Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/52

Rh MURAL DECORATION the temple of Salus, executed about 300 B.C. (//. T., xxxv. 4). Unfortunately no existing Roman paintings seem to be earlier in date than the Christian era, and all belong to a period of decline in art. Pliny (xxxv. 1) laments the fact that the wealthy Romans of his time preferred the costly splendours of marble and porphyry wall-linings to the more artistic decoration of paintings by good artists. Historical painting seems then to have gone out of fashion ; among the numerous specimens now existing very few from FIG. 8. One Figure from a Pompein.ii Wall-Painting Ariadne and Dionysus. Now iii the Naples Museum. Pompeii represent historical subjects ; one has the scene of Masinissa and Sophonisba before Scipio, and another of a riot between the people of Pompeii and Nocera, which happened 59 A.D. Mythological scenes, chiefly from Greek sources, occur most frequently : the myths of Eros and Dionysus are especial favourites. Only five or six relate to purely Roman mythology. We have reason to think that some at least of the Pompeian pictures are copies, probably at third or fourth hand, from celebrated Greek originals. The frequently repeated subjects of Medea meditating the murder of her children and Iphigenia at the shrine of the Tauric Artemis suggest that the motive and composition were taken from the celebrated originals of these subjects by Timanthes. Those of lo and Argus, the finest example of which is in the Palatine &quot;villa of Livia,&quot; and of Andro meda and Perseus, often repeated on Pompeian walls, may be from the originals by Nicias. 1 In many cases these mural paintings are of high artistic merit, though they are probably not the work of the most distinguished painters of the time, but rather of a humbler class of decorators, who reproduced, without much original invention, stock designs out of some pattern-book. They are, however, all remarkable for the rapid skill and extreme &quot; verve &quot; and freedom of hand with which the designs are, as it were, flung on to the walls with few but very effective touches. Though in some cases the motive and composi tion are superior to the execution, yet many of the paint ings are remarkable both for their realistic truth and technical skill. The great painting of Ceres from Pompeii, now in the Naples museum, is a work of the highest merit the simple grandeur of the drawing and the delicate modelling of the flesh, executed in the easiest and most direct manner possible, are alike admirable. The round juiciness of the fruit in her basket, rapidly painted with a few telling strokes of the brush, recalls to mind in effect, though not in execution, the startling realism of the Dutch painters of still life, who laboured painfully to gain the effect produced with such rapidity and ease by the Roman artist. Fig. 8, from a Pompeian picture, is a fine example of good modelling of flesh. In the usual scheme of decoration the broad wall-surfaces are broken up into a series of panels by pilasters, columns, or other architectural forms. Some of the panels contain pictures with figure - subj ects ; others have conventional ornament, or hanging festoons of fruit and flowers. The lower part of the wall is painted one plain colour, forming a dado ; the upper part sometimes has a well-designed frieze of flowing ornaments. In the better class of painted walls the whole is kept flat in treatment, and is free from too great subdivision, but in many cases great want of taste is shown by the introduction of violent effects of architectural perspective, and the space is broken up in a disagreeable way by complicated schemes of design, studded with pictures in varying scales which have but little relation to their surroundings. The colouring is on the whole very pleasant and harmonious quite unlike the usual chromolithographic copies. Black, yellow, or a rich deep red are the favourite colours for the main ground of the walls, the pictures in the panels being treated separately, each with its -own background. Technical Methods of the Romans. Much has been written on this subject, and the most varying opinions have been expressed. The real fact appears to be that several methods were employed in each painting. First, the ground of the required colour was laid on while the stucco was still moist. This ground therefore was true fresco or &quot; fresco buono. &quot; On this, when dry, the various pictures and ornaments were painted in tempera. That the pictures themselves were not in true fresco is shown : (1) because the coloured ground always exists under the pictures ; (2) by the wide distances apart of the &quot; fresco edges &quot; or joinings in the stucco, showing that a much larger area of stucco was applied at once than could have been covered with the frequently elaborate paintings before the stucco was dry ; (3) by the fact that many of the brilliant pigments were not such as could have been used upon moist stucco. The next point is how these tempera paintings on the fresco ground KYQfixcd so as to last for nearly eighteen hundred years uninjured by the damp which necessarily soaked through into the soil and ashes in which they were buried. This was probably effected by the &quot;encaustic &quot; process (2-yKa.vcris). When the painting was finished and dry, hot melted wax was brushed all over it ; and then a red- See Newton, Led. on Painting of the Ancients, 1882.