Identifier: pompeiiitslifear00mauauoft (find matches)
Title: Pompeii : its life and art
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Mau, August, 1840-1909
Subjects: Pompeii (Extinct city)
Publisher: New York Macmillan
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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ed black. Abovethese are three narrow blocks of magenta. The rest presenta considerable variety of size and color, until we reach thosejust under the cornice, which again are all of the same shade, magenta. The cornice in this style is always of the Ionic type, withdentils. In many cases, as that of the bedroom in the houseof the Centaur, it serves as an upper border for the decora-tion, the wall above being unpainted. Sometimes, however, the 2<; 45° POMPEII imitation of marble is carried above the cornice, the wall surfacebeing divided to represent smoothly joined blocks withoutbevelled edges, or painted in plain masses of color separatedby a narrow white stripe, as in the atrium of the house of Sal-lust. Above these brilliant panels we see in Fig. 250 a secondcornice of simple design ; the wall between this cornice and theceiling was left without decoration. This system made no provision for paintings ; their place wastaken in the general scheme of decoration by elaborate mosaic
Text Appearing After Image:
Fig. 250. — Wall decoration in the atrium of the house of Sallust. First or Incrustation Style. pictures upon the floor. The taste of the age evidently pre-ferred representations in mosaic ; otherwise the painting ofpictures upon the walls, which was brought to so high a degreeof perfection by Polygnotus and his contemporaries, would nothave been abandoned. The Incrustation Style, as exemplified at Pompeii, is in asecondary stage ; it must have been worked out originally ingenuine materials, at a time when walls were actually veneered,to a certain height, with slabs of various kinds of marble, cutand arranged to represent ashlar work; above the cornicemarking the upper edge of the veneering, the surface was leftin the white. The use of different varieties of marble points WALL DECORATION 451 to an active commercial intercourse between the countries about;the Mediterranean Sea, such as first became possible after the. conquests of Alexander. So characteristic a style, requiringj the

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