Identifier: pompeiiitslifear00maua (find matches)
Title: Pompeii, its life and art
Year: 1902 (1900s)
Authors: Mau, August, 1840-1909 Kelsey, Francis W. (Francis Willey), 1858-1927
Subjects:
Publisher: New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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Roman public and religious architecture in most cities still
adhered to the forms of marble construction, a suggestion of
which we find in the white walls of the temple of Isis ; but the
lower third of the columns in the colonnade about this temple
was painted red, and the entablature was no doubt ornamented
with colored designs, as was that of the temple of Apollo. The
best preserved example of this last phase of Pompeian architec-
tural ornamentation is in the semicircular vaulted niche at the
right of the Street of Tombs.
Thus we see accomplished at Pompeii, in less than two cen-
turies, a complete revolution in matters of taste, so far as relates
to architecture. An entirely new feeling has been developed.
The beauty of contour and of symmetrical proportion found in
the Greek architecture had no charm for the Pompeian of the
later time ; its place had been usurped by a different form of
beauty, that produced by the use of a variety of brilliant colors in
association with forms that were intricate, and often grotesque.
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PLATE XL.—ARTEMIS. COPY OF AN ARCHAIC WORK

CHAPTER LIII
SCULPTURE

THE open squares and public buildings of Pompeii were
peopled with statues. The visitor who walked about the Forum
in the years immediately preceding the eruption, saw on all
sides the forms of the men of past generations who had ren-
dered service to the city, as well as those of men of his own
time.
Besides the five colossal images of emperors and members of
the imperial families, places were provided in the Forum for
between seventy and eighty life size equestrian statues; and
behind each of these was room for a standing figure. Whether
all the places were occupied cannot now be determined, but
from the sepulchral inscription of Umbricius Scaurus (p. 418) it
is clear that as late as the time of Claudius or Nero, there was
yet room for another equestrian figure. Statues were placed
also in the Forum Triangulare and occasionally at the sides of
the streets.

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