The Neoclassicising of Pompeii

Turning belief into a Style

At the time that Pacini, Briullov and Lytton were creating their Pompeianmelodramas, Europe and its colonies were increasingly being gripped bynew visual and literary styles based upon artefacts found at Pompeii andHerculaneum. The emergent style became known as Neoclassicism, the mostpopular and enduring style in history. Its synthesis of romanticism andrationalism enabled it to cross virtually every social, political and culturaldivide and its coincidence with the Industrial Revolution made it the world sfirst truly global style. The discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum notonly shaped much of the iconography of the technological revolution, butalso became part of the zeitgeist that fed the growing Enlightenmentmovement in eighteenth century Europe. Material from the once buriedcities alongside a renewed interest in ancient Greek and Latin literature,mainly poetic and philosophical, provided the cultural values that theEnlightenment movement was searching for and seeking to promote. As theNeoclassical Style became increasingly embedded into the social fabric ofthe contemporary world, it inevitably re-framed understandings of theancient material that created it. Inevitably, in the absence of any objectiverational, Roman wall-painting became associated with many of the aestheticvalues attributed to Neoclassicism. Even the eminent August Mau whowrote one of the first authoritative books on Pompeii in the late eighteenhundreds, characterised and critiqued Pompeian wall-paintings usingaesthetic values derived from Neoclassical painters such as Anton RaphaelMengs (1728-1779), Jacques-Louis David (1748-1825) and Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (1780-1867).

Mau was not alone since all of the early texts on Roman wall-painting werewritten from a connoisseur s perspective. They excluded any sense ofhuman interaction and discussed the paintings as if they existed in a gallery,as opposed to a functioning household. In recent years the critical pendulumhas swung in the opposite direction, replacing connoisseurship withanalytical methods predicated upon politics and sociology, and Roman

Mars Being Disarmed by Venus Jaques-Louis David 1824

painting has not escaped the equally distorting affects of thesemethodologies. With the emergence of Reception Theory there is now anincreased awareness that material evidence, such as ancient painting, canhave both an original and an evolving meaning as its audience changes withtime.

Neoclassical Painting

None of the painters that Mau and other writers used to evaluate Pompeianpainting were from Italy. But all of them were drawn to it by the work ofearlier Italian artists such as Sandro Botticelli (c.1445-1510) and Raphael(1483-1520). These artists were amongst the first to combine mythologicalthemes with idealised views of the Italian landscape. Botticelli s Primaveraand The Birth of Venus, both produced in the mid to late fifteenth century,were entirely made up of classical references.

Primavera Sando Botticelli 1482

The Birth of Venus Sando Botticelli 1485

In order to find Classical megalographia painting on this scale, we have togo back to pre-Christian times and paintings such as the Dionysian frieze inthe Villa of the Mysteries, c. 50 BC.

Saint John on Patmos Nicholas Poussin 1660

Nicholas Poussin (1594-1665), Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) and ClaudeGell_e (Le Lorrain) (1600-1682) were amongst the first none Italian paintersto be drawn to Italy. A beautiful irony emerges if one imagines ClaudeLorrain in the Campagnia painting an idealised classical landscape, whilstsimilar idyllic landscape paintings lie buried beneath his feet.

Unlike Renaissance masters such as Botticelli and Raphael who foregrounded myth, seventeenth pro-Neoclassical painters mainly used it as anarrative trope for the newly evolving and highly sought after genre of

Pompeii 1855 Robert Scott Duncanson(men viewing a fragment of Pompeian wall-painting with Vesuvius in the background)

mytho-picturesque landscape painting. Poussin, Dughet and Claude as wellas the Italian Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) re-establish a discourse betweenidealised nature and classical idealism almost entirely predicated upon thepoetry of Horace, Virgil and Ovid.

Astraias Abschied von den Hirten Salvator Rosa 1650s

The lure of Italy, as a latter day Elysium, was to a very large extent derivedfrom idealised readings of these Latin poets, made accessible throughincreased access to classical libraries. (For more on this subject seeColtman, V. 1999. Classicism in the English Library, Beckford SocietyLectures 2000-3.) Since the work of the seventeenth painters sited abovewas a discourse underpinned by the picturesque, Christians as well ashumanists could engage with it. The melancholic Epicureanism and Stoicvirtues that they subtly imbedded in their paintings, became the emblematictrademarks of later Neoclassical artists such as Mengs, David and Ingres.

Dreaming of Italy

Dream of Italy William Louis Sonntag 1859

Virtually every major painter between the late-seventeenth and late-nineteenth century went to Italy to study its pictorial heritage, and not justEuropeans. When the father of American Painting Benjamin West (1738-1820) arrived in Italy in 1760 it signified the beginning of the Americanartist s love affair with Italian art. Others such as Thomas Cole (1801-848),Robert Scott Duncanson (1821-1872),William Louis Sonntag (1822-1900),John Frederick Kensett (1816-1872) soon followed. America s artisticpilgrimage to Italy and Pompeii continued into the twentieth century withartist such as Mark Rothko (1903-1970) and Cy Twombly (1928-). Europeanmodernist such as Paul Klee (1879-1940), Giorgio de Chirico (1888-1978)and Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) had already visited some 30 years earlier andelements of Pompeii were already evident in their work. Of all the artists

that visited Pompeii Arnold B_cklin (1827-1901) was the one whose workwas most affected. Virtually over night his paintings changed frommelancholic landscapes to vibrant magic-realist portrayals of mythologicalbeings. As the dream of Italy came to dominate both elite and popular tastethroughout Europe. The rich on both sides of the Atlantic bought paintingsthat romanticised Italy, whilst those with more modest means acquiredprints. Paintings and prints of paintings by Claude were particularly popularwith the landed gentry and many palatial estates, such as Stourhead, weremodelled upon his idyllic landscapes. Ironical, these fantasised Italianlandscapes came to be known as the “English garden”.

Mount Parmassus with Apollo and the Muses Claude Lorrain 1680

Latin Poets and Ancient and Neoclassical Painters

The halcyon romanticism associated with Neoclassical painting was almostentirely derived from the Augustan poets Horace and Virgil, who in turndrew on Hellenistic sources. Their eulogies to sacro-idyllic and bucoliclandscapes inhabited by redeeming heroes, became the topos for virtuallyevery aspiring post-seventeenth century painter. The same Latin poetsinfluenced Roman wall-painting seventeen hundred years earlier, as well asmonuments such Augustus Ara Pacis, designed to symbolise the dawningof a new Golden Age of peace and prosperity.

Ara Pacis Augustus s monument to peace Rome c.20 BC.

(For more on this theme see Castriota, David. 1995. The Ara Pacis Augustaeand the Imagery of Abundance in Later Greek and Early Roman ImperialArt. Princeton.) The fact that the Latin poets influenced both ancient andmodern artists does not mean that they shared the same aesthetic values. Farfrom it, the former were pagan and the latter Christian, although temperedby the emerging Enlightenment. Pagan painters lived in a world that was nottoo dissimilar to the narratives that they depicted. They inhabited a ritualised

world in which every day life brought them into contact with the gods of theGolden Age. Their cities and the landscapes that surrounded them werelittered with shrines, temples, and sacro-idyllic groves that were the abodesof their gods. The Neoclassical painter on the other hand, relied entirelyupon a romantic vision predicated upon a literary topos. Despite thisfundamental difference, the aesthetic values associated with Neoclassicalpainting transplanted themselves onto the wall-paintings from Pompeii andHerculaneum. The ancient bucolic landscapes that signified Pagan Rome smelancholic longing for its political and religious roots in agrarianism,became a quaint pastoral charade in the vocabulary of Neoclassicism. Bythe late-eighteenth century, maidens and shepherds frolicking amongst theruins of the Forum and Colosseum typified the passing of the Golden Age,especially if viewed by moonlight. Neoclassicism also reconfigured thesacro-idyllic grove into a place in which the aristocracy could masquerade assatyrs and maenads. All of which was a far cry from the sombre depictionsof sacrificial scenes that appear to magically hover on Pompeian walls.

Landscape from the centre panel of the north wall of the Black Room in the ImperialVilla at Boscotrecase c. 20BC

The image of the classical hero was also appropriated by Neoclassicism,particularly in France, where its fledgling Republic used it to promote self-sacrifice for the good of the Republic. In contrast to French pragmatism,Pompeian heroes were depicted fighting complex corporeal andmetaphysical battles.

The Oath of Horatii Jaques Louis David 1784

Theseus Slaying the Minotaur Casa di Gavius Rufus c.50s AD

The discoveries made at Pompeii and Herculaneum, in addition to having amajor influence on painting, also played a major role in shapingNeoclassical design. In many ways this had an even more pervasive effectupon contemporary attitudes to the ancient wall-paintings. Virtually everydesigned object from a palatial house to a mass produced teaspoon wascreated in the Neoclassical style, and not just in Europe. Europe s coloniesalso imported and made Neoclassical style objects. Virtually everygovernment from totalitarian to democratic, republican to monarchist, cameto adopt the Neoclassical style, resulting in cities as far apart as New Yorkand Sydney, St Petersburg and Shanghai all sharing a common visuallanguage. The extent to which Pompeii and Herculaneum fed this newcultural phenomenon cannot be overstated.

Neoclassical typewriter. Late 1800s

In late eighteenth century England manufactures such as Wedgwood, werequick to satisfy the growing taste for all things Neoclassical by mass-producing artefacts based upon wall-paintings and stucco relief work fromPompeii, Herculaneum and Rome.

Wedgwood Jasperware from 1775 Jasperware was also influenced byInspired by Roman white and blue Stucco decoration. House of the Griffin,figurative vases c. 50 BC – 100 AD Palatine Hill Rome c. 80 BC

Chippendale lead the way in furniture and the mass-produced furnituremarket soon followed. Most of the early Neoclassical designs were anindiscriminate mixture of Etruscan, Roman, Pompeian and Greek motifs andthe names given to these styles were also highly misleading, with Pompeianmotifs being referred to as Etruscan and vice versa. James Athenian Stuart(1713-88) who visited Pompeii in 1754 was one of the first to createinteriors based upon classical sources. His hybrid designs were manlyderived from Etruscan, Pompeian and Greek artefacts, which he thenliberally infused with motifs taken from Raphael s Roman style decorativewall-paintings in the Vatican. The designs he produced for Spencer House inLondon in 1759 are generally regarded as the first of their kind in northernEurope.

Interior design by James Athenian Stuart at Spencer House 1760s

One of the most comprehensive Pompeian interior design schemes wasproduced by Joseph Bonomi (1739-1808) in 1782, for the Earl of Aylesfordat Packington Hall in Warwickshire. As increasing numbers of Pompeianwall-paintings influenced the emerging Neoclassical style, the city s namebecame exclusively associated with Neoclassical interiors. At the same timeBritish architects such as Robert Adam (1728-1792) followed by Sir JohnSoane (1753-1837) used motifs from the newly excavated Campagnian sitesto soften the classical austerity associated with Palladianism, the thendominant architectural style. In so doing they also unwittingly acceleratedthe process by which Pompeian domestically located wall-painting becamedepaganised and turned into a decorative interior design style. Adam in thecompany of the French neoclassicist Charles-Louis Cl_risseau (1721-1820)visited the Campagnian sites in 1755, and the work that they subsequentlyproduced had a major impact upon British and European perceptions ofancient wall-painting. Between 1760 and 1780 Adam was one of the mostsought after architects in England and his Neoclassical designs played amajor part in the introduction of the Pompeian Style into England.

Interior design by Robert Adam at Osterley Park 1775-77

He was not without his contemporary critics. John Gwilt in his Encyclopediaof Architecture (1842) praised Stuart s purity and condemned the vicioustaste of Robert Adam, a fashionable architect whose eye been ruined by thecorruption of the worst period of Roman art. Horace Walpole also describedAdam s designs as 'gingerbread and snippets of embroidery or 'filigranetoy work'. Hitherto, pastiche versions of ancient wall-paintings had beenconfined to venues such as the Vatican. In the hands of designers such asAdam, however, they increasingly appeared in palatial houses, beforemigrating to the homes of the less wealthy in the form of mass-producedwall-paper. Like Adam, Cl_rasseau s influence was equally profound, but onthe course of Neoclassicism in central Europe. In the mid-eighteenth centuryhe spent several decades in Rome as the pupil of the painter Panini whospecialised in depicting ruins. Cl_rasseau also developed this theme and hisromanticised visions of classical antiquity exerted a profound influence onyoung visiting architects and artists, who used him as a guide and mentor.By using ancient ruins as melancholic symbols of a lost Golden Age he madeRome a sign and not a signifier. In so doing he divested it of autonomousmeaning and turned it into a surrogate for the lost world of Classical Greece.

Architectural Ruin Cl_rasseau 1765

Twenty-three years after Adam, in 1778, the influential British architect SirJohn Soane spent over two years travelling in Italy. His designs for the Bankof England had a profound impact upon contemporary taste in Britain and itscolonies. Subsequent generations of Neoclassical architects acquired theirknowledge of antiquity, albeit a decontextualised one, via his collection ofancient fragments, which he displayed in his house in Lincoln s Inn London.In 1835 he published Memoirs of a Professional Architect, in which hefurther added to the decontextualisation process by Romanticising hismoonlight visits to Pompeii.

Interior of Soane s house Gandy drawing of the Bank of EnglandJoseph Gandy 1811 as a Pompeian ruin 1830

In Germany Neoclassical architecture was promoted via the work of KarlFriedrich Schinkel (1781-1841), who visited Pompeii 40 years after Soane in1824 Schinkel later become one of Germany s most important Neoclassicalarchitects and significantly contributed to Berlin s Neoclassical appearance.In a letter to his architectural tutor David Gilly (1748-1808), Schinkelrevealingly wrote, "When it comes to antiquity, it offers nothing new to anarchitect because one is from childhood familiar with it." Clearly he was notreferring to actual antiquity, since he did not become familiar with it untilhe was 42 years old. Like so many other influential figures he firstexperienced it through the filter of an appropriated form, such as theBaroque.

The British architect Charles Cameron (1740-1812) played an even moreinfluential part in internationalising the Neoclassical style via his work forEmpress Catherine the Great of Russia. As a result of his 1772 publicationThe Baths of the Romans explained and illustrated, with Restorations ofPalladio corrected and improved, Catherine commissioned him to producearchitectural and interior designs for her country palace at Tsarskoe Selo andPavlovsk situated outside of St Petersburg. Many of the interior featureswere based upon wall-paintings from Rome and Pompeii and the Grand Hallin Catherine s private apartments at Tsarskoe and the Graecian Hall at

Pavlovsk, also bare strong resemblance to Adams Marble Hall at KedlestoneHouse (1760), produce some twenty years earlier.

Adam design for Kedlestone Hall 1760 Cameron design for Pavlovsk St. Petersburg 1780s

Dilettantes and Pattern Books

Dilettante collectors such as Sir William Hamilton (1730-1815), the EnglishAmbassador to the Court of Naples between the years 1764 –1800, acquiredimpressive amounts of antiquities. His 750 Etruscan vases; 300 glass pieces;125 terracottas; 627 bronzes; 150 ivories; 150 gems; 6000 coins, laterbecome the foundation of the British Museum s Greek and Romancollection. Hamilton and the German art historian Johann JoachimWinckelmann, were amongst the first to express concern at the removal ofprized sections of wall-paintings, which caused the material evidence to befragmented. ( For more on Hamilton: Jenkins and K. Sloan,1996, Vases andVolcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection, London, The BritishMuseum Press.) The material evidence from Pompeii and Herculaneum wasfurther fragmented and decontextualised by the increasing number of PatternBooks produced in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. Most of

them were derived from decorative motifs found in wall-paintings, stucco-work and architectural details. Some of the designs, such as those producedby Charles Percier (1764-1838)) and Pierre Fontaine (1762-1835) weretaken directly from wall-paintings, whilst others merely referred to otherillustrated publications such as the eight volume Le Antichit_ di Ercolanoesposte, published between 1759-1792 by the Royal Herculaneum Academy.

Designs by Percier and Fontaine 1812

This was soon followed in 1766 by D Hancarville s Collection of Etruscan,Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Honourable Wm.Hamilton and Abb_ de Saint-Non s 178I Voyage pittoresque ou descriptiondes royaumes de Naples et de Sicile with illustrations made by a DominiqueVivant-Denon and others. Percier and Fontaine became Napoleon's favouritearchitects and interior designers and consequently their pattern bookReceuils de Decorations Interieur (1812) had an enormous impact uponFrench taste and significantly contributed to the creation of the FrenchEmpire Style, which incorporated Pompeian motifs into politicised designsemblematic of Napoleon s political ambitions.

Rehersal of the "Flute Player" and the "Wife of Diomedes" Gustave Boulanger 1861

The Pompeian Style

The introduction of the Empire and Pompeian Style, along with the variousarchitectural recreations associated with them, such as Ludwig I of Bavaria sHouse of Caster and Pollux, Prince Napoleon s Palais pomp_ien (1857) andQueen Victoria s Pompeian Garden House (1884), laid the foundations forour depaganised view of Roman wall-painting. Like Raphael s stylisedappropriations some two centuries before, they appeared to have the gravityand exoticism of an historical artefact, whilst in reality beingdecontextualised pastiches. The knock on effect of this was that the paganoriginals were stripped of their symbolic value and instead becamedecoration, in the modern sense of the word. Neoclassicism s cultural,political and scientific agenda, underpinned by the Industrial Revolution,embedded the iconography of Pompeii and Herculaneum into world cultureand in so doing, created one of the most opaque filters through which wenow view the art that emerged from those cities.

Tepidarium of the Baths in Pompeii Th_odore Chass_riau 1853