Marble, Memory, and Meaning in the Four Pompeian Styles of Wall Painting.

Abstract

This dissertation explores developments in the use of decorative marble and other stone and their representation in wall paintings from Roman domestic buildings in Campania from ca. 150 B.C.E. to 79 C.E. I use wall paintings from houses and villas to explore three main thematic issues: (1) how transformations in attitudes toward luxury and the display of wealth and power played out in the domestic sphere; (2) the role of wall painting in communicating social, ethnic, and political identity and status in Pompeii in the aftermath of Roman colonization; and (3) the relationship between memory and changes in the meaning and reception of visual culture. I focus on the representation of decorative stone in wall paintings from the houses and country villas of the Bay of Naples region. Imported decorative stone is especially relevant to these topics, in large part because it is mentioned frequently in Roman literature in the context of moralizing discourses on luxury. These sources highlight the fascination marble held for ancient Romans and its symbolic and socio-political importance. Imitation marble is also common in most periods of wall painting and often makes up the majority of the decorated wall surface. My approach takes into account evidence in the form of relevant examples of painting, other related archaeological data, and written sources, to investigate the social and cultural significance of Roman painting. My study shows that stylistic changes in wall painting were motivated by a combination of individual communities’ internal dynamics, local histories, and broader cultural shifts in the Roman Empire. In addition, the reception of older paintings by subsequent generations depended on shifting contemporary attitudes toward private displays of wealth as well as the construction of the past in the memory of a particular period. Painting functioned as an entirely separate form of communication from literature that did not always agree with what the texts presented. My examination of imitation stone in wall painting sheds light not only on how Roman attitudes toward luxury changed over time, but also on how different types of evidence provide us with information that is sometimes complementary and sometimes contradictory.