Kurzfassung

This project examines the decorative schemes of Pompeian domus façades to investigate how the representative needs of affluent homeowners extended beyond domestic interiors and into the realm of the street. Despite the often-dreadful state of preservation of street façades, this paper demonstrates that simplified First-Style schemes and their derivatives constituted the most popular design choices for wealthy proprietors from the late Samnite period up until the eruption in AD 79. The...This project examines the decorative schemes of Pompeian domus façades to investigate how the representative needs of affluent homeowners extended beyond domestic interiors and into the realm of the street. Despite the often-dreadful state of preservation of street façades, this paper demonstrates that simplified First-Style schemes and their derivatives constituted the most popular design choices for wealthy proprietors from the late Samnite period up until the eruption in AD 79. The intriguing longevity and stability of this decorative apparatus seems astonishing given the many socio-political as well as seismic upheavals affecting Pompeii, such as the Sullan siege and consequent colonisation, the advent of the Imperial dynasty, or the devastating earthquake of AD 62. Yet rather than being governed by traditionalism born out of economic considerations or simply indifference, it is argued here that the diachronically consistent aesthetics of domus façades primarily responded to a specific set of social norms. Calling for, amongst other things, moderation in private outward display, they largely prevented the innovative pictorial fashions that successively took hold of interiors from spilling out onto street-facing walls. Resulting in comparatively simple and reserved exterior designs, Pompeian façades went on to curry little favour with early excavators and scholars and have consequently now mostly succumbed to erosion. In resuscitating this casualty of the excavations at Pompeii, the project thus hopes to contribute to closing a gap in our understanding of the Roman domus as a social unit.» weiterlesen» einklappen