(music) ("In the Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)
Male: We're outside of the city walls
in Pompeii in the Villa of Mysteries.
Female: This is called the Villa of Mysteries
because of this room that we're looking at.
It's a very mysterious room
painted with figures engaged in something
that we really can't figure out entirely.
The frescoes that we're discussing
in this room exist in this large villa
overlooking the sea, filled with other frescoes
from different periods of Roman wall painting.
Male: So many of the houses in Pompeii
are eclectic in their styles.
They incorporate styles from one period,
but then a new room perhaps is
constructed or renovated
and a new style is added,
so it's a bit of a mix.
Female: Just like you might have
a bathroom in your house
left over from the 1960s.
Male: This villa had one's large windows
that looked onto the sea, but
if we look toward the sea now,
it's actually very distant.
The eruption of Mount Vesuvius
added a tremendous amount of shore
to the coastline and the Villa of Mysteries
is now quite a distance from the beach.
Female: It's quite a luxurious villa.
Roman wall painting is fresco,
it's painted directly onto wet plaster.
Male: And these are true fresco,
or what the Italians call Buon fresco.
But the ancient Romans also sometimes
added secco fresco to the top.
In other words, the underlayer was
a mixture of lime plaster that was
basically stained with a kind of
water color that wouldn't remain on
the surface, but would actually stain
the full depth of that new plaster.
Once that had dried,
sometimes finishing touches would be
added with what is called secco fresco,
or dry fresco.
Female: The colors are still very deep.
We see reds, greens, purples and blues.
Male: These may not have originally
been quite as deep when the excavations
were first taking place.
This particular fresco cycle had
oil and wax added to it to help
preserve it, but it actually darkened the color.
Female: The room is entered through
a very small door and it has two windows,
so that adds to the sense that this
was a room that had a special purpose.
Male: There's been a lot of debate about
what these figures depict.
These are large-scale figures painted
on three walls that we think depicts
a Dionysian cult ritual.
At this time, what we call mystery cults,
which were religions that came from
the east, were not entirely okay.
The state religion was still the only
official religion that was allowed.
Female: Right. If you were involved in
something like a Dionysian cult or
another eastern cult, you had to
keep it somewhat secret.
Let's start by looking at the figures
closest to the doorway where one would enter.
Male: We see a woman with her hand
bent against her hip.
She is fully dressed and has
an aristocratic air to her.
She seems literally to be entering
in from the doorway.
Female: She wears a veil and pulls
the veil down around her shoulder
and chest and because of the veil,
we think that she is a bride.
Male: In fact, we think that this entire
ritual that's being rendered on these walls
is about mystical marriage to
the god Dionysus.
Female: He appears on the next wall.
Male: Before we get to him,
we see a small child, a boy,
who's stark naked and seems to be
reading intently from a small scroll.
We think that this is some sort of
liturgy, some sort of ritual.
Female: Behind him is a seated female
figure, and then next to her,
another female figure who seems to be
carrying something which we really
can't identify.
Sometimes figures are grouped together,
but then other times, figures are alone
and seem to be very much in their own world.
Male: There is a sense of continuous
space, though, and continuous time.
They could be going about their own activities
independent of each other.
Female: When we look toward the feet
of the figures, we see a ground
that they're standing on.
We have a sense of illusion of space.
This division of the wall into
horizontal bands and the creation of
an illusion of space is part of
what we consider second style wall paintings.
This is different than the flatness
that we saw in the first style.
Male: Characteristic of second style wall painting,
it is as if the room itself is
architecturally extended.
It's as if this wall breaks out and
there's enough room on a platform
for these figures to stand on.
But this is unusual in that we have
such a dense freeze of figures
and at this scale.
Female: That's right.
In the next scene we see a group
of figures around a table who are
involved in some kind of ritual it seems,
although it's very difficult to identify
exactly what.
Male: Some art historians have suggested
that this is a kind of cleansing ritual.
You can kind of see some sort of liquid
being poured onto a table top,
there's a drape that's being lifted up.
The figure who's facing away from us,
look at the way that one of her hips
pushes over the stool that she sits on.
There's a bravura illusionism
that's extraordinarily successful,
and even though her back is facing
towards us, we are engaged with her.
We are looking towards that table
almost the way that she is.
Female: We have a sense of psychology
of emotion, of individuality.
The seated figure seems to be
looking toward a standing, drunken figure
who we've identified as a silenus,
or a drunken, older, satyr figure.
Male: Satyrs hung around with Dionysus
and everybody drank a lot,
so no surprise there.
Female: Yeah, he looks quite tipsy.
Next to him are three figures.
Male: Most people are struck by
the one figure of the three that is standing.
She seems shocked.
There's a kind of recognition,
but also a kind of surprise.
Female: And fearfulness.
Male: And fearfulness, absolutely.
Of course that entire upper body is
framed beautifully by that cloak
that billows in back of her.
It's picked up the wind
and look at the way it turns in space,
light and shadow are used exquisitely
in order to construct that volume
in back of her.
Female: She moves toward the right,
but she looks back to her left,
so there's a sense of reacting
and moving away.
Her left hand, her left forearm
is foreshortened.
Male: Her expression, looking over to
the back wall, bridges that gap
as we seamlessly move over
the corner of the room without
even realizing it.
This is really thoughtfully conceived.
Female: She seems to be reacting to
a mask held up by a figure on the next wall.
Male: That's a young figure standing
above another silenus.
Now we're at the back panel
where Dionysus sits and we can see
he is absolutely drunk.
Female: When we think about Dionysus,
we think about unbridled pleasure
that's indicated in his body as
he lounges across the lap of Ariadne,
his mortal lover.
Male: He's got his own staff
draped over him, but look at the way
that the body's beautifully articluated
almost completely nude,
to his drape is just falling away.
But it's the way in which his body's
absolutely relaxed.
This is not the way the Greeks
or the Romans represented their athletes.
Female: But we do see often
images of Dionysus in this pose;
sleeping, dreaming, reclining, drunken, awakening
Male: I love the way that Ariadne,
a mortal, her hand is over his shoulder.
There's a kind of intimacy there.
He is enjoying himself.
Female: And as we move toward the right,
we see a kneeling figure who is
unveiling something under a purple cloth
that has just been removed from
its case that's on the ground.
Male: Right. Some would call this
a basket of some sort.
Art historians have spent a lot of time
trying to determine what exactly is there.
Many people think it's a fallace.
One art historian has suggested
it might be a rendering of Mount Vesuvius
which is visible from just outside this house.
Female: Next to that we have a winged figure
who's foreshortened moving towards us,
but looking over to her left.
She's whipping a figure who's kneeling
across the next corner.
Male: The winged figure's body
has this wonderful torsion as she
reaches back in order to really
get a good strike with that whip.
So just like the back left corner,
the artist, whoever it is,
and we don't have a name,
has been able to bridge that
corner seamlessly and we know that
the velocity of that whip will
move our eye right over to its victim.
The woman's back is exposed,
her head is down in the lap of
a woman who seems to be comforting her.
Female: Beside them, another woman who
is nude and seems to be dancing.
Male: Look at the elegance of this figure
and the way that her drape creates
a crescent that frames her body just beautifully.
Female: We have figures who are in
groups together, comforting each other
or enacting something together,
and then a figure who is isolated
or seems to be somewhat separated
from that group.
Male: The scene is then interrupted by
a large window and concludes
with three figures on the right.
We have a small, angelic figure,
a kind of [pootie] that seems to be dancing.
Female: And then another figure who's
seated, who's doing her hair,
being helped by a standing woman.
Perhaps she's already gone through
the ritual and is a bride of Dionysus or
perhaps she's the next initiate,
we really don't know.
(music) ("In the Sky With Diamonds" by Scalding Lucy)