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Philostratus and the Imaginary Museum for Piglet's Grandfather, for the Sign TRESPASSERS Wand for NORMAN BRYSON Christopher Robin

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Philostratus and the Imaginary Museum for Piglet's Grandfather, for the Sign TRESPASSERS Wand for NORMAN BRYSON Christopher Robin JOHN ELSNER w. And Christopher Hobin's two names, when taken lOp;ethcr with 'Trespassers after an uncle and William after Trespassers', became CHAPTER EIGHT proof. They did not simply prove that Piglet had a grandfather. They proved that the language-game of two names I.:ould work, and that it could provide an identity for all concerned for Piglet, philostratus and the imaginary museum for Piglet'S grandfather, for the sign TRESPASSERS wand for NORMAN BRYSON Christopher Robin. Through competition, the limits of the credible, of identity itself, had changed. 34 The Imagines of the Elder philostratus must cuunt as one of the great ruins of antiquity (Fig. ]9). From the Renaissance until the time ofthe excavations at Pompeii and ITerculaneum, the-Imagines, together with tlie--sur~T~ing-!ragments preserved in' RO~le, ~titUted virtually all that couldJ);k~;I~-E~~bpe-::;l~~~r';~~ classical painting. Even today, when so much more of that painting has been brought to light, the Imagines remains ~ ~~e reso~~c.e. It is our most extensive account of what a Roman picture gallery, a Roman catalogue ofpictures, ;md the Roman viewing of pictures may have been like. philostratus claims to base his account in actuality. In the Proem he assures his reader that his sixty-odd verb'll descriptions are rendered after original paintings (pil1.akes) housed in a single collection ill Neapolis (Naples). I was lodging olltside the walls lof Neapolisj in a suburb facing the sea, where there was a portico built on four, I think, or possibly five terr'lCes, open to tile east wind and looking out on the Tyrrhl'l\ian sea. It w:!s resplendent with all the marbles favoured by luxury, blll it was , ", particularly splendid by reason of the panel-paintings set within the walls, paintings which I thought had been collected with real for thev exhibited the skill of very many painters. I philostratus has been asked by the son of his host to speak about the paintings, and he agrees. The text that follows presents itsd!" as the record of his discourses, delivered before an ,IUdience ofynung men' eager to learn', in the presence of the pictllr('s lH Parr of the fascination of the text for the Renaissance and 2~) -~,..~ .......".---­ PHI LOS T RAT USA N I) TilE I MAG I N A II Y M {' Sj. NORMAN BRYSON eighteenth century seem to have intensified this A t1anti.~-like ) aspect of the Imagines, and in the nineteenth century attempts were \1,. undertaken to correlate philostratus' text with the .~ u..l1earth::J_~ ex~v~ti~~. One consequence ofsuch efforts was that the ctescriptions were found by some scholars n~~ to correspond, ,I \, <-U),}l)'Ut,)l)r1 \... or not to correspond closely 5nough, wit]I the Campani,ln paintings. A debate accordingly developed from the second half of (ft.... l the~T;,eteenth century and into the twentieth century in which the in--l~ . CJuestion of the authenticity of the descriptions became the leading CJuestion. Were they reliable, or had philostratus invented the. entire gallery out of nothing as a virtuoso exercise in ecp1Irasis? ( ~ll~~n became polarised,~with figures such as Welcker, > Brunn, and Wickhotf on the side ofauthenticity, opposing CayIus) Friedrichs, Matz and Robert.2 Scholarship in English played a lesser role in the debate, with the great exception of Karl Lehmann'5 article 'The Imagines of the Elder Philostratus', published in Art Bulletin some fifty years ago, in 1941.:1 Coming almost at the close of the' authenticity' debate, Lehmann's article advanced what is perhaps the most vigorous and ingenious case ever mounted in defence of the view that the Imagines were b'lsed on an actual picture collection from the late second century or early third century CEo ok Lehmann begins ~h Goethe's essay' Philostrats ~;ema.lde' 'J written in 1818.4 Goethe had maintained that the present order of the sixty-odd elements in the Ifllaljines is confused and confusing. Acc( ,rdingly he rearranged them under nine separate headings: ( 1) Heroic an(1 Tragic Subjects; (2) Love and Wooing; (3) Birth and Education; (4) Deeds of Herakles; () Athletic Contests; «(i) Hunters and Hunting; (7) Poetry, Song and Dance; (8) Landscapes; and (9) Still Lite. Lehmann takes Goethe's thematic Fig. 29 re-ordering, which aimed at a clearer editorial se(luence, and puts it to use within the debate on the authenticity of Philostratus' modern reader has been the promise contained in the idea of pictures. Working entirely from the existing, and apparently resurrection: from its pages might be constructed an entire gallery confused, sequence, Lehmann argues that it is possible to account of the lost paintings ofantiquity, together with the context of their for both the coherence of thematic groupings within the Imar;illes reception by a living audience. Though the paintin~s at Pompeii and the seeming incoherences of sequence also present in the text and Herculaneum antedate philostratus by two centuries, the by mapping the Imagines against an arcl!itectura/~ "} "-. lS(i discoveries in Campania anel their publication from the mid­ ~........-. NOHMAN BRYSON PHll.OSTRATllS AND TIIF IMA(;INARY ~ll'SE'" Some examples will help to clarify Lehmann's processes of reasoning. In the second book of the Imagines occur six 20 consecutive pictures illustrating the adventures of Herakles. r A~'~sl 'I· Africa I Lehmann points out that it is inconceivable that this grouping _ J could be accidental. [. Apart from a fleeting appearance in the WALL II picture of the Argonauts (2. I 5), Herakles features nowhere else in ---lUi the sixty-odd descriptions. And yet, the sequence of the Ilerakles ""I ),.1 '0 ej rlibY "I~ pictures is strange. The first (2.20) portrays the contest between ___aJ I , ~r Herakles and Atlas; the scene takes place in north-western Africa. -I -I ,...~ The second (2.21) shows the fight between Heraklcs and Antaios; ~ now the scene is Libya. The next depicts Herakles, again in north Africa, sleeping and attacked by the Pygmies (2.22). Obviously il 3 these three (2.20-2.22) are concerned with Herakles' African ~. adventures, Then /()liows a picture representing the madness of Alll'rtM Herakles, and now a temporal series can be inferred: after completing the last of the twelve Labours, Herakles voyaged along the coast of Africa, encountering on the way Antaios and later the A1IUes~'1 Pygmies, before his return home and his attack of insanity. This EL sequence accounts clearly for numbers 2.20-2.23 four of the six Herakles episodes. But the two remaining pictures (2.24 and 2.25) Fi!-,. lO do not fit this scheme at all. Picture 2.24 deals with Herakles and Theiodamas. In the myth, the episode can be located in two ending at the 'wrong' points. The sequence should be: the different regions - Thessaly and Rhodes. philostratus reads the commencement of Herakles' adventures in Thessaly; Heraklcs and landscape of 2.24 as Rhodian. To Lehmann, this sounds odd. For the horses of Diomedes; Herakles and Atlas; then I Ierakles' return if the painter had intended the landscape as that of Rhodes, the voyage, including the episodes with Antaios and with the Pygmies, picture should properly have been placed between the African in North Africa; finally Herakles' homecoming and madness. If adventures and Herakles' final homecoming. Lehmann's resolution Philostratus' account were cut and resequenced it would make up oT the anomaly is to claim that philostratus was wrong to interpret a single story. How has this Raw in the presentation come about? the landscape as that of Rhodes. In fact the mountains in the ' It is here that Lehmann advances the hypothesis of the Room picture must be those of Thessaly which is where. lIcrakles' 0 (fig. 3 ). If the secluence is laid out as it continuous chronicle, its · l' L.abours begm. six component episodes can be thought of as forming a band of Picture 2.24 thus inaugurates the narrative sequence. The next pictures inset into the walls ofa single chamber. The hypothesis of picture in the Imagilles shows one of the Labours - the taming of the Room then permits Lehmann to advance the corollary idea, of the horses of Diomcdcs. Though it comes last in the series, in the Doorway. That the Imagines confusingly recounts the terms of a continuous chronicle it follows 2.24 and precedes the Herakles episodes in the order 3/4/5 /6/ 1/2 can be explained if later episodes, 2.20 to 2.23. \Vhat has happened is that the PiJilostr;Ht!s is imagined entering the room through a ') X Imagines has run through a continuous story, but starting and placed between the second and third pictures (2.2~, . The horses of ]., II ..... ; .......... ,'~..~~. NOHMIIN BRYSON PHILOSTRATliS AND THE IMAGINARY MI'SEl',' Diomedes' and 2.20, 'Atlas '). philostratus passes through the door, turns to one side, and begins his text in the middle of the Herakles legend (fig. 30). Observing the 'correct' narrative sequence is evidently less important to him than describing the pictures as he Ilnds them in situ, set into the walls. I f the existence of room and doorway is accepted, the break in sequence can be WALL read as an architectural caesura, not a textual glitch. (In Lehmann's reading, all textual discontinuities will be projected as architectural 9 registers: disunity in the text is to be resolved into the unity of the t !l. building; the text's openings, interruptions, and incompleteness I will be transformed, through a specific ecphrastic operation, into J, the wholeness of an image, an edifice, a museum.) Having tested the hypotheses of the room and the doorway and finding them secure, Lehmann now proceeds to blot'k in the walls s of his ml/see imaginaire from dado to cornice.
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