| Paintings and mosaics in Pompeii and Ercolano: |
Landscape
|
 The
conquest of Egypt after the Battle of Actium in 30 B.C. had a
number of political, economic and social consequences, but it
also had enormous cultural impact with the opening of the Roman
world onto the civilisation that existed on the banks of the
Nile, and the acquisition of its art forms, albeit altered by
the influence of Alexandrine Hellenism. Putting to one side
those aspects of "Egyptomania" that saw the re-working of
Pharaonic themes in the decoration of architectural works but
above all in painting, it was landscape scenes that most
strongly felt the influence of this world, be it for marble
relief work, for the glyptic or toreutic arts, or for painting.
In the latter field, there were two basic types; that of
grotesque Nilotic landscapes, and that of generic landscapes
invariably featuring some sacred element.
The fragment in question was probably part of a long frieze,
similar to that from the peristyle in the House of the Cytharist
now in the Naples Museum, whose origins can be traced to
Corridor F in the Villa Farnesina where we can find, among other
things, all the subjects mentioned by Vitruvius (VII 5, 1):
ports, promontories, beaches, woods, mountains, sheep and
shepherds. The characters who make up this picture are of
diminutive stature, and have been executed with rapid skilful
brush-strokes.
In this fragment we can see a water-bearer moving rightwards
towards three figures: a woman holding a recipient, a figurine
now incomplete as a result of the poor state of the plaster, and
a character who appears to be piling up earth. To the left we
can recognise a fisherman sitting on the bank on which people
dressed in cloaks are strolling around; the scene is dominated
by a tall building, maybe a lighthouse (?), behind which there
is the large piazza of a forum which, in turn, is surrounded by
monumented porticoes along its sides, with a pedestal for
statues in the middle and showing the outlines of temple looming
in the background. Another L-shaped portico on the right hand
side ends with a tower.
Bibliography: Rostovtzeff 1911, p. 75; V. Sampaolo, Le pitture,
in Le Collezioni del Museo Nazionale di Napoli, Roma 1986, p.
130, n. 57
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Fonte: MANN
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