Pompeii No.42: A Return for Marcus Aurelius

My original idea for filling this wall was to create a trompe l'oeil arrangement that resembled a wall of the London residence of Sir John Soane.

musicartlondon.wordpress.com

Not only was Soane England's premier Neoclassical architect, but he appears to have been the first person to collect architectural salvage on a large scale. Later in life, he trained young architects from his house, and his collection became an important source of learning for them. Sir John Soane had a very modern design sense, and I'm a huge fan of his work. You can read more about him in the homage I posted here.

At some point, though, I realized that to continue my masonry lines and to also paint architectural remnants would be much too busy, and that I would be better off to pick one great sculpture and give it preeminence.

I settled on this huge sculpture of barbarians kneeling before Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is about to pardon them. The sculpture, which is nearly life-sized, is incorporated into the main staircase of the Palazzo del Conservatori, one of the Capitoline Museums. It's interesting that the emperor's gesture mirrors the statue of him that is in front of the same museum, below.

Looking at the composition, I was bothered by one head that seemed slightly out of scale, and which, in my opinion, detracted from the head of the emperor's immediate companion, Tiberius Claudius Pompeianus. And so I took the liberty of removing it — adiós!

I begin by outlining the figures. All the straight lines are still in pencil because I'll go back and define them with a straightedge.

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Next I work in the middle of the image because I want to be satisfied with all the faces early in the process. I'm using Sherwin Williams paints the same way I'd use artists' acrylics, developing depth through washes of increasingly darker tones. I generally paint a range of middle tones, then paint darker tones, then paint highlights. Most of the real work is done in the middle tones.

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Here's the final image, what I call the Marcus Aurelius Plaque. You might recall that there is a roundel portrait of the emperor on the other side of the kitchen door, so I now also have a Marcus Aurelius Wall.

Looking towards the living room — I painted the plaque to match the coloration of the transom sculptures.

Here's a view looking back towards the kitchen.

In the next posting, I'll address something that's been bothering me for months, and I know it will improve the whole room. I hope you'll join me then!

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Pompeii No.41: The Kitchen Masonry

Here's the kitchen masonry painted, and now the Pompeii Room is starting to look finished on all three sides (four, if you count the transom). As you can see, the mural turns a corner into the living room, to meet a bookcase.

Because the masonry is rather stylized, I've kept the pediment equally simple, but I haven't decided whether it should be more ornate. On one hand, more detail might be fun, and on the other hand, no amount of detail will make the pediment truly trompe l'oeil because the 3-dimensional door frame is always seen at close range. What do you think — more detail, or leave as is?

Here's the kitchen surround, looking into the living room. As you can see, the kitchen masonry dovetails into the transom, which in turn meets the masonry of the opposite wall.

I've left room for a plaque to go in this space, and it might just be my favorite detail yet. Can you guess what will go here? All will be revealed in the next posting, and I hope you'll join me then!
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Pompeii No.40: The Kitchen Door Frame

In my posting No. 39, I revealed the corner of my dining room dedicated to Marcus Aurelius, below:

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Now it's time to move to the the yellow wall and tackle the kitchen door and the area that surrounds it, as seen in the diagram above and the image below:

Oh, oh, the color photo didn't turn out too well, so we'll make it a duotone and pretend it's an old archival image. The door frame was put up before I had any thought of a mural, so it's not Pompeian in style. I'd describe it as Elizabethan.

The door frame was designed around two angelic furniture details that were a Christmas gift many years ago from my sister-in-law, Alice. The rest of the door frame was built to my design by a very talented artist, Jerry Jones. When I designed the door, I was actually thinking of that great English treasure, Knole House, below.

knoleconservationteam.wordpress.com

Because the door frame was moved to my house from my previous address, it was not exactly flush to the wall. So the first order of business was to fill in a slight gap with a mixture of caulk, spackle — and on some rounded edges — papier maché.

I've painted the door frame to look like stone, and the rest of the wall will match the other masonry in the room.

Here's the finished kitchen door and the base coat for the wall, with masonry lines penciled in.

If you look closely, you can see that I've penciled a pediment over the door frame. I hope the result will give it a slightly more Neoclassic feel.

And I hope you join me for the next posting,

when I paint the blocks, and mortar them into place!

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Pompeii No.33: Painting Emperor Trajan

In my last posting I dedicated a dining room bust to the Emperor Nerva. His predecessors had been so cruel and tyrannical, and Nerva was so just by comparison, that he was perceived by the army to be weak. Fearing his own assassination, Nerva adopted the popular Trajan, a general of Spanish origin, and named him his successor. Nerva thereby placated the restless army, and soon thereafter died peacefully in his sleep.

click to enlarge   |   map by Mark D. Ruffner

Trajan (53-117 A.D.), a soldier-emperor, was regarded in his own time as the best of Roman emperors, and his reputation has endured. The Roman Empire reached its maximum territory under his reign, and if you click on the map above, you can see the extent of what he controlled. Trajan inaugurated public works and social welfare, and presided at a time of peace and prosperity. The Roman Senate would venerate all future emperors with the words, "Be luckier than Augustus and better than Trajan."

en.wikipedia.org   |   trauwerk.stanford.com   |   artflakes.com

Almost all images of Trajan reveal a commanding figure with a low brow and a stern countenance. For my transom bas relief, I've chosen the image on the right. I like it because it's a little softer, yet shows someone who must have been very calculating.

Here's my version of the Emperor Trajan. And below is a perspective of the finished transom.

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By now you may have figured out that the remaining three of the Five Good Emperors will each be painted above one of the three muses on the other walls of my room. I hope you join me for my next posting and the fun of another imperial portrait!

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I posted earlier about a modern typeface called "Trajan," based on the inscription of the famous Trajan Column. You can find it here. Appropriately, the incised names of "Nerva" and "Trajan" are in the Trajan font, which I expanded for spacing.

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Pompeii No.32: Five Good Emperors

The next stage in the decoration of the Pompeii Room is to incorporate the images of five successive Roman emperors. They reigned at the height and might of the empire, during a period of relative tranquility that became known as the time of The Five Good Emperors.

(History buffs and authorities will have to excuse me, since all five reigned after Pompeii was already covered by ash. This will just have to come under the heading of artistic license!)

In fact the Emperor Titus, son of Vespasian, ruled when Pompeii was destroyed. Titus was succeeded by his brother, Emperor Domitian, whose reign was one of terror, at least for everyone in close proximity to him.

art-prints-on-demand.com

Domitian was assassinated, and the Roman Senate, weary of the last several reigns, decided to appoint one of their own, an elderly senator named Nerva, shown above. Nerva was popular within the Roman Senate and a fair and just man by the standards of the day. His surprise ascension might be likened to that of Gerald Ford in our own time.

Nerva (30-98 A.D.) was the first of the Five Good Emperors, and a bas relief bust of him will fit into the niche on the left side of my transom. 

nndb.com  |  sacredantinous.com  |  en.wikipedia.org

Here you see three busts of Nerva, each one more stylized than the last. We can be certain that Nerva had a cleft chin and a small mouth, and perhaps a rather pinched expression. But determining how he really looked is almost akin to a forensics case.

One thing that has occurred to me is that the center bust appears to use the image of Caesar Augustus as a template. I will use that image, but narrow the head slightly and combine it with the smaller mouths seen in the other two busts.

Here's my version of Nerva. Because of his age (65 was quite advanced by Roman standards) and because he appears to have had a smaller jaw, you will notice that I have given Nerva slightly hollowed cheeks. Next week we'll look at the second of the Five Good Emperors, Trajan. 
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Pompeii No.31: The Transom's Central Panel

In my last posting, I mentioned that I was going to paint my dining room's transom to look like the top of a triumphal arch. The little drawing above illustrates the effect I want to achieve in terms of a wider central panel and two smaller panels.

Here are three Roman triumphal arches, and in each of them you can see that the top's center plaque is equal to the width of the actual arch, plus its adjacent columns (It's interesting that there seems to have been a design rule, but then it's an obvious way to aesthetically divide the space.).

The arches, from top to bottom and in the order they were erected, are the Arch of Titus, Rome, circa 82 A.D.; the Arch of Trajan, Benevento, circa 117 A.D.; and the Arch of Constantine, Rome, 315 A.D.

sources, from top to bottom: tours-venice-italy.com  |  ancientrome.ru  |  studyblue.com

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For my central panel, I've chosen a bas relief that's filled with Roman symbolism, though it was actually designed for a post office in Hartford, Connecticut. I've made some detail changes to the original design, but they're very minor.

I start out by outlining the design, then paint light medium tones. I then work into the darker tones, and finally add any highlights.

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In my next posting, I'll be filling the left niche, and what I put there will quite possibly be the major theme of the Pompeii Room. I hope you'll join me then!
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Pompeii No.30: The Transom Solutions

When I moved into my house more than 25 years ago, it had changed very little since the 1940s. Upon entering, a guest would face two very disparate arches — a perfectly round one leading into the hallway, and an ovoid one that lead into what is now the Pompeii Room.

The two odd arches met at one point and created a design tension that bothered me to no end.

When I built bookcases on two living room walls, I neatly hid both arches by building a shelf that also connected the bookcases. For a number of years, the shelf was a display area for many collections that ringed the living room, much like a museum.

The displays were quite a conversation piece, but as time went by, I divested myself of almost all of them. Then I added the back-lit crown moulding which you see in the photo above, taken when the Pompeian project was in an early stage.

The unusual living room shelf created a space in the Pompeii Room that I've always called "the transom." And this photograph of the transom explains why at the very beginning of the project I painted masonry around the hallway entrance:

I simply needed to make sense of the transom by painting it as an architectural element that would unite both sides of the room. And so my goal is to transform the structure from a quirky transom into something akin to the top of a Roman triumphal arch!

Next week I'll reveal the first of three painted bas reliefs, and I'll start with that long central panel.

I hope you'll join me then — it's going to be fun!

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Pompeii No.8: The Cobalt Door Surrounds

This week I'm painting two inset panels on either side of my hallway portal. I've looked at the space for years, thinking that it was a prime spot to make an interesting statement. I thought alternately of painted figures or three-dimensional totems. Ultimately, I chose the two panels that are featured in the painting below.

click to enlarge | The Art of the Italian Renaissance | Ullmann

This is a c. 1480 portrait by Melozza de Forlì of Francesco della Rovere, also known as Pope Sixtus IV. Sixtus is shown with his librarian and four nephews. It's appropriate that Sixtus IV is immortalized with the nephews because he was known for nepotism and, in fact, he made six of his nephews cardinals! Indeed, it is no coincidence that the word "nepotism" is derived from the Italian word for nephew, nipote. While the subject of this lovely painting established the Sistine Chapel, he was corrupt, and history remembers him unkindly.

Though he was a fine artist, little is known of de Forlì, in large part because he was overshadowed by the next generation of Italian artists, which included Michelangelo. We do know that de Forlì worked for Sixtus IV, and that he was responsible for the frescoes in the Vatican library.

click to enlarge   |   sources below

In the image above,

the center decoration is by Benozzo Gozzoli,

Benozzo Gozzoli  |  Scala/Riverside

The first and third pilasters are by

Filippino Lippi and Pinturicchio respectively,

Italian Frescoes  |  Abbeville Press

In my research, I've discovered a number of Renaissance frescoes that utilize cobalt blue pilaster decorations.

While the Egyptians were known to have developed a synthetic cobalt blue, the formula was lost to later cultures, who ground lapis lazuli to create the rich color. And so it is no wonder that Renaissance artists would concentrate the expensive color in a prominent yet narrow part of a fresco.

My approach to decorative art such as this mural — or the Egyptian door I shared earlier — is usually through draftsmanship. I like to carefully work out everything in advance, sometimes making multiple tracings. I then transfer a design by burnishing it from the tracing.

That way, as you can see, I have a record of my designs, should I need to refer back to them or reuse them.

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The finished doorway.

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Now I'm going to put away the masonry tools for a while and get back to that beam that unites all my columns. Next week we'll be adding a little dimension there to transform it into an entablature.
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