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ONE who is familiar with the remains of ancient art and the traces of ancient life, in Italy and Greece, and the islands of the Mediterranean-who knows the Baths of Titus and Caracalla, the Parthenon, the temple of Phigagia, and even the almost forgotten cities of Lycia and Caria-will find that a new experience awaits him at Pompeii. However close may have been his observations, however thorough his studies, all that he has learned becomes poor and scanty by contrast with the wealth of knowledge which the unburied Vesuvian city now gives to the day. Sitting on the steps of the Parthenon, and looking over the ruins of the structures of Phidias and Ictinus to the ever-young and unchanging features of the immortal Attic landscape, one may bring the Grecian era nearer; but when one stands where the chief thoroughfares of Pompeii cross, and sees Vesuvius over walls still gay with frescoes, doors still surmounted by the symbols of trade and traffic, and taverns, where the empty amphora keep their place under the marble counters, the life of the city, in its simplest and commonest details, becomes a thing of yesterday. It impresses one like a miracle-or rather, let us say, a Providential deposit of the most honest and intelligible, because undesigned,

records of a period which could have reached us in no other way.

Pompeii is, indeed, a priceless treasury of the annals of an ancient city, and if from this one we cannot learn all, we at least come away with an instinct sharpened by positive knowledge, and we begin to guess, not blindly as heretofore, but by repeating, modifying, and expanding the facts we have gathered. It is a veritable Rosetta stone, a key which expounds the domestic and public life of the ancients, making their hieroglyphics in art and literature an intelligible language to us. Such a mine of intelligence belongs not to Italy, but to that world of newer civili zation which is built upon the ashes of the Past. There is not a house or shop, even of the most insignificant tradesman or artificer, which does not keep for us some revelation of the habits of its occupant. Since the Cavalier Fiorelli has directed the excavations, a thousand minute relics, or signs, hitherto lost, are preserved. The hollow ashes give back the forms and garments of the flying citizens who were smothered in the streets and passages; the charred wood, replaced by exactly similar posts and beams, restores for us the hanging balconies, and the roofs shading the atria and peristyles; even the kitchens and

Entered, in the year 1808, by G. P PUTNAM & SON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the U. S. for the Southern District of NY VOL. II.-1

ovens yield up their deserted loaves and viands, and the bronze water-jars keep their unevaporated contents.

A single illustration will serve to show the difference between the former and the present mode of conducting the excavations. Here let me say that the Bourbons have already been engaged for more than a hundred years, with long intervals of neglect, in the disinterment of Pompeii, and that not more than two fifths of the city have yet been laid bare. The first excavations were not only so rudely made that many slight and delicate articles were lost, but much else was either disfigured or stolen, from the carelessness with which the ruins were guarded. The reign of Murat, whatever it might have been politically, was auspicious for Pompeii, and the work of excavation began to assume an ordered and intelligent system. Nevertheless the excavation was still carried on, and until very recently, by vertical sections, and thus, in removing the mass of ashes and lapillæ, the walls, covered with the debris of the wooden upper stories, often tumbled down in fragments before they could be strengthened. Neither was any attention given to the hollow moulds left by fragile objects, which the heat of the ashes had destroyed while retaining their shape. The recklessness and neglect of the former century was avoided, but the hand which led the work was not yet directed by feeling and conscience.

The true hand has at last been found. Within the last ten or fifteen years, since the Cavalier Fiorelli has been entrusted with the direction of the labors, they have been so conducted as to destroy the least possible, and preserve the most possible. The Italian Government can afford but sixty thousand francs a-year (which, however, is very much more than the Bourbons expended) for the work, so that only from thirty to forty laborers can be steadily employed; but if the excavations advance slowly, they advance regularly and save what they reveal. The ashes are now removed in horizontal sections, beginning at the

top, and the walls can thus be strengthened as they are laid bare, preserving not only, in many cases, the arrangement of the upper chambers, but-what is of much more importance-the frescoes which adorned the rooms below. How many of these latter treasures have been stolen, wantonly destroyed, or lost by exposure to the weather, we can only conjecture. Those which remain form a collection unique of its kind in the world, and of inestimable value for the insight which it gives us into ancient pictorial art.

Herculaneum and Pompeii, although they have furnished many exquisite statues, cannot be said to have enlarged our knowledge of the character and excellence of ancient sculpture. This being the art which endures through the material in which it works, War, nor Time, nor natural convulsions, cannot so thoroughly destroy its achievements, that the Future does not receive a tolerable legacy. These cities rather illustrate for us the richness of their age in noble works. They have given us the exquisite Narcissus, the dancing Faun, the Apollo, the portrait-statues of the Balbi, the Alexander, the Tiberius, and a host of minor works, all of which belong to schools and are treated in styles with which we are already familiar. They are enrichments, but not revelations. Michel Angelo understood the excellences of antique sculpture as well as any artist of our day.

The walls of Pompeii, however, give us, by almost a miracle, certain knowledge of an art which may be said to have been known to us only by tradition.

From the perishable nature of painting, even in fresco, its most durable form, the world could never have hoped to possess a single specimen of the pictorial art of the Greeks and Romans, but for the singular chance (or design) by which they have been preserved. Let the reader imagine that not a single antique statue or bas-relief were known to us, and that--we will not say the Laocoon, and the Aristides, and the Venus of Milo, but-a hundred works of sculpture were suddenly ex

humed what wonder, what joy, what knowledge would thereby be given to the world! Pompeii has wrought this miracle for painting. What we previously knew was confined chiefly to those arabesque decorations of the Baths of Titus, which were the delight of Raphael (his only models, after Perugino and Masaccio), and to a few fragments of mutilated fresco, all rather illustrative of decorative art than painting. It had become a conventional idea with scholars, that, in spite of Apelles and Zeuxis and Protogenes, the Greeks were very indifferent painters. Their coloring, it was surmised, was crude and flashy they had no comprehension of perspective or foreshortening, and their drawing might be estimated by that upon the sepulchral vases and urns. To one who has been fed with these conjectures, which have been asserted so frequently and so positively that they are still generally believed, the walls of Pompeii will indeed be a revelation.

The value of the specimens already rescued is more than their artistic character. Not being portable, they were executed on the spot, and for the most part by local artists. Pompeii was but a third-rate city; it had nearly been destroyed by an earthquake, ten years previous to its entombment, and the most of its frescoes must have been painted during that period of restoration. It cannot be supposed that, when Rome was most luxurious, and the shores of the Mediterranean were covered with magnificent towns, artists of established fame could be spared for a place so unimportant as Pompeii. What we now possess cannot, therefore, be considered as more than the ordinary art of the age; but it is none the less a basis of clear knowledge in regard to modes of painting, treatment of subjects, and skill in the various technicalities of the art. In this respect, the mural paintings of Pompeii are as satisfactory, as would be a collection of antique statues, which did not include the master-pieces, in regard to the character of the ancient sculpture. Having

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an average of manner and skill, we can easily project upwards as well as downwards.

I believe there is no evidence whatever that the Greek and Roman painters were acquainted with oil as a vehicle for color. Oil, as Ruskin truly says, alone comes near to Nature in its opaque lights and its transparent shadows, while in practical use it is more facile and free than any other material. We can, therefore, in fairness to the Pompeiian painters, only contrast them with such artists as work in fresco or tempera, or, perhaps, that form of encaustic painting which has been recently revived in Germany. The depth, strength, and brilliancy of a picture in oils on canvas cannot possibly be obtained by these earlier methods. The ancients, undoubtedly, had their detached pictures upon wood or canvas, and the most famous works of the great artists could thus be bought, sold, and transferred from place to place. It is probable that such pictures exhibited the triumphs of their genius, and that the mural painters were an inferior class of artists. So much the higher, then, must the ancient painters rise in our estimation, when we find that the latter class, whose works we can now judge, understood drawing, color, perspective, and (to a certain extent) chiar' oscuro.

Many fine pictures must have been lost by the action of the weather, since the first private dwellings of Pompeii were opened. Others have been greatly damaged by neglect, while, incredible as it may seem, some were wantonly destroyed, in former years, because it was difficult or expensive to detach them from the walls! At present, every picture of value which is unearthed is carefully sawed from the walls, secured in a solid frame, and transported to the National Museum (formerly the Museo Borbonico) at Naples. It is singular that Pompeii itself should not only have given the hint, but also the method, of transferring and preserving frescoes. In the Temple of Venus, adjoining the chief Forum of the city, there is still a picture to be seen, in one

of the chambers occupied by the priests -a fresco representing Bacchus pouring a goblet of wine over his panther, while he leans upon the shoulder of Silenus, who plays the lyre. A close inspection of this picture revealed the fact that it had been transferred from a former building, and was fastened in its place by iron clamps; and, further, that in making the transfer, a space was left for the circulation of air at its back, in order to preserve it from possible injury from damp. The Pompeiian paintings are now arranged in the same manner on the walls of the Museum at Naples.

The pictures on these walls, including the decorative arabesques, and those which have been allowed to remain in situ, in the houses of Pompeii, will number nearly, if not quite, a thousand. In Naples they form a marvellous gallery of antique painting, which has not, and cannot have, its like in the world. One truly feels, there,

"Like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken-" so rich, so varied, so entirely satisfactory in regard to method and treatment, are the pictures. From mere decorative forms-that mingling of the graceful and the grotesque which has its own peculiar charm-to what, in the classic times, must have been considered "High Art," all the departments of painting are represented. If landscape remains in the background, we must remember that the love of Nature, the fine appreciation of the features of scenery and atmosphere, is but scantly represented in literature. Art rarely, if ever, moves in advance of letters, in its aims and its achievements, and we cannot expect to find that painted which existed so very dimly and imperfectly in the tastes of the people.

The decorative painting of Pompeii has been so extensively copied, that its colors and its forms are now tolerably well known, and I need not describe it in detail. Its chief characteristic is the employment of a broad, warm field of color generally that which is now distinguished as "Pompeiian red "-with very gracefully and delicately drawn

ornaments of vines, birds, and scrollwork, disposed in irregular panels. The object seems to have been, first, to cheer by the breadth and warmth of the ground-color, and then to pleasantly occupy the fancy with light, easily untangled labyrinths of form. Nothing could be better adapted for domestic architecture, and the wonder is that, having once been so generally employed, it was ever lost.

The department of still-life is most amply illustrated. Fish, birds, game, fruit, and even drinking-vessels were the usual fresco decorations of diningrooms, of eating-houses, and even in some cases of the kitchen itself. Landscapes, especially in combination with architecture, or as backgrounds to inferior figure-pieces, are also frequent. Genre pictures, the existence of which denotes a certain amount of development and taste, are by no means rare. Of portraits, there are few, if any, which profess to have that exclusive character; but there are many faces and figures which betray an individuality that could only have been derived from living models. Religious and mythical subjects are the most numerous, and represent the highest skill; repetitions of the same subjects enable us to determine how far their treatment was in accordance with conventional or traditional ideas (like that of Saints and Holy Families in the Italian Schools), and in what particular the individuality of the artist expressed itself. This, the highest field of painting, is of course the most interesting and important. Here we find the finest works, whether original or copies of older pictures.

The first characteristic which strikes the eye is the simplicity and breadth of the larger pictures, and the arrangement, both of colors and forms, in masses. This is not accidental, but intentional, in order to produce an effect in the dim light in which they were seen. In the private houses both the atrium and the peristyle were roofed, except the square aperture over the impluvium in the centre; and the pictured walls, therefore, did not receive a

fourth part of the light under which they are now seen. There is evidence that some of them were only designed to be seen by artificial light. The ancients understood the secrets of effect so well-so much better than we do, in fact that we must not suppose they painted without special reference to the conditions under which the picture would be seen. The walls were lighted principally from above, which would also require a particular disposition of the shadows. For the same reason fine gradations of tints could not be employed, since they could not be clearly seen. The picture must be simple, painted in few but harmonious colors, and especially those which attract light. When one is acquainted with this circumstance, he is not surprised at the predominance of the reds and yellows.

Couture says he has ascertained, by careful examination of pictures, that the Venetian artists had each a favorite base, or ground-color, upon which he relied to give tone to his picture-that Titian's base, for example, was amber, Giorgione's golden, and that of Paul Veronese silver-gray. The Pompeiian painters seem to have adopted the same principle, and perhaps amber would nearly express the prevailing tone of their pictures. The walls appear to have been painted al fresco, for the most part, with their decorative borders and panels, the latter being left for the paintings to be afterwards added in tempera. I believe the vehicle which they usedwhether glue, wax, resin, or albumenhas not been positively ascertained. Fortunately we have their colors out of the shops, as they were sold for use-all mineral, comprising the earths and ochres still employed, with lapis lazuli for blue.

There are, of course, great differences in the execution of many of the pictures. It is easy to see that some are weak (and probably cheap) copies of good works, like those Assumptions and Nativities which tourists are wont to purchase in Italy at the present day. Others as certainly show the hand of an independent artist, and the figures

breathe life from every limb. With the exception of Giotto and Masaccio, I find no such power of expression in the Italian artists before Raphael, as in the Medea, the Achilles, and the Theseus of the Pompeiian walls. Although there are few figures wherein certain minor details are not faulty, the masses are so boldly and beautifully drawn, the grouping so symmetrically balanced, and the heads and eyes so spirited, that the total effect is truly admirable. Each picture tells its own story in the directest way: nothing is introduced-scarcely the simplest furniture-which has not a right to be there. In short, so much skill and knowledge are displayed that we are forced to suppose that frequent faults of omission-as in comple tion wanting to figures in the background-were not occasioned either by ignorance or carelessness, but so left because they could not be observed in the shadowed rooms where the pictures were painted.

The landscapes, I have said, are inferior; but the manipulation also shows them to have been the work of inferior artists. That landscape-paintings were popular at that period, we know from the letters of Pliny, who not only praises, but describes, the works of a certain Ludius. In Pompeii, however, the artists appear to have been mostly Greek ("Alexandros of Athens" being the only name that has descended to us), and mythological pictures, in the manner of what was then the Greek school, were the prevailing taste. In fact, the position which the landscapes generally occupy on the walls denotes that a lesser value was attached to them. Many are rude sketches of a temple and tree, with the sea mountain as background; others are islands or shores, crowded with architecture. In the latter there is not much perspective, either linear or aerial, but the temples are executed with a certain degree of care, while the trees and rocks have been slighted. One exception is a view of a rocky landscape, with shep herds, the background being a mountain, with a winding row of cypresses.

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