The Palace and Park by Phillips, Forbes, Latham, Owen, Scharf, and Shenton

of a map of Rome, engraved on marble about the time of Septimius Severus. (Bellorius Ichnographia, Tab. 7, page 35.) THE HOUSE OF PANSA. (1811-14.) One of the largest of the superior class of mansions hitherto discovered. It has an extensive garden, and the rooms were distributed with great regularity. This house is more generally referred to in illustration of a Pompeian house, and for that reason has been made the subject of a larger and more elaborate plan than the rest. In one of the bed-rooms, five female skeletons were found, some of them with gold ear-rings. The name of the house is derived from the red letters PANSAM. ÆD. PARATVS. ROG. daubed upon the door-post. (The plan of this house is given large at the end of this book.) THE HOUSE OF CERES (1827). Called also the House of Zephyrus and Flora, from an interesting painting of the _Marriage of Zephyrus and Flora_; it is also known as the House of the _Ship_ (Naviglio), which latter name is derived from a painting in one of the shops. Another name, also, is of the _Bacchantes_. The beautiful seated divinities, _Bacchus_ and _Ceres_, between the Tablinum and Alæ of this court, were copied from this House of Ceres. A third sitting deity, _Jupiter_, with a round plate behind his head, like the _nimbus_ of saints in old pictures, belonged to this series. It is remarkably dignified. (See Mus. Bor., vol. vi., tav. 52.) THE HOUSE OF THE FAUN (1829-31). So called from the discovery of the beautiful little Faun introduced in this court, copied in the original material, bronze. This house is celebrated for its great mosaic, representing _Alexander and Darius at the Battle of Issus_. The apartments were very numerous and on a grand scale. HISTORY OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE. The original intention in constructing the Pompeian Court in the Crystal Palace was to appropriate it for purposes of refreshment. In furtherance of this plan, more especial attention would have been devoted to the mural decorations and the arrangements for public accommodation and convenience. The nature and extent of the gigantic structure within which this court was to be erected, determined, in a great measure, the breadth of space to be left open. A glance upwards will show the spectator how the supports of the galleries are arranged, and also the necessity that exists for incorporating these within the walls of the smaller erection. The refreshment chambers must necessarily have been much larger in extent than any of the rooms in the houses at Pompeii; the general disposition of their chambers, however well suited they might have been for the purposes of ancient life, were totally inadequate to the requirements of modern visitors; consequently this plan was abandoned, and the present Pompeian Court instituted in its stead. The original design for this house was made by Mr. Digby Wyatt, at Naples; and, in conjunction with Mr. Owen Jones, his companion in the tour for the collection of works of art for the decoration of the Crystal Palace generally, he entered into arrangements on the spot with Signor Abbate, the official draughtsman to the King for the Pompeian excavations, to come over to England the following spring, with cartoons and tracings, from Pompeii, in order to decorate the building, then to be prepared for him, at Sydenham, with facsimiles of the different paintings at Pompeii selected by Mr. Wyatt for the decoration of the respective rooms. The King of Naples granted permission to Signor Abbate for the visit, and, accordingly, this distinguished artist arrived in England fully prepared to perform his task. Although the plan of devoting the Pompeian Court to refreshment was meanwhile given up, the measurement of the walls that had been given to Signor Abbate for the preparation of his cartoons prevented any general change of design, and the shortness of the period originally fixed for his stay in this country prevented any important alterations being undertaken. The decorative painting of the Pompeian house was entirely under the management of Signor Abbate, Mr. Parris. Jun. acting as his deputy. They had thirty assistants, ten of whom were English. The principal figure painters were Mundici and Gow, and the names of the chief ornamentalists are Leslie, Luetyens, Wassner, Yahn, Munsch, Mœvius, and Meyer. The entire arrangement and building are due to Mr. Digby Wyatt, furthered by the zeal and energy of Mr. Thomas Hayes, his deputy. It will be seen in the following description of the Court, that each part has been copied from some existing authority; and the few exceptions that do occur, in which originality was necessary, have been carefully noted. Some of the leading works which contain illustrations of Pompeii, will be found enumerated in the list of books at the end of the description of the Roman Court, and others of more immediate importance have been referred to in the text when requisite. DESCRIPTION OF THE POMPEIAN HOUSE. The outer walls are supposed to be surrounded by the street, and the entire house forms what the Romans called an _insula_; that is, a detached building. The tiling, more conspicuous from the gallery, has been faithfully copied from an ancient example, from the House of the Female Musician. The roof of a house was found complete in April, 1853, with the upper part of the ridge carefully guarded by cement. The principal entrance faces the nave; it is flanked by two pilasters, the capitals of which are copied from the back entrance of a house excavated in 1834 (Mus. Bor., vol. x., tav. A, B), and from sketches taken on the spot. The general proportions of the doorway are taken from the house of Pansa (Gell, Pompeiana, series i., pl. 34.); the grating, or lattice-work[55] over the door, is introduced upon the authority of Mr. Donaldson in his work upon doorways. The external windows are devised to throw more light into the chambers, and to afford a more ready means of looking into the inner recesses. This apparent innovation is authorised by the windows of the Tragic Poet’s house which open upon the street, although much higher up, being raised more than six feet above the level of the foot-pavement. They seem to have been closed by sliding shutters and were sometimes glazed. Glass was much used at Pompeii both for drinking vessels and windows; sheets of glass have been found there, and a convex glass for a lamp remained in the wall, dividing two apartments in the public baths near the forum. The front part of the entrance was called _Vestibulum_; the remaining part of the passage, _Prothyrum_, which latter was bounded by a second door which closed in the _Atrium_. The door is quadrivalve, and the panelling is taken from the false door painted on the wall of the Chalcidicum near the statue of Eumachia (Gell, Pompeiana, 2nd series, page 21, plate 9). [55] Called by Vitruvius _Hypaetrum_. Smith, s. v. Janua. p. 626. Compare a latticed window in vol. i., p. 229 of “Pitture d’Ercolano.” The inlaid marble on the threshhold, representing a dog, is found at the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet (Mus. Bor., vol. ii., tav. 56). A similar device was painted at the entrance of Trimalchio’s house, described by Petronius, who was alarmed at the first sight of the furious animal at the full stretch of his chain so skilfully represented in the original mosaic (Petronius, Satyricon, ch. 29). The inscription on both is the same, CAVE CANEM, which means “Beware of the dog.” The _Prothyrum_[56] or _Ostium_, was the passage between the street door (_janua_), and the house door (_ostium_), and corresponds to our entrance hall; a small square room on one side was sometimes devoted to the door-keeper or porter (_janitor_ or _ostiarius_). They were called _Cellæ Ostiariæ_. [56] Rich, s. v. The walls and ceilings of these side apartments are white, with a red _dado_, that is, the lower part of the wall, answering to our surbase. The decoration of these rooms is imitated from the House of the Second Fountain. The walls of the _Prothyrum_ itself are red, with a winged Cupid in a panel on each side. They are from the House of the Dioscuri. The _dado_ is black, the ceilings of these three apartments are white and slightly arched. Most of the ceilings in Pompeii were of this description, and composed of segmental vaults painted in fresco, like the walls beneath, only in lighter colours or more delicate and thinner patterns on a white ground. A small stucco cornice highly enriched with colour follows the lines of the archivolt. In the Villa of Diomed are some flat ceilings, and other examples have been published in the Pitture d’Ercolano. ATRIUM. The view of this spacious apartment at the moment of entrance is very imposing; the only difference between this and a real Pompeian house consists in the greater diffusion of light, and the increased scale of the apartment better suited to a palace in the capital of the Empire. For the purpose of fully displaying the beauties of the mural decorations, much more light has been admitted into this apartment than is usually found in the same division of the Pompeian houses. To this end, the central aperture, which ought to have been of the same size as the reservoir below, has been considerably widened. Windows also have been introduced in order to give the spectator a better view of the decorations within the side chambers. At a glance the eye recognises the various parts of the building previously described. In the centre below is the square basin to collect the water, called the _impluvium_, and the corresponding aperture above would be the _compluvium_. At the further end, facing the entrance, a graceful female figure is seen playing the lyre--these paintings will be described hereafter. In many houses this extremity is painted sky blue, with shrubs and trees to imitate a distant garden--this was the case in the peristyle of the Tragic Poet’s House (Gell, vol. i., p. 159), also in the Houses of the Quæstor and Actæon (Gell, pl. 20, page 175). The dark square central part forming as it were a frame to our view of the peristyle, is the _tablinum_, the side-passages are the _fauces_, and the smaller apertures round the sides of the _Atrium_ will be recognised as conducting to the _cubicula_. Each of these apartments we propose to examine minutely, after having taken a general view of the _Atrium_. This important space in a Roman house was called also the _Cavum Ædium_, or _Cavædium_, as Pliny writes it. There were various kinds of _Atria_; the simplest with no support in the centre--as this--called the _Atrium Tuscanicum_. Where the roof was supported by four columns in the centre it was called _Tetrastylum_. If the columns surrounding the _impluvium_ were numerous, it was called _Corinthium_, and when, as rarely has been found, no opening was left in the centre, the apartment was said to be _Testudinatum_. Sometimes a roof was so arranged as to throw off the water outside, and then the term _displuviatum_ was employed. The _Atrium_, as viewed from the door, is oblong, in a position reversed from that in which it is generally found in Pompeian houses: although an authority for this arrangement exists in the House of Queen Caroline. The _impluvium_ in the centre is of marble, and the exquisite small marble statue of a faun, serving at the same time as a fountain, is copied from the house called after the grand Duke of Tuscany. The floor is an excellent imitation of ancient mosaic work, executed by Messrs. Minton; the various patterns are taken from different Pompeian houses. Many of the floors at Pompeii exhibit some of the finest examples of mosaic work in which elaborate paintings with every variety of colour have been produced. They are composed solely of small pieces of coloured stone or glass fitted closely together and highly polished. It is the most durable of all methods of painting, and is generally set in a strong bed of cement. The modern Romans practise this art with such success, that a mosaic can scarcely be distinguished from a picture carefully painted with the brush. Every altar-piece but one, now in St. Peters’, has been made by this process. The celebrated mosaic of the Doves drinking, described by Pliny, is now in the capitol at Rome, and many descriptions of pictures executed in this mode are to be found in ancient authors. This process must be carefully distinguished from _inlaying_, which the ancients also practised, and may be seen here in the vestibules and some of the side chambers leading out of the peristyle. The prevailing colour of the atrium is white. All round the doors and the windows of the Cubicula the wall is painted bright blue with red dado. The pilasters are white with the lower part yellow; their capitals white heightened by blue and red; they are from the House of the Centaur. In square compartments, on a white ground, between the capitals of pilasters, are elegant groups of female figures on marine animals, and Cupids in chariots; some of the small enriched mouldings are from the cornice of the tomb of Calventius Quietus, and the atrium frieze _above tablinum_ is copied from a side apartment in the Tragic Poet’s House (Mus. Bor. vol. ii., tav. A). It is composed of white figures of combatants in armour on foot and in chariots; shields and dead bodies lie prostrate. The ground of this frieze is purple, but the ground of the original is described as white, and the figures are said to be clothed in blue, green, and purple draperies. The females are Amazons, distinguished by the pelta or lunated shield (see Statue No. 194 of the Greek Court.) The rest of the frieze is white, with patterns of bright-coloured lines in simple forms. Over each pilaster the frieze is broken by double figures of Victory, yellow and gold, which serve to support the beams which project to the edge of the compluvium. They were modelled by Mr. Monti, under the superintendence of Signor Abbate, from a drawing by Mr. Wyatt. The compluvium is bordered with red standing tiles called antifixa, and the arrangement of Mazois in his restoration of the House of Diomed has been followed. The antifixa may be seen also on the model of the Parthenon in the bas-relief gallery adjoining the Greek Court. The angle tiles, with a spout to discharge the rain water, merit attention. The sloping roof of the atrium, composed of light beams with panelling between them, has been chiefly restored from existing paintings; but few traces of woodwork remain in any part of these ancient cities without having been seriously disturbed; the atrium ceilings being of wood, were consequently destroyed; pictorial records are therefore our only authorities. Fortunately for us, the ancients seem to have delighted in depicting themselves and their ways of living, so that it is not improbable that the architectural specimens that we see on their walls are only the transcripts of the slender constructions which were in fact confined to the upper stories. This is the more probable as the background of these architectural scenes is generally sky, and where vegetation does appear among them it consists commonly of plants growing in pots, or else the tops of trees as they would appear from the upper part of a house. CUBICULA. We must now go into the detail of the house and pass into each room as consecutively numbered in the plan, beginning in this instance on the left hand of the principal entrance, keeping the wall of Atrium always to the left.