DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5596#0147
122
ANCIENT ART.
plaster. This being the most important room in
the house, the owner had chosen it for the exhi-
bition of these masterpieces, though in most of the
other rooms fresco paintings had been inserted from
other houses, while one room was adorned with
very large and magnificent paintings of mythological
subjects, and which, though quite perfect on their
discovery, had lost all their beauty, and in many
parts were quite ruined, at my second visit, only
two years after; so perfectly reckless is the govern-
ment of what becomes of the monuments left at
Pompeii, after removing what it considers will be
an embellishment to its museum.
These paintings on wood would be what the
ancients might have called their " Old Masters,"
while the fresco decorations which we see at
present must necessarily have been of more modern
date. But though the paintings on wood have
perished, some few and rare specimens have de-
scended to us of another description—their mosaic
paintings. The richest Roman mosaic pavement
will bear no comparison with the chaste and elegant
Greek mosaics of Pompeii; while these again will
bear no contrast with the mosaic wall-pictures.
There are several of such mosaic pictures in the
Museum at Naples, (I Studii,) one of which is
engraved in the Museo Borbonico, (vol. iv. tav.
xxxiv.) but being only in outline, and not very
exactly drawn, it conveys no idea of the beauty of
ANCIENT ART.
plaster. This being the most important room in
the house, the owner had chosen it for the exhi-
bition of these masterpieces, though in most of the
other rooms fresco paintings had been inserted from
other houses, while one room was adorned with
very large and magnificent paintings of mythological
subjects, and which, though quite perfect on their
discovery, had lost all their beauty, and in many
parts were quite ruined, at my second visit, only
two years after; so perfectly reckless is the govern-
ment of what becomes of the monuments left at
Pompeii, after removing what it considers will be
an embellishment to its museum.
These paintings on wood would be what the
ancients might have called their " Old Masters,"
while the fresco decorations which we see at
present must necessarily have been of more modern
date. But though the paintings on wood have
perished, some few and rare specimens have de-
scended to us of another description—their mosaic
paintings. The richest Roman mosaic pavement
will bear no comparison with the chaste and elegant
Greek mosaics of Pompeii; while these again will
bear no contrast with the mosaic wall-pictures.
There are several of such mosaic pictures in the
Museum at Naples, (I Studii,) one of which is
engraved in the Museo Borbonico, (vol. iv. tav.
xxxiv.) but being only in outline, and not very
exactly drawn, it conveys no idea of the beauty of