Pompeii No.23: The 4 Styles

Pompeian murals fall into one of four styles of decoration, and I thought this would be a good point in the Pompeii Room project to stop and talk about them. I'll do an abbreviated description of the four styles, and then you can determine for yourself how my own mural would be characterized (bearing in mind that it's still a work in progress).

The earliest Pompeian murals were meant to appear as a rich masonry, though they were in fact faux granite and marble in stucco relief. The wall below was scored in three dimensions, and what remains of the trompe l'oeil marble is almost lost.

studyblue.com

Below is another example of the First Style (also called Masonry Style).

www.accla.org

Grand Illusions  |  Phaidon  |  Cass  |  Leighton  |  1988

Above is a detail of a 1982 Art Deco wall by the great contemporary muralist, Richard Haas. Some of Pompeii's First Style surfaces probably looked a lot like Haas' rendition of marble.

The Second Style (also called Architectural or Illusionist Style) was an artisitic revolution. The Pompeian rooms, which usually did not receive a lot of light, were now painted to bring the outdoors inside, and to give the illusion of opened space. The home of P. Fannius Synistor (which is the inspiration for my own room) included a bedroom (cubiculum) with an imaginary cityscape, below.

click to enlarge  |  Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, spring, 2010

You can see a landscape in the background of Synistor's room, and some of the Second Style murals carried that one step further, with lovingly detailed gardens, like the one below.

click to enlarge  |  Pompeii: The Last Day  |  Wilkinson  |  2003

An important element throughout the Second Style was trompe l'oeil details. Bowls of fruit, vases of flowers and musical instruments abounded. Below, the scroll, ink pot, wax tablets and piles of coins were a not-too-subtle reminder of the homeowner's education and wealth.

click to enlarge  |  The Art of Pompeii  |  Magagnini  |  de Luca 

Another facet of the Second Style was the depiction of monumental figures, and there's no better or more famous example than the Salon of Mysteries, in the Villa of the Mysteries, below.

sites.davidson.edu

The Third Style (also called Ornate Style) was a reaction to the open vistas of the Second Style. The Pompeians were ready to reclaim and flatten most of the wall space that they had once opened up.

Pompeii   |   Coarelli   |   Riverside  |  2002

Typical of the Third Style were pictures mounted on candelabra, small paintings centered on blank panels, and fantasy architectural details that were thin and elongated — all shown above.

click to enlarge  |  www.boundless.com  |  monm.edu

Walls of the Third Style were often barer and more stylized than my first example, such as these two. In the Third Style, the colors red, black and deep yellow predominated.

The Fourth Style is the culmination of all the previous styles, and probably because so much of Pompeii was rebuilt after an earthquake in 62 A.D., it's the style most often found in Pompeii.

Pompeii   |   Coarelli   |   Riverside  |  2002

The Fourth Style incorporated all three previous styles. Walls were usually divided into three or five panels of flat colors, but some vistas opened up, revealing fantasy architecture with elongated forms. Both of these handsome rooms are from the House of the Vetti, and in the bottom room you can see a wainscoting that's a nod to the First Style.

Pompeii   |   Coarelli   |   Riverside  |  2002

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Pompeii No.22: The Muse of Architecture

In contrast to the Muse of Sculpture, my greatest departure from the Bürkner etchings is with the Muse of Architecture.

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I omitted the small angel, in part because I thought it cluttered the composition, and in part because I reckon that a muse really doesn't need anyone to whisper direction into its ear. I also simplified the architectural model from six columns to four columns.

My biggest change was in the figure of the muse itself. I think the Muse of Architecture should be more elegantly dressed than Bürkner's version, and have a softer face. My friend Yvonne, whose Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin inspired this mural, made an astute observation. She looked at the muse's face and asked, "Is this one of your friends, because the face is a more modern depiction of beauty?"

Well, she was half right, because I based the face on that of Isabella Rossellini, whose beauty I've always admired. Now Ms. Rossellini can add to her list of many accomplishments that she is also the Muse of Architecture.

The muse's attendant bears watching.

I fear that he is a bit of an imp.

The finished Muse of Architecture is below.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

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Pompeii No.21: The Muse of Sculpture

The Muse of Sculpture was the Bürkner engraving that I thought most resembled a Michelangelo study.

academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

Bürkner understood that Michelangelo's female bodies were probably all based on the male form (one wonders whether Michelangelo ever did use a female model). Bürkner also had a good sense of Michelangelo's rather heroic poses and the way he draped clothing.

click to enlarge

In fact I've made very few changes to Bürkner's engraved design. My only real critique of Bürkner's engraving is that the muse's sculpture is a weak design, and it's definitely reflective of the Victorian era. I also have an aversion to mythical entities with insect wings.

Only the tiniest of sprites —

like Tinker Bell — should merit them!

And so I've added a more classic sculpture. This type of sculpture, below, is known as a "term" (thanks, Stefan), and it very often incorporates the head of a god, but more usually the head of a satyr. Were the term used as a furniture leg, it would be known as a "terminal."

Because the children depicted with the Muse of Painting were not winged, I decided to drop the wings on this little attendant as well.

I looked at several renditions of blond hair by Michelangelo and noticed that he would sometimes add a tint of red or orange to the yellow. Perhaps the Muse of Sculpture is a strawberry blond.

The finished Muse of Sculpture is below.

click to enlarge

click to enlarge

Next week, we'll look at

the Muse of Architecture.

I hope you'll join me then!

In my last posting, several of my blogging friends suggested that something extra was needed around or above the muse. I want to assure my readers that I am still unveiling the Pompeii Room in its early stages, so please don't think for a moment that this is near completion!

Pompeii No.20: The Muse of Painting

academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

As I studied this engraving by the 19th-century illustrator, Hugo Bürkner, it occurred to me that he had in turn studied Michelangelo, and that my color interpretation of Bürkner's engraving would benefit from my revisiting Michelangelo and his work.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

The great irony of this resplendent painting by Michelangelo, the tondo of the Holy Family, is that its creator didn't consider himself a painter and vigorously resisted most painting assignments. Even more amazing is that the man who commissioned this as a wedding gift for his wife was dissatisfied with the result.

The Sistine Chapel: A Glorious Restoration

In all of Renaissance painting, one will be hard pressed to find a more sensitively rendered infant Jesus.

I've chosen the tondo primarily as a color reference, and in particular, I'm looking at Michelangelo's sumptuous fabrics.

I begin with lots of color reference at hand, and by working upon a light, neutral silhouette. To work directly on those dark background colors would be difficult for me (though I have known artists who do like to work from dark to light).

I've made a number of changes to Bürkner's original design to suit my own purposes:

• The image is reversed so that the shadows fall in the same direction as the mural's adjacent columns.
• I'm guessing that the two small figures, which are male and female, represent the yin and yang of creativity. But as all the muses will be feminine, I have decided to make all their attendants masculine. We'll just have to come up with a different allegory for these two.
• I've added height to the pedestal, and that has everything to do with adjusting the figures so that they bisect the two background colors in a pleasing manner.
• I've also lengthened the muse's paint brushes, just to add a little more generous dimension.
• The muses's face is more mature, and I've indicated that she actually does have a jaw!

• I wasn't sure what instrument the boy was resting his hand on, but I've painted it to look more like a prism. Then I added reflected light to the bottom of his leg.
• One of the biggest changes is getting rid of all that fussy Victorian underbrush. For a sparer, more classic foliage, I turned to Mr. Wedgwood, below.

source

 Below is the final Muse of Painting.

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No matter how much color correction I do, the purple of the base translates more vividly on the Internet. It is in actuality less intense.

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Next week we'll go to the opposite wall
and look at the Muse of Sculpture.

I hope you'll join me then!

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Pompeii No.19: Finding the Muse

In my last three postings, we looked at the trophy as an ornament, as well as my interpretations of the trophy, which now decorate both sides of the dining room window.

Now it's time to decorate the three panels that are x'd above. My thought all along was that these areas should have figures, as so many Pompeian murals did.

Italian Frescoes: The Flowering of the Renaissance  |  Roettgen

Originally, I was planning on three figures posed heroically, like this image by Domenico Ghirlandaio. If I used centurions, it would be a nice continuation of the trophy theme.

www.bythegods.net   |   Antiques in Italian Interiors, Verbavolant

I also considered using statues of Roman gods, like this one of Jupiter with his lightning bolts, and maybe putting them in alcoves like the image on the right. There were certainly a lot of Roman gods from which to choose!

Pompeii, Riverside

Another thought was to paint what I would call vignettes, figures on plain backgrounds. The painting on the right you might call a celebrity portrait; it's of the Greek playwright Menander, who authored more than a hundred comedies.

Karl Friedrich Schinkel: An Architecture for Prussia  |  Rizzoli

In Pompeian decoration — and its numerous revivals — such figures often float in the center of a panel, but in the back of my mind . . .

. . . I really liked the look of the grounded figures shown above. This is a screen-save from a video on British royal palaces. Fiona Bruce is walking through the Venitian lodging of the 18th-century British consul, Joseph Smith. (If you are like I am, you're always admiring the wallpaper at the very moment in a movie when someone gets killed!) I like those pedestals, and if I had figures at the bottom of the panels, there would still be room for ornamentation between the figures and the garlands.

click to enlarge  |  academicnudes19thcentury.blogspot.com

In my wanderings through the Internet, I came upon these engravings by a 19th-century German illustrator named Hugo Bürkner (1818-1897). What struck me about these images is that Bürkner obviously studied Michelangelo. You can see that especially in the central engraving, in the musculature and draping of cloth. I would make some changes, but I think these muses of painting, sculpture and architecture would make dandy Pompeian motifs.

100swallows.files.wordpress.com  |  photo by Wkinght94

And it would also be a nice nod to Michelangelo, whose tomb coincidentally bears the three muses of painting, sculpture and architecture. Michelangelo's tomb, by the way, was designed by Vasari, remembered today primarily for his biographies of other artists.

So it's settled.

Next week I'll unveil the first panel figure,

the Muse of Painting!

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Pompeii No.18: The Right Trophy

Last week, I unveiled the finished left trophy, but I've actually been working on both trophies simultaneously.

Like the left trophy, the right trophy features a helmet that is on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Metropolitan Museum of Art  

The helmet is called a burgonet, a term that is derived from the word Burgundy. This one is embossed steel and dates to between 1545 and 1550, and it was probably made in Milan, Italy. The Metropolitan rues the fact that early conservators polished a subtly engraved background pattern completely away!

I've mentioned that I like to use as much reference as possible, and when I was designing the trophies, I had a clear vision of heavily grained poles upon which to mount the paraphernalia. Where would such wood exist? I ended up photographing weathered telephone poles that face the Gulf of Mexico, near my neighborhood.

Moving down and behind the shield are a number of implements that are historically correct. (I have taken a little license with the baton in the form of a battering ram, if only because I wanted the pleasure of painting the ram's head!) The hand is the top of a Roman standard.

Unlike the shield of the left trophy, the design of this shield was never seen in Rome. Instead, I have borrowed the design of a cameo from the collection of Catherine the Great, below.

photo-illustration, Mark D. Ruffner  |  ancientrome.ru

Looking at the collections of Catherine the Great, one quickly realizes what a discerning eye she had. She loved cameos, and especially jeweled ones, but it was her habit — one can clearly see by looking at her collection — to replace any jeweled frames with very simple ones. She evidently didn't want anything to detract from the artistry of the cameo itself.

The base of the right trophy complements, but is not identical to the left trophy.

Below is the finished Right Trophy Wall.

click to enlarge

That panel on the right is looking quite bare now, don't you think? In the next week we'll figure out what to put there. I hope you'll join me then!
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