II. The Bucolic
Landscapes

The vignettes are variations on a familiar theme: the so-called sacro-idyllic landscape. Rostovtzeff in his famous study has shown that the formal vocabulary of this species of Roman painting is limited. Sacro-idyllic landscapes in the strict sense are combinations of no more than a few motives: modest architecture such as small towers of different shapes, aediculae, sacella, scholae, so-called sacred gates, columns and pilasters with ornaments fastened to them--but no colonnades, porticos or houses--together with statues and votive gifts, altars, parapets, torches, vases, occasionally balusters, and always, prominently, trees and groves. Such bucolic scenes are always peopled, mostly with worshippers, sometimes with travelers and shepherds with their flock. Rarely if ever do we find compositions that contain all of these elements, the rule seems to be a selection of motives, but there appear always architectural forms, trees and people.

The north wall vignette [pls. 29.A] shows as its prominent element a rectangular tower with a tilted roof. The upper story seems to be an open gallery with slender pillars.[2] Its solid wall is decorated with tympana or shields hanging down from the gallery. Two porches project to the front and to the left; they are decorated with a garland, a patera, a bunch of grapes. Behind the tower are two trees, their branches framing the building. A third tree on the left stands between a column and a little altar; on the other side is a parapet with a column decorated with a votive shield and spear topped by a statue. On both the right and the left groups of people enliven the setting; a fifth person between the groups walks toward the tower.

This is clearly a scene of worship. One figures pours a libation on the altar, others approach the column and its cult image with gestures of veneration. The tower, [p. 18] therefore, cannot be a simple domestic structure such as a storage house for grain and fruit. [3]

A tower-like building of different shape also forms the center part of the second vignette, presumably in Naples [pl. 30]. The available illustration is too poor to allow for a complete reading; the picture seems to have been found in a bad state of preservation. But it is at least clear that we have here a slender, cylindrical tower with a gallery and a projecting porch with a tilted roof, framed by the branches of a tree behind it. A large awning fastened to the tower and to a tree on the right, spreads over a group of people. Another group has gathered at the left side.[4]

The third vignette [pl. 31], in New York, is simpler than the other two. We see a tall sacred gate in light purple and green, topped by a statuette. Next to it, a holy tree, painted in green, grows through the opening, one branch spreading to the left. In the gate, very sketchily painted, stands a statue. To the left there is a porch, light purple in color, decorated with the head of a goat which is fastened to the column; a garland with a tympanon hangs from its roof and a parapet encloses the porch. A woman stands within this porch. A low curved enclosure, light brown, surrounds tree and gate. On the left, two female figures approach a tripod; one of them, apparently a child, painted in light green, carries a vessel on her head; the other in yellow and green clothes bends down to deposit some gift at the base at the tripod. On the right side a shepherd with pedum and staff {?}, a heavy cloak on his back and a goat skin around his hips, walks towards tree and gate, driving a sheep before him. Farther behind is a woman, or perhaps a statue of a goddess, in light green. The colors [p. 19] have faded. No doubt the sacred gate and the holy tree were brilliantly painted, and so perhaps were the bent woman, the shepherd, and the sheep.

All the motives of these sacro-idyllic landscapes were commonplace by the time they were painted. We find them all in many earlier landscape scenes, as, for example, on the stucco ceiling of the Villa Farnesina[5]. Not commonplace, however, is the overall design of decoration: the small compact vignette in the middle of the large central unit of a wall. In fact there is no earlier example of precisely such a decorative scheme. In the Second Style[6]there are many forms of landscape[7] but the free floating vignette is not among them, for the simple reason that no wall of the Second Style would have provided an appropriate place for it. With the introduction of the central vignette, floating but compact, which establishes a new fashion, the bucolic landscape takes on a strange character and suggests a different meaning. Each part of the scene is realistically drawn and foreshortening serves to indicate the third dimension of buildings; realistic consistency, however, is not the element that binds the parts together. The unity of the setting does not lie in its perspective. The vignettes are curiously flat in spite of perspective and shading. Their pictorial unity is based upon such purely formalistic devices as the straight ground line, extending beyond the scene, and upon the triangular and symmetrical composition. The result is something novel, strange and peculiarly suggestive, precisely because it is neither purely representational nor purely decorative. With their brilliant high-lights and their sketchily applied colors, the sacred landscapes emerge like jewels from the dark expanse that surrounds them, each a rich little island glittering in the vastness of a dark sea, seen in a far distance and as if in a dream, a clear, detailed mirage. [p. 20]

2. The Panels of the Red Room [pls. 18. 32-39.C]
The original distribution of the landscape panels on the three walls is noted by Della Corte 470-474. His information can easily be checked. On the north or rear wall the landscape is in situ, the east and west walls can be reconstructed. Their landscapes differ with respect to the direction of the light: in the one, the landscape with the tetrastylon, it comes from the left, on the other, the landscape with the schola, from the right. The direction of the light in the paintings coincides with the actual source of the light in the room[8], that is, the large opening in the south wall. Therefore the panel with the tetrastylon was on the west wall and the panel with the schola was on the east wall. [p. 20]

The three panels share these characteristics: on a large white area are placed sacro-idyllic landscapes that are divided into a darker foreground and a lighter background scene; the color scheme is subdued, reddish brown and grayish yellows prevailing, blues, green, and grays in lighter shades being added, with a few touches of brilliant white or gold; the drawing is quick and sure, in details sketchy; persons and objects in the foreground scenes are more clearly delineated with firm brush strokes, while the background scenes are painted with lightest touch and seem to fade into the white surrounding area.

The north wall panel differs slightly from the other two. It is narrower and taller, and so is the composition of the landscape itself. The white area underneath the landscapes proper is higher in the north wall panel than in the others. The result is that al three landscapes appear on the same level. The white area above the landscapes is higher on the north wall than on the west and east walls.[9] Again the result is an almost identical height of all three landscapes. The composition of the north wall landscape is symmetrical and the axis is emphasized by the column. On the west and east walls the placing of the landscapes is slightly off center so that there is more white background to the left on the west panel, to the right on the east panel, that is, in either case towards the north wall. Accordingly the weight of the composition, in both panels, lies somewhat on the side nearest the entrance; this is particularly true of the west panel; the landscape on the east wall being the more symmetrical of the two. [p. 21]

Description
North Wall Landscape [pls. 32-34. C]
A rocky island with one large tree is characterized as a sacred place by the statue of a seated deity on a high pedestal. Next to it stands a tall column decorated with shields and with a bronze vase on top; to the left on a square base is a cylindrical monument with flat cupola, clearly a tomb[10] with paterae or shields and garlands. To the left a shepherd leans on the pedestal of a shorter column with a vase; he is surrounded by three dark goats. A pinax is propped against the pedestal of the large column. On the right a small slightly curved bridge, or perhaps merely a wooden plank connects the island with the shore in the foreground. Two women and a child on the bridge approach the island, the leading woman has a branch or torch or staff in one hand, while the other hand is stretched out in a gesture of veneration. The shore, too, is sacred: there is an altar and on a pedestal next to a tree an ithyphallic herm, protected by a meniscus.

Behind the island, separate and distant, there is a grove shielded by a parapet; [p. 21] there are two temples and trees and cliffs. On the steps of the larger temple sits a man, apparently a shepherd with his staff; two men pass by the smaller temple.

The statue should tell us to whom the sacred little island belongs. The closest analogy is to be found in a sacro-idyllic landscape from Pompei [pl. 53, 1], no longer preserved, but known through a drawing showing a seated figure with thyrsos and shield. Three more thyrsoi make the identification certain: it is Bacchus, although the shield seems strange. But our figure holds a scepter and wears a crown, perhaps also a veil; also the deity is female rather than male. The adjacent tomb suggests Persephone, but she could as well be Demeter, Tyche, Kybele or Isis. Ithyphallic herms are too frequent to serve as a basis for a specific interpretation since they are part of the scenery, being, of course, images of Priapus[11]. [p. 22]

East Wall Landscape [pls. 35-37]
The foreground scene represents a rocky territory--which is, however, probably not an island--with a large tree enclosed by a scholalike sacellum of an unusual shape: on a pedestal with steps is a semicircular structure consisting of a solid wall with a detached column at each end.[12] It is decorated with various objects: shields, tympana [?], vase, pinax; a herm and a statuette are on the steps. The tree, too, is decorated. On its trunk is fastened a very peculiar object, paralleled only in a landscape painting in Pompei [pl. 52, 1]; probably it is a shield of the kind pygmies seem to favor, a round affair with a conical protuberance[13], adorned with fillets and combined with a thyrsos. A woman, perhaps a priestess accompanied by a servant girl, is entering the precinct, fillets in her right hand. A shepherd leans on the pedestal, talking to his dog, which has raised one foreleg in response. Another person, perhaps a traveler[14], rests. Behind him there is a very large bronze or quilded tripod on a rectangular base, a particularly well wrought and expensive votive gift similar to the tripod on one vignette. On the left, a little fountain basin stands on three legs of the common feline form.

The background scene, not related to the foreground by any visible means, actually consists of two quite different sets. On the right hand a large colonnade, ending with a tower, stands on a platform on which in the far distance there are two women. The platform is accessible through a narrow stair of 5 steps. On the left [p. 22] side there is a complex of buildings, one tower with tilted roof, similar to the one in the north wall vignette, a shorter tower, a colonnade, a parapet surrounding trees and bushes. The buildings are decorated with shields; there is also a large krater on a pedestal. An approaching traveler marches towards the group of two women who stand before the parapet. On both sides rise distant cliffs. [p. 23]

West Wall Landscape [pls. 18, 38-39]
A fig tree with three branches is encircled by an open tetrastylon which is decorated with a tympanon, shields and the head of a large goat.[15] The sacellum is closed on three sides by a low parapet. In front of the sacellum stands a large bronze krater, probably a fountain with high curb. Behind the sacellum to the left are trees and the curved wall that seems to indicate the border of the entire precinct. Outside the precinct and closer to the foreground is a group of three statues on a short cylindrical base on a rectangular plinth on which two torches are lying: obviously the triple Hecate. A similar arrangement is to be found on the right: a tree, a statue on a cylindrical base, two torches. Nearby a woman and her servant girl are about to enter the precinct, another woman, also accompanied by a servant girl, is already entering the tetrastylon. On the steps leading to the tetrastylon sits a traveler. A small herm in the middle of the foreground scene can no longer be identified.

The background scenery has faded but one may still recognize a group of three persons and behind them two temples in the far distance and high rocks at the horizon. [p. 23]

Sources
If we examine the motives of the three vignettes and of the three panels we find that they have the same theme, the sacred tree combined with architecture. The buildings, however, differ: we find rectangular and cylindrical towers with porches and a sacred gate on the vignettes, a column, a schola, a tetrastylon on the panels. None of these motives is new, in fact all are typical and appear in earlier examples of sacro-idyllic landscape painting.[16] The principal examples of landscape painting preceding the murals from Boscotrecase are the following[17]:

1. Villa in Boscoreale: circa 40 B.C.
a. The cubiculum, Metr. Mus. New York [pl. 47, 1].

b. Fragment of a frieze, Mariemont.
Lehmann 15 f. 82-131, 161f. pls. 10-25.

2. Casa del Criptoportico, Pompei; 40-30 B.C.
Room leading to the Cryptoporticus landscapes [according to Beyen II 99].

3. 'House of Augustus', Rome, Palatine; shortly before 30 B.C.
Recently: excavated: G. Carettoni, Bd'A. 46, 1961, 189ff. Room with three central panels, similar to and immediately preceding the panels in the triclinium of the Casa di Livia.

4. Casa di Livia, Rome; 30-25 BC
a. The Yellow Frieze [pl. 51, 2].

b. Two panels in the 'triclinium' [pl. 48, 1]
G. E. Rizzo, Le pitture della 'Casa di Livia' [1936] pl. 7, 2. fig. 18. 42. L. Borrelli Vlad, BollICR. 19/20, 1955, 117f. fig. 111f. G. Lugli, La trenica edilizia romana I [1957] 430: "33-29 B.C." Beyen II fig. 228 f. 233 ff. E. Nash, Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome I [1961] 310.

5. House of Obellius Firmus, Pompei IX 10, 1-4; 25-20 B.C.
Cubiculum, monochrome landscapes on upper part of the wall [pl. 47, 2].

V. Spinazzola, Pompei alla luce degli scavi nuovi di Via dell' Abbondanza [1953] fig. 409-411. Schefold, WP. 288. Beyen II 36. 41 fig. 223f.

6. Aula Isiaca, Rome; circa 25 B.C.
a. The mythological murals.

b. The fresco in the apse.

Rizzo, Le pitture dell'Aula Isiaca di Caligola [1936. The date suggested p. 39 is no longer accepted, except by A. Rumpf, HdArch. IV 1 [1953] 177, see Schefold, PM. 64:, nicht nach 20".

Dawson 63 n. 59: "20-10". Beyen II 16. 22: "after 35/30 B.C."

Fig. 237 ff. Nash 1. c. 316].

7. Two green monochrome panels of a Second Style wall, Naples, Nat. Mus. 8593. 9413 [pl. 49, 1.2]; circa 25 B.C.

Elia No. 260. 377. A. Maiuri, Roman Painting [1953] 41. Schefold, WP. 326. 346. Rizzo, Casa di Livia, fig. 40. Dawson 95 No. 33. Beyen II fig. 236.

8. Villa underneath the Villa Farnesina; 19 B.C.
a. White cubiculum, "E", three central panels [pl. 48, 3].

b. White wall, Cryptoporticus "A", frieze at eyelevel [pl. 50, 3].

c. Black wall, scenes on partitions between candelabra [pl. 50, 2].
[p. 24]

d. White walls, Ambulatorium "F" and "G", frieze of alternating landscapes and still-lifes [pls. 50, 1. 51, 1].

A. Mau, AdI. 54, 1882, 301ff. 56, 1884, 307ff. 57, 1885, 302ff. MonInst. 11, 1882 pl. 44, 12, 1884/85 pls. 5, 23, 28. Lessing-Mauy, Wand- u. Deckenschmuck eines ršmischen Hauses aus der Zeit des Augustus [1891] pls. 1.3. 9. 11.

c. Stucco ceiling.

E. L. Wadsworth, MemAmAc. 4, 1924, pls. 1-9. Beyen II fig. 240-258.

9. Casa dei Gladiatori, Pompei V 5, 3; circa 20-10 B.C.
Beyen II 33 fig. 266. Schefold, WP. 90.

10. Columbarium in the Villa Pamphili, Rome; circa 20-10 B.C.
G. Bendinelli, Le pitture del columbario di Villa Pamphili [1941]. Beyen II 247.

To these may be added more questionable examples:
11. Casa del Menandro, Pompei I 10, 4.

Exedra [Tree behind arcade. Beyen II 177ff. 372 believes the murals with Actaeon and the sacellum of Venus to be copies of Second Style paintings]. Schefold, WP. 44.

12. Casa degli Epigrammi, Pompei V, 1. 18; 35-30 B.C.
Central panels in the room with the epigrams [not genuine landscape paintings but pertinent because of its motives]. Schefold, WP. 65; Am. 71, 1956, 223; PM. pl. 8. B. Neutsch, JdI. 70, 1955, 174f. Beyen I 265 fig. 106. II 205ff. 226ff. fig. 86a-88a.

13. Yellow monochrome panel, Naples, Nat. Muse. 9423; undated, circa 30 B.C. [? Attributed to Fourth Style by Rostovtzeff 85f. fig. 52 and by Schefold, WP. 164: ,um 70"].

Elia No. 261 fig. 35. HBr. 175, 2. Beyen I 308. Schefold, WP. 346.

More monochrome landscapes of the Second Style were found, for instance in the Casa del Marinaio, Pompei VII 15, 2 and in the Casa del Fauno, Pompei VI 12 where they were noted by Mau but exist no more. There had once also been landscapes in the upper part of the wall in the House of Caesius Blandus, Pompei VII I, 40, and in Pompei VIII 5, 230[18] . . . . [ p. 25]

Yet the richest evidence may be found in the Farnesina, in both the stuccos and the paintings. Of these, no less than four different rooms are decorated with various kinds of landscape, statues on columns and people [pl. 48, 3].... [p. 26]

Yet the comparison of the Boscotrecase landscapes with their predecessors reveals difference rather than similarity. A familiar and limited vocabulary is used for novel themes and new purposes.

Basis and precondition for the new role landscape pays in the Boscotrecase murals is its position on the walls, which are built of large plain areas with small, slender, delicate and elegant ornaments. Since they are centrally located and form the sole representational decorations, the landscapes, even the vignettes, concentrate upon themselves the interest of the beholder; the rest of the wall appears almost as their frame.

Landscape friezes or decorative combinations of landscape elements of the Second Style cannot claim such a prominent place. Only some Second Style panels occupy similarly eminent positions; namely those from the Casa degli Epigrammi [No. 12], the three in the 'House of Augustus' [No. 3], the two from the Casa di [p. 26] Livia [No. 4b], the fragments from the Aula Isiaca [No. 6a], the three panels from the white cubiculum of the Farnesina [No. 8a], and the fragment from the Casa dei Gladiatori [No. 9].

In the so-called triclinium of the Casa di Livia three walls are decorated with centrally located landscape paintings. Only two have survived: the rear wall painting and one from a long wall[19], both prospects rather than panels. In either case the landscape is a highly formalized and, as it were, symbolic setting without people. The ducks, the sheep and the birds are almost ornaments. In all these aspects the newly discovered panels in the 'House of Augustus' appear very similar. The stillness and the authority of the paintings derive from their strangely austere composition and not from the evocation of the atmosphere of a landscape. There is neither the intimacy nor the charm of a bucolic spot, no air and no space, no action and no sentiment, but an almost forbidding strictness. In this respect the paintings still resemble the panels from the Casa degli Epigrammi [No. 12] and the central parts of the side walls of the Boscoreale cubiculum with a sacred gate and its statue.[20]

In the Aula Isiaca [No. 61], probably only a few years later than the Casa di Livia, landscape paintings not only appear in the center, but also on the side wings of the walls. These paintings are closely integrated in the architectural framework and are probably to be read as a continuous prospect. They tell a legend and thus belong to the mythological landscapes; they are a frieze rather than a sequence of single panels and seem to derive from friezes such as the Odyssey frieze, except that they now occupy the main part of the wall rather than its top and are combined with the architecture in a more intricate fashion.[21] Apart from some motives which all landscapes share, the Aula deals with landscape and its position within a wall in a fashion completely different from the Boscoytrecase manner. The landscape panel in the apse [No. 6b] seems to have been a landscape still-life rather than a representation of a landscape setting, somewhat in the tradition of the paintings on the rear wall of the Boscoreale cubiculum, and also comparable to one panel of the 'House of Augustus' [No. 4], representing a fountain basin with birds. Little is preserved. At any rate there are no persons and, again with the exception of certain motives, no similarity in concept, style, and execution exists between this mural and the Boscotrecase paintings.

It is the decoration in a room of the Farnesina [ No. 81, pl. 50, 1[22]] that comes closest to the accomplishments of the Boscotrecase murals. The room which is very poorly preserved and practically not published, is small, its wall are predominantly white. In their central aediculae there are--or were--lightly painted sacro-idyllic scenes. One shows a large column, which emphasizes the axis of the [p. 27] panel, with an armed goddess on it. At the foot of the column, probably on the steps of its pedestal, sits a male figure, apparently a shepherd. A second panel gives a variation of the scene--an Athena statue on a column and two worshippers before her in an apparently rocky setting. The central picture, of a slightly better preserved third wall, has two small scenes, one above the other, to be seen together: a shepherd next to an altar or short column with fruit and flowers, a torch or staff. The shepherd raises his hand and turns to the scene above, which is a sort of sacred landscape with column and schola. There must have been a statue on the top of the column.

Here we seem to have the immediate precursors of the Boscotrecase panels. The Farnesina panels occupy the dominant place on the walls, which are simpler and architecturally less articulated than those from the 'House of Augustus' and the Casa di Livia, and they enliven the scene with men. They are no longer formalized allegories of a sacred spot but charming and gentle sketches of pious rural life.

It is hardly necessary to point out the enormous differences that exist between these Farnesina panels and those from Boscotrecase. The modest decoration of the Farnesina have become, in the Red Room landscapes, representations that are great and impressive though still light and unpretentious. More important, what in the Farnesina panels is the simple white area of the wall, is in Boscotrecase used as a significant background that belongs to the scene--it has become the air that surrounds it.

We must compare, at this point, the Boscotrecase landscapes with the two green panels in Naples [No. 7], although they are not central panels but belong to the wings of the wall [pl. 49, 1.2]. It is obvious that one of the two shares significant aspects with the two-scene Farnesina panel. In each case there are two scenes, one above the other, not formally integrated, on a monochrome ground that is not an active and meaningful part of the representation. The Naples panels precede that of the Farnesina. Paintings such as these, as well as the panels in the 'House of Augustus' and the Casa di Livia, may have served as starting points for the Farnesina painter, who combined the formalization of the latter with the relaxed composition of the former. The result characterizes, in the development of landscape painting, the phase immediately before Boscotrecase, a Pompeian example of which may be seen in the badly preserved fragment in the Casa dei Gladiatori [No. 9].

We may, then, conclude: the new significance of the landscape within the decoration of a wall and the significance of landscape painting itself is the achievement of the Boscrotecase painter. A proper evaluation of this achievement requires further observations.

We may turn first to the vignettes of the Black Room [pls. 29-31]. We have seen that they are small compact scenes on a ground line, not framed, in the center of the wall, set off against the black expanse that serves as background. The combination of all these characteristics is new but each can be found separately in preceding examples.