 In this video, we will look at the expansive history of Roman wall paintings. Beginning with early influences outside of Rome, we will then focus on the famous four Pompeian wall painting styles and their relationship with other contemporary wall paintings in Rome itself. In a second video, we will go beyond Pompeii and the Vesuvian cities to examine examples from all over the Mediterranean to witness the longevity of painted frescoes in the Roman Empire, including such cities as Ostia, Ephesus, Trier, and more. To begin with, we are largely dependent on our knowledge of the earliest examples of wall paintings from two Roman sources, Punnid the Elder and Vitruvius. Punnid the Elder, in his Encyclopedic Natural History, Book 35, discusses the great Greek artists and their Greek painting innovations as early as the 4th century BCE. Although we don't have any of these originals, we do have copies and emulations of these works from wall paintings in Pompeii and from later Mosaic copies. For example, Punnid describes the works of a certain Salsus of Pergamum of the 2nd century BCE. Pergamum was a center of Greek culture and learning in modern-day Turkey. Salsus was credited with painting a realistic depiction of doves drinking from a bowl. In this version, from Hadrian's Villa, the scene is actually a micro-Mosaic. Another painting ascribed as Salsus is a realistic illusionistic scene of an unswept dining floor after a party littered with food scraps. Such a Mosaic version, a copy of this painting, quite possibly, was found in a Hadrianic villa on the Aventine Hill, today displayed in the Vatican. Another author, Lucian, describes the wedding of Alexander the Great in Roxanne. He notes that it was painted by a contemporary of Alexander the Great, the painter Etienne. We think we have a credible copy of it from the House of the Golden Bracelet in Pompeii and the new antiquarium of Pompeii. The figure next to Alexander is in Persian dress. Such accurate features lend to the theory that it is a copy of the lost original. We also have faithful copies of two famous paintings from the Hellenistic Age. One is the Alexander Mosaic of 100 BCE from the House of the Faun in Pompeii, rediscovered in 1831. It realistically depicts Alexander and his Macedonians against the Persian King Darius, possibly the fame battle of Isis, a painting attributed to flexiness of Eritrea or Apelles. The painterly qualities, the shattering, the contours, the perspectives apparent to the Mosaic reflect the lost painting. Based upon a lost painting, today the Alexander Mosaic is in the museum in Naples, but here we have a faithful reproduction which brings it back to the original location, which is absolutely spectacular. You get a sense of being a guest here and admiring this Mosaic. You get a sense of it through the colonnades, the wall paintings, and the modern landscaping. This was the greatest house, the largest house in Pompeii. We also have the fabulous Nile Mosaic from the Sanctuary of Fortuna and Prandeste in Lazio that depicts at times an accurate and sometimes imaginative Egyptian landscape with a bird's eye view labeled with Greek terms. Besides these incredible copies of paintings in the Greek world, we actually do have a few indications of the reverberation of the artists from the Macedonian royal tombs of Urgina, dated to 340 BCE, with such scenes as the rape of Persephone with dynamic action and delicate rendering of drapery and hair. Turning to early italic painting examples, we look at the impressive Francois Tumovolci of the 4th century BCE and the painted tomb slabs of Pestum. In Rome, we marvel at the historical tomb from the Esquiline Hill, now in the Montmartini Museum in Rome. Dating to the 2nd century BCE, it depicts the Fabii clan making treaties and fighting battles on four separate registers. Such organization of scenes would have been related to contemporary painted frescoes that decorated some public monuments, like the Coria, depicting Roman victories in the 3rd and 2nd centuries BCE. Another great source from antiquity, Vitruvius in his 10 books of architecture, discusses the composition of layered mortar and lime plaster of frescoes and the color added. Dry pigments were applied to the plaster still wet so that the color set into it to become an integral part of the wall. He discusses many pigments, for red, cinnabar, vermilion, that is mercury sulfide. Though toxic due to the mercury, it was also used for cosmetic purposes as well. For white, white lead. For blue, sand ground up with potassium nitrate and ground up copper heated in a kiln. For purple, burnt ochre plus vinegar. Purple was also extracted from the dye of a sea mollusk called murex. Alongside ancient authors and mosaic copies mentioned, the bulk of our knowledge of Roman wall paintings comes from the preserved frescoes in the Vesuvian cities destroyed by the eruption of the Suvius in 79. We have a treasure trove of work. And as early as 1882, the German scholar August Mao recognized a sequence of evolution of styles that are the anchor in the study of the frescoes today. While there are some challenges to his dating, the basic precepts still hold. Let's examine the four styles of Pompeian wall paintings. The first style, known as the incrustation style, an imitation of marble panels from Greek Hellenistic period palaces that became all the rage throughout the Greek world in the third and second centuries BCE. Vitrivious tells us as much in his seventh book on architecture. Strips and panels of polished and painted stucco were made to look like panels of marble to cover the walls in Roman houses. Typical examples of this period between 280 BCE come from the house of Salast and the house of the fawn in Pompeii and the house of the Samnite in Herculaneum. The second style is known as the architectural style. Illusionism is the dominant feature highlighted by architectural components in Tromploi, Trick of the Eye, and the vanishing point perspective composition, based off the Scanaefrans buildings in theaters in front of which actors performed. Vitrivious notes that in his day the projections of columns and gables were used to frame landscape scenery, bucolic scenes, images of gods, mythological scenes, and more. The second style flourished throughout the first century BCE and dramatically evolved over time. One of the earliest preserved examples is the house of the Gryphans from circa 100 BCE, found underneath the portion of the palace of Domitian on the Palatine Hill in Rome. Another early example is found in the Republican era sanctuary in Brescia in Northern Italy, dating to around 80 BCE. This sanctuary was painted with colonnades and stunningly realistic depictions of a variety of colored marble panels. Even more impressive are some later examples from the Vesuvian cities. In Pompeii, a real standout large-scale painting from the Villa of the Mysteries, and these paintings are known as megalografia. Another rare example of large-scale megalografia is from Boscariale, the Villa of Pubius Fanius Sinistor, now at the Met, with panels probably copying Hellenistic paintings. There are also impressive city landscapes that show the complexity of the contemporary Roman cities. Back in Rome, we can turn to frescoes dated between 50 and 30 BCE, the so-called House of Livia on the Palatine, and the many rooms of the so-called House of Augustus on the Palatine. Built on two terraces out of previously existing houses, it seems most probable that these structures went out of use as early as 36 BCE and the later House of Augustus placed on top next to the Temple of Apollo. And the Tiber Riverside Villa of the Farnizina, dated circa 20 BCE, it was possibly owned by Julia and Agrippa. A series of recomposed rooms removed from the villa during the construction of the Tiber River flood walls are on display in Palazzo Massimo of the Museo Nacional de Romano. They represent some of the best work produced in Augustan Rome showcasing just how far the second style had come. Another fine creation is the sub-training dining room from the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta, dated to 20 BCE, which has a barrel vaulted ceiling to imitate a grotto. All four walls depict a rich garden setting for the guests of the emperor and empress. It is also on display in Palazzo Massimo. The third style is the highly ornamental style, dated to the late Augustan period at the end of the first century BCE. It was criticized by Vitruvius as departing from reality with his fantastical beasts stemming from plants and delicate columns too thin to support real architecture. We find such examples of refined artistic flair in this so-called Villa of Agrippa posthumous in Pastor Tricase near Pompeii. And we also see the third style in the late Augustan era pyramid tomb of Cestius. The central chamber is delicately rendered by these few figures and thin columns. Such was the regression and the evolution beyond the second style. The fourth style is typically dated to 40 CE and beyond, thus fully in the Julio-Claudian and Flavin eras. At least 80% of the walls of Pompeii are decorated in the fourth style. Known as the intricate style, you have even more lavish details and more ornamentation than before. The second style architecture framework is back though less solid than before but more than that of the third style. The walls truly are taken to another level. The best example from Pompeii is the house of the Vettii, which we have already examined in detail in the video celebrating its reopening. It truly is a marvel and we see entire surfaces now covered with various scenes of landscapes, mythology scenes, still life scenes and more. We can also look to the house of Marcus Lucretius Fronto, rich in detail. Much of the dynamic also seems to have come from Rome itself. We get the true sense of profound ornamentation when we look at the wall paintings, also on the ceiling, of the Domus transitoria of Nero on the Palatine hill, dated between 59 and 64 CE, destroyed in the great fire of 64. We can also look to the impressive wall paintings of Nero's successor villa, the Domus Aurea. This was fourth style wall painting at its greatest in terms of sheer scale. What makes the fourth style so engaging is the volume of preserved works and we can explore in Pompeii, Herculaneum, Aplantis and Stabia, and also the archaeological museum of Naples and the various genres depicted, portraiture, landscape, mythology, daily life and more. With the destruction of Pompeii in 79, that was the end of the categorization of the four Pompeian wall styles. But of course, Romans continued to decorate their houses with wall paintings. And we will continue our discussion of the evolution of wall paintings in another video by looking at examples from all over the empire to see what happened under the Antonine emperors, the severans in all the way to the 4th century CE. Join us online for free weekly seminars by signing up for our newsletter at ancientromelive.org and consider making a tax-deductible contribution so we can make more great content.