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8.6 Genre, Historical, and Portrait Painting
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Del curso dictado por Yale University
Roman Architecture
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Exploring Special Subjects on Pompeian Walls
Painted renditions of special subjects inserted into Second through Fourth Style Roman wall paintings. These include mythological, landscape, genre, still life, and history painting, as well as painted portraiture. Highlights include the Dionysiac Mysteries paintings and the Riot in the Amphitheater, both from residences in Pompeii.
Conoce a los instructores
Diana E.E. KleinerDunham Professor of History of Art and Classics at Yale University
History Of Art
We also see among the paintings, that I call special subjects
today genre scenes, scenes that represent daily life, in Pompeii or Herculaneum.
I'll show you just one of those here.
It is a painting of what's usually
called a painting of a magistrate, distributing free bread.
And it comes from House VII.3.30 in Pompeii, a wall
painting from VII.3.30, in Pompeii, dates to around AD 70.
And what's depicted here, whether the magistrate is distributing free
bread or it's bread being sold, we're not absolutely sure.
But what you can see here is, piles and piles of round breads, that are
being distributed to those who stand in front of the bread stand.
And I can show you a detail
also of the same, where you can get a better sense of the shape of the breads.
We remember the petrified bread.
That we looked at from Pompeii, and the the division into shapes, that
make it resemble a pizza, the same kinds of breads can be seen here.
And it's those, that bread that is being distributed to these people, down below.
While this, while this painting comes from a house there,
you know, it, and it may have been, you know, may have
just referred to the particular profession of someone, who lived in that house.
But paintings like this, we believe, and it may or may not
have been the case with this one could also have, were also used
as shop signs, to advertise, what was being sold in one of
those tabernae that opened off, off, that often opened off houses, in places
like Pompeii and Herculaneum, and that may have been the case here as well.
Just a few words about, what we might call history painting among the Romans.
This is a fascinating and very famous painting of the amphitheater at Pompeii.
You see it on the left hand side of the screen.
It comes from House 1323 in Pompeii, and dates to between, 59 and 70 AD.
And it purports not only to represent the Pompeii amphitheater, which I remind you
of here and you'll recall the very
distinctive staircase of the amphitheater, at Pompeii.
And you can see how carefully that is rendered here by the artist,
to make sure that we know, this is indeed the amphitheater at Pompeii.
It purports to represent, a very famous historical event.
At least for, at least in terms of local history.
And that is a brawl that broke out between the Pompeians and a, another group
of individuals, who lived in the area called the Nucerians, Nucerians.
The Pompeians and the Nucerians, a brawl broke out between them.
You can see that brawl being represented in the oval arena, there.
The brawl was so serious,
that the local ah,magistrates decided to punish both
the Pompeians and the Nucerians, and they did something
quite extraordinary, and that is, that they decided to
close down the amphitheater in Pompeii, for ten years.
Count them, I mean can you imagine the
city of Pompeii without an amphitheater, for ten years?
That was a very brutal punishment. But it seems to have happened and
it is memorialized.
That very event is memorialized in this painting in this house at Pompeii.
This painting is also very valuable.
I think I've mentioned this to you, before.
It's also very valuable, not only for showing us the shape of
the, of the amphitheater which of course as you know, still survives,
the oval shape and the ceding but for an, for a detail
that doesn't still survive and that is the awning, I mentioned to you,
that an amphitheater design.
They put poles at the very uppermost part of the amphitheater and they would, were
able to put an awning on those poles, to protect people in inclement weather.
And we see the representation, our only preserved
representation in paint of one of these awnings.
so, again, it's very valuable in terms of, helping us understand amphitheater design.
The last two paintings I want to show you today are both portrait paintings.
And you have to think of these portrait
paintings like the mythological panel pictures, as paintings
that were inserted into walls or inserted into,
probably, mostly, third and fourth style Roman walls.
And when all, when those treasure hunters hit Pompeii
and Herculaneum, these were the ones they went to, first.
[LAUGH] They, and
they, and they cut a fair number of these out
of their original contexts and, and made off with them.
But some of them fortunately, have found their
way into, especially into the Naples Archaeological Museum.
This is the first one I want to show you,
an absolutely fetching portrait of a young woman, from Pompeii.
That dates to around a, a the middle of the first century AD, that is 45 to
50 AD.
And we see it here, and it's a,
it's a, it's a, it's an incredible painted portrait
by clearly once again, a very talented artist
who's done an extraordinary job of capturing this woman.
It's a very, very, very appealing portrait.
We see her, she's quite attractive young woman with
wide, sort of hazel colored eyes sharp, straight brows
a straight nose, a cupid's cupid's lips.
As you can see down below, the hair is magnificently rendered.
You can see that she has a bevy of corkscrew curls.
Those in the front, toward the front of her face
are highlighted and match very well, the color of her eyes.
She wears gold hoop earrings, that also mimic the curlicues of her locks.
And then you can see also, that she wears something that appears to have
been fashionable to wear, among Roman and Pompeian women, and that is a gold
hairnet, at the very apex, which adds shine and, and, and glimmer to her
port, to the hair; but also you can see, the hair beneath it, through that.
Down below you can see, she wears a green garment and a, a sort of purple or
brownish mantle over her shoulder, and she holds a stylus to her lips.
And she has in her other hand a, a, as you can see,
a tablet in front of her, and she is, it is clear, as she
puts that stylus to her lips, she is deep in thought, very pensive,
figuring out, what it is that she's going to write, on her wax tablet because
these were wax and they would write into the wax tablets.
Because she is caught in this moment of deep thought a number of scholars
have suggested, that she must represent the Greek poetess, Sappho.
Which is why I put that painted portrait of Sappho, on your monument list.
But you can see, I put Sappho in quote marks.
I think this is almost certainly not Sappho it is probably
a Pompeiian woman and she may not be thinking about the poetry that she's about
to write, but perhaps the shopping list that she's putting together, before she
makes her way down to the central market, of the city of Pompeii or
sends her slave, to go down to the central market, of the city of Pompeii.
But it may also be that, she was literate.
And that she wants to underscore the fact that, she was literate.
It may also be, that this was just a
set way of representing women in portraiture in Pompeii.
Because this is not the only portrait we have, of a woman
with her stylus to her lips and her tablets in her hands.
Here's another portrait that we have, also from Pompeii, with a woman represented, in
exactly the same way. This portrait is from house 7260 and
dates to around, 62 to 79 AD. The portrait of a woman
and presumably, her husband by her side. She again, has the stylus to her lips.
She has the tablet down below.
You can see that he holds a scroll, which has a a red place marker up above.
So this portrait of the two of them may
either elude to the fact that they are both literate,
that they can both read and write.
It's also possible that the that the scroll that
he ho, holds may indicate, that he's a magistrate.
Or, lastly, and one of the more popular solutions is that this may, he maybe
holding the marriage certificate, the marriage between the two.
The portraits are very interesting.
You can see that she isn't quite as gorgeous, as her other counterpart.
Her hair is not arranged in those wonderful golden locks.
But looks kind of frizzy over her forehead and down her neck.
As you can see here, her ears stick out,
she has a uni brow, but she's, she's, she's more
than happy to be represented as she was, preserved for
posterity, as she was along with her husband over here.
And if you look at the portrait, you will see
again, that it has a black frame around it, and then a maroon
frame, which tells us, again, that this was inserted into a wall, a third
or fourth style wall, just like the mythological paintings were inserted, into
those walls, as a, as a painting, that was located in the center of that wall.
And in this case, emphasized the, the owners of this particular house, and
their their undying love for each other, their relationship honors
their marriage, and served, you know, as the kind of counterpart,
to a portrait of the loving couple that one might put
on a mantelpiece or on a piano in one's house today.
So you have to think of it as, quite comparable to that.
Again, when you wander through Pompeii, you don't see many
of these portraits in situ in large part because they were
so popular with treasure hunters.
But fortunately, we do have a few preserved in from both Pompeii
and Herculaneum and those can be seen in museums like Naples, today.
Thank you.
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