We looked last time at the magnificent paintings

in the Villa of Livia at Primaporta.

And we talked about the fact that that was the quintessential second style wall.

Because more then any other we saw it it was truly the wall as panorama as a vista

into something that might lie beyond and we described in great detail the

features of this particular painting.

It's interesting that you wouldn't think that a gardenscape would be

a good subject for third style Roman wall painting, a kind of painting that

again respects the flatness of a wall and yet we do have examples

of what we would term third style Roman wall painting showing the

depiction of a gardenscape and I turn to that now.

The painting that you look at is on the wall of

the house of the Orchard, the Casa del Frutteto, in Pompeii.

In the orchard, the so-called orchard cubiculum, and it dates to AD 25 to AD 50.

So considerably, later, and it's interesting by the

way, to note the chronology here, third-style Roman

wall painting has a quite long life, because if we talk about it being used

already in 20-10 BC at Oplontis and we're now looking at a house that could

be as late as 50, might have been decorated as late as 50 AD that

takes us, sixty or seventy years for this one style.

So although I said there's cycles of

fashion, fashion wasn't changing all that quickly.

At this particular juncture.

But here we see a gardenscape, in what we would call a third style wall.

Now why do we call this a third style wall?

It's divided into zones. We have a black socle down here.

We have a zone here which seems to show a fence.

A more substantial fence than we saw

in the villa, the gardenscape of Livia.

It does seem to support some marble

vessels, or vases here.

So you might, you should look at the bottom, you

think well, maybe there is some suggestion of some space.

In fact, if you look very carefully at the gateway of the fence, you can see

that there is some attempt to represent it, as if it recedes in to depth.

At least the doorway, so there's some attempt at that here.

But if you look at this zone, I think you'll agree with me that

the artists have once again, the painters have

once again, respected the flatness of the wall.

Yes there are columns here, but they are not substantial columns.

They are attenuated columns, maybe not as

attenuated as Boscotrecase but attenuated nonetheless.

They do have capitals at the top, but as you walk into this room and

look at them from a distance, they look like gold stripes on a flat back wall.

And in fact, the fact that the wall was painted black is very significant,

and not blue as we saw in the gardenscape of Livia at Primaporta.

And look also, what's particularly interesting is the way in which

the artist has positioned the trees within the frames of the columns.

If you look very closely you will see

that there isn't a single leaf that either overlaps

the columns or that disappears behind the columns.

They are completely contained, within those columns, they are represented very

abstractly, very flat, and so because they are contained within

those we get the impression not that we're looking at a

gardenscape that is somehow viewed through a window behind the columns.

But is it it's almost as if we're looking at a Japanese

screen or something like that.

It's a flat surface that has been decorated with depictions of trees

not of you to look at trees that lie behind these columns.

It's, it's very, it's really fascinatingly done I think and if we look at a detail

of the wall in the Casa del Frutteto over here and of a tree, and a detail

of a tree from Livia's Villa at Primaporta,

I think we again see the differences between the two.

Blue background, which gives us a sense of reality here; mountains in the

background, as you'll remember, a black

background here, gives a very different effect.

Here, we talked about how the artist was a particularly good observer of nature.

Had really gone out and looked at

real trees.

Had looked at the way in which leaves rustled in the breeze.

Had looked at the way in which, again, light falls differently on leaves.

You could, it can bathe them in light or it can bathe them in shadow.

We looked at the very realistic way in which the artist depicted the birds who

are in flight, and then alight on, a, on a leaf or a branch of the tree.

Look at the difference here.

The leaves

are beautifully rendered, beautifully rendered, but they are

rendered, they are all rendered essentially the same.

You don’t have the same sense of the difference of

light and shadow, you don't have this same sense, I

mean you don't, these seem immutable not as if they

could be ruffled by the breeze at all, immutable shapes.

And look at the difference in the bird, who himself seem

or herself, seems to be a shape against a black background

you don't get this sense, there's no sense of movement as you see

of the birds, as you see at the Villa of Livia at Primaporta.

The bird is one shape among many shapes.

The sinuous snake that makes its way up the tree.

Has you know you have some sense again of this sort of teasing us here.

There's some sense of depth.

Because as it slithers all along here you get the sense

that it is intertwining itself ,with ,with the trunk of the tree so

that maybe there's a hint of, of of, some depth and some motion there so

this is interesting play I think that the artist has, has created here.

But on the whole this again is a painting that clearly respects

all the tenants that have come to be from the point of view

of these artists third style Roman wall painting even for a subject as

as unlikely for this as a gardenscape. [COUGH] we have talked

about third style Roman wall paintings in Campania.

We have talked about the fact that a lot of it seems

to be connected in some way to members of the imperial household.

And we see the same also in Rome and it's to Rome that I would now like to turn and

specifically to the golden house or the Domus Aurea of the Emperor Nero.

I show you a view of the famous octagonal room of Nero's

Domus Aurea It is one of the greatest rooms in Roman architecture.

It's an octagonal room

that has a large oculus that is made

out of concrete, it has radiating alcoves and it

is in a sense of grandiose version of the

frigidarium that we saw in the Stabian and Forum Baths at Pompeii.

It is part of a very major

architectural revolution under Nero It is extremely important.

We'll talk about it in great detail, vis a vis the architecture, in a later lecture.

But I do want to bring up just the, the, contextually it works better for

me to talk about the paintings separately, and

the paintings in connection to paintings in Pompeii.

And it's to those paintings, that I'm going to turn [COUGH] now.

The paintings in Nero's Domus Aurea, that we will

see are both third and also fourth style Roman paintings.

So once again, we seem to be in a situation where

we are looking at a palace in this case commissioned by

an imperial patron in which it looks like there was an important

transition from one Roman decoration, one Roman wall painting decoration

style to another in this case the third style to the fourth style.

The Domus Aurea paintings are important for three major reasons.

The first reason is we can date them exactly.

We know that these paintings, both of the third and the fourth

styles, were done in the Domus Aurea between 64 AD and 68 AD.

We also know, and we know this very rarely, the name of the painter who

was responsible for the third and fourth style painting in the Domus Aurea.

His name is

one you will, I hope you will, I, I'm not,

hope, I know you will never forget because his name was Fabullus,F-a-b-u-l-l-u-s,

Fabullus and he was indeed as you shall see truly fabulous.

Fabullus is known from, we know him from the writings of Pliny.

Many of you have probably read the writings of Pliny.

Tells us a lot about art, ancient art and Pliny tells

us that Fabullus was the painter for the Domus Aurea in Rome.

And he tells us a couple of other interesting

tidbits about Fabullus.

He tells us that Fabullus always used to paint in a toga.

Painting in a toga is like painting in a three piece suit, today.

You wouldn't paint in a, you know, painting in a

toga, it makes no sense to paint in a toga.

But he obviously, whether he really painted in a toga, we don't know.

But that was his reputation, which means he

dressed up for the event, took it very seriously.

We also know from Pliny that, or

Pliny tells us that the Domus Aurea was Fabullus' Prison.

Why was it Fabullus' prison?

It was Fabullus' prison because any of you who have visited the Domus Aurea and

those of you who haven't, I hope you will when you are in Rome, because

it's an extraordinary place to see, will,

will see that it is corridor after corridor

after corridor after corridor and we only have today a very small piece of the

Domus Aurea preserved.

So if, if, if Fabullus' job was to paint all

of the walls and all of the ceilings of the

Domus Aurea, it would have indeed taken a lifetime, it

would have indeed served as a kind of prison for him.

I suppose later, it might be interesting to think of him

in connection to, he was not as great as but he was

in a sense the Michelangelo of his time.

Think about Michelangelo and the Sistine ceiling and all the time

that he devoted to, to painting that extraordinary space also in Rome.

I show you a couple of views of the corridors.

I'm not going to go into detail now on exactly why this

is the case, but the Domus Aurea is now underground, it's subterranean.

It was, it was raised to the ground, and

covered over in part by a later Roman

emperor that we'll talk about in the future.

So if, when you visit it today, you need to go underground.

It was buried for a long time and rediscovered in the renaissance

and it's interesting because we know that the famous painter Raphael, the famous

renaissance painter Raphael, went underground and was one of the first to

see the paintings of the Domus Aurea because Raphael left a graffito on

the wall which basically says Raphael was here.

And we're fortunate that he left that because it tells us again that he

was here and we're not surprised because this is a loggetta in the Vatican today

that was designed by, it was painted by Raphael and you can see how much

the paintings of the Domus Aurea were

weathered obviously then the one on the left.

But the painting of the Domus Aurea had a huge impact

on Rafael.

I'm going to show you three rooms in the Domus Aurea.

The first is the, and I'm sorry I have to show you this to you in black and white.

It's the only image.

And it's very hard to photograph there.

And it's of one of the, it's the only image I happen to have of this wall.

But I am showing you a room called

the Sala degli Uccelletti, which means the room of the birds.

And like the other

paintings I'm going to show you today, it dates to 64 to 68 AD.

You can see that this is a third style Roman wall painting.

It partakes of all the features that we've

already described for third style Roman wall painting.

It, it it, it has a flat wall as you can see here, it's not painted

red or black, but in this case white which makes it even more delicate looking

but it is definitely, they have definitely observe

the integrity of the wall and painted it white.

You can also see that the architectural members that there are are

very attenuated and look like stripes on the wall from a distance.

You can see that some of the frames are vegetal or floral, very delicate

as you can see here, and then in the central panels, and it's the reason

that it's called the Sala degli Uccelletti--, we have little birds and those little birds float

in the center of these panels, once again, a decorative motif among many.

So the flatness of the wall observed a wall

that is flat and to be decorated by the painter.

But that's a Sala degli Uccelletti: third style. This is a vault in the

Domus Aurea which is useful for us because here

we can get a better sense of the color.

Once again the background is white.

And once again, the integrity of the wall has been respected.

The artist has divided that wall into a

series of panels but within those panels, we

see once again sea creatures, in this case,

floating in the center of those framed panels.

We are meant to read them as frame panels, not as views into some other world.

Note also that some of the frames are

done with vegetal and floral floral, floral motifs.

Very very delicate, very attractive, very ephemeral in a

sense, very light, light weight against that white background.

So very much again another example of third style Roman

wall painting. But then there is this room and this room

is room 78, and room 78 is extremely important for us because we see

something else is happening in room 78. Yes, it does still have a white wall.

Yes it does still use a floral decoration for some of the frames.

Yes it does have framed panels,

in this case not with black but with red frames as

you can see here, all elements of the third style absolutely.

So it partakes of a number of third style elements the white wall itself is very

third style thing to do but you will

notice of course that something new has happened here.

And that is more substantial architecture has been or the representation of

more substantial architecture has been reintroduced.

If you look at these architectural elements

that frame some of the panels you will

see that we see once again real columns,

real columns that seem to support projecting lintels.

And then through those, once again a white background in

this case, but through those we see other elements of architecture.

Here a two

storied columnar a ob a monument and over here what seems to be a

broken triangular pediment supported by substantial columns.

So architecture is, substantial architecture is reintroduced

in the central zone flanking the panels

on either side, but it is a different architecture then we've ever seen before

because we never see a complete building, we see only fragments of buildings.

This broken triangular pediment on it's own is an example of that.

Fragments of buildings which we will see are

depicted in what I would describe as illogical space.

They don't look like they're actually, occupying space the way a regular

building would or what is, in what is characteristic of the second style.

But depicted, fragments of buildings depicted in a logical space.

And then very important in the upper most zone we see a depiction of

a number of these fragments of architecture,

all jumbled together, almost to create a building.

Although it isn't a building that actually works.

I like to call these architectural

cages, because they're, they are individual elements,

individual fragments, again, that are grouped together.

Architectural cages that often have in them very strange mythological

and other creatures most of whom are very difficult, to identify today.

So we see this incredible transition

between the third style Roman wall painting

that Fabullus is using for the Domus Aurea to something that is transitioning us

into what we call the fourth style. In fact I would call this room

a fourth style, Roman room, a fourth style painted room.

And the genius behind this, I would speculate was Fabullus himself.

7.4 A Third Style Garden and Fabullus Paints the Domus Aurea in Rome

Roman Architecture

Meet the Instructors