English:

Identifier: herculanumetpomp18703barr (find matches)
Title: Herculanum et Pompéi, recueil général des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques, etc., découverts jusqu'à ce jour, et reproduits d'apreès Le antichita di Ercolano, Il Museo borbonico, et tous les ouvrages analogues
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Barré, Louis, 1799-1857 Roux, H. (Henri), Sr Bouchet, Adolphe
Subjects: Art, Greco-Roman
Publisher: Paris, Firmin Didot frères, fils et cie
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:
il apris seulement lapparence la plus noble et la plus bril-lante. On doit savoir gré au peintre de ne pas avoirsuivi la tradition vulgaire, qui est dune vérité tropaffligeante. Cette peinture et la nymphe que nous avons vue toutà lheure (2) ont été trouvées dans un appartement dela maison de Pansa. La petite fresque de la vignette, représentant le com-bat dune panthère et dun tigre, a été trouvée, il y aplus de quatre-vingts ans, dans une maison dHercula-num avec plusieurs autres sujets également bachiques.Ces fresques nétaient point peintes sur lenduit mêmede la muraille, mais elles y étaient fixées par de petitscrampons : elles avaient donc été détachées dun autremur, sans doute au moyen de la scie, et par un procédésemblable à celui quemploient les modernes. Cette cir-constance indique le cas que les Pompéiens ont fait deces petites peintures, dans lesquelles on remarque, eneffet, beaucoup dexpression et de naturel. (i)Orid.,Met., IV, 6M. (2) PI. 117. H©
Text Appearing After Image:
DEUXIÈME SERIE. 59 PLANCHE 123. Il est facile de reconnaître des acteurs comiques dansles deux principales figures de ce tableau. Examinonsdabord ce personnage, si roide dans son attitude, etdont le masque grimaçant voudrait bien être terrible.Cette espèce de géant sappuie sur une pique ; il estcoiffé dune toque blanche, posée sur le front à la ma-nière des tapageurs ; son costume se compose, en outre,dune tunique blanche, ceinte très-haut (succincta), duneespèce de pantalon collant et à pieds, fait pour dessinerses formes, dont il est certainement très-fier, et dun petitmanteau violet jeté sur lépaule gauche. Voilà sans aucundoute le soldat fanfaron des comiques anciens, carac-tère qui a été transmis jusquà nous par le matamore dela comédie espagnole et le capitan de Cyrano de Ber-gerac. Quant à lautre acteur, entièrement vêtu de blanc,qui paraît prendre la parole, et que le premier écouteavec une attention assez hautaine ; à lattitude penchée deson corps

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English: Translated description of PLATE 123: It is easy to recognize comic actors in the two main figures of this painting. Let us first examine this personage, so rigid in his attitude, and whose grimacing mask would really like to be terrible. This kind of giant leans on a pike; he wears a white hat, placed on his forehead in the manner of rowdies; his costume is composed, moreover, of a white tunic, girded very high (succincta), with a kind of clinging trousers with feet, made to outline his forms, of which he is certainly very proud, and of a small purple coat thrown over the left shoulder. Here, without a doubt, is the swaggering soldier of the old comedians, a character which has been transmitted to us by the braggart of the Spanish comedy and the captain of Cyrano de Bergerac. As for the other actor, entirely dressed in white, who seems to be speaking, and to whom the first listens with rather haughty attention; to the leaning attitude of his body, to the spacing of his legs and his arms, to the mocking and mischievous expression of his mask, described by Pollux, finally to his short tunic and the little coat, in which he draped in gesticulation, one recognizes the father of this numerous and intriguing line of Crispins, Pasquins and Mascarilles, the favorite slave, the famulus dux of ancient comedy. A third character without a mask, with a red tunic and a white cloak, stands near the soldier, and seems to play a less important part in this scene; two others finally are behind the second interlocutor, and one of them has a red tunic: they are, without doubt, dumb characters. It is not so easy to determine positively to which play of Plautus or Terence, or of some other Greek or Latin comic, the scene which the painter wished to represent may belong. The swaggering soldier of Plautus offers a situation where Pyrgopolinices, the taker of cities and towers, the skillful valet Palestrion and the young Pleusid, must find themselves in the presence of each other, more or less as the three principal characters are here. On the other hand, at the end of The Eunuch of Terence, Thrason, the soldier, finds himself in the penultimate scene with the parasite Gnathon, to whom the attitude and figure of the second character would suit well, when the the arrival of Chéréas, Phaedria and Parménon, makes known to the braggart that he is played: the moment chosen by the painter would be that when Phaedria declares to Thrason that he will kill him if he meets him again in this place , a threat that agrees well with the gesture of the young man seen on the left in the painting; however Gnathon, at the request of the soldier, undertakes to have him still accepted as a rich and stupid rival, at whose expense the courtesan and her lover can amuse themselves in several ways.