painting, it is fairly flat and
we are going back to the first stop of Roman wall painting.
And I remind you of one of the first Roman wall paintings that we looked at together.
But it really is very different from the first style as well,
because in the first style you'll remember the wall was not actually flat.
The wall was built up as a relief In a series of architectural zones,
and then the individual blocks were painted different colors
to give an illusion once again that this was not a plain wall.
But rather a very exotic and
expensive marble wall with marbles brought from all over the world to decorate it.
So an illusion of something that it wasn't.
Here in the third style we are again not dealing with any illusions really at all.
But just a respect for the flatness of the wall,
decorating that flat wall with a kind of wallpaper through paint and
then putting on that flat wallpapered wall pictures.
Hanging pictures just as we hang pictures on flat walls today.
The Villa at Boscotrecase also has a black room, so-called because
the main color there, the main background color there is, as you can see, black.
It, too, is interesting in a somewhat different way, but
is a quintessential example of mature Third style Roman architectural painting.
We see once again that the room has been divided into a center,
a central area with wings, one on either side.
We also see that it has been divided into painted zones, red at the bottom,
black in the center, black also at the top.
We can see that there are architectural members,
although again they look from a distance like white stripes on a black wall.
But if we get up close to them, and I'll show you even some
closer views in a moment, we will see that we are dealing with very, very,
very, very attenuated colonets with capitals at the top.
And notice, and this has been true throughout, they decorate these columns
also, all up and down all along the way with floral motifs and so on and so forth.
Which also underscores their function as a decorative motif rather than
an actual column.
The column supports, the colonettes support you know, what looks like a very
Simple, pediment, it just slightly peaked as you can see up there.
But there is one, this painting is interesting, because if you look carefully
at the frieze at the uppermost part of the columns or columnettes.
You will see that there is some hint of space there.
Look at the way it undulates.
It recedes over here, it recedes over there, and
then it also meanders in the center.
So there's a slight hint in this particular case of some space,
some respect session into depth which only adds to the intrigue and
mystery of these incredible paintings.
These are very, very interesting in detail.
I can show you here for example, the swans.
We see some swans.
And remember these swans, this again seems to be an imperial house,
because we will see swans are very important for the Emperor Augustus.
And he decorates the Ara Pacis in Rome a great work of architecture and sculpture
with swans that may make reference to a new golden age that he has ushered in.
We see those here, but look at them.
Look at the way they rest on these little candelabra like torches, and
then those in turn on a spiraling canthus
tendril that doesn't look like it could support anything at all.
How very strange, to have a swan supported by a tendril like this.
This sort of thing couldn't actually work and
it's one of, again, the intrigues, the details of paintings such as these.
This is another interesting detail,
because it shows a kind of candelabra supporting a paneled picture.
That we are meant to read as a panel picture on the wall.
And if you look carefully,
you can see the Egyptian eyes and motifs in that panel picture.
There was an extreme Egyptomania that spread through Rome and
Italy after Augustus was victorious over Mark Antony and
Cleopatra at the famous Battle of Actium.
Augustus initially used these Egyptianizing motifs to make political
remarks about his victory over Cleopatra and Antony.
But over time it became more a fashion and we begin to see Egyptian eyes and
motifs not only in the homes of members of the imperial family,
but used even more widely than that.
Another detail shows again that central area,
now you can see that they are indeed colonets.
With capitals at the top.
You can also see there are a couple of medallions that turn out to be
medallions that have heads in them over here.
But here you can see how fanciful it gets,
even though this is clearly a colonnette with a capital.
What capital supports, then, in usual building practice, supports on top of it,
a medallion with a head and then another curlicue on top of that.
And that supports the pediment,
and that has on the edge this very decorative motif dripping off the side.
I mean, this is fantastic in that regard.
Fantastic and they're clearly having fun with these details and
using these wonderful details, this drop element over here for example.
The portraits, the images are interesting.
The heads are interesting.
Many scholars have believed that they're representations of gods, like Apollo.
But a couple of scholars have put forward the idea, and
I find it a very attractive one.
That we may actually have, there are two of them, we may actually have a portrait
of Julia, whose marriage may have been commemorated here and
of her of her step-mother,
Olivia, to the emperors of Rome during the age of Augustus.
Most interesting of all is the small,
sacro idyllic landscape that floats in the center of the panel.
Again, in third style Roman wall painting, we either tend to have painted panels in
the center with frames as we've seen thus far, or floating elements in the center.
They could be a floating woman on the back of a bull/sea creature, or
they can be a sacroidealic landscape as we see here.
And here's another detail where we can blow up that sacro idyllic landscape and
see again.
That it is just the sort of sacred and idyllic landscape we've seen before with
the shrine, top of a column, a building over here, trees, a tree in the center,
other trees and then various sacrificial goings on in front of that.
But from a distance again, it just looks like some sort of
object Floating in the center of a very large black flat wall,
one decorative motif among many.
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