National Gallery of Art Exploring the Grove: Pastoral Space on Roman Walls Author(s): BETTINA BERGMANN Source: Studies in the History of Art, Vol. 36, Symposium Papers XX: The Pastoral Landscape (1992), pp. 20-46 Published by: National Gallery of Art Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42620374 Accessed: 08-02-2018 16:00 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/42620374?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms National Gallery of Art is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in the History of Art This content downloaded from 159.92.238.59 on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 16:00:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms /';-=09 )(8* =-0/'] This content downloaded from 159.92.238.59 on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 16:00:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 4 BETTINA BERGMANN Mount Holyoke College Exploring the Grove : Pastoral Space on Roman Walls scend subject matter - pure form evokes a countryside in Western art appear on the privileged spot, demarcated from the world The walls countryside walls earliest of Roman of housesRoman painted surviving in the in first Western houses images painted art appear of in an the on idyllic first the at large. Pastoral space thus becomes meta- centuries b.c. and a.d. In subject, com- phorical, focusing on artifice itself.2 position, and mood these images could The inclusion of nonrepresentational be models for the pastoral landscapes in- space within the art historical category of vented in Venice in the early sixteenth cen- pastoral painting indicates a growing con- tury, yet their status as details of interior cern to distinguish between mode and wall decoration, their execution by work- intent in discussions of pastoral and land- shop craftsmen, and their indirect relation- scape art. Leo Marx identifies as "pas- ship to literary texts have excluded them toralism" a persistent attitude throughout from the genre.1 Indeed, neither literary Western culture that has found expression critics nor art historians formulated a pas- in many modes and genres, while Denis toral category of landscape in antiquity. Yet Cosgrove argues that landscape art, includ- the lack of a critical definition does not ing pastoral, along with maps and literary deny the existence of artistic precedents description, in may be a manifestation of po- a cultural tradition. Specific social and litical eco- phenomena. 3 If these broad concepts nomic changes in central Italy in the accommodate first the protean nature of pas- centuries b.c. and a.d. stimulated the toral, rep- they also raise questions about its resentation of one type of landscape, parameters. the How can the impulse for the sacred grove, which in subject and compo- creation of a landscape be distinguished sition articulates the primary pastoral from con- pastoralism? cerns of conflict and escape. Through its artifice every landscape Normally the term "pastoral" evokes painting rus- harbors that paradox essential to tic scenes, shepherds tending their flocks, pastoral: one is both invited and detached a quiet place and peaceful mood. Recently, while involved in a process that heightens however, art historians have identified awareness pas- of one's station in the present toral not as a distinct subject matter world. and Yet a pastoral landscape is more per- theme, but as certain compositional sistentstruc- in its challenge to the viewer; its tures or relationships of pictorial features emphatic internal conflicts make the very that offer spectators "inviting occasions" act of viewing conflict-ridden as well. Ac- for escape and reverie. Such structures cording to modern criteria, any representa- posit a visible dialectic between nature tion and promoting this particular heightened civilization. In painting of the twentieth response to art and nature qualifies as century, pastoral structures may even pastoral. tran- 21 This content downloaded from 159.92.238.59 on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 16:00:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms In light of our expanded understanding of like the rocks and trees, an intrinsic part of pastoral art, a réévaluation of Roman paint- a larger setting. Instead the main focus of ings is in order. Although the literary forms most scenes is a structure or a mythical of ancient pastoralism, especially those of moment that posits a series of oppositions Theocritus and Virgil, are usually regarded between the natural and the human, "be- as the heart of later revivals, the existence tween the little world of natural simplicity of an ancient visual tradition of pastoral and . artifice in general/' as stated in has not been directly addressed. Perhaps Halperin's second criterion. In this simple wary of anachronistic projection, scholars dialectic Roman images of groves are com- focus on the bucolic motifs that abound in parable to the "classical" pastoral paint- various media from the Augustan period. 4 ings of art history. A recent analysis of the various postclassi- An even more compelling and un- cal theories of literary pastoral, however, explored aspect of Roman landscapes is led David Halperin to conclude that al- Halperin's third criterion of a contrast "be- though there was no articulated concep- tween a confused or conflict-ridden reality tion of pastoral in antiquity, an attitude and the artistic depiction of it as compre- compatible with modern concepts did hensible, meaningful, or harmonious." If exist. Halperin's four-point definition rec- one looks beyond the contents of each ognizes pastoralism as a broad cultural scene to its location on a painted wall, to phenomenon that may include ancient its architectural milieu, and finally to its and modern, literary and visual modes: historical moment, the groves express a complex pastoral attitude, for their setting 1. Pastoral is the name commonly given to liter- confers on them a meaning alien to their ature about or pertaining to herdsmen and their nature. activities in a country setting ; these activities In analyzing the Roman images, we must are conventionally assumed to be three in num- ber: caring for the animals under their charge , address the issue of ancient visuality, singing or playing musical instruments, and namely the modes of vision employed and making love. differentiated by the Romans. In variety and kind, the pictorial structures of painted 2. Pastoral achieves significance by oppositions , landscapes capture views that were ideal- by the set of contrasts, expressed or implied, which the values embodied in its world create ized by contemporary poets, villa owners, with other ways of life. The most traditional and geographers. While the remains of pri- contrast is between the little world of natural vate estates attest to the popularity of such simplicity and the great world of civilization, views, discussions about vision, nature, power, statecraft, ordered society ; established and territorial control reveal a deeper, met- codes of behavior, and artifice in general. aphorical meaning behind them. The con- 3. A different kind of contrast equally intimate fluence of these perceptual attitudes in the to pastoral's manner of representation is that first centuries b.c. and a.d. produced a cre- between a confused or conflict-ridden reality ative moment of pastoralism, of which the and the artistic depiction of it as comprehen- groves painted on domestic walls are one sible, meaningful, or harmonious. expression. 4. A work which satisfies the requirements of any two of the three preceding points has ful- Pictorial Structures of the Sacred Grove filled the necessary and sufficient conditions of pastoral. 5 Roman landscapes have traditionally been Thus defined, a pastoral painting can evaluated apart from their context, an ap- range from a combination of bucolic fea- proach that is justified by the framing de- tures to certain structures of representa- vices around many examples and by the ap- tion. Although many Roman paintings of parent similarities of these landscapes to groves satisfy Halperin's first criterion in European oil paintings. Ironically this atti- that they depict herdsmen caring for ani- tude has determined the present appear- mals, this activity is rarely their primary ance of many of these works, which, cut subject, for the figures and animals are, from their settings in the eighteenth and 22 BERGMANN This content downloaded from 159.92.238.59 on Thu, 08 Feb 2018 16:00:49 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms nineteenth centuries, now hang in wooden gardless of scale, original placement, and frames on the white walls of the Museo quality of execution. While such schemes Archeologico Nazionale, Naples. Yet these clearly reflect an efficient method of as- detached images of groves, as the following sembling ready-made pictorial units in the analysis will show, are coherent composi- rapid technique of fresco and thereby con- tions in which pictorial structures, taken firm that the images were not based on in conjunction with their decorative set- direct observation of the environment, ting, may readily be identified as pastoral. their ideal structures represent a selection In this discussion "grove" connotes a fromsa- and judgment about that environ- cred space in nature where one or more ment, and their repetition lends them the trees, distinctive earth forms such as status of topoiJ caves and boulders, and water in springs or That the pictorial structures of Roman brooks are designated - by a structure, by landscape were meaningful, even meta- various votive objects, and by attendant phorical, is evident in images of the grove.