IV. The Painter and his
Place in Roman Art

Wall is made to suggest air, that is undefined depth

Fusing the two the impression of immeasurable depth is emphasized, and simultaneously their purely representational values as sea and sky are decreased.

Depth - While the Second Style prospect tried to achieve the illusion of actual depth, the central panels in Boscotrecase suggest indefinable depth; while the prospects seem to pierce the walls, the Boscotrecase paintings use parts of the wall as the active background for scenes in which it plays the part of air or even sky and water. The illusion of simple reality has changed into the illusion of an imagined world, "trompe l'oeil" into magic.

Moods [see footnote 2.]

Perspective - Also, see footnote 10.

Chorographies [Map view, Bird's eye view, Footnote 11 regarding oriental influence]

Varietates topiorum - popular decorations of Second Style walls . . . . and characterizes the species as ab certis locorum proprietatibus imagines --the variety of all sorts of settings is expressed by the images of their specific characteristics. They are in Vitruvius's words: portus, promontoria, litora, flumina, fontes, euripi, fana, loci, montes pecora, pastores.

Formula of pictorial license - [Painter] discovered that the convention of incoherent perspective was not necessarily only an inevitable and useful formula for depicting actual settings, but that the freedom it gave the painter could provide also the means for showing the real world as a magic world. A formula of pictorial license was thereby changed into genuine form, a convention into a style. In this new style stable scenes are made flexible, simple settings ambivalent, actual distances indeterminable, defined bodies ambiguous--representation becomes suggestion, reality a vision, and a picture a mirage. The road from cartographic chorographies to the painted dreams of Boscotrecase is a long, but a straight one; it begins with visually conveyed information and leads to works of art.

We may summarize the results of the preceding observations [chapters] as follows: The Black Room, the Red Room and the room with the mythological landscapes represent three different forms of landscape painting as wall decoration; all of them are new and all of them set a pattern for the future. The landscape vignettes in the middle of a wall and the bucolic and mythological landscapes as central panels are popular during the Third Style and even occur on many Fourth Style walls. There are no extant examples of any of these three forms preceding Boscotrecase; it seems unlikely that such works ever existed, unless they were slightly earlier ones by the same painter and his workshops.

With respect to motives the Boscotrecase painter is no innovator. It is not his formal vocabulary that is original, but the way he uses it in each of the three types, all three of which elevated landscape painting to a position never attained in Roman art before.

A landscape is now the sole representational decoration, and for the first time landscape painting occupies the center of a wall. This dominating position is reflected in the compositions themselves and in their relation to the surrounding fields.

The vignettes [ pls. 29-31. A] are compact, brilliant scenes on the vast expanse of the black background. Unframed as they are, they change the meaning of the black by making the neutral background an active element of the composition. Therefore they seem to be large landscapes seen in perspective diminution, vistas in immeasurable depth, illuminated distant scenes floating in the darkness of night.

A similar effect is achieved in the landscapes of the Red Room [pls. 32-39. C]. Through the aerial perspective of the landscapes themselves the white behind them is seen as air, but it is simultaneously the background of the entire panel, less than one half of which is occupied by the actual landscape. Thus the landscapes seem to be suspended in mid-air.

In the mythological pictures [pls. 40-46. D] the bluish green space connoting both air and water fuses the two different elements into one immeasurable and intellectually incomprehensible unit that visually operates like the black around the vignettes and the white around the bucolic landscapes.

Significantly these analogous effects are achieved by different means: the activation of the neutral wall [in the Black Room], the double role of the background within the framed panel [in the Red Room], the fusing of two important representational elements within a composition [in the mythological panels] have, as pictorial means, nothing in common. Yet, considering the fact that the paintings are murals, wall and background are indeed related. To make the wall appear as background [p. 53] of a mural composition seems an almost obvious device. Such use of the wall should not, however, be taken for granted--it is an artistic innovation of primary significance. In the Boscotrecase paintings it means that the ^wall is made to suggest air, that is undefined depth. In other words: the two-dimensional space is produced. In pictorial representations unlimited space can be suggested most effectively by sky and sea alone, by virtue of the unbroken continuity that we associate with the one and the other. In fusing the two the impression of immeasurable depth is emphasized, and simultaneously their purely representational values as sea and sky are decreased. The novel, solely pictorial, unit thus achieved merely suggests depth as such and therefore acquires the character almost of a wall that has been made the active background of a floating landscape in the manner of both the vignettes and the bucolic landscapes.

This intricate relation between wall and picture illustrates a characteristic difference between Second and Third Style systems of decoration. The simple illusionistic effects of the Second Style achieved by apparently real columns, apparently pierced walls, apparently open vistas into various layers of depths, include principal panels only in the form of prospects more or less clearly characterized as such[1]. Within a system of decoration aimed at negating the solidity of the wall, pure panels must appear as additions, and such is the case in the two green panels in Naples [pl. 49, 1.2] which significantly belong to the wings of the wall. With the Farnesina taste takes a new direction which we may remember Vitruvius mentioned with violent disapproval. Many, though not all, columns lose their volume, other architectural elements their solidity: the wall begins to assert itself. The painter of Boscotrecase completes the trend: the walls themselves are now solid units, the Third Style is established. Yet the old tradition is not totally denied, it is but re-interpreted in a very subtle manner. ^While the Second Style prospect tried to achieve the illusion of actual depth, the central panels in Boscotrecase suggest indefinable depth; while the prospects seem to pierce the walls, the Boscotrecase paintings use parts of the wall as the active background for scenes in which it plays the part of air or even sky and water. The illusion of simple reality has changed into the illusion of an imagined world, "trompe l'oeil" into magic.[2] [p. 53]

None of the preceding landscape murals had been characterized by anything similar. Their relation to the wall was unambiguous; the landscapes were either set apart as friezes, panels, or prospects, all clearly distinguished from the surrounding parts of the wall, or they were merely decorative ornaments. In the Farnesina the frieze on the white wall running at eye level behind pillars and between framed panels [see above, p. 24. 8b pl. 50, 3] and the little scenes freely distributed in the compartments of the Black Wall [see above, p. 24 No. 8c p l. 50, 2] do not achieve any illusion of depth through their places on the walls, and were obviously not supposed to do so. The landscape panels in the Casa di Livia [see above, p. 24 No. 4b] suggest no more depth than is created by the unambiguous arrangement of the objects represented. The monochromes, the Yellow Panel from the Boscoreale [pl. 47. 1], the Yellow Frieze in the Casa di Livia [pl. 51, 2] and other yellow monochromes mentioned above, the Green panels in Naples [see above , p. 24 No. 7 pl. 49, 1.2] in a way suggest depth but they are narrow or small pieces closed within their frames. The quality of being monochromes operates against the illusion of real unlimited space as we experience it. Their yellow or green appear as a formula of depth rather than as its representation or suggestion. Still, the black and the white walls of the Farnesina, and green monochromes such as those in Naples, may have been, and probably were, starting points for the Boscotrecase painter. In recognizing the potentialities of such paintings, in discovering the way in which a wall may be used as suggestive background and a green monochrome as suggestive of a blend of sky and sea, the painter demonstrated supreme ingenuity.

No less ingenious is the novel use of that form of perspective which most of these previous representations share, the so-called bird's eye perspective. The term is unfortunate because the objects represented are not uniformly seen from a high eye level. In fact each appears in its own perspective, namely, that which is most informative and in which its shape and volume may be comprehended most easily. Within the frame of frieze or panel the objects thus represented are arranged according to the convention that "above" means "behind" or "distant". Buildings therefore appear as seen from different, but usually high, points of view while people and smaller objects seem to be represented at much lower eye levels. There is, necessarily no consistent scale--the representation of reality as it appears to the eye takes second place to the desire to give the fullest possible information about the things selected for representation.

This bird's eye perspective, of course, occurs in many civilizations and many epochs. It plays, however, an important and specific role in Roman art, important because it is applied at a time when realistic perspective was not only known but was the order of the day; specific because it occurs only for special reasons in special instances.

Ancient literature tells us of a species of Roman pictorial representation of actual events that were not works of art but means of information on public as well as private affairs.[3] Representations of specific happenings in a war were publicly [p. 54] displayed and often supplemented by an oral or written explanation[4]. Lawyers used pictorial representations in their pleas, private persons used them to arouse interest in their affairs.[5] Such panels were exhibited in public places and they accompanied triumphal processions.[6] These pictures must have been almost as familiar to the Romans as newsreels or photographs of current events are to us. In each and every case the sole purpose was information, the fullest possible pictorial record of all relevant facts. Sometimes it was just the setting, the locality, that was pertinent, for example the town walls and the city of Carthage[7] or the luxurious villa of a rich man.[8] How were such pictures drawn and what did they look like? None, of course, is preserved, but as regards perspective it is not difficult to reconstruct their character. There is simply no way of producing a complete pictorial record of events within their settings other than a representation in bird's eye perspective.[9] We may add as corollary: it is only in pictures that are means to an end that inconsistency of scale and of perspective diminution will be accepted as a convention by a public acquainted with and used to a realistic rendering of persons and objects.[10]

There is no evidence whatever that the Hellenistic Greeks developed or even accepted an analogous species of painting separate in form and purpose from their mode of representation insofar as we know it. Bird's eye view is not Greek.[11] [p. 55] Combinations of people and settings in Hellenistic art, though not infrequent, conspicuously avoid bird's eye perspective; instead they demonstrate various attempts at congruity in the fusion of the two elements. Hellenistic science, however, did develop a form of illustration that is different and indeed pertinent to our problem. Ptolemy in the first chapter of his Geography tells us of certain maps representing countries [Greek text] rather than large parts of the world. These chorographies included "Topography" that is, representation of typical or characteristic sites or settings. A topographer, says Ptolemy, has to be a painter, and one such painter is known: a certain Demetrius, who left Alexandria for Rome.[12] A few years after his arrival, a painting was exhibited in 174 B.C. showing the form of the island of Sardinia and the battles fought there.[13] Whatever the relation between Demetrius and this painting may have been, the formal affinity between chorographic topography and Roman pictorial records is obvious. Both were necessarily combinations of bird's eye and normal view, symbolic rather than realistic renderings of events and objects in specific settings. Both were informative and useful, neither was in the realm of art.

At one point in the development the convention of cartographic representation must have been adopted for paintings that were no longer pure chorographies nor pure visual records. Chorographies were adapted for decorative use: the Nile mosaic in Palestrina is the prime example.[14] Agrippa's huge map of the world in the [p. 56] Porticus Vipsania may have been another adaptation.[15] Of the Roman pictorial records we have only one example left: the well-known painting in Naples of the riot in the Pompeian amphitheater, an event of some importance as we learn from Tacitus.[16] If we compare mosaic and painting, we see at once how closely related they are in perspective and scale.

This is the quarter in which we suggest that the beginnings of Roman landscape painting must be placed. Significantly enough, the oldest extant example of a representation of landscape elements on a Roman wall is a fragment in the Villa die Misteri, which, though earlier than the other decorations, is already Second Style. Now almost obliterated and rarely mentioned, it is a cartographic Nile landscape in the manner of the Palestrina mosaic[17]: here is chorography as wall decoration. Perhaps the popular fashion of yellow monochromes reflects the tradition of chorography; the Boscoreale panel [pl. 47, 1] may actually be intended to imitate it. The Yellow Frieze [pl. 51, 2] is already more: the map is abandoned, the topography has become an independent painting. When and in what material [panel, roll, wall] this step was first taken, we have no way of knowing. More important is that chorographic landscapes existed alongside a completely different species of landscape painting that shares not a single stylistic element with the topographies and their adaptations. The walls on which the Odyssey Frieze and the Yellow Panel from Boscoreale were painted are contemporary; the Yellow Frieze is even later.

It is these alterations of topographies, enriched by numerous motives in order to satisfy the Roman taste for factual information, and painted according to the Roman convention of birdÍs eye pictures, that Vitruvius 7, 5, 1-3 mentions as popular decorations of Second Style walls. He calls them varietates topiorum and characterizes the species as ab certis locorum proprietatibus imagines --the variety of all sorts of settings is expressed by the images of their specific characteristics. They are in Vitruvius's words: portus, promontoria, litora, flumina, fontes, euripi, fana, loci, montes pecora, pastores. Exact information, richness of motive, and the cartographic mode of representation are the three points that these wall decorations have in common with the traditional Roman pictorial records. Vitruvius separates the "varieties of landscapes" from the representation of Greek legends to which belong Ulixis errationes per topia. He, too, knew that the two were different species belonging to different traditions and to different styles.[18] [p. 57]

When the boscotrecase painter elevated Roman landscape painting to a superior position he did not follow the Hellenistic tradition of Ulixis errationes per topia, he did not try to emulate the Hellenistic type of landscape painting. He detected the inherent potentialities of the Roman form; he saw in the perspective incongruity and the pictorial variety of his predecessors the latent possibility of a new concept of landscape painting. He discovered that the convention of incoherent perspective was not necessarily only an inevitable and useful formula for depicting actual settings, but that the freedom it gave the painter could provide also the means for showing the real world as a magic world. A formula of pictorial license was thereby changed into genuine form, a convention into a style. In this new style stable scenes are made flexible, simple settings ambivalent, actual distances indeterminable, defined bodies ambiguous--representation becomes suggestion, reality a vision, and a picture a mirage. The road from cartographic chorographies to the painted dreams of Boscotrecase is a long, but a straight one; it begins with visually conveyed information and leads to works of art.[19]

The importance of the Boscotrecase painter for the history of Roman art and especially for Roman painting can hardly be overrated. Where did he come from, where did he learn? Answers to these questions, speculative as they are, may perhaps be suggestive. Comparing earlier landscape paintings, we find time and again that the closest similarities with the Boscotrecase occurred in the murals from the Farnesina. The fact that the Farnesina was painted no more than a decade before does not fully explain this relation. There are too many similarities, not only in the landscapes but also in the ornamental motives. Some of these may be mentioned: slender columns, articulated by ornaments in Boscotrecase [pl. 19, 1.5], by leaves or ornaments in the Farnesina[20], branches of leaves in intermittently light and dark shading on dark ground, held or bound by cords[21] [pl. 17, 2], extremely thin but solidly bond garlands[22] [pl. 26], small compartments in the upper part of the walls decorated with theatrical masks[23] [pl. 27, 2], rich and elegant candelabra[24] [pl. 28, 1.2], griffins within ornaments[25] [pl. 27, 3]. It is significant that the Farnesina examples are to be found on the black and white walls and on the stucco ceiling. These [p. 58] are precisely the places where landscape scenes occur as well. The identity of the landscape motives in both Farnesina and Boscotrecase is striking, as we have seen. In some instances the manner of representation is also similar, for example in the way shepherds and animals are drawn.[26]

The relation between the Farnesina and the villa in Boscotrecase is very close indeed. I do not believe, however, that there is any decoration in the Farnesina which unmistakably betrays the hand of the Boscotrecase painter himself or of his assistants. But it appears very likely that the Boscotrecase painter learned and worked in that atelier which is responsible for the painting of the most advanced decorations[27] in the Farnesina. Everything seems to point to the closest relation between the two villas. They share still another peculiarity. In the stucco ceiling of the Farnesina one of the gods represented is Augustus as Novus Mercurius.[28] In the black Room from Boscotrecase the medallions are portraits of either Agrippa or of another member of the Imperial family [see above, p. 14 pl.s 4. B]. These pictorial allusions to the Imperial house are unique on Roman walls.

The Two villas are indeed sisters. The villa in Boscotrecase was the property of Agrippa before it became the property of his posthumously born son [see above p. 10f]. The Farnesina was, as has been shown recently[29], Agrippa's and Jullia's Roman suburban villa, the decoration of which began after Agrippa's return to Rome in 19 B.C. and may have been completed in that year or shortly thereafter. The atelier must have been the outstanding one of its time; it could boast working "by appointment of the court". Here were the best and the most advanced painters leading the way towards a new form of decoration in spite of Vitruvius' and perhaps other conservatives' denunciation. Protected and perhaps encouraged by the Emperor's daughter and her husband, the most progressive and talented among these painters became the founders of what we call the Third Style.[30] One of these, probably the finest, was commissioned again to work for the Imperial family, this [p. 59] time as a leading painter in the Campanian villa near Boscotrecase belonging to the just deceased Agrippa. Parts of the villa had been built and decorated earlier, the peristyle had been finished, perhaps immediately after the Farnesina or even at the same time.[31] Now the villa was being finished and the new rooms were painted in the modern fashion. Their decoration was entrusted to one of those painters who had learned his craft in Agrippa's and Julia's Roman villa, and in the meantime he may have proven to be one of the most accomplished and advanced artists of his time. This choice was very likely determined by his particular gift for landscape painting--that species of decoration which was eminently suitable for a villa rustica or a villa suburbana.[32] He designed with exquisite taste the decorations of the room and he supervised the work, reserving for himself the painting of some landscape panels. The landscape on the north wall of the Red Room and the Polyphemus picture are certainly products of his own hand.[33] He may have sketched the other landscapes and left the execution to trusted assistants, correcting here and there and painting parts of their panels himself, particularly in the east and west landscapes of the Red Room.

His work made a wide and deep impression. Through the following decades it was imitated frequently by local Pompeian painters. No wonder: he came from Rome--a painter of the most elegant and sophisticated set at the Imperial court where Ovid and his taste ruled supreme.

The artistic achievement, the originality and the historical importance of the Boscotrecase painter have been indicated above--the limitations in the scope of his works should not be passed over in silence. At the very time of his activity at Boscotrecase a different Roman work of art was being produced: the Ara Pacis. The ornaments of the altar and of the villa are alike in style and are equally refined. But here the similarity ends, for an official state monument and a private villa demand different themes and representations.[34] The reliefs of the altar make history and politics speak in a new language; the paintings give a new voice to the expression of that pleasure which landscape holds for the well-educated private person.