Image request

A quick image request: I am looking for images of reconstructions of domestic interiors, ones which include wall paintings, but also furniture and, if at all possible, lighting.
These images don't have to be 100% "accurate"--it's to illustrate a point I will make in a conference paper about the undue focus scholars place on the interpretations of wall paintings. Well, what I think is undue focus considering other "distracting" elements in these interiors--furniture, lighting elements, domestic objects with other figural decoration, etc. In other words, I simply want to give the impression these suites of multi-media decoration had.
Any help is appreciated! Thanks!

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Sto cercando immagini di ricostruzioni di interni domestici, quelli che comprendono affreschi, ma anche mobili e, se possibile, l'illuminazione.
Questi immagini non devono essere al 100% "scientificamente precisi" - sono per illustrare un punto che farò in una presentazione sulle interpretazioni degli affreschi: che c'è attenzione eccessiva su decorazione murale, considerando altri elementi di "distrazione" in questi interni - mobili, lampade, oggetti domestici con altri decorazione figurale, ecc.Grazie!

Pompei. La città antica "esportata" in Venezuela

According to Mario Cardone at TorreSette.it, there are plans to construct a replica of the House of Julius Poybius in Caracas (Venezuela). There are precedents for this sort of reconstruction, so it will be interesting to see if anything comes of the plans. The proposed reconstruction is based on the recent multimedia presentation of the House of Polybius as part of the PompeiViva initiative.

Pompei. La città antica "esportata" in Venezuela

Pompeiviva, la fortunata iniziativa promozionale estiva degli scavi archeologici di Pompei, promossa dal commissario all’emergenza Marcello Fiori, sarà probabilmente “esportata” a Caracas per far vivere agli abitanti del Venezuela, insieme alla laboriosa comunità di italiani residenti, un tratto suggestivo dell’antica cultura romana all’ombra del Vesuvio. Un istantanea fermata nel momento in cui il Vulcano lasciò nella storia dell’umanità i segni terribili della sua forza distruttiva, seppellendo sotto ceneri e lapilli ogni traccia di vita del territorio sottostante, insieme agli scheletri degli abitanti. Il progetto di portare in Venezuela questa storia di vita e di cultura è nato da una visita di martedì scorso agli scavi di Pompei di Giovanni Labella e della sua famiglia. Labella presiede l’associazione “Campani del Venezuela” ed é vice presidente della Camera di Commercio venezuelana. Nello specifico, il nostro qualificato compatriota sta vagliando la possibilità di reperire finanziamenti pubblici per riprodurre, nel corso della celebrazione in Venezuela del centocinquantesimo anniversario dell’unità d’Italia, una copia fedele della domus di via dell’Abbondanza appartenuta a Giulio Polibio. In essa, insieme alla copia degli ambienti, gli affreschi e le suppellettili della casa originale sarebbero installati gli stessi congegni multimediali della casa di Pompei, concepiti da Claudio Salerno (dello staff di Fiori) e dai suoi collaboratori dell’Istituto per la diffusione delle scienze naturali. Nel corso della visita i turisti, a Pompei, hanno potuto entrare anima e corpo in un film di duemila anni. Lo stesso potrebbe succedere prossimamente a Caracas, dove i visitatori della mostra sarebbero messi in grado di provare le medesime sensazioni dei protagonisti di quell’antico paesaggio e dell’immane tragedia del 79 d.C.. Effetti speciali fanno comparire all’interno della casa il ricco proprietario che descrive la sua dimora, ricca di marmi intarsiati, mosaici e decorazioni. Nei vari angoli della domus e nel giardino sono stati ricreati “ad arte” gli stessi rumori, silenzi e suoni tipici del tempo antico. Suggestiva la scena finale con la materializzazione di una giovane donna incinta.

Reconstruction techniques at Pompeii

One aspect that every Pompeian scholar is bound to come up against during the course of their research is the question of what is and isn't reconstructed at Pompeii. In the course of my own work I've examined walls and doorways time and again with this in mind. Now I'd like to open it up to other researchers to kindly point out some details that can be put together as recognised patterns of reconstruction that are otherwise unrecorded in the excavation reports, etc. Please post a reply if you can help with this!

Mortar - what is ancient and what is modern?
This is a big question because so much relies up on viewing a mortar up close. Occasionally it's possible to know what is a modern repair like repointing (to keep the opus incertum stones from falling apart and allowing the wall to collapse, etc), but does anyone have other markers to point out?

Blocked doorways: Blocked in antiquity or in modern times (and why)?
20th century site workers (muratore) developed a method of filling in doorways but leaving gaps at each side of the doorway to show that it was a modern fill. Of course, the largest clue lies in the modern mortar, but does anyone have further thoughts on this and/or why the muratore thought this was necessary?

Earthquake damage to walls in AD 63: How to know?
John Dobbins and the Pompeii Forum Project have carried out some great work on noting wall failure patterns and the subsequent repairs. But does anyone else have some tips?

Should we rebury Pompeii?

Google Street View has generated an awful lot of chatter about Pompeii on Twitter and in other blogs. I came across one blogger the other day who was advocating the reburial of the site as a solution to its conservation problems, since computer-generated reconstructions mean that tourists no longer need to visit. Conservators are fighting a losing battle, even when they have appropriate funding. Pompeii is dying, there is no doubt about it.
You can imagine my knee-jerk reaction to the idea of burying Pompeii, because I'm sure you all just had it too! But since then I have been mulling the idea over. So here are my thoughts, in no particular order. I'd be really interested to know what anyone else thinks.

• This is not a new idea, but one that surfaces every few years, often alongside with the idea of building a replica Pompeii for tourists (the best versions imagine the real site left to scholars - now, there's an idea!). The thing is, a replica - whether real or digital - can't reproduce the atmosphere of Pompeii and the experience of walking its streets and entering its houses. We need to remember that Pompeii is a tourist site. I sometimes think that we scholars are there on sufferance. The SAP likes us, for sure, for I don't think the Italian government cares all that much unless there is money to be made. Perhaps I am being too cynical. But note that the majority of Fiori's current initiatives are to do with making the site more accessible and enjoyable for tourists. Even if scholars all agreed that Pompeii should be reburied, the government would never allow it to happen.
• Burying Pompeii would be an economic disaster for the region. Ok, the entrance ticket money goes directly to the site and funds (one hopes) conservation and other necessary works. But an entire modern town depends on Pompeii for its livelihood - hotels, restaurants, shops, stalls. This is an economically depressed region at the best of times. Reburying Pompeii would destroy it.
• How exactly would it be reburied? Practically, I mean. It took years of effort to get rid of the fill in the first place! Anyone who has read the excavation reports knows that this issue was a serious and costly one. Thank goodness for the A3 autostrada, since that used up a lot of lapilli! So what could be used to rebury the site, where would it come from, and how much would it cost to do it?!
• Covering Pompeii over would mean the end of stratigraphic excavation. Reconstructions would document the state of the town in AD 79 (or should I say 2009!), but investigations into Pompeii's pre-AD 79 history would stop. We wouldn't be able to answer any of our questions about the development of the site, for example.
• Would any reconstruction really be able to document everything? Scholars are finding new things all the time - I'm thinking about recent research into upper floors and on graffiti, but there are other examples too. And wouldn't the reconstructions decay too (look at the current condition of the Pompejanum at Aschaffenburg, for example)? Even computer-generated reconstructions will eventually degrade.

So is there is a solution? Personally I don't think we can stop the destruction of Pompeii. We can slow it (as they are doing in Herculaneum), but Pompeii won't be around 1000 years from now. Just look at the parts of the town excavated in the 1700s. The walls have crumbled, the wall-paintings have disappeared. And this has happened DESPITE conservation attempts (yes, the first efforts of conservation occurred in the 1770s and have continued since then). So our job is to study and record (in multiple formats) as much as we can now, and to support any efforts of conservation. There is no point complaining about the inevitable decay of the site.

Reconstructing the history of the Pompeia, Saratoga Springs

I finally got the chance to have a look at some of the links sent in after my previous post on the Pompeia of Saratoga Springs (thank you to those of you who commented on this!). In particular I had been wondering what happened to this building (after all, the Pompejanum of Aschaffenburg can still be visited today), and I was intrigued by the idea that this wonderful building may now be the base of an advertising company. So I googled 'Pompeia', 'Saratoga Springs' and 'advertising' and came up with the name of advertising company, Palio. A brief exchange of emails with Lori Goodale at Palio revealed that Palio is indeed based in the Pompeia. Lori very helpfully shared the information that Palio hold in their files about the building and a current photograph of the atrium. So here is my potted history of the Pompeia, based on what Lori gave me and a few extra things I've been able to dig up.
The Pompeia was built in 1889 by Boston hardware merchant and architect, Franklin Webster Smith, once dubbed 'Reconstruction Smith'. He had already built the Villa Zorayda in St Augustine, Florida (a Moorish Palace) and the Casa Monica Hotel, also in St. Augustine (another Moorish castle but on what seems a far larger scale; the website contains historical images of the hotel, which are amazing). Smith was described as 'a man of vision and foresight' who wanted both to enhance Saratoga's prosperity and her cultural and intellectual standing. Apparently he had a personal distaste for horse-racing and gambling, for which Saratoga was famous. He would go on to design the Halls of the Ancients in Washington D.C.

The Pompeia was described as a replica of the House of Pansa, but in fact it seems to combine elements from the architecture and decoration of several different Pompeian houses, along with other random antiquities. Smith commissioned artists and historians to copy the architecture, statues and paintings that 'would show the life of a Roman nobleman'. He also purchased countless works of art and ancient artifacts during his 14 trips to Europe and they were displayed in the Pompeia.

There was a 'Salve' mosaic in the fauces, with porters' room on either side and a cave canem mosaic at the entrance of the atrium. All the furniture in the atrium - tables, chairs, couches, musical instruments, tripods, candelabra - were copied from originals in the Naples Museum or from wall-paintings found in Pompeii or Herculaneum. Cabinets of busts of ancestors and family archives, located in the tablinum. The ceiling here was decorated with copies of mosaics from the Villa of Diomedes (I don't know which ones!). There were copies of papyrus rolls and a replica of a strong box from the Naples Museum. There was a lecture hall decorated with a painting of the 'Grandeur of Rome at the Time of Constantine', 50 feet long by 11 feet high. This painting was badly damaged in a fire (see below). Smith's intention was that the Pompeia would become an annual excursion for all the schools and colleges within 'a day's ride' of Saratoga. The entrance fee was 50 cents and for a few brief years the Pompeia was a famous tourist destination.

Smith had other plans for Saratoga, too, but the majority of them never saw the light. He went bankrupt and the banks foreclosed on the Pompeia in 1906. However, the building is still standing and has enjoyed (or perhaps suffered) a varied history since 1906. In 1914 the Pompeia was bought by the Masonic Hall Association and was used by the local Masons for 30 years. On Christmas Eve 1926 a fire destroyed parts of the Pompeia, including many of the Roman relics and a hallway of Egyptian murals and artefacts. Local photographer George S. Bolser was a child when this occurred and recalled Egyptian mummies lying smoldering on the street while the police chased away curious kids! The Masons sold the Pompeia in 1952 and it became a Synagogue and Jewish Community Center until 1989. I've not been able to discover how the building was used between 1989 and 1999 (the year that Palio moved in). Below is a photo of the atrium of the Pompeia today. I love the green columns and the painting of what I think is the Saratoga racetrack in the background.

The photo of the external facade and the atrium as it is today were provided by Lori Goodale of Palio (the first may be from the George S. Bolser Collection); the other photos are from Flickr.

Pompeia, Saratoga Springs

My thanks to David Emery for sending in this photo from the A. D. White Architectural Photographs, Cornell University Library (Accession Number: 15/5/3090.00452) of the Pompeia at Saratoga Springs. Other images from the Pompeia can be seen here on Flickr.

These are fabulous photos and I want to know more! Is the Pompeia still standing? Can it be visited? Who built it and why? Can anyone provide any details about this?

In Germany, an outpost of Pompeii shows its age

An interesting piece below about the condition of the Pompejanum of Aschaffenburg - a replica Pompeian villa built from 1843 - 50 by Ludwig I of Baveria. It's interesting to note that the Pompejanum suffers from the same problems of preservation as the ruins of Pompeii themselves.

Does anyone know whether the Pompejanum is based on a particular villa or is it just 'Pompeian-style'? There must be articles and books written about it - can anyone provide some bibliography?

So ancient is Europe that even a "new" building often seems as battered and worn as an "old" one. East of Frankfurt, restorers have struggled to remove the scars of nearly 160 years from a reproduction Roman villa which used to offer a vision of luxury living in the Italian city of Pompeii before a volcanic eruption on August 24 in 79 AD. ...
The Pompejanum was built in the German city of Aschaffenburg as a replica of a villa in Pompeii. The rich reds, intense blues and greens of its wall paintings are a shock to anyone expecting the dullness of the ancient ruins.
"The excavations were expanding during the reign of King Ludwig I of Bavaria," explained a Pompejanum art historian, Werner Helmberger.
Like many educated Europeans, Ludwig had made the Grand Tour to Italy and had been fascinated by the discoveries.
"He noticed how quickly the colourful Roman frescoes faded when they were brought to light," said Georg Fahrenschon, today's Bavarian finance minister, who oversaw funding of the replica's restoration. That gave him the idea of building a reproduction villa.
"He never intended to live there. Its purpose was to educate Bavarians about classical architecture," said Helmberger.
In 1843, Ludwig laid the foundation stone at Aschaffenburg, a town in the far north of his kingdom, and the replica with its colourful interior was completed in 1850. But within a century it was as much a ruin as Pompeii was.
During the Second World War, the US Army shelled Aschaffenburg. The walls of the Pompejanum were smashed and the frescoes lost. The building is close to the Main River, and dampness from the soil crept into what was left, worsening the damage, along with vandalism.
Teenagers lit campfires in the rooms or scratched hearts into the plaster. A bullet which remains impacted in the nose of the goddess Hera in a mosaic apparently dates from those violent days.
Restoration of this outpost of Campania began in the 1960s. In the decades since, fashions in historical preservation have regularly changed and each phase followed different principles. The last, intensive phase began in 1989.
In line with current principles that advocate showing a building's many phases, parts of the Pompejanum are fully restored to their 1848 state and others seem frozen in their state of war destruction in 1945.
The Housewife's Room, opened to the public this month when the work was completed, has largely grey walls, where the US shells wrecked the frescoes. They have only been restored at a few spots.
Restorer Armin Schmickl-Prochnow said: "We make a point of only using the materials of 2,000 years ago. They are simply earth pigments with some lime added to bond them."
Raimund Wuensche, head of the Bavarian state antiquities collection, said the 12.7 million euros (17 million dollars) spent since the 1960s on restoring the Pompejanum had been well worth it.
"It's a unique feeling here: the space, the frescoes, the culture, all in one place." (source)

(source: Flickr. For more photos from Flickr, see here).

More on the Getty fragment

David Gill, my colleague from Swansea, has also posted information about the Getty fragment on Looting Matters, along with details of other fragments that seem to have come from the same wall painting. He comments: '[The fragment] will join two other fragments returned to Italy: one from the J. Paul Getty Museum, the other from the Shelby White collection (see my comments from January 2008 with initial reconstruction). A fourth fragment was apparently seized from Giacomo Medici in Geneva. The latest fragment will be returned in May 2009.'

[The arrangement of the fragments has been created by David Gill and is intended to give an impression of the original design. It is not an accurate reconstruction though the fragments are at the same approximate scale. This was originally created in January 2008.]

Digital images reveal the secrets of Roman painting

Another press release from the University of Southampton about the Amazon head that was found by the Herculaneum Conservation Project. See my earlier post too. This is what they have to say now:

Cutting-edge imaging techniques are being used in the digital restoration of a 2000-year old Roman statue.
The delicately painted statue, which was discovered in the ancient ruins of Herculaneum in 2006 and believed to depict an Amazon Warrior, is now the subject of a joint restoration project by the University of Southampton, the University of Warwick, and the Herculaneum Conservation Project.
Highly sophisticated digital imaging is vital for the recording, subsequent analysis and restoration of cultural heritage material. Experts in archaeological computing led by Dr Graeme Earl of the Archaeological Computing Research Group in the School of Humanities, used a novel form of photography – Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM), developed by HP Labs - to provide a detailed record of the texture and colour of the painted surfaces.
A specially-designed rig, camera structure, and associated custom software was developed in the School of Electronics and Computer Science by Dr Kirk Martinez and the team in the Mechanical Workshop to enable very fast acquisition of PTM data, with variable sample sizes. The rig uses a lightweight tripod running on battery power, making it adaptable enough to use on archaeological sites. The whole kit is highly portable and can be carried in a suitcase. 'It was fascinating to pull together various elements from my imaging research projects in order to solve all the issues for the new rig design,' said Kirk Martinez.
The head of the Amazon Warrior was discovered in 2006 in the ancient ruins of Herculaneum, a town close to Pompeii, which was buried in the AD79 eruption of Mount Vesuvius. The delicate painting of the statue’s features and its fine state of preservation meant that it was regarded as a landmark discovery by archaeologists, providing clues to the decoration of Roman statues that had previously been only guessed at.
The digital restoration project is an initiative of the Packard Humanities Institute, in collaboration with the Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei and the British School at Rome.
‘Our work at Southampton bridges the gap between computing and archaeology in bringing the best that colleagues in engineering, electronics and computer science have to offer to unique artefacts from our past,’ said Dr Earl.
The series of images (different views are illustrated above) resulting from the scanning process is used to produce a single PTM file via the HP Labs PTM fitter software. The PTM viewer enables a virtual light source to be moved across the virtual scene. The viewer can also vary lighting intensity, add additional virtual lights, derive surface models and to carry out image processing tasks such as edge detection.

Article: Virtual Relighting of a Roman Statue Head from Herculaneum: A Case Study

I've just been sent a copy of a paper recently presented/published on "Virtual Relighting of a Roman Statue Head from Herculaneum: A Case Study", which may be of interest to those involved in digital reconstructions of Vesuvian archaeology.

The work was carried out last year by teams from the University of Warwick (and Southampton), in collaboration with the Herculaneum Conservation Project, and the Superintendency.

The full bibliographical reference is:

Jassim Happa, Mark Williams, Glen Turley, Graeme Earl, Piotr Dubla, Gareth Beale, Greg Gibbons, Kurt Debattista and Alan Chalmers. "Virtual Relighting of a Roman Statue Head from Herculaneum: A Case Study". In AFRIGRAPH '09: Proceedings of the 3rd international conference on Computer graphics, virtual reality, visualisation and interaction in Africa, page 5-12, New York, NY, USA, 2009. ACM.

Given that these conference proccedings are increasingly hard to track down, do feel free to email me at s.court [at] herculaneum.org if you'd like to get hold of a copy.

University of Southampton work at Herculaneum

The University of Southampton has just highlighted the work of its archaeology department at Herculaneum on its homepage (www.southampton.ac.uk) with various links for further information. Their work includes a team who are "virtually" reconstructing a statue head (along with the University of Warwick), and another team who have carried out geophysics - all in collaboration with the Herculaneum Conservation Project, and of course, thanks to access and permission granted by the Soprintendenza.

House of Julius Polybius and Der Spiegel

I was reminded by Francesca's re-posting of Der Spiegel's article about 'recent' research to reconstruct the final hours of the inhabitants of the House of Julius Polybius that I was deeply suspicious that this was new research ... So, a little investigation later, I can tell you that Luongo, Perrotta and Scarpati gave a conference paper on the effects of the eruption on the House of Julius Polybius in 1997 (I even went to it, I have the conference material to prove it!), and they published an article on it in 2001:

Luongo, G., Perrotta A. e Scarpati C. 2001. 'L'impatto dei prodotti di eruzioni esplosive sull' ambiente: l'eruzione del 79 d.C. a Pompei'. In: La casa di Giulio Polibio. Studi Interdisciplinari. Ministero per i Beni e le Attività Culturali. Edizione: Centro Studi Arte Figurative, Università di Tokyo, pp. 215-238.

Of course, this doesn't mean that they're not still working on it ... I wonder where Der Spiegel got its information from?

Luongo, Perrotta and Scarpati were involved in the production of a Japanese CDRom: 'La casa di Julius Polybius' by Masanori Aoyagi, 2001. They have published a whole bunch of articles on the impact on the eruption on structures, and I will list those in a comment to this post.

In 2003, the BBC made a documentary entitled 'Pompeii. The Last Day', which tells the story of the final hours of the inhabitants of the House of Julius Polybius, and also of other characters (such as Stephanus, of the Fullery of Stephanus). The work of Luongo, Perrotta and Scarpati is not explicitly credited, but I can't believe that it didn't influence the documentary ...

(Four other parts of this documentary can also be seen on UTube.)

Primo tentativo di colorazione di tessuti usando le techniche degli antichi

Does anyone know anything more about this?:

'Italia, Pompeii - è avvenuto il primo tentativo di colorazione di tessuti usando le techniche degli antichi
A Pompei, Il 15 novembre del 2008 si è sperimentata per la prima volta la tintura di tessuti utilizzando le tecniche antiche. La caldaia usata è stata ricostruita apposta dal Centro studi Jean Berard, dove gli studiosi si sono basati alle caldaie originali d’epoca romana che si sono conservate integre in certe tintorie della parte antica della città.' (Martina Calogero, ArcheoRivista, 12 January 2009)

Herculaneum Amazon

On the theme of Amazons from Herculaneum, a painted marble bust - thought to represent a wounded Amazon - was found by the Herculaneum Conservation Project. Scientists at the University of Warwick WMG have used rapid prototyping to create a physical 3D model of the head that records small details. The next step is to 'apply techniques to the computer model to exactly reproduce the lighting and environmental conditions under which the painted statue would have originally been created and displayed. This visualisation will provide archaeologists with an otherwise impossible view of how the original statue may have looked in context, and allow them to experiment with alternative hypotheses.'

Original 3D model

The photos are from Warwick WMG: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/mediacentre/wmgnews/scientists_bring_2000/pics/. There is also a video explaining the process at this site.

MAV Ercolano

Has anybody visited the Museo Archeologico Virtuale in Ercolano? It opened last summer, I believe, and it looks remarkable.

I would be really interested to know if anyone has visited the museum and what they think of it.

P.S. I also found a really cool plan of the Bay of Naples on the museum website: http://gallery.xlimage.it/acquerello/index.html.