Pompeii: Sculpture
The open squares and public buildings of Pompeii were peopled with statues.
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“Sculpture” from Pompeii by August Mau, 1904.
The open squares and public buildings of Pompeii were peopled with statues. The visitor who walked about the Forum in the years immediately preceding the eruption, saw on all sides the forms of the men of past generations who had rendered service to the city, as well as those of men of his own time.
Besides the five colossal images of emperors and members of the imperial families, places were provided in the Forum for between seventy and eighty life size equestrian statues; and behind each of these was room for a standing figure. Whether all the places were occupied cannot now be determined, but from the sepulchral inscription of Umbricius Scaurus (p. 418) it is clear that as late as the time of Claudius or Nero, there was yet room for another equestrian figure. Statues were placed also in the Forum Triangulare and occasionally at the sides of the streets.
In the portico of the Macellum were twenty-five statues; the sanctuary of the City Lares contained eight, while the portico of the Eumachia building furnished places for twenty-one. But only one of the hundreds of statues erected in honor of worthy citizens has been preserved, that of Holconius Rufus, the rebuilder of the Large Theatre; the figure was dressed in the uniform of a military tribune, and stood on Abbondanza Street near the Stabian Baths. With this should be classed the portrait statues in the temple of Fortuna (p. 131), and those of Octavia (Fig. 38), Marcellus (Fig. 39), and Eumachia.
The statue of Eumachia is an interesting example of the ordinary portrait sculpture of the Early Empire (Fig. 255). The pose is by no means ungraceful, the treatment of the drapery is modest and effective. The tranquil and thoughtful face is somewhat idealized, and without offensive emphasis of details. The statue is not a masterpiece; nevertheless, it gives us a pleasant impression of the lady whose generosity placed the fullers under obligation, and affords an insight into the artistic resources of the city.
A number of portrait statues belonging to sepulchral monuments were found when the tombs east of the Amphitheatre were excavated (Chap. 51). Most of them are of tufa covered with stucco; the rest are of fine-grained limestone. From the aesthetic point of view they are valueless.
Fig. 255. Statue of the priestess Eumachia.
Sculptured portraits of a different type were set up in private houses. Relatives,freedmen,and even slaves sometimes placed at the rear of the atrium, near the entrance of the tablinum, a herm of the master of the house. At each side of the square pillar supporting thebust,
Fig. 255.—Statue of the priestess Eumachia. there was usually an armlike projection (seen on the herm of Cornelius Rufus, Fig. 121), on which garlands were hung upon birthdays and other anniversary occasions. Both the herm of Rufus and that of Vesonius Primus previously mentioned (p. 396) are of marble; the head belonging to the herm of Sorex (p. 176) is of bronze.
The most striking of the portrait herms is that of Lucius Caecilius Jucundus (Fig. 256), which was set up in duplicate, for the sake of symmetrical arrangement, in the atrium of his house on Stabian Street. The pillar is of marble; the dedication reads Genio L[ucii] nostri Felix l[ibertus] ‘Felix, freedman, to the Genius of our Lucius.
The bust, of bronze, is modelled with realistic vigor.
There is no attempt to soften the prominent and almost repulsive features by idealization. We see the Pompeian auctioneer just as he was, a shrewd, alert, energetic man, with somewhat of a taste for art, and more for the good things of life,—a man who would bear watching in a financial transaction.
Houses were adorned also with heads and busts of famous men of the past,—poets, philosophers, and statesmen.
An extensive collection of historical portraits was discovered at Herculaneum, but Pompeii thus far has not yielded many examples. In a room in one of the houses was found a group of three marble heads, about one half life size, representing Epicurus, Demosthenes, and apparently the Alexandrian poet Callimachus, whose works were particularly valued in the time of the Early Empire. The identification of the third head is not certain, but whether Callimachus or some other poet is intended, the group reveals the direction of the owner’s literary tastes; he was interested in philosophy, oratory, and poetry.
Fig.256.—Portrait herm of Caecilius Jucundus.
Two portrait busts of distinguished men, which evidently belong together, were found in another house, laid one side. In the Naples Museum they bore the names of the Younger Brutus and Pompey, but both identifications are erroneous; the features in neither case agree with the representations upon coins. The faces, as shown by the physiognomy and the treatment of the hair, are those of Romans of the end of the Republic or the beginning of the Empire. Recently a new identification has been proposed which has much in its favor. It rests chiefly upon the resemblance of one of the busts to the mosaic portrait of Virgil, discovered in 1896 at Susa, in Africa. The full, round face of the other agrees very well with what we know of the appearance of Horace. It may be that we have here a pair of poets, the two most prominent of the Augustan Age.
Frequently the gardens of the peristyles, as those of the houses of the Vettii and of Lucretius, were profusely adorned with sculptures of all kinds. We find in them statuettes, herms, small figures of animals, and diminutive groups. Figures derived from the myths of the bacchic cycle, Bacchus, Silenus, satyrs, and bacchantes, are particularly common. The artistic value is slight; among the best examples is the double bust, with Bacchus on one side and a bacchante on the other, found in the garden of the house of the Vettii (Fig. 257).
Fig 257. Double bust, Bacchus and Bacchanate. Garden of the house of the Vettii
Characteristic among these sculptures are the figures designed for the adornment of fountains; a number of them are exhibited in the Museum at Naples. Bacchic figures are met with most frequently. A good example is the marble Silenus in the garden of the house of Lucretius; the water spurts from the opening in the wineskin which the old man carries. The design of the small bronze satyr in the peristyle of the house of the Centenary is more pleasing; an opening in the wineskin, held under the left arm, cast a jet against the outstretched right hand in such a way that the water was thrown back upon the satyr’s body.
Fountains were adorned also with genre groups and animal forms. We have already noticed the two bronze groups in the peristyle of the house of the Vettii, each representing a boy holding a duck, from the bill of which sprang a jet of water (Fig. 162). The largest collection of animal forms was about the basin in the middle peristyle of the house of the Citharist; it comprised two dogs, a boar, a lion, a deer, and a snake, each throwing a jet into the basin below. The fountain jets, however, were not in all cases so closely related to the ornamental pieces. A number of those in the house of the Vettii sprang from lead pipes near the figures. The familiar bronze statue of the seated fisherman, in the Naples Museum, belonged to a fountain, in which the jet was thrown forward, not from the figure, but from the mouth of a mask projecting from the stump on which the fisherman sits.
Of the statues of divinities set up for worship in the temples, there are unfortunately but few remains. The most important fragment is the head of Jupiter, discussed in a previous chapter (Fig. 22). Three wretched terra cotta statues of the gods of the Capitol were found, as we have seen, in the temple of Zeus Milichius; and mention has been made also of the herms and other specimens of sculpture in the courts of the temples of Apollo and Isis, and in the palaestra. More numerous than any other class of sculptures, however, are the small bronze images of tutelary divinities preserved in the domestic shrines. These are of interest rather from the light which they shed on the practices of domestic worship than from their excellence as works of art, and it seems unnecessary to add anything here to what has already been said in regard to them in the chapter dealing with the arrangements of the Pompeian house. But occasionally there were large domestic shrines, in which statues of merit were placed; among these are two worthy of mention.
Fig 22. Bust of Jupiter found at Pompeii.
In the corner of a garden belonging to a house in the first Region (I. ii. 17) is a shrine faced with white marble, in which was a small marble statue of Aphrodite, partly supported by a figure commonly identified as Hope, Spes. The carving is in no way remarkable, but the statue is of interest on account of the well preserved coloring applied to the eyes, hair, and dress. The group is now in the Naples Museum.
A more important example, from the aesthetic point of view, is the statue of Artemis, of one half life size, shown in Plate XL It was found in a house near the Amphitheatre which was excavated in 1760 and covered up again. It is a careful copy, made in the time of Augustus, of a Greek masterpiece produced in the period of the Persian Wars. The original was probably the Artemis Laphria mentioned by Pausanias. This was a work of Menaechmus and Soedas, two sculptors of Naupactus. Previous to the battle of Actium it stood in a sanctuary in Calydon, whence it was removed by Augustus, who presented it to the colony founded by him at Patras.
The goddess appears in this statue as a huntress, moving forward with a firm but light step; the bow in the left hand has disappeared. The copyist was remarkably successful in impressing upon his work the gracious and pleasing character of the original; the later archaic Greek art, in spite of its conventions, is full of human feeling. The copy preserved also the coloring of the model; but the tinting of the Roman colorist was probably less delicate than that of the Greek limner who added the polychrome decoration to the marble original. The hair was yellow. The pupils of the eyes were brown, the eyelashes and eyebrows black. The rosettes of the diadem were yellow, and the border of the outer garment was richly variegated in tints of yellow, rose color, and white. Traces of rose-colored stripes are visible also about the openings of the sleeves, on the edge of the mantle at the neck, and on the border of the chiton.
Besides the bronze statues of Apollo and Artemis already mentioned (pp. 88, 352), four others of those found at Pompeii are worthy of more than passing notice,—the dancing satyr from which the house of the Faun received its name, the small Silenus used as a standard for a vase, the so-called Narcissus and the Ephebus found in 1900.
Fig. 258. Dancing Faun. Bronze statuette, now in the Naples Museum.
The dancing satyr is shown in Fig. 258. It was found lying on the floor of the atrium in the house of the Faun, but the pedestal could not be identified. The figure is instinct with rhythmic motion.
Every muscle of the satyr’s sinewy frame is in tension as he moves forward in the dance, snapping his fingers to keep time; the pose is a marvel of skill. The unhuman character of the half-brute is indicated by the horns projecting from the forehead, and the pointed ears.
The face, marked by low cunning, offers no suggestion of lofty thought or moral sense. We have here the personification of unalloyed physical enjoyment. The satyr, unvexed by any care or qualm of conscience, is intoxicated with the joy of free movement, and dances on and on, unwearied, with perfect ease and grace.
Muscular tension is skilfully indicated in the Silenus, who stands holding above his head with his left hand a round frame, in which, as shown by the fragments, a vase of colored glass was standing at the time of the eruption. The head, crowned with ivy, leans forward and to the right, and the right hand is moved away from the body in the effort to balance the weight supported by the left. The frame is awkwardly designed to represent a snake. The thick-set figure of Silenus is about sixteen inches high. This bronze was discovered in 1864, in the house of Popidius Priscus (VII. ii. 20).
The third of the bronzes mentioned is also a statuette, about two feet high (Fig. 259). It was found in 1863 in a house of the seventh Region (VII. xii. 21). The figure is that of a youth of remarkable beauty. The face wears an expression of childlike innocence and pleasure. The head leans forward in the attitude of listening; the index finger of the right hand is extended, and the graceful pose is that of one who catches the almost inaudible sound of a distant voice.
Fig. 259 Listening Dionysus, wrongly identified as Narcissus. Bronze statuette in the Naples Museum.
The name Narcissus, given to the figure by Fiorelli immediately upon its discovery, is surely wrong; that unhappy youth did not reciprocate the love of the nymph Echo, and could not have been imagined with so cheerful a face. The figure has also been called Pan, from a myth in which Pan and Echo appear together; but the characteristic attributes are lacking, and the rough god of the shepherds would not have been represented in so lithe and graceful a form.
This beautiful youth, with an ivy crown upon his head and elaborate coverings for the feet, and with the skin of a doe hanging over his shoulder, is none other than Dionysus himself. The mirthful god of the vine is not playing with his panther—the base is too small to have been designed for two figures, and the attitude of listening is not consistent with this interpretation. The youthful divinity has fixed his attention upon some distant sound,—the cries of the bacchantes upon some mountain height, or the laughter of naiads in a shady glen.
Of unusual Interest is the bronze statue of an ephebus, discovered in November, 1900, outside the city on the north side, about a hundred paces from the Vesuvius Gate; it was laid away in an upper room of a house presenting nothing else worthy of note. It is apparently a Greek original, and is of three-quarters life size (Fig. 257).
The statue represents a youth about fourteen years of age, of slender but well-developed form, and finely chiselled features. Advancing with firm but graceful step, he rests the right foot, and is bringing the left foot forward. In his right hand, extended, he carried some object—a branch, it may be, or a crown, which was to be laid upon an altar; the eye naturally follows the movement of the hand.
Fig. 260. Bronze Youth. Naples Museum.
Especially effective is the rhythmic movement of the body. The right thigh, sustained by the resting foot, is carried slightly forward; the chest on the left side swings back, while in consequence of the extension of the right hand the shoulders remain horizontal. Notwithstanding the felicity of the pose, it must be confessed that the modelling as a whole is somewhat lacking in vigor, the treatment of details being superficial.
In Greece, before it was carried off to Italy, the figure may have been set up as a votive offering in some sanctuary, or have stood in a gymnasium. From indications on the under side of the feet it is clear that the statue, after the manner in vogue in Greece, was mounted on a stone pedestal, being joined to the pedestal with melted lead; the round bronze base found with it is of Italian origin. Probably when it was being transported from Greece the eyes, of marble became loose in their sockets and fell down into the hollow interior of the statue; they were replaced by glass eyes. The breaking of the right arm, which was severed when found, made possible the recovery of the original eyes, which have now again been set in place.
Insensible to the charm of the figure when seen as the sculptor designed it, the Pompeian owner, deciding to turn it to practical use, converted it into a lampholder. In the right hand was placed a short bar of bronze, to either end of which was fastened a small ornament with a projecting arm, for a hanging lamp; the whole statue was then coated with silver. However barbarous the taste that prompted the transformation, the decorative effect of the silvered statue with its lighted lamps must have been far from unpleasant.
Regarding the place of the statue in relation to the development of Greek sculpture, it is yet too early to speak.
Had the ruins of Pompeii not been systematically searched, after the disaster, for works of art and other objects of value, they would have yielded a far richer store of sculptures. But while the specimens recovered add little to our knowledge of types, they give a new insight into the application of the sculptor’s art in antiquity to the beautifying of the surroundings of everyday life.
Mau, August. Pompeii. Translated by Francis W. Kelsey. The MacMillan Company, 1904.
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