I want to show you another example of, of fourth style because we believe fourth style remember the date of the Domus Aurea 64 to 68 so if it is being if it's coming to the the four, the fourth style at that time it means it is about the time of the earthquake in Pompeii. And we do see paintings in Pompeii that we believe date between the earthquake of '62 and the eruption of Vesuvius of '79 that are examples also of fourth style Roman wall painting. This is one of them. It's a wall from the House of the Vestals in Pompeii. It dates to 62 to 70 AD. And we can see exactly what I was describing at the Domus Aurea. We look at the bottom part, and we see that it still has it still looks like a third style wall in that. We see golden panels and red panels with floating figures in the center and with floral decorations around those. We see over here a mythological panel with a black frame around it that is meant to look like a panel picture hanging on a flat wall. All of that is exactly what we saw in the third style, but again, what separates this from a third-style painting is this reintroduction of architecture over here, architecture pre- presented against a white background, but it's not a full building, it is a fragment of a building, a fragment of a building with substantial architectural members and a projecting entablature above. And then in the upper zone again, against a white background, those architectural cages, those fragments of architecture that have been jumbled together and are used as a [UNKNOWN] for these very strange creatures. Animal, human and the like that are, that are located in them. These architectural cages that are also decorated with strange and interesting ornamentation at the upper most part, so another example of fourth style. Our very best examples of fourth style Roman wall painting all come from a single house in Pompeii. It is a house that we looked at together before. It is the House of the Vettii. You'll remember the kitchen in the House of the Vettii. For example the wonderful garden that we explored there. It is also a house that has an incredible array of paintings. And it shows us several stages of the fourth style. And I should mention also, that while we call these styles first, second, third, and fourth, as anything else they have sub-styles, sub, sub-styles and transition periods, you know one can refer to late early second style, mature second style, late second style, early third style, you know all, there are certain subtleties. Because again, remember, the artists who were making these were not thinking, oh, I'm transitioning from the second to the third style. They were just moving on. They were experimenting with things they hadn't experimented before, and they soon found themselves in a different milieu. So, there are those subtleties and we can see those in the House of the Vettii. I can show you early, middle and even late fourth style at the House of the Vettii, which is just what I'm going to do now. We're going to begin with Garden Room Q which is the one that you see here which you can see from the monument list we believe dates to 62 to 70 AD, Garden Room Q. Now if all of Garden Room Q that was preserved was the bottom part, if you didn't have that very top zone, and I asked you what style is this, you would probably tell me third style. And you'd be right that it was third style. But, the addition of that zone in the uppermost part gives it away as a fourth style wall. But it's again, a very good example of an early one because we can see this transition. So, in the bottom again, very much adhering to the tenants of third style Roman wall painting. Design, respecting the flatness of the wall, dividing the wall into a series of zones. a socle that's black. A main section that's red so the wings on either side that are also black but as you look at this wall from a distance those black elements look like stripes large black stripes on the wall and even within those black stripes we see these very attenuated delicate colonnettes Close up, you can see that they're colonnettes, but from a distance, again, they look like gold stripes on a flat wall. Floating, floating mythological figures in the center, as is characteristic of the first style. And then there was a panel painting over here that was rudely removed by treasure hunters at one point. So panel pictures as well as floating mythological figures, and then at the uppermost part, you see this addition, white ground architectural cages, as I've described them, with a whole panoply of interesting mythological and other figures that are inserted into those architectural cages. So a very early example of fourth style Roman wall painting in the House of the Vettii in Rome. These again are so interesting in detail, if you blow this up to the size that we see it here you will see that this is that black background in between the red panels that we were looking at before. You can see all kinds of strange things going on here in detail. A female figure semi-naked. She's clashing her cymbals, she's dancing here. And she is supporting on her head, she's oblivious to the fact that she's supporting on her head the base of one of these one of these colonnettes, as you can see here. Pays no heed whatsoever that she's serving as a support for the colonnettes, and that either side of her, what we call herms, H-E-R-M-S which are part-human and part-pedestal male heads, bearded male heads, carrying libation dishes or whatever on either side, and then a very interesting sacrifice scene down here. So again, as I've said so many times, looking at these paintings, the details of these paintings, is a very intriguing experience. The room that seems to be a good example of the mid-fourth style is the House of the Vettii, Room of Pentheus, which we date to around 70 AD. You see it here. It is very well preserved. It is a room in which the color gold abounds, as you can see. A maroon socle. The gold central zone. it, it partakes of third style in that, you can see that the main parts of the wall are flat with a panel, a mythological panel picture that is surrounded by a frame. So just to make absolutely sure that the viewer understands that what they are looking at here is a panel picture that hangs on a flat wall. Not a window into something that lies beyond but we see in this central zone the reintroduction of architecture. Substantial architecture where you can really make out the columns and the pediments but not full buildings. Fragments of buildings. Fragments of buildings that are represented in very illogical space as you can see here. In substantial elements like this with the supporting the columns supporting the lentil with the coffered ceiling represented in perspective so all of that brought back but again these are not full buildings as we would see in the second style but these fragments in illogical space, and the detail again of the saying that I just described. And it's interesting to compare it to some details from second style Roman wall painting. Think Fannius Sinistor the metropolitan museum cubiculum, where you can actually, and these are, you really have a sense of what this building was. There's a doorway that leads in, and then there are a series of tiers and there's a balcony and everything, everything connects to one another. But here we see something quite different where we see a, not a whole building or parts of a building together, but rather these individual pieces that are depicted as I mentioned in a very illogical way. The, the glory of Fourth Style Roman Wall painting depends on your taste, because it is very gaudy as well, but one could say that the greatest preserved, or the most interesting, let's put it that way, the most interesting preserved Fourth Style wall is also in the House of the Vettii, it is in the Ixion Room of the House of the Vettii. We believe it dates to 70 to 79. It is our you know, an example of full blown fourth style at it's most incredible. And, you know, it's almost as if this artist wanted to be remembered for posterity. We don't know his name unfortunately but. Remembered for posterity as the person who created the textbook example of fourth style Roman wall painting, and what's fascinating about it is what he has done is he has mixed together all of the earlier styles, first, second, third, fourth. First, we see the socle down here is all done in paint. But it is painted to represent marble, or to imitate marble encrustation, just as we saw in the first style, so the marble encrustation of the first style used for the socle, but again, in paint, not in relief. The second tier, we see the substantial column supporting lentils and entablatures with. With coffered ceilings represented in depth that's the second style element. This style these panels red with mythological paintings in the center with frames and over here a white panel with floral decoration and floating mythological figures, those are elements of the third style And the fourth style, re-introduction of architecture in the central zone. Fragments of architecture, not full buildings. Fragments of architecture depicted in illogical space. And then in the uppermost tier these architect, these architectural cages with peopled with all kinds of strange figures, animals. Divinities personifications and the like, so all of those four styles brought together in one place. Here's another view, one that perhaps gives you an even better sense, not of everything I've described, but of the overall appearance of this room as one walks into it. It's actually a very small room but it gives you the sense of grandiosity. And this is interesting, too, because you see in this case. The artist has kind of matched up the I mean, he's he's represented two very similar fragment's one on either side that in a sense as you stare at it gives you the sense or at least gives me the sense that perhaps maybe there is something that continues behind the wall or behind this central mythological panel picture. That you see here, but this is quintessential, quintessential fourth style Roman wall painting. I think, I had I went to show you also one more detail here. Where you can see, here you can see one of those one of these elements with the fragments of architecture in the illogical space in detail and you can see even, even here too there are strange things are going on, we see masks reintroduced in the fourth style, we see in this case, that mask is supported by a panel picture that represents a, a curved staff, an animal, some, some baskets on top of a table. I mean, it's, you try to interpret exactly what all this meant. But, it's interesting how much detail is put into these, even though each of this individual items are difficult to see you tend when you walk into a room like this, you tend to look at the whole, not at the individual details, and yet, the artist, patrons and so on, have paid a great attention, of attention to that detail.
