The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton
10. PLAN of some private dwellings copied from the celebrated fragments
2626 words | Chapter 566
of a map of Rome, engraved on marble about the time of Septimius
Severus. (Bellorius Ichnographia, Tab. 7, page 35.)
THE HOUSE OF PANSA. (1811-14.) One of the largest of the superior class
of mansions hitherto discovered. It has an extensive garden, and the
rooms were distributed with great regularity. This house is more
generally referred to in illustration of a Pompeian house, and for that
reason has been made the subject of a larger and more elaborate plan
than the rest. In one of the bed-rooms, five female skeletons were
found, some of them with gold ear-rings. The name of the house is
derived from the red letters PANSAM. ÆD. PARATVS. ROG. daubed upon the
door-post. (The plan of this house is given large at the end of this
book.)
THE HOUSE OF CERES (1827). Called also the House of Zephyrus and Flora,
from an interesting painting of the _Marriage of Zephyrus and Flora_; it
is also known as the House of the _Ship_ (Naviglio), which latter name
is derived from a painting in one of the shops. Another name, also, is
of the _Bacchantes_. The beautiful seated divinities, _Bacchus_ and
_Ceres_, between the Tablinum and Alæ of this court, were copied from
this House of Ceres. A third sitting deity, _Jupiter_, with a round
plate behind his head, like the _nimbus_ of saints in old pictures,
belonged to this series. It is remarkably dignified. (See Mus. Bor.,
vol. vi., tav. 52.)
THE HOUSE OF THE FAUN (1829-31). So called from the discovery of the
beautiful little Faun introduced in this court, copied in the original
material, bronze. This house is celebrated for its great mosaic,
representing _Alexander and Darius at the Battle of Issus_. The
apartments were very numerous and on a grand scale.
HISTORY OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE.
The original intention in constructing the Pompeian Court in the Crystal
Palace was to appropriate it for purposes of refreshment. In furtherance
of this plan, more especial attention would have been devoted to the
mural decorations and the arrangements for public accommodation and
convenience. The nature and extent of the gigantic structure within
which this court was to be erected, determined, in a great measure, the
breadth of space to be left open. A glance upwards will show the
spectator how the supports of the galleries are arranged, and also the
necessity that exists for incorporating these within the walls of the
smaller erection. The refreshment chambers must necessarily have been
much larger in extent than any of the rooms in the houses at Pompeii;
the general disposition of their chambers, however well suited they
might have been for the purposes of ancient life, were totally
inadequate to the requirements of modern visitors; consequently this
plan was abandoned, and the present Pompeian Court instituted in its
stead.
The original design for this house was made by Mr. Digby Wyatt, at
Naples; and, in conjunction with Mr. Owen Jones, his companion in the
tour for the collection of works of art for the decoration of the
Crystal Palace generally, he entered into arrangements on the spot with
Signor Abbate, the official draughtsman to the King for the Pompeian
excavations, to come over to England the following spring, with cartoons
and tracings, from Pompeii, in order to decorate the building, then to
be prepared for him, at Sydenham, with facsimiles of the different
paintings at Pompeii selected by Mr. Wyatt for the decoration of the
respective rooms. The King of Naples granted permission to Signor Abbate
for the visit, and, accordingly, this distinguished artist arrived in
England fully prepared to perform his task. Although the plan of
devoting the Pompeian Court to refreshment was meanwhile given up, the
measurement of the walls that had been given to Signor Abbate for the
preparation of his cartoons prevented any general change of design, and
the shortness of the period originally fixed for his stay in this
country prevented any important alterations being undertaken. The
decorative painting of the Pompeian house was entirely under the
management of Signor Abbate, Mr. Parris. Jun. acting as his deputy. They
had thirty assistants, ten of whom were English. The principal figure
painters were Mundici and Gow, and the names of the chief ornamentalists
are Leslie, Luetyens, Wassner, Yahn, Munsch, Mœvius, and Meyer. The
entire arrangement and building are due to Mr. Digby Wyatt, furthered by
the zeal and energy of Mr. Thomas Hayes, his deputy.
It will be seen in the following description of the Court, that each
part has been copied from some existing authority; and the few
exceptions that do occur, in which originality was necessary, have been
carefully noted.
Some of the leading works which contain illustrations of Pompeii, will
be found enumerated in the list of books at the end of the description
of the Roman Court, and others of more immediate importance have been
referred to in the text when requisite.
DESCRIPTION OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE.
The outer walls are supposed to be surrounded by the street, and the
entire house forms what the Romans called an _insula_; that is, a
detached building. The tiling, more conspicuous from the gallery, has
been faithfully copied from an ancient example, from the House of the
Female Musician. The roof of a house was found complete in April, 1853,
with the upper part of the ridge carefully guarded by cement. The
principal entrance faces the nave; it is flanked by two pilasters, the
capitals of which are copied from the back entrance of a house excavated
in 1834 (Mus. Bor., vol. x., tav. A, B), and from sketches taken on the
spot.
The general proportions of the doorway are taken from the house of Pansa
(Gell, Pompeiana, series i., pl. 34.); the grating, or lattice-work[55]
over the door, is introduced upon the authority of Mr. Donaldson in his
work upon doorways. The external windows are devised to throw more light
into the chambers, and to afford a more ready means of looking into the
inner recesses. This apparent innovation is authorised by the windows of
the Tragic Poet’s house which open upon the street, although much higher
up, being raised more than six feet above the level of the
foot-pavement. They seem to have been closed by sliding shutters and
were sometimes glazed. Glass was much used at Pompeii both for drinking
vessels and windows; sheets of glass have been found there, and a convex
glass for a lamp remained in the wall, dividing two apartments in the
public baths near the forum. The front part of the entrance was called
_Vestibulum_; the remaining part of the passage, _Prothyrum_, which
latter was bounded by a second door which closed in the _Atrium_. The
door is quadrivalve, and the panelling is taken from the false door
painted on the wall of the Chalcidicum near the statue of Eumachia
(Gell, Pompeiana, 2nd series, page 21, plate 9).
[55] Called by Vitruvius _Hypaetrum_. Smith, s. v. Janua. p. 626.
Compare a latticed window in vol. i., p. 229 of “Pitture d’Ercolano.”
The inlaid marble on the threshhold, representing a dog, is found at the
entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet (Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 56).
A similar device was painted at the entrance of Trimalchio’s house,
described by Petronius, who was alarmed at the first sight of the
furious animal at the full stretch of his chain so skilfully represented
in the original mosaic (Petronius, Satyricon, ch. 29). The inscription
on both is the same, CAVE CANEM, which means “Beware of the dog.”
The _Prothyrum_[56] or _Ostium_, was the passage between the street door
(_janua_), and the house door (_ostium_), and corresponds to our
entrance hall; a small square room on one side was sometimes devoted to
the door-keeper or porter (_janitor_ or _ostiarius_). They were called
_Cellæ Ostiariæ_.
[56] Rich, s. v.
The walls and ceilings of these side apartments are white, with a red
_dado_, that is, the lower part of the wall, answering to our surbase.
The decoration of these rooms is imitated from the House of the Second
Fountain. The walls of the _Prothyrum_ itself are red, with a winged
Cupid in a panel on each side. They are from the House of the Dioscuri.
The _dado_ is black, the ceilings of these three apartments are white
and slightly arched.
Most of the ceilings in Pompeii were of this description, and composed
of segmental vaults painted in fresco, like the walls beneath, only in
lighter colours or more delicate and thinner patterns on a white ground.
A small stucco cornice highly enriched with colour follows the lines of
the archivolt. In the Villa of Diomed are some flat ceilings, and other
examples have been published in the Pitture d’Ercolano.
ATRIUM.
The view of this spacious apartment at the moment of entrance is very
imposing; the only difference between this and a real Pompeian house
consists in the greater diffusion of light, and the increased scale of
the apartment better suited to a palace in the capital of the Empire.
For the purpose of fully displaying the beauties of the mural
decorations, much more light has been admitted into this apartment than
is usually found in the same division of the Pompeian houses. To this
end, the central aperture, which ought to have been of the same size as
the reservoir below, has been considerably widened. Windows also have
been introduced in order to give the spectator a better view of the
decorations within the side chambers. At a glance the eye recognises the
various parts of the building previously described. In the centre below
is the square basin to collect the water, called the _impluvium_, and
the corresponding aperture above would be the _compluvium_. At the
further end, facing the entrance, a graceful female figure is seen
playing the lyre--these paintings will be described hereafter. In many
houses this extremity is painted sky blue, with shrubs and trees to
imitate a distant garden--this was the case in the peristyle of the
Tragic Poet’s House (Gell, vol. i., p. 159), also in the Houses of the
Quæstor and Actæon (Gell, pl. 20, page 175). The dark square central
part forming as it were a frame to our view of the peristyle, is the
_tablinum_, the side-passages are the _fauces_, and the smaller
apertures round the sides of the _Atrium_ will be recognised as
conducting to the _cubicula_. Each of these apartments we propose to
examine minutely, after having taken a general view of the _Atrium_.
This important space in a Roman house was called also the _Cavum Ædium_,
or _Cavædium_, as Pliny writes it. There were various kinds of _Atria_;
the simplest with no support in the centre--as this--called the _Atrium
Tuscanicum_. Where the roof was supported by four columns in the centre
it was called _Tetrastylum_. If the columns surrounding the _impluvium_
were numerous, it was called _Corinthium_, and when, as rarely has been
found, no opening was left in the centre, the apartment was said to be
_Testudinatum_. Sometimes a roof was so arranged as to throw off the
water outside, and then the term _displuviatum_ was employed.
The _Atrium_, as viewed from the door, is oblong, in a position reversed
from that in which it is generally found in Pompeian houses: although an
authority for this arrangement exists in the House of Queen Caroline.
The _impluvium_ in the centre is of marble, and the exquisite small
marble statue of a faun, serving at the same time as a fountain, is
copied from the house called after the grand Duke of Tuscany. The floor
is an excellent imitation of ancient mosaic work, executed by Messrs.
Minton; the various patterns are taken from different Pompeian houses.
Many of the floors at Pompeii exhibit some of the finest examples of
mosaic work in which elaborate paintings with every variety of colour
have been produced. They are composed solely of small pieces of coloured
stone or glass fitted closely together and highly polished. It is the
most durable of all methods of painting, and is generally set in a
strong bed of cement. The modern Romans practise this art with such
success, that a mosaic can scarcely be distinguished from a picture
carefully painted with the brush. Every altar-piece but one, now in St.
Peters’, has been made by this process. The celebrated mosaic of the
Doves drinking, described by Pliny, is now in the capitol at Rome, and
many descriptions of pictures executed in this mode are to be found in
ancient authors. This process must be carefully distinguished from
_inlaying_, which the ancients also practised, and may be seen here in
the vestibules and some of the side chambers leading out of the
peristyle.
The prevailing colour of the atrium is white. All round the doors and
the windows of the Cubicula the wall is painted bright blue with red
dado. The pilasters are white with the lower part yellow; their capitals
white heightened by blue and red; they are from the House of the
Centaur. In square compartments, on a white ground, between the capitals
of pilasters, are elegant groups of female figures on marine animals,
and Cupids in chariots; some of the small enriched mouldings are from
the cornice of the tomb of Calventius Quietus, and the atrium frieze
_above tablinum_ is copied from a side apartment in the Tragic Poet’s
House (Mus. Bor. vol. ii., tav. A). It is composed of white figures of
combatants in armour on foot and in chariots; shields and dead bodies
lie prostrate. The ground of this frieze is purple, but the ground of
the original is described as white, and the figures are said to be
clothed in blue, green, and purple draperies. The females are Amazons,
distinguished by the pelta or lunated shield (see Statue No. 194 of the
Greek Court.) The rest of the frieze is white, with patterns of
bright-coloured lines in simple forms. Over each pilaster the frieze is
broken by double figures of Victory, yellow and gold, which serve to
support the beams which project to the edge of the compluvium. They were
modelled by Mr. Monti, under the superintendence of Signor Abbate, from
a drawing by Mr. Wyatt.
The compluvium is bordered with red standing tiles called antifixa, and
the arrangement of Mazois in his restoration of the House of Diomed has
been followed. The antifixa may be seen also on the model of the
Parthenon in the bas-relief gallery adjoining the Greek Court. The angle
tiles, with a spout to discharge the rain water, merit attention. The
sloping roof of the atrium, composed of light beams with panelling
between them, has been chiefly restored from existing paintings; but few
traces of woodwork remain in any part of these ancient cities without
having been seriously disturbed; the atrium ceilings being of wood, were
consequently destroyed; pictorial records are therefore our only
authorities. Fortunately for us, the ancients seem to have delighted in
depicting themselves and their ways of living, so that it is not
improbable that the architectural specimens that we see on their walls
are only the transcripts of the slender constructions which were in fact
confined to the upper stories. This is the more probable as the
background of these architectural scenes is generally sky, and where
vegetation does appear among them it consists commonly of plants growing
in pots, or else the tops of trees as they would appear from the upper
part of a house.
CUBICULA.
We must now go into the detail of the house and pass into each room as
consecutively numbered in the plan, beginning in this instance on the
left hand of the principal entrance, keeping the wall of Atrium always
to the left.
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