Chapter 7
Painting and Private Art Collections in Rome
Agnès Rouveret,
Agnès Rouveret
Search for more papers by this authorAgnès Rouveret,
Agnès Rouveret
Search for more papers by this authorBook Editor(s):Pierre Destrée,
Penelope Murray,
Pierre Destrée
Search for more papers by this authorPenelope Murray
Search for more papers by this authorSummary
This chapter takes as its starting point the building up of immense collections of Greek art works in Rome, which, for the Roman elite, represented a source of prestige in the exercise of power and of pleasure in private life. But, beyond social practices, has this culture of collecting given rise to specific forms of perception of art works? Is it possible to identify distinct stages in aesthetic experience, from emotions to critical judgments? To answer these questions, the collections of panel paintings (tabulae) appear to be an interesting case study. Two themes of wall paintings have been considered, landscapes and fictitious panel paintings. Their insertion into the decorative system of the walls allows one to better identify the various types of viewer–object relations. Connected with rhetorical codes and poetical forms, they delineate a form of aesthetics of intimacy, specific to the domestic sphere.
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Further Reading
- Recent syntheses provide precise overviews of the public collections in Rome: see Marvin (2008), Rutledge (2012), Bravi (2012). Also important are the studies on Pliny the Elder's Natural History: see Naas (2002), Carey (2003), Gibson and Morello (2011). The great part of the major literary sources are collected and translated in Reinach (1921), Becatti (1951), Pollitt (1983). On the critical literature about art, the key volume is Pollitt (1974); Tanner (2006) provides remarkably new insights on the theme we are dealing with. On private collections, there have been relatively few syntheses in recent times, except Bounia (2004), the collective volume Il collezionismo nel mondo romano, and Robert's (2005) original essay.
- The studies on Roman painting are numerous and reviewing them far exceeds the limits of this chapter. The question of the relation between Greek masterpieces and Roman copies is not considered a central issue anymore (Ling 1991, 134–135), as compared to the contextual analysis of the domestic decorations, on which PPM () is essential reading. For the collections in Naples, see Bragantini and Sampaolo (2009). Hellenistic discoveries open up new perspectives on the way to think about how Roman wall paintings dealt with earlier Greek models: see Baldassarre et al. (2002) and on the interpretation of fictitious pinacothecae, see Prioux (2008). For different conclusions, Squire (2012). The synthesis proposed here relies on works centered on the relations that establish themselves between the viewer and the domestic context. On specific topics (pictures, scaenographia, landscapes), see among others Leach (1988), Rouveret (1989), Bergmann (1994, 1999), Sauron (1994, 2009), Elsner (2007), Barbet and Verbanck-Piérard (2013), and references therein.
