By Angela Rocco DeCarlo, copyright 2009
The ancient city of Pompeii, Italy, has fascinated the world since excavations began in 1748 on this city buried more than 1700 years ago. Victim of Mt. Vesuvius’ cataclysmic volcanic eruption on August 24, 79 AD, it remains one of the world’s most important travel destinations.
Today, visitors can get a taste of the lost city of Pompeii at Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s (LACMA) exhibit, “Pompeii and the Roman Villa - Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples.” The show runs from May 3 through October 4, 2009. It is testament to the voracious appetite ancient Romans had for all Greek culture and art. That single-mindedness resulted in priceless treasures being preserved for nearly two thousands of years.
Fortunately, we know exactly what happened to the ill-fated people of ancient Pompeii thanks to the scholar, Pliny the Younger, who wrote a detailed eyewitness description of the sudden explosion, in 79 AD, of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples, Italy. The powerful volcanic eruption, together with earthquakes and tsunamis, devastated the coastal area and the cities were covered under volcanic rock and nearly forgotten, until 1738 when the royal family of the region initiated excavations on Herculaneum and on Pompeii ten years later.
As an Italian American, seeing an ancient Pompeii exhibit is a bit like going home. My 19th century Italian ancestors came from the Pompeii, Campania, Italy, area and when visiting that site several years ago there was a profound sense of connection. I was puzzled to see faces in frescos which looked familiar – then I realized they looked like people I knew, cousins and other relatives. Over the years I’ve seen many Pompeii exhibits in various museums and each has been different.
LACMA’s “Pompeii and the Roman Villa” is a bountiful feast of beautiful specimen art pieces, from Roman villas, in various media, designed to illuminate the richness of taste and refinement of the elite Romans who built spectacular villas around Pompeii. Other exhibits had slightly different perspectives.
The Art Institute of Chicago’s glorious display more than 25 years ago put the visitor immediately into the atrium, (center courtyard) of a Pompeii town home. One heard and saw the graceful fountain, just as the Roman families would enjoy. Last year’s San Diego Art Museum Pompeii exhibit showed another side of life in Pompeii, focusing on how the ordinary people of the area lived. There were huge commercial scales; models of storefronts; displays of goods for sale; where people lived (often above the store); the type of businesses they ran and the cleverness of the city engineers in keeping the city clean and prosperous. There was also a film which belabored the eruption of Vesuvius and the possibilities of future explosions - much like a Hollywood disaster film might show.
Some past Pompeii exhibits have included casts of dead bodies – actually the spaces where the bodies had been trapped in the eruption – but the LACMA show does not. This exhibit seeks to soothe with scenes and artifacts from magnificent villas, showing the glory of furnishings of great art. Interestingly, there are several fine paintings or frescoes of villas, but no scale models. As many villas covered huge tracks of land, such models would have added interesting information to the exhibit.
This show is an elegant collection of Roman and Greek artifacts, as well as 19th century European photo albums, paintings and books by those who traveled to the discovered cities and fell in love with the entire Bay of Naples region, including Pompeii, Herculaneum and other cities, after they were uncovered in the 18th century. These modern Europeans were amazed to see entire cities emerge from underground to reveal secrets of past lives. The news of the discoveries swept Europe, and ultimately North America, and people became just as fascinated with the art and culture of Pompeii as the ancient Romans had been with the original Greek art that informed so much of Pompeii culture.
Suddenly, all things Roman became the frenzy of fashion after the excavations began and anyone who aspired to refinement sought to attach themselves to Roman art. Many artisans were influenced by the discoveries of Pompeii and the art of the area, including the great English potter Josiah Wedgwood. He was inspired by the classical vases and jewelry found in the Pompeii region and opened a new factory, Etruria, in 1769 to produce jasperware art objects which utilized low relief designs based upon art pieces of antiquity.His designs were inspired by Greeks and Roman myths and were depicted in Wedgwood’s distinctive white relief on blue vases, tableware and other objects. Alas, a Wedgwood display does not appear in the LACMA exhibit. Nonetheless, it is an elegant exhibit filled with spectacular artifacts showing the great love of Greek art the Romans cultivated and passed on to us all in the Western World. For example, our Capitol Building in Washington, D.C., mimics this great architectural tradition, together with many public buildings throughout the country.
Ancient Pompeii and the surrounding coastline cities were popular and successful commercial and artistic centers centuries before the 79 AD eruption, attracting the Roman elite, artisans, merchants and entrepreneurs of every type. This was the place of the Lifestyle of the Rich and Roman, where ruling families and emperors such as Julius Caesar, Tiberius, Caligula,Claudius and Nero had summer homes filled with the best of Greek culture and art. The lawyer Cicero had eight homes in the area. Fortunate for us, this LACMA show details the great love Romans had for Greek art and culture and how they emulated it all in every aspect of their homes and lives.
Posterity benefited from the tragedy of Pompeii. The circumstances of the destruction and preservation ensured the area’s place in history and art. On that day of doom for Pompeii, in 79 A.D, the nephew of Pliny the Elder, the commander of the fleet, wrote an eyewitness account of the volcano’s eruption (“Eyewitness to History”, edited by John Carey).
“My uncle (Pliny the Elder), on active command of the fleet….” observed a threatening cloud and set out at once to investigate. …the huge cloud blackened the sky and appeared “…as being an umbrella pine, for it rose to a great height on a sort of trunk and then split off into branches…” The Pliny account describes how people fled with pillows tied to their heads to ward off the burning ash. Many survived, but still more perished, incinerated by volcanic ash. The uncle, Pliny the Elder, died of suffocation in attempting to rescue those trapped near the volcano. Pliny the Younger and his mother fled only after learning of the Elder’s death. This horrific story was recast in the 1834 novel, “The Last Days of Pompeii,“ by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which has had many reincarnations in films and books. It is a story of endless interest to succeeding generations.
Today, visitors to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) exhibit, “Pompeii and the Roman Villa – Art and Culture around the Bay of Naples,” can relive the Mediterranean glamour in which the elite of first century Roman politics and commerce luxuriated. The LACMA Pompeii exhibit has a vast array of fine examples of stunning antiquities, from gigantic Aphrodite/Venus sculptures to beautiful frescoes, mosaics, bronze figures, jewelry and literature set off to advantage by the rich background of deep hunter green walls with white surrounds.
Images such as “ The Three Graces”, 1st century BC and “Relief of an Athlete with Hoop”, 1st century BC -1st century, AD, seem so familiar, as these classic figures have been reproduced repeatedly. It also reminds us that there’s nothing new under the sun. The hoop in the “Relief of an Athlete” was used in various ancient games, so the hula hoop is, in fact, rather ancient.
Here you will experience the luminous blue and green garden scenes so often used in a Pompeii villa, as well as towering sculpted urns, precisely carved cameo brooches and bracelets, exquisite gold, pearl and emerald earrings, delicate glassware, silver mirrors and finely cast bronze figures, including a magnificent Alexander the Great astride his beloved warhorse Bucephalus. A mosaic of Plato with his students indicates the reverence for Greek intellectual values which the Romans sought to emulate.
The ancient Romans knew a good thing when they saw it.
Already master militarists, architects, lawyers, administrators and engineers, whose magnificent roads have endured as long as the city of Pompeii, which had the dubious benefit of lying under volcanic ash for 1700 years, the ancient Romans fell in love with Greek culture and set out to capture it. That they vanquished Greece in 146 BC is almost beside the point, as they seized upon and elevated every aspect of Greek culture and built upon it.
The Romans loved the “old masters” from the “Golden Age of Pericles” of the 5th century BC, much as we today revere Michelangelo and Da Vinci. Beauty is eternal and the Romans saved and enlarged the best of Western art from the Greeks. We lucky few can see some of these ancient artifacts in Los Angeles, CA.
This exhibit benefits from curators Carol Matausch, Art History Professor at George Mason University, who developed the Pompeii exhibit for the U.S. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., and Kenneth Lapatin, Associate Curator of Antiquities at the J. Paul Getty Museum, who is guest curator at LACMA.
This exhibit at LACMA runs May 3, until October 4, and offers a tantalizing peek into an ancient luxurious era, which may resonate with modern viewers. It may seem somewhat reassuring that no matter how dire circumstances may be, some things endure, especially the love of beauty.
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LACMA –“Pompeii and the Roman Villa”
5905 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
323-857-6000
Admission –general admission $12; seniors/college students, $8; under 18 yrs free. After 5 p.m. pay what you wish. Second Tues. of month, free admission. Hours: Mon.,Tues., Thurs., 12-8 p.m.; Fri., 12-9 p.m; Sat., Sun., 11-8 p.m.
Parking –prepay at welcome center; parking across the street.
