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A Fragment of a Roman Wall-Painting

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A Fragment of a Roman Wall-Painting Sonderdrucke aus der Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg VOLKER MICHAEL STROCKA A fragment of a Roman wall-painting Originalbeitrag erschienen in: Alexander Cambitoglou (Hrsg.): Classical art in the Nicholson Museum, Sydney. Mainz: von Zabern, 1995, S. [251]-257, Taf. A Fragment of a Roman Wall-Painting Volker Michael Strocka This fresco fragment (pl. 82, colour pl. 7, fig. 1) comes from a wall and, as will become clear in the following paragraphs, more particularly from the socle zone of a Roman wall-decoration datable to the third quarter of the first century AD. 1 The left and upper edges are almost straight, and form approximately a right angle, whilst the break is irregular along its lower and right edges, where several leaves have lost their tip and Fig. 1. Nicholson Museum inv. 80.49 (the stippling indicates'areas of restoration). where at least one flower is missing. Against a black background a plant sprouts above a horizontal, 7 — 8mm wide white line. Its flowers, reddish with white highlights and on high stems, and the long, pointed leaves clearly characterize it as an iris,2 a garden flower which was much appreciated by the Romans.3 252 V. M. Strocka With a series of sketchy brushstrokes the painter has placed several groups of dull-green leaves on the black ground before adding the two stems, using the same colour but interrupting .the flow of the brush several times. The start of a third stem which rose no doubt just as steeply as the two preserved ones can be seen on the right-hand side, where the fragment is at its widest. On top of the high, dull-green leaves another four were painted in a lighter green, but with equally hasty brushstrokes. Two of them grow almost horizontally to the sides, the other two shoot upwards. Short, ochre strokes radiating from the base of the plant on and across the white line surely represent the remains of dead leaves. There were several, but only two are extant. It is in the representation of the flowers that the expressive painting style is at its most sophisticated. Their colour varies from brown-violet, through pink, to grey 4 and there are highlights indicated by short white strokes. Noteworthy is the unevenness of the black background. It appears to have a pink undercoat and has become grey in places, probably due to weathering. An irregular line separating a darker from a lighter portion is particularly striking. It runs towards the upper left-hand corner, exactly in the continuation of the taller flower stem. The lighter portion to the right is due to weathering. The fragment has been recomposed from at least six pieces, and the joins and the upper edge have been skilfully repainted. There is a major restoration between the horizontal white line and the lower edge, and several minor repairs have been made on various parts of the surface.5 The fragment is approximately 1.3 cm thick and is made up of three plaster layers. At the bottom, the layer of coarse plaster which originally must have been much thicker than the l cm it measures now, contains many large and small black to grey inclusions; a coat of finer plaster follows, up to 4mm deep, with fairly numerous small grains of black and grey sand; at the top is a very fine coat of finishing plaster, on which the decoration has been painted. This structure and, above all, the obviously volcanic origin of the inclusions correspond with those of Campanian frescoes; the thinness of the finishing coat tallies with that of walls belonging to the Third and Fourth Pompeian Style, and provides a first indication as to the probable provenance of the fragment. The painting has been executed in true fresco technique; not only the black background, but also the white ground-line and the plant itself were painted whilst the plaster was still wet, and then rolled into it when it started to dry. In view of the rapid brushstrokes and the lack of flaking one can exclude the use of tempera in al secco technique, which was sometimes adopted when vignettes were added to coloured fields. Freestanding plants of the size of the plant on our fragment are a very popular motif on black and red socle zones of the Fourth Pompeian Style (ca. 2nd half of the 1st century AD) and occur occasionally also against other background colours. The size of the plant suggests that the fragment comes from a small room. Depending on room size, socle zones of Fourth-Style walls in Pompeii vary in height between 44 and 97 cm, i.e. between 1.5 and 3.25 Roman ft., and on average measure 67cm. 6 The way the height of the zone below the ground-line and the height of the plant relate to the overall height of the fragment suggests that our fragment has hardly been trimmed on its lower and upper edges. If this assumption is correct, the fragment, with its preserved height of 44.5 cm, belonged to the socle zone of a rather small room. Rather than simply refer to another similar painting of an iris in order to determine the date of the fragment, I should like to broaden the discussion and investigate the origin and the development of this decorative motif. Strangely enough, there is as yet no satisfactory examination of the socle plant in Roman wall-painting, neither from a botanical, nor from an art-historical point of view. ? The earliest socle plants occur already in paintings of the later Second Style (ca. 40 BC). The Pompeian fragment inv. 8594 in the National Museum in Naples which—contrary to what has been believed for a long time—does not come from the Praedia Iuliae Felicis (II 4), but from a cubiculum of the Insula Occidentalis (VI 17, 41), 8 exhibits a A Fragment of a Roman Wall-Painting 253 series of marsh plants, loosely distributed in front of the socle of the architectural representation. The plants seem to be standing in the water, while ducks swim through arched apertures that appear to interrupt the socle. The idea to question the stability of the painted architecture occurs in a number of instances in the final phase of the Second Style (ca. 40-20 BC), which often shows a liking for surprising effects. Plants are now painted on to a flat, two-dimensional socle zone. Some examples have survived in Pompeii, such as the rather thin plants in cubiculum 5 of the House of Obellius Firmus (IX 14, 1-4)9, or in the low socle zone of the caldarium 28, the smaller baths of the Casa del Criptoportico (I 6, 2), the row of various bushes that appear to spread from the garden painting in the apsis.1 o A third very early example, now lost, was seen by A. Mau in the tablinum of the Casa del Centenario (IX 8, 3.6). 11 In this case, there were plants alternating with standing figures. Still extant are the carefully painted bushes with radially sprouting leaves on the south wall of exedra q in the Casa del Gallo (VIII 5, 2) 12 that belongs to the earliest phase of the Third Style (20-10 BC). For the first time, each plant is here depicted on a single socle panel. Particularly original and delicately painted are the socle plants (three on each of the West and the East walls) in the so-called Red Room 16 of the Villa at Boscotrecase, the wall-decorations of which I propose to date to the first decade of the 1st century AD. 13 In every panel of the black socle an oblong is delineated by white lines, in which from a tiny plant with seven serrated leaves three threadlike branches sprout, each with pointed leaflets and small blossoms. The central one rises straight, the two lateral ones stretch horizontally in a double sweep, each held by a pair of tight strings which hang from the upper border. The delightful contrast between meticulous realism for the details and total lack of three-dimensionality and unreal proportions is typical of the late Augustan period. In the tablinum of the Villa of the Mysteries, the decoration of which is only slightly later (AD 10-20) and hardly less delicate, the socle—again on black ground—has been transformed into a miniature garden. 14 A kind of light scaffolding on which small-leaved climbers form a regular pattern, subdivides the zone below the three main fields into nine sections, each of which is occupied by plant in a symmetrical arrangement. In the field at the centre is a lush, acanthus-like plant, while the fields on either side have each an oval bush resembling a boxtree, a flowering iris plant, and a bush with small leaves and a large white flower, probably an agave. Even the birds are added in a symmetrical arrangement. Compared to those in Boscotrecase, the plants here have more individuality, although because of their two-dimensionality and their symmetrical composition they are completely subject to the overall decorative effect. The painter of a wall in the building of Eumachia in Pompeii, dated to the period of Tiberius (AD 20-30), went a step further. 15 Here, the black socle is subdivided by ochre uprights—corresponding to the intercolumniations of the main zone—into oblong fields, each of which is occupied by three plants. Various kinds of tufts, including iris plants with or without red and white flowers, stand on a red ground-line which separates the black background from a low brown skirting board.
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