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The technique of stucco ceilings at Pompeii
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
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The buried cities of Campania occupy a unique position as sources for a knowledge of the material aspects of classical antiquity. The rain of pumice-stone and ashes first concealed and then preserved many classes of objects and structures that at other points in the ancient world would have been doomed to perish at the hand of man, or through the disintegration due to atmospheric agencies. The dry climate of Egypt, as of certain tracts of Hither Asia, has spared papyri and textiles from the destruction due to damp, but even in those exceptional regions nothing has been found in the nature of classical remains comparable to the houses of Pompeii for the manner in which circumstances have preserved the stucco facing of the walls; hence it is that for information as to ancient house-painting and kindred subjects we must go first to Pompeii.
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- Copyright ©A. W. Van Buren 1924. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
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page 114 note 1 There have been a few instances at Ostia also, where fragments of stucco ceilings were preserved through the circumstances of their fall, in such a manner as to enable the capable personnel attached to those excavations to achieve feats of restoration comparable to those of their Pompeian colleagues.
page 114 note 2 The oecus of this splendid house is illustrated on our fig. 18, from Alinari's photograph no. 34511; see also N.d.S. 1910, p. 320 (illustration), pp. 322 f. (description, by G. Spano).
page 114 note 3 In a small room of the baths of the Casa del Laberinto there is an interesting masonry barrel vault, covered with stucco, and a beautiful conch-shell window opening.
Probably of masonry construction also is the almost perfectly preserved vault in a room behind the atrium of VII, iii, 21 : it has never been replaced.
The decorative treatment of such ceilings, whether of masonry or on a wooden framework, is appreciatively described by F. von Duhn, Pompeii, eine hellenistische Stadt in Italien, third edition, pp. 86 ff.
page 115 note 1 The traditional reading creta aut marmore of Krohn's text would mean apparently ‘with terracotta or marble’; but on technical grounds the emendation creto marmore seems required.
page 115 note 2 This passage is treated by Choisy, in his edition, 1, pp. 55 f.; III, pp. 22 f.; IV. plate 10; and by Prestel, in his edition, pp. 352-354, and plate LIX.
page 116 note 1 These photographs, with the exception of fig. 18, are due to the skill and enthusiasm of Signor Cavaliere Giuseppe Giordano of Torre Annunziata; authorisation and facilities were liberally granted by the authorities of the excavations.
page 116 note 2 Described by Wadsworth, E. L., in Memoirs of the Amer. Acad. in Rome, iv, 1924, p. 95Google Scholar.
page 116 note 3 In this list, the first set of figures refer to the Regio, the second to the Insula, and the third (where there is a third) to the number of the house entrance.
page 122 note 1 The above list naturally does not include the unpublished excavations of the Strata dell' Abbondanza, where, however, the bathrooms in the House of Trebius Valens will well repay study.
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