DISPLAY CASE 2
STUCCHO – FRESCOES – MARBLES
STUCCO
Stucco consists of a mixture of finely crushed plaster or marble, lime and pozzolan. It is often worked wet by kneading it and it is shaping it with the help of moulds or freehand. Finally, it is painted.
Bas-relief decorations were obtained in this way and in ancient times they were widely used in internal and external architecture, for vaults, ceilings, and walls. Of the fragments found in Villa Rufione red, yellow, and blue painted stucco reflect the decorations found in the frescoes, with ornamental lines for palmettes, ovules and dentils (1, 2, 3), busts (4), while others have been used to embellish structural elements such as lintels or columns. A white stucco scroll (5) adorned a Corinthian capital, and a “dentil”, a tooth like decoration (6), were part of the entablatures.
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FRESCOES
The fresco is an ancient painting technique. The colour was made with pigments, generally of mineral origin which were diluted in water and then applied to the fresh plaster. Once the plaster had proved, the colour became fixed and was both water resistant and permanent. Both Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder write about the preparation of the different layers of plaster on which the paint was spread (Tectorium). A curl of mortar mixed with lime was applied to the wall, on which a thin layer of plaster was applied. As a rule as many as seven layers of stratification were required, although only in very rare cases was this rule respected to the letter. The last layer was laid at the same time as the fresco was executed and the surface needed to remain damp while being decorated. Decoration could take several days.
The subjects depicted could be many and varied according to the taste that time. In our case, the frescos are decorative (palmettes, waves and scrolls) that divided the wall both horizontally and vertically, but there is no shortage of everyday objects, animals, or human depictions. Some of the colours used were so precious that they were supplied directly by the client. These were: Armenium and Indicum, which were used to make blues; Chriscolla was used for greenery; and minium and Cinnabris, mixed with other colours, created “Pompeian red”.
Four Pompeian styles found in antique frescoes. In style I (approximately 200-100 BCE): there was an abundant use of relief and coloured stucco, imitating the polychrome marble block walls seen in Hellenistic palaces. In the second style (approx. 100-30 BCE): there was a prevalence of figures and the use of perspective. In the third style (approx. 30 BCE – 50 CE) profound differences in the conception of space can be seen. Whilst in the fourth style (approx. 50-79 CE) there was a clear freedom of expression with the reworking of previous styles.
In Villa Rufione’s frescos there is a prevalence of third and fourth styles, with foundations in perspective, and false windows, etc.. Here you can see a female face with red hair (7), a male body holding a pole in his left hand (8), a Flamenn (priest) (9), part of a female body with a yellow tunic with her left arm bent over her belly (10), and a legionnaire’s shield (11).
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THE MARBLES
A large quantity of marble were found at the site in Giano dell’Umbria, indicative of a rich patronage. Marble slabs covered floors and walls up to about 1m in height. The coloured marble came from quarries throughout the Mediterranean basin. Cipollino marble (12) came from numerous quarries located on the southwest coast of the island of Euboea, Greece, between the present-day cities of Styra and Karystos. Some of these ancient quarries permitted marble slabs over 100 meters long to be extracted. The marble was exported to Rome from the first century BCE, it was used until the late fifth century, in the Byzantine Age. African marble (13) spread rapidly in Rome and was used for floor and wall cladding, basins, and columns. Bigio marble (14) was extracted from quarries located near the ancient city of Teos, near Izmir, Turkey. Also known as Numidian marble, ancient yellow marble (15) was taken from quarries located near the ancient city of Simitthus in Tunisia. The quarries soon became imperial property, and this variety of marble was widely used for column shafts and wall and floor coverings in public buildings in the cities closest to the Mediterranean coast.
Pavonazzetto marble (16), whose name is derived from the Latin for peacock, is a type of white marble with dark purple veins, as in the peacock’s tail. It is also called Phrygian, due to its origin from the homonymous region of Asia Minor in Turkey. The pavonazzetto was one of the most sought-after and widespread coloured marbles in ancient Rome; it was used for floors, ornaments, columns and statues as, for example, those in Trajan’s Forum. The Portasanta (17) was one of the most widely used marbles in Rome. It was quarried on the Greek island of Chios in Greece. Today it is called “Portasanta” marble because it was reused in the jambs of the Holy Door of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. It was quarried in large quantities and used in Rome from the second century BCE.
