Pompeii in The Visual and Performing Arts: Its Reception in Spain and Latin America 9781350277885, 9781350277915, 9781350277892

Table of contents :
Cover
Halftitle page
Series page
Title page
Copyright page
CONTENTS
ILLUSTRATIONS
CONTRIBUTORS
INTRODUCTION: THE RECEPTION OF POMPEII IN SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA Mirella Romero Recio
Before Pompeii
After Pompeii
Living in Pompeii
Seduced by Pompeii
New Pompeiis
Conclusion
Notes
References
CHAPTER 1 THE ‘POMPEIAN HOUSE’ IN SPAIN: A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION BETWEEN REALITY AND UTOPIA1 Mirella Romero Recio
The Pompeian house and nineteenth-century Spanish architects
Adaptation of the Pompeian house in the early twentieth century
The Pompeian house as utopian project in Ciudad Lineal (Madrid)
By way of conclusion
Notes
References
CHAPTER 2 ECHOES OF POMPEII IN MEXICO: ACADEMY, SOCIETY AND ART1 Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez
The Academy
Society
Clothing and personal grooming
Shows and public places
Art and the homeland
The legacy of Pompeii in present-day Mexico
Conclusion
Notes
References
CHAPTER 3 ART AND RHETORIC FOR AN EMPIRE: THE POMPEIAN STYLE IN PUERTO RICO AND THE UNITED STATES DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY1 Daniel Expósito
‘Resembling a product of Herculaneum and Pompeii’: the Pompeian style in San Juan de Puerto Rico
Towards a visual genealogy of naval power: the Pompeian style in the US Capitol, Washington, DC
Notes
References
CHAPTER 4 POMPEIAN INFLUENCES ON THE ELITE OF SANTIAGO DE CHILE: VISUAL ARTS, ANTIQUITIES AND ARCHITECTURE (NINETEENTH CENTURY)1 Carolina Valenzuela Matus
Classical taste: travel, collecting and antiquarianism
The Santiago elites and the Pompeian influence in palatial homes and public spaces
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER 5 JOAQUÍN SOROLLA AND POMPEII: THE IMPACT OF A TRIP ON HIS LIFE AND HIS OEUVRE1 Ana Valtierra
His stay in Italy: a brief summary of his training and how he obtained a grant
The sketches of his trip: the importance of colour and architectural perspective
Coloured sketches, tracings and copies of ‘Pompeian’ decorations
Sorolla’s house and gardens in Madrid: always present recollections of his trip to Pompeii
The recreation of Pompeian ambiances in the oeuvre of Sorolla
Notes
References
CHAPTER 6 THE REFLECTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD IN PICTORIAL SCENES: THE QUEST FOR THE POMPEIAN ATMOSPHERE IN SPANISH COSTUMBRIST PAINTINGS1 María Martín de Vidales García
Notes
References
CHAPTER 7 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM, AND THEIR RECEPTION THROUGH PLASTER COPIES AND PHOTOGRAPHY1 Jesús Salas Á lvarez
The importance of classical sculpture as a decorative element in Neapolitan palaces: originals and plaster casts
Classical sculpture as a decorative element in Spanish royal palaces
The Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the dissemination in Spain of the sculptures of Herculaneum and Pompeii
The role of the San Carlos Royal Academy in Mexico and the distribution of classical antiquities in America
Plaster casts of sculptures in the first half of the nineteenth century
Photography and its use to record the ruins at Pompeii
By way of conclusion
Notes
References
CHAPTER 8 POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM IN CUBA: THE IMPACT OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS ON THE ISLAND’S VISUAL ARTS1 Federica Pezzoli
Nineteenth-century Cuba and the dissemination of and the taste for the neoclassical style
Gioacchino Albé, Daniel Dall’Aglio and Antonio Meucci
The Aldama Palace
The Cantero Palace
The Borrell Palace
The Esteban Theatre
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER 9 EXCAVATING THE PAST AND FRAMING NEW IDENTITIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: VESUVIUS, POMPEII AND MODERNITY IN RIO DE JANEIRO1 Renata Senna Garraffoni
Excavating Pompeii: encounters between Naples and Brazil
From Naples to Rio de Janeiro: ancient Romans in Rio de Janeiro newspapers
Teresa Cristina: empress and archaeologist
The Catete Palace: one monument, many stories
Notes
References
CHAPTER 10 POMPEIAN ECHOES IN RURAL HOUSES IN CENTRAL CHILE: THE QUEST FOR NEW IDENTITIES1 María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar
The estate house tradition in the Chilean Central Valley
Pompeian spaces in Santiago: the residence of José Arrieta Pereira
Maximiano Errázuriz’s Pompeian house
The Pompeian house of the Santa Rita vineyard
Conclusions
Notes
References
CHAPTER 11 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII: FROM LITERATURE TO COMICS IN LATIN AMERICA1 Laura Buitrago
Comics, illustrations and literature
The Classics in Latin America and Spain
Some final thoughts
Notes
References
CHAPTER 12 THE LATIN AMERICAN POMPEIIS: FROM A LANDSCAPE IN RUINS TO THE IMAGE OF TRAGEDY1 Ricardo Del Molino García
Pompeii as a comparative reference for pre-Hispanic and colonial ruins
Pompeii as an image of tragedy in the twentieth-century Latin American cultural landscape
Conclusion
Notes
References
EPILOGUE Shelley Hales
Eclecticism
Modernity and technology
Gender
Transforming a Continent
Conclusion
References
INDEX

Citation preview

POMPEII IN THE VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS

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IMAGINES – CLASSICAL RECEPTIONS IN THE VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS Series Editors: Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Martin Lindner Other titles in this series Ancient Greece and Rome in Videogames: Representation, Play, Transmedia, by Ross Clare Ancient Violence in the Modern Imagination: The Fear and the Fury, edited by Irene Berti, Maria G. Castello and Carla Scilabra Art Nouveau and the Classical Tradition, by Richard Warren Classical Antiquity in Heavy Metal Music, edited by K. F. B. Fletcher and Osman Umurhan Classical Antiquity in Video Games, edited by Christian Rollinger Geographies of Myth and Places of Identity: The Strait of Scylla and Charybdis in the Modern Imagination, by Marco Benoît Carbone A Homeric Catalogue of Shapes, by Charlayn von Solms Orientalism and the Reception of Powerful Women from the Ancient World, edited by Filippo Carlà-Uhink and Anja Wieber Representations of Classical Greece in Theme Parks, by Filippo Carlà-Uhink Screening Love and War in Troy: Fall of a City, edited by Antony Augoustakis and Monica S. Cyrino The Ancient Mediterranean Sea in Modern Visual and Performing Arts, edited by Rosario Rovira Guardiola The Reception of Cleopatra in the Age of Mass Media, by Gregory N. Daugherty The Smells and Senses of Antiquity in the Modern Imagination, edited by Adeline Grand-Clément and Charlotte Ribeyrol Women in Classical Video Games, edited by Jane Draycott and Kate Cook

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POMPEII IN THE VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS ITS RECEPTION IN SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA

Edited by Mirella Romero Recio

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BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2023 Copyright © Mirella Romero Recio & Contributors, 2023 Mirella Romero Recio has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Series cover design: Clare Turner. Logo design: Ainize González and Nacho García. Cover image: Toilette of a Roman Lady (detail), Giménez Martín, Juan (1855–1901). © Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Romero Recio, Mirella, editor. Title: Pompeii in the visual and performing arts : its reception in Spain and Latin America / Mirella Romero Recio. Description: London ; New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2023. | Series: Imagines – classical receptions in the visual and performing arts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022060165 | ISBN 9781350277885 (hardback) | ISBN 9781350277922 (paperback) | ISBN 9781350277892 (ebook) | ISBN 9781350277908 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Pompeii (Extinct city)–In art. | Pompeii (Extinct city)–In popular culture. | Arts, Spanish–Themes, motives. | Arts, Latin American–Themes, motives. Classification: LCC NX653.P65 P66 2023 | DDC 704.9/4993772568—dc23/eng/20230105 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022060165 ISBN: HB: 978-1-3502-7788-5 ePDF: 978-1-3502-7789-2 eBook: 978-1-3502-7790-8 Series: IMAGINES – Classical Receptions in the Visual and Performing Arts Typeset by RefineCatch Limited, Bungay, Suffolk To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

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CONTENTS

List of Illustrations List of Contributors Introduction: The Reception of Pompeii in Spain and Latin America Mirella Romero Recio 1

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1

The ‘Pompeian House’ in Spain: A Source of Inspiration between Reality and Utopia Mirella Romero Recio

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Echoes of Pompeii in Mexico: Academy, Society and Art Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez

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Art and Rhetoric for an Empire: The Pompeiian Style in Puerto Rico and the United States during the Nineteenth Century Daniel Expósito

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Pompeian Influences on the Elite of Santiago de Chile: Visual Arts, Antiquities and Architecture (Nineteenth Century) Carolina Valenzuela Matus

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Joaquín Sorolla and Pompeii: The Impact of a Trip on his Life and his Oeuvre Ana Valtierra

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The Reflection of the Ancient World in Pictorial Scenes: The Quest for the Pompeian Atmosphere in Spanish Costumbrist Paintings María Martín de Vidales García

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The Archaeological Discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and their Reception through Plaster Copies and Photography Jesús Salas Álvarez

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Pompeii and Herculaneum in Cuba: The Impact of the Archaeological Finds on the Island’s Visual Arts Federica Pezzoli

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Excavating the Past and Framing New Identities in the Nineteenth Century: Vesuvius, Pompeii and Modernity in Rio de Janeiro Renata Senna Garraffoni

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10 Pompeian Echoes in Rural Houses in Central Chile: The Quest for New Identities María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar

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11 The Last Days of Pompeii: From Literature to Comics in Latin America Laura Buitrago

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12 The Latin American Pompeiis: From a Landscape in Ruins to the Image of Tragedy Ricardo Del Molino García

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13 Epilogue Shelley Hales

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Index

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ILLUSTRATIONS

1.1.

1.2. 1.3.

2.1. 2.2. 2.3. 3.1. 3.2. 4.1. 4.2. 5.1. 5.2. 5.3. 5.4. 6.1. 6.2. 6.3.

7.1.

Mario Blasco – the son of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez – seated on the Carrara marble table in the Pompeian terrace. © Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation. Held in the Blasco Ibáñez House-Museum (Valencia, Spain) La Tierruca. © Asociación Cultural Legado de Arturo Soria Proposed design for the construction of the Forum in Ciudad Lineal. González del Castillo 1920b: 440. Image held in the Biblioteca Nacional de España collection José María Vázquez, Portrait of Doña María Luisa Gonzaga Foncerrada y Labarrieta, 1806. © National Museum of Art, Mexico Petronilo Monroy, Allegory of the Constitution of 1857, c. 1869, National Museum of Art, Mexico. © Wikimedia Commons (public domain) Petronilo Monroy, Bacchante, c. 1865. © National Museum of Art, Mexico Court Room, La Fortaleza, c. 1848. © Will A. Martínez Medina Naval Affairs Committee room, US Capitol, 1858. © Wikipedia (public domain) Cousiño Palace, 1900. View of the hallway. Medina Hall. FB1382. © National Library (Chile) Equine statue in the Porsche, Santa Lucia Hill. In: Vicuña Mackenna (1874) Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Women’s apodyterium of the Stabian Baths in Pompeii. Drawing inventory no. 12492. © Museo Sorolla Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Samnite horseman from the site of Paestum. Drawing inventory no. 82. © Museo Sorolla Gardens of the house of Sorolla, currently the Sorolla Museum. © Isabel Rondón Caballero Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Resting Bacchante. @ Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia Maximino Peña Muñoz: Drawing of the work Vestal romana cuidando el fuego sagrado. Image held in the Biblioteca Nacional de España collection Casto Plasencia y Maestro, Motivo decorativo: Ninfa de las mariposas o escena pompeyana. © Museo de Zaragoza. Photo Eduardo González Bayod Germán Hernández Amores, photograph of the work Pompeyana después del Baño. © J. Laurent y Cía. Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España, Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte Stereoscopic photograph of the Forum in Pompeii. Taken around 1860 by G. Sommer. Private collection of J. Salas

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29 41 47 48 58 65 80 82 91 93 96 99 110 113

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7.2. Stereoscopic photograph of the Amphitheatre in Pompeii, taken around 1870, from the photography studio of G. Sommer (reference no. 343). Private collection of J. Salas 8.1. Ceiling of the dining room on the top floor of the house of Domingo del Monte. © Julio A. Larramendi 8.2. Main hall and small hall of the Cantero Palace. © Julio A. Larramendi 9.1. José Correia de Lima, Dª Teresa Cristina, c. 1843. © Museu Imperial/ Ibram/MTur/nº07/2022/MUS 9.2. Pompeian Hall. © Acervo Museu da República/IBRAM/Secult/Ministério do Turismo 10.1. Child in the Pompeian courtyard in the Arrieta Park, Santiago, Chile, c. 1905. © Brügmann Heritage Archive 10.2. Architect Roger Tolson and others at the Pompeian house of Maximiano Errázuriz in Panquehue, Chile, c. 1894. © National Historical Museum of Chile 10.3. Terrace of the Pompeian house of Viña Santa Rita, currently the Hotel Casa Real, Buin, Chile. © María Gabriela Huidobro (author) 10.4. Fountain with sculpture of Spring, before the entrance to the Roman baths at the Pompeian house of Viña Santa Rita, currently the Hotel Casa Real, Buin Chile. © María Gabriela Huidobro (author) 11.1. Cover of The Last Days of Pompeii, first edition produced between 1973 and 1975 by Publicaciones Educativas Ariel. © Radmandí Proyectos Editoriales 12.1. ‘Great disasters of history by earthquake and volcano’ in McAlister, Samuel A. and Louis A. Ayme. Martinique Flood of Fire and Burning Rain: The Greatest Horror of Modern Times. Philadelphia: P.W. Ziegler, 1902. © Harvard University, digitalized by Google (public domain) 12.2. Everett, Marshall. The complete story of the Martinique Horror and other great disasters. Chicago, 1902. © The Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/ item/02023424/ (public domain)

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CONTRIBUTORS

Laura Buitrago is a predoctoral research fellow in the Department of Humanities: History, Geography and Art at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where she is working in the RIPOMPHEI project (Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America) directed by Professor Mirella Romero Recio. Her thesis studies the Latin American travellers who visited the Neapolitan sites and the reception of the trip in their countries of origin. Her research focuses on classical reception in Latin America, women’s history and cultural studies. Elvia Carreño Velázquez is an academic at the Center for Classical Studies of the Institute of Philological Research of the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; she is a professor of Philology and Old Books at the College of Classical Letters of the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters at the same university. Her lines of research include the classical tradition in Mexico, New Hispanic culture and ancient books. She is the author of the works El libro antiguo (2015) and El mundo en una sola mano, bibliotecarios novohispanos (2013): a work that won the CANIEM 2014 prize in the genre general interest. She is the author of several articles in specialized journals and is currently the vice president of the Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Clásicos, A. C. Ricardo Del Molino Garcia is Professor of Ancient History and Classical Tradition at the Universidad Externado de Colombia. He studied Law at Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and Humanities at Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where he obtained his PhD in 2008. His research focuses on the use of ancient history in Latin América, with particular interest in the reception of Greece and Rome in the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. He also has ongoing research interests in the presence of GraecoRoman antiquity in Latin American popular culture. He is a foreign academic of the Academia Colombiana de Historia and a member of Instituto de Historiografía ‘Julio Caro Baroja’. Daniel Expósito is Assistant Professor of Art History at the Universidad de Puerto Rico, Recinto de Río Piedras. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the Universidad de Sevilla, and he obtained his PhD at the Universidad de Granada in 2015. His research focuses on Architecture and Visual Culture in the Caribbean from the eighteenth century to the present, and its relationship with other regions. He has published many papers and book chapters about these topics in international scientific journals and publishers. Renata Senna Garraffoni is Professor of Ancient History at Paraná Federal University, Brazil. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History from Campinas State University, Brazil, where she obtained her PhD in 2004. She furthered her studies in different international

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research centres, namely Spain and England. Her current research interests include Latin graffiti from Pompeii and classical reception. She is the author of several books and papers, including the most recent Mujeres, género y estudios clásicos: un dialogo entre España y Brasil, 2020, co-edited with Manel Garcia. Shelley Hales is Senior Lecturer in Art and Visual Culture in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Bristol. She works on Roman domestic space and art and their reception in the nineteenth century. She has co-edited two volumes exploring the impact of Pompeii on the modern world. The first, with Joanna Paul, Pompeii in the Public Imagination from Its Rediscovery to Today (2011) and the second with Anne-Marie Leander Toauti, Returns to Pompeii: Interior Space and Decoration Documented and Revived 18th–20th Century (2016). She is currently investigating the intersections between classical archaeology and Victorian funerary culture. María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar is Professor of Ancient History and a researcher on classical reception in Chilean and Latin American culture at the Universidad Andrés Bello, Chile. She is the Dean of the Faculty of Education and Social Sciences at the same institution. She received a PhD on History from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She is author of the book El imaginario de la Guerra de Arauco. Mundo épico y tradición clásica (2017), and editor of the books América Latina y lo clásico. Lo clásico y América Latina (2018) and De heroínas, fundadoras y ciudadanas, mujeres en la historia de Chile (2015). In 2013, she received the Miguel Cruchaga Tocornal Award, given by the Chilean Academy of History. María Martín de Vidales García is Faculty member at the Universidad Isabel I de Burgos. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Art History from the Universidad Complutense. In addition, she carried out a Master’s degree in Cultural Heritage at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, where she obtained her PhD in 2020. She furthered her studies in different Italian research centres such as Università Tor Vergata di Roma. She focuses on the study of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century art. Moreover, her current work explores the use of antiquity in Spanish painting and the use of classical iconography in modern portraits. She has published papers about this field of interest. Federica Pezzoli is Assistant Professor of Greek Philology at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. Her research focuses on Greek political thought (especially Plato and Aristotle), Greek institutions and classical reception. She has edited (with Elisabetta Poddighe) Politeia in Aristotle’s Political Theory and Historical Research (2022), a monographic number of Araucaria. Revista Iberoamericana de Filosofía, Política y Humanidades. Her publications include Aristotele. Politica. Libro II and Aristotele. Politica. Libro IV (2012 and 2014). Mirella Romero Recio is Professor of Ancient History at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and History from the Universidad Complutense, where she obtained her PhD in 1999. She furthered her studies in different international research centres, namely England, Italy and France. She is the author of

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several books, including Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (2012) and Pompeya. Vida, muerte y resurrección de la ciudad sepultada por el Vesubio (2010), and has published a number of papers in prestigious scientific journals and publishers. She is an Academica correspondiente of the Real Academia de la Historia, and Director of Instituto de Historiografía ‘Julio Caro Baroja’. Jesús Salas Álvarez is Associate Professor of Archaeology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Geography and History from the University of Sevilla, where he obtained his PhD in 2005. He furthered his studies in different international research centres at Italy and France. He’s an expert in Historiography of Archaeology, highlighting these two books Imagen Historiográfica de la antigua Urso (2002) and La Arqueología en Andalucía durante la Ilustración (1736–1808) (2010). He has published a number of papers in prestigious scientific journals and publishers. He’s an external member of Instituto de Historiografía ‘Julio Caro Baroja’ (UC3M). Carolina Valenzuela Matus is an academic researcher at Universidad Autónoma de Chile. She holds a PhD in Ancient History Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid. She works on the classical tradition, antiquities and history of Museums of Natural History. Her work has appeared in journals and books and she is currently leading a research project entitled ‘Preserving animals. A history of the Taxidermy in Chile and its scientific contribution (XIX–XXI Centuries)’, financed by the National Agency of Research and Development (ANID). She is also Professor of the PhD Program in Social Sciences from the Universidad Autónoma de Chile. Ana Valtierra is Assistant Professor of History of Art at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in History of Art from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, where she obtained her PhD in History of Art in 2012. She furthered her studies in different international research centres, namely the CNRS (France) and CSIC (Spain). She has participated in prestigious international research projects, such as the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). She has published many papers in prestigious scientific journals and publishers at international level. Her research focuses on ancient art and its reception and disappeared cultural heritage. Aurelia Vargas Valencia is Senior Researcher at the Centre of Classical Studies in the Institute of Philological Research (UNAM) and member of the National System of Researchers (SNI). Her main research is focused on philological analysis of legal sources of Roman Law and its reception in Mexico and in the latest years on legal, scientific and artistic works of the eighteenth century. Among her publications are found Las Instituciones de Justiniano en Nueva España (2001, reimp. 2011 and 2018). She was President of the Mexican Association of Classical Studies (2015–19) and current director of Bibliotheca Scriptorum Græcorum et Romanorum Mexicana at UNAM.

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INTRODUCTION: THE RECEPTION OF POMPEII IN SPAIN AND LATIN AMERICA Mirella Romero Recio

It is hard to imagine that there might be anyone in the world who has not heard of Pompeii. Nonetheless, despite globalization, there are many people who have not. Curiously, however, all of us who live in the West tend to think that this is absolutely impossible, and we think this because we have internalized the image of this Roman city, extraordinarily preserved by disaster, to such an extent that it now forms part of our everyday lives. This is also true of many other images of the ancient world. It is not just that they are important and form part of our visual imagery: we also find it inconceivable that they might not be embedded in the cultural traditions of the five continents. Of course, Pompeii is not the only universally-known city from antiquity. Rome and Athens, for example, are inescapable archetypes, but these were great cities with splendid buildings, the capitals of empires and renowned cultural centres. Pompeii, on the other hand, was a modest city that had the misfortune to be consumed by a volcano which at the same time saved it for posterity, and it attained almost mythical status in the eighteenth century. As Goethe famously said in his Italienische Reise (1816), ‘Many disasters have befallen the world, but few have brought posterity so much joy’. From then on, and especially into the nineteenth century, Pompeii became a byword among aficionados of Graeco-Roman antiquity (for better or worse, as it was not always judged with benevolence), and its influence gradually spread throughout Europe and across the ocean to America. This book is the product of research on the reception and influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Latin America,1 and it explores some of the questions concerning the transmission of this influence in the sphere of the visual arts, with the goal of advancing knowledge of the reception of classical antiquity through an analysis of the close cultural ties that united and continue to unite both sides of the Atlantic. The book does not claim to be exhaustive and the reader will not find examples from all Latin American countries. Nevertheless, the contributing authors discuss the reception of Pompeii in the visual arts from a range of perspectives applied to a selection of countries with the aim of furnishing a series of accounts that shed light on Latin America as a whole. The ties between Spain and the countries of Central and South America are well known and evident, but what is less well known is that the link with antiquity in general, and Pompeii in particular, did not always serve to tighten this bond. On the contrary, one of the clearest conclusions to be drawn from the chapters in this book – and one to which I shall return later – is that Pompeii was used in the quest for a new model that would help Latin America distance itself from its colonial past, in other words, from Spain. The first news of the Italian discoveries and the first artistic models 1

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts

from these cities reached Latin America before independence, and institutions such as the San Carlos Academy in Mexico initially served as a means to publicize them. By the nineteenth century, however, these institutions had become the torchbearers of a trend that sought to break with the mother country and forge a new identity that found an aesthetic medium in these antiquities. As we shall see, there are multiple and varied approaches to the use made of Pompeii in the visual arts.

Before Pompeii When Charles VII of Naples, the future King Charles III of Spain, began funding excavation work at Herculaneum in 1738 and Pompeii in 1748 (although it would take some time for this latter city to be identified as such), a passion for the remains of Greek and Roman antiquity had already been swirling around for centuries (Haskell, Penny 1982). Since the fifteenth century, occasional excavations had been carried out with the specific intention of unearthing sculptures with which to swell the collections of popes, monarchs and nobles. These questions have been well studied and this is not the place to reprise them, but it is worth recalling that some finds – the remains of Hadrian’s Villa at Tivoli (De Franceschini 2016), the frescoes in Nero’s Domus Aurea [Golden House] in Rome (Dacos 1969, 2008; Iacopi 1999; Meyboom, Moormann 2013; Farinella 2020) and the Aldobrandini Wedding fresco found on the Esquiline Hill (Fusconi 1994) – were decisive in shaping a taste for the classical that subsequently influenced palace decoration. It no longer sufficed to collect ancient works, nor was it enough for painters and sculptors – eager to see these collections and record the pieces they housed – to reproduce a classical aesthetic; it now became a question of surrounding oneself with antiquity by creating architecture and decorations that would allow modern people to feel Greek and Roman. Spain was no exception. The Roman world was highly visible in Spanish palaces, and from the Renaissance onwards it became fashionable to amass collections of ancient statues to decorate interiors and gardens (Cacciotti 2005: 195). Copies of the sculptures found their way into the palaces of monarchs and aristocrats, while paintings and tapestries depicting real or mythological figures from antiquity (Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar, Jason and Theseus) adorned the walls and were identified with the monarchs. Emperor Charles V considered himself a descendant of Hercules, and his image, like that of his successors, was associated with classical heroes in the symbolic programmes of interiors and ephemeral architecture.2 Decorative motifs inspired by ancient paintings and artefacts also began to appear in private and public rooms. Again starting in the Renaissance, it also became frequent practice for collectors to include portraits of Roman emperors as a representation of power, as Professor Mary Beard has recently discussed (2021), and Spanish monarchs and nobles were no exception to the rule, as evidenced by collections such as that of Pedro Afán Enríquez de Ribera, the first Duke of Alcalá de los Gazules, whose sculptures acquired in Italy in the second half of the sixteenth century (including busts of emperors) are now housed in the Casa de 2

Introduction

Pilatos in Seville, or by that of Philip II, whose collection also included that of the sixteenth-century politician and diplomat Diego Hurtado de Mendoza. It is also well known that the famous painter Diego Velázquez visited Italy between 1649 and 1651, commissioned by Philip IV to buy pieces with which to decorate the Alcázar and to make plaster casts of several famous statues (Velázquez 2007), and that Philip V and especially his wife Isabella of Farnese were both passionately interested in antiquities, acquiring the collection of Christina of Sweden in 1725 and that of the Marquis of Carpio in 1729 (Simal 2006. See Chapter 7). Images of antiquity crossed the Atlantic when the conquistadors and evangelists brought their knowledge of the classical world to America, generating close ties between the Graeco-Roman past and the new world (MacCormack 2007; Valenzuela 2016). In the new viceroyalties, grandiose celebrations began to be held to commemorate important events related to the royal family, such as births, accessions to the throne or funerals, and these were accompanied by a decorative programme depicting the monarchs as the heroes of old. For example, in 1559 Charles V was likened to Ulysses, Theseus and Hercules in the tomb erected after his death in the convent of San Francisco in Mexico City. Similarly, for the swearing-in of Ferdinand VI, a work of ephemeral architecture was designed in Durango (Mexico) in which the labours of Hercules were equated with those of the Spanish monarch (Mínguez 2003: 54; 2013: 98; Chiva 2012). However, the monarchs never visited the new world themselves; thus, the viceroys served as their proxies not only in the exercise of power, but also in the transmission of a heroic image (Chiva 2012; Mínguez 2013: 98–101), giving rise to spectacles such as Blasco Núñez de Vela’s entry into Lima in 1544 as the first viceroy of Peru as if he were a Roman emperor being welcomed by a triumphal arch. The scenes that decorated such arches abounded in depictions of heroes such as Hercules and Ulysses, to whom the new viceroys compared themselves in merit and virtue. Triumphal entrances and the construction of ephemeral architectures sporting a decorative programme based on the ancient world continued into the nineteenth century, albeit their incipient decline became evident in the late eighteenth century (Chiva 2012: 227–32). By then, the popularity of antiquity in the world of the arts had burgeoned in Spain and America alike, spurred by an extraordinary gift, the discovery of Herculaneum and Pompeii.

After Pompeii As I noted earlier, excavations at Herculaneum, Pompeii and Stabiae began in the eighteenth century. Charles VII of Naples entrusted the excavation of Herculaneum to Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre, a military engineer who had accompanied him in the conquest of Naples, and decreed that any valuable finds that came to light should be dispatched to his Palace of Portici. Thus was born the Ercolanese Museum, to house the excavated remains, and the Accademia Ercolanese, to study them and publish the findings, as explained in Chapter 7 of this volume. As soon as the first volumes of the Antichità di 3

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts

Ercolano Esposte started to appear, the paintings discovered in the houses began to form a catalogue of decorative motifs that artists enthusiastically and repeatedly employed on the walls, ceilings, furniture and tableware of the Spanish monarchs’ palaces (Romero Recio 2016; Alonso 2018). The small palaces where the future Charles IV rested, amused himself and hunted – El Pardo, El Escorial and Aranjuez (built in Madrid once he was king) – and rooms in the royal palaces abounded with motifs first called ‘Herculanean’ and later ‘Pompeian’, all copied from the Antichità (Romero Recio 2016). Those closest to the monarchs soon followed suit, decorating their own residences in a similar style, as did, among others, the all-powerful prime minister during the reign of Charles IV, Manuel Godoy, or the no less well-known María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva, the Duchess of Alba immortalized by Francisco de Goya (Romero Recio 2020; 2022). Pompeii began to dominate everything related to artistic motifs inspired by the classical world, so that all the elements associated with antiquity came to swell a style known as ‘Pompeian’, as discussed in Chapter 6 by María Martín de Vidales. The remains at Pompeii began to overshadow those at Herculaneum, largely because it was much easier to excavate Pompeii; consequently, more remains were uncovered there and the finds became better known. But it was not only Herculaneum that was relegated to the sidelines. Pompeii also eclipsed the fame of other archaeological finds, so that from the late eighteenth century onwards, classically-inspired decorative arts began to be lumped together as ‘Pompeian’ style even though the source of inspiration was far removed from this Campanian city. I shall cite just one example from among many. Thus, even today, many experts still refer to the decorations in some of the rooms of the Godoy Palace (which were moved to what is now the Spanish Naval Headquarters) and the Buenavista Palace (the Spanish Army Headquarters), both in Madrid, as being Pompeian in style, although many of the motifs were inspired by other well-known archaeological finds, including the Borghese Sacrificants and Dancers and the Aldobrandini Wedding, widely known thanks to works such as the Admiranda Romanarum antiquitatum ac veteris sculpturae vestigia by Bartoli and Bellori (Rome 1693) and the Antiche camere delle terme di Tito e le loro pitture, restituite da L. Mirri (Rome 1776).3 Pompeian style has remained a term that refers to everything that recalls the classical style, and not only in the field of decorative arts. As Ana Valtierra indicates in Chapter 5, the great painter Joaquín Sorolla also used this term to describe ancient remains that did not come from Pompeii. This predilection for all things Pompeian also reached Latin America, and several chapters in this volume examine this question, underscoring its importance in shaping new identities in the nascent independent republics. However, before delving into this matter, it is worth mentioning another aspect that brings us to the chapter by Jesús Salas. Plaster casts of sculptures found at Herculaneum were sent from Naples to King Charles III so that he too could contemplate the magnificence of the discoveries that were still being uncovered (and which interested him so much), and these were later deposited with the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts – an institution founded in Madrid in 1752 – to help train artists in the classical style. Other plaster casts were subsequently added to the collection, and the casts made from them supplied to teachers’ studios, on petition to private individuals who used them to decorate their palaces in Madrid and to 4

Introduction

various educational institutions such as the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Valencia 1768) or the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts in New Spain (founded in 1783 in Mexico). The San Fernando Academy had received reproductions of pieces from Italian collections, and these were then shipped across the Atlantic to provide the students at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico with plaster casts to work with. The ties between the two academies spurred the spread of the neoclassical movement in America, as evidenced by the work of artists such as Manuel Tolsá (Bonet 2016; Ortega 2016), and an interest in archaeology, as reflected, for example, in the works included in the academy’s library (Salgado 2016). Then, in the nineteenth century, photography became a fundamental medium in terms of circulating images of the Vesuvian cities among researchers and the wider public, helped by the press (see Chapter 7 by Jesús Salas and Chapter 9 by Renata Senna Garraffoni). In addition, the depiction of Roman scenes related to Pompeii enjoyed great success in Spain, thanks to the work of painters such as Alejo Vera Estaca and Ulpiano Checa, as discussed by María Martín de Vidales in Chapter 6, and Joaquín Sorolla, discussed by Ana Valtierra in Chapter 5. Naturally, echoes of this artistic expression also reverberated in Latin America. Having studied at the San Carlos Academy and in Rome, Santiago Rebull was commissioned by Maximilian of Habsburg to paint the Bacchantes in Chapultepec Castle, inspired by the Pompeian dancers recorded in the Antichità di Ercolano, as Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño discuss in Chapter 2, which explores the echoes of Pompeii in Mexico. This decorative style spread to other countries such as Cuba – strongly influenced by Italian artists rather than via Spain, as Federica Pezzoli shows in Chapter 8 – Puerto Rico and the United States, as evidenced by Daniel Expósito’s analysis in Chapter 3 (it was again an Italian painter who was responsible for the decoration of the Capitol).

Living in Pompeii Pompeii continued to be a source of inspiration throughout the nineteenth century, being replicated in the palaces of the nobility, in the mansions of the bourgeoisie and in public buildings, especially casinos, theatres and cinemas. Examples can be found throughout Spain, but Madrid in particular hosts a wealth of them, although many of the mansions have unfortunately been destroyed. Such is the case of the palace known as the Capricho de la Alameda de Osuna, which boasted Pompeian pictorial decorations, a mosaic copied from recent finds and classical sculptures in the garden, including the Laocoön and marble busts of Roman emperors (Añón, Luengo 2003). Similarly, the now lost Palace of the Marquis of Portugalete had a bathhouse and a courtyard in the Pompeian style, as did many other mansions of the bourgeoisie and new aristocracy in nineteenth-century Madrid.4 Notable among those that are still standing is the Linares Palace (now the Casa de América [House of America]), which was commissioned by José de Murga, a wealthy man to whom King Amadeo of Savoy granted the title of Marquis of Linares. Around 1890, the painter Alejandro Ferrant decorated the Pompeian 5

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts

Gallery with murals and embellished the doors in the same style (Arias Anglés 1992; Romero Recio 2016). This style had evolved and the paintings were no longer faithfully copied from the archaeological records of the remains of the Vesuvian cities, but nevertheless, both the atmosphere of the images and the spaces in which they appeared were defined as ‘Pompeian’. Much less ostentatious was the house built in Madrid by the painter Joaquín Sorolla and another constructed in Valencia by his good friend the writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez, but both residences had sculptures in their gardens and decorations that surrounded their owners with elements that recalled antiquity in general and Pompeii in particular (see chapters 1 and 5). Even one of Spain’s most innovative and internationally renowned urban development projects, Arturo Soria’s Ciudad Lineal, proposed the construction of houses, public buildings and even a forum inspired by the remains of Pompeii (see Chapter 1). Although these ideas were not put into practice, decorative motifs inspired by Pompeii adorned large buildings constructed in various other countries, including the Fortaleza [Fortress] de Santa Catalina in San Juan (Puerto Rico), the Capitol in Washington (USA) (see Chapter 3), the Iturbide Theatre in Querétaro (Mexico) (see Chapter 2), as well as public spaces such as Santa Lucia Hill in Santiago (Chile) (see Chapter 4) and less ostentatious, more popular constructions such as the Pompeii Cinema in Madrid, which shared both its name and its decoration with the famous site (‘Cine Pompeya’ 1951). Naturally, the luxurious dwellings of the American elite were also influenced by Pompeian taste. Mexico, Cuba, Chile and Brazil all boast prime examples that are analysed here by Aurelia Vargas, Elvia Carreño, Federica Pezzoli, Carolina Valenzuela, Gabriela Huidobro and Renata Senna Garraffoni, and many more have been located by the RIPOMPHEI project, such as the Casa Dorada in Tarija (Bolivia), the Casa del Poeta Soldado Julio Arboleda in Popayán (Colombia) and the Errázuriz Alvear Palace (now the National Museum of Decorative Art)5 and the Talar de Pacheco in Buenos Aires (Argentina).6 Research has revealed that those who commissioned these mansions and gardens strove to adhere to the most classical European tradition, not only as an aesthetic fashion, but also as the expression of a new identity that cast off Spanish models to instead adopt Italian, French and English influences. It was mainly – but not exclusively – artists from these countries7 who helped spread Pompeian taste throughout Latin America, such as Eusebio Chelli, Antonio Meucci, Jules Sagebien, René Sergent and Roger Fleming Tolson (see chapters 4, 8 and 10). These did not limit themselves to residences, but also applied the style to other public spaces, such as parks and theatres. The Swedish architect, Enrique Åberg, even suggested the possibility of using the design of the Pompeian house (considered as much Greek as Roman) to improve the dwellings in which his contemporaries lived in the Argentinian city of Buenos Aires (Åberg 1878). Another important element to consider is that these members of the elite were giving expression to their desire to create collections of objects from antiquity (not only from Greek and Roman but also other Mediterranean cultures such as Egyptian or Assyrian) which, of course, included remains from Pompeii. One of the most important and remarkable collections was the one assembled by Empress Teresa Cristina at the National 6

Introduction

Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, which housed numerous remains from Pompeii and other sites in the Neapolitan area, many of which were destroyed by the fire that gutted the museum in 2018 (see Chapter 9). Much more modest in quantity and quality was the collection of the Chilean magnate Pedro del Río Zañartu; nevertheless, it remains noteworthy because it illustrates his desire to bring Graeco-Roman antiquity to the countries of Latin America. He visited the ruins and brought back Pompeian artefacts as souvenirs of his trip which are now housed in the Pedro del Río Zañartu Park-Museum in Hualpén (Chile) (see Chapter 4).

Seduced by Pompeii Pompeii was much more than a way for the American upper classes to mimic European elites in the quest for a new identity. The city had also become popular for two other main reasons: the success of a novel, The Last Days of Pompeii, published by Edward Bulwer-Lytton in 1834 (Moormann 2015: 224–34), and word of the finds that began to reach the press in the mid-nineteenth century, although some mention of them had already been made in the eighteenth century in both American and Spanish periodicals.8 Bulwer-Lytton’s novel was far more popular than guidebooks among those privileged enough to travel to Europe and visit the sites. The Peruvian Pedro Paz Soldán (better known by his pseudonym Juan de Arona) visited Pompeii twice – in 1861 and again in 1862, on his return from Athens – and, like so many other American travellers who undertook a Grand Tour,9 he read Bulwer-Lytton’s ‘little novel’ and saw a performance of the opera Ione in Lima (Paz Soldán 1971: 204). The composer of this piece, Enrico Petrella, had set his music to a four-act libretto by Giovanni Peruzzini that focused on the main female character of The Last Days of Pompeii. The opera premiered in Milan in 1858 and was subsequently performed in numerous Spanish and American cities, including Valencia, Madrid, Barcelona, Mahón, Palma de Mallorca, Santiago de Chile and Mexico City (see Chapter 2). Ione was not Pompeii’s first success on stage. Giovanni Pacini’s opera, L’ultimo giorno di Pompei, had premiered at the San Carlo Theatre in Naples nine years before BulwerLytton’s novel was published, and was performed in Madrid on numerous occasions between 1830 and 1839, starring very famous sopranos such as Adelaide Tosi and Henriette Méric-Lalande (Romero Recio in press). However, illusion and magic shows recreating the Pompeian disaster – such as those staged in Mexico – would have been much more popular (see Chapter 2), as would the plays adapting the misfortunes of the main characters in The Last Days of Pompeii, such as the play that premiered in 1892 at the Novedades Theatre in Madrid entitled Pompeya: drama histórico de espectáculo en cuatro actos, dividido en quince cuadros en prosa y verso [Pompeii: historical spectacle in four acts, divided into fifteen scenes in prose and verse] by Juan Espantaleón (1892; Romero Recio 2010: 422–3). We do not know what means were used to render the eruption credible, but although they could not compete with the famous pyrodramas that were so popular in Great Britain and the USA – which were staged outdoors and 7

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts

simulated fires and explosions using fireworks and lighting (Malamud 2009: 177–9; Moormann 2015: 380–2) – such spectacles were certainly intended to be as realistic as possible, as can be deduced from their description, which echoed the chaos described by Bulwer-Lytton or depicted in paintings such as The Last Day of Pompeii by the Russian Karl Bryullov and The Last Days of Pompeii by the Spaniard Ulpiano Checa: The darkness lifts somewhat, revealing one of the streets of Pompeii, along which all manner of people are running: masters followed by their slaves; mothers and fathers with their small children in their arms; others carrying valuables, and so on. Their faces, however, illuminated by the flashes of lightening, all bear the same expression of pain and horror. There are terrible underground rumblings and earthquakes, accompanied by an ever-increasing deluge of ash, lava and molten rock. Espantaleón 1892: 95 The impact of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel was not limited to literature or the stage, however, but also extended to painting, as discussed in Chapter 6. Paintings such as La belleza feliz y la esclava ciega [The happy beauty and the blind slave] by Juan Luna Novicio (1881), La canción de Tesalia [The song of Thessaly] by Agustín Salinas Teruel (1887), Enamorados en Pompeya [Lovers in Pompeii] by Ulpiano Checa (1890) and Tocador de una dama romana [A Roman lady at her dressing table] by Juan Jiménez Martín (c. 1895) all depicted some of the best-known scenes from the novel, as well as its main characters, especially Glaucus, Ione, Nydia and Julia. The novel had initially achieved great success thanks to its publication in the press in instalments, but the twentieth century heightened its popularity still further thanks to film and comic books (and later, television and, of course, the internet). The Last Days of Pompeii was soon captured on film, and several silent versions were made. Between 1908 and 1926 alone, four adaptations were filmed in Italy (Wyke 2019) that had an enormous impact worldwide. In countries such as Spain and Brazil, the press reported on these screenings, which were resoundingly successful.10 We know, for example, that in 1913, the films supplied by the production companies Pasquali of Milan and Ambrosio of Turin were combined and screened in Madrid, with what result it is difficult to guess (Nuevo Mundo 2 and 9 October 1913). Numerous versions have been released, including one in the twenty-first century, in 2014 (Pompeii, directed by Paul W. S. Anderson, which is not based on Bulwer-Lytton’s novel), but they have all dwelt on the swift, tragic end that overtook the debauched inhabitants of Pompeii in the amphitheatre (Wyke 1997: 147–82; Pomeroy 2008: 32–4). Another art form that combines image and word – the comic book – also helped spread Bulwer-Lytton’s Pompeii in Latin America. As Laura Buitrago discusses in Chapter 11, illustrated literary adaptations of the novel circulated widely throughout Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru, Chile and Argentina. These reached several countries thanks to the distribution network of the Bruguera publishing house (based in Barcelona, Spain), which encompassed countries such as Argentina, 8

Introduction

Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay and the United States. Many adaptations were published and they achieved a widespread readership in Latin America, perpetuating the image of the city’s sudden, devastating destruction, the corruption of a society given over to vice, and the redemptive role of Christianity, spiced up with covers and illustrations that emphasized the weakness of women and children in need of male protection in the midst of the catastrophe.

New Pompeiis On 19 September 2021, a volcano erupted on the island of La Palma (Canary Islands, Spain). The experts, who had been warning of the event because of the seismic activity recorded in the preceding days, defined it as Strombolian in nature, although once the eruption ended some 85 days later, they refined their definition (fissural Strombolian with phreatomagmatic bursts).11 The event was a catastrophe for the island’s inhabitants, and many lost their homes and livelihoods (mainly banana plantations). Schools, businesses and roads were buried under the lava. The airport had to be closed several times and even the powerful telescopes of the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory, one of the most important in the world, stopped scanning the universe for fear that the ashes might damage its delicate mirrors. It was a tragedy that will not soon be forgotten because of the immense material losses, but fortunately nobody was killed. However, shortly after the first explosion, all the world’s media began to recall the Pompeian disaster.12 Not even the type of explosion was similar, since the eruption that destroyed Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae was not Strombolian, but Plinian (named, as is well known, after Pliny the Younger, who gave a meticulous description of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 ce ),13 the only resemblance being that both were a volcanic eruptions. Thus, the historical parallel that immediately came to everyone’s mind was Pompeii, and even colleagues and friends frequently asked those of us familiar with Pompeian history what it felt like to watch the eruption live, as if this gave us a better understanding of the history of the cities razed to the ground by Vesuvius. This is yet another very recent example that shows the extent to which Pompeii remains embedded in our visual imagination. Ricardo del Molino discusses this in detail in his chapter on Latin America’s Pompeiis. This Roman city has maintained a strong presence in the cultural imagination of Latin America and the Caribbean from the eighteenth century to the present day, as a landscape of tragedy. Cities devastated by natural catastrophes became new Pompeiis, and images of the devastation were published, including charred corpses from the city of St. Pierre (on the island of Martinique, devastated by the eruption of Mount Pelée), which recalled the famous remains extracted from Pompeii itself using the renowned plaster cast technique devised by Fiorelli (which again yielded striking media images during the recent excavations carried out at the site in 2021). Vesuvius, the symbol of the region of Naples, was inextricably linked to the image of tragedy caused by natural disasters that were becoming better and more widely known thanks to the press and which reinforced cosmopolitanism 9

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts

in cities such as Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, as Renata Senna Garraffoni explains in this volume. Quickly learning of events taking place in Europe thanks to the telegraph, and broadcasting them in the press, served to strengthen the ties between the old and the new continents. News of the Vesuvian catastrophes came as quickly as news of the new archaeological finds in Pompeii. This captivated a readership highly interested in learning about the most valuable or striking remains, but readers in Spain and America were also fascinated by simple everyday objects that revealed what the Romans ate or how they entertained themselves (there are several examples of this in Chapter 2 by Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño). Photography had become not only an essential tool for archaeologists, but also the best medium for disseminating knowledge of the site, images of which appeared in specialist books and travel guides, on postcards eagerly consumed by tourists and above all, in the press, which transmitted the accounts of travellers who had walked its streets and pictures of the most recent finds to all corners of the world and especially to those people who would never be able to visit Pompeii. Spanish and Latin American magazines such as Caras y caretas (Buenos Aires), El viajero ilustrado hispano-americano (Barcelona) and Renovación española (Madrid) are just a few examples of the numerous periodicals that carried news and photographs of the Campanian site. However, the new Pompeiis were not always associated with images of tragedy. Renowned worldwide for its unusual state of preservation and the peculiarity of some of the preserved remains, Pompeii became a cultural icon that was equated in Latin America with important ancient pre-Hispanic or colonial ruins and in Spain with ancient Hispanic remains. In both cases, these remains were placed on an equal footing with the Roman remains in terms of heritage value due to their extraordinary state of preservation and exceptional nature, although Pompeii was not the only ancient city to be identified with other localities. In fact, many cities in Spain and Latin America have been named after ancient cities or have been compared to Greek and Roman cities. From Seville and Salamanca to Mexico City, Havana, Bogotá, Lima, São Carlos and Buenos Aires, Spanish and American cities have been compared to Athens and Rome, to Sparta and Troy, to Pompeii and Carthage (Lleó 2012; Rodríguez-San Pedro 2017; Del Molino 2019; Vergara 2014, 2108), establishing a continuity between antiquity and the modern world in which the Graeco-Roman past provides the basis for effecting change in the political order, modernizing customs and creating an image of progress associated with all things ‘classical’. In general, however, ancient cities that have preserved archaeological remains of particular significance have been dubbed Pompeiis. The erotic images unearthed in the city gained it a reputation for debauchery comparable to Sodom and Gomorrah (Romero Recio 2015: 126–7), which would not encourage modern cities to identify with it unless they had been victims of a tragedy, as noted above, or if they contained numerous Pompeian-style mansions, as Federica Pezzoli discusses in relation to what was said about Havana in a Mexican newspaper (see Chapter 8). Thus, the ancient pre-Hispanic cities of Uxmal, Tula, Teotihuacán and Palenque in Mexico contained ruins of singular value that merited this designation (see Chapter 12). Similarly, in Spain, the name was applied to cities of great importance in the country’s history during antiquity, such as Ampurias (a 10

Introduction

Greek foundation converted into a Roman city), Mérida (founded by Octavian Augustus in 25 bce and capital of the province of Lusitania) and the colony of Italica, birthplace of the emperor Trajan and, perhaps, of Hadrian.14 In the American and Spanish ‘Pompeiis’ alike, concerted efforts were made to render them attractive to tourists.

Conclusion Latin American countries were not beyond the reach of Pompeii’s influence. The fame of the preserved remains of a Roman city buried beneath lava from a volcanic eruption in 79 ce spread from Central America and the Caribbean to the Southern Cone. The press, images (paintings, engravings, photographs), archaeological remains amassed in collections, shows (opera, theatre, cinema and even illusionism), literature, comic books and buildings inspired in the constructions found in the Vesuvian cities all facilitated the spread of a predilection for Pompeian art in America. Until recently, however, this phenomenon has received little or no research attention. Studies on the reception of antiquity and the classical legacy have proliferated in recent years in Spain and Latin America alike, generating publications that have become a point of reference for all scholars (Duplá, Dell’Elicine, Pérez, 2018; Cruz, Huidobro 2018), but these have not focused on a singular, preferential route through which the ancient world reached the new continent: the ‘Pompeian route’. As the reader will see in the following pages, it is by no means an exaggeration to say that Pompeii should occupy a prominent place in reception studies in the Latin American world. The paucity of research on this subject previously rendered invisible the importance for this region of the remains found at the Campanian sites, despite the existence of closely related studies conducted in the USA (Nichols 2017). However, Latin American countries were not oblivious to their surroundings, and in addition to feeling culturally linked to Graeco-Roman antiquity, they endeavoured to permeate their immediate context with it. Pompeii provided them with a widely extolled (but also reviled) and repeatedly imitated reference point in Europe, which they desired to see in person or, if this was not possible (only a minority could afford it), at least through the means available to them. Consequently, Pompeii can be found in the same fields as those in which it had flourished in Europe: architecture, painting, decoration, drama and so on. Thus, the city was not unknown on the other side of the Atlantic; rather, Pompeii was also Latin American.

Notes 1. Research project entitled ‘Recepción e influjo de Pompeya y Herculano en España e Iberoamérica’ [Reception and influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Latin America], ref. no. PGC2018-093509-B-I00. Funded by FEDER / Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, State Research Agency. The project website is available at https:// humanidadesdigitales.uc3m.es/s/ripomphei/page/inicio_rimpophei [accessed 19 July 2022].

11

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts 2. Mínguez 2003; 2013: 89–90; Morózova 2017. 3. On the success of the Borghese Dancers in art and decoration in Europe: Aymonino 2012. See Romero Recio 2020. 4. Many palaces in Madrid that sported this type of decoration have now disappeared, as can be seen in Lasso de la Vega 2010. 5. The owner of this palace, the Chilean Matías Errázuriz, was a relative of Maximiano Errázuriz, mentioned in Gabriela Huidobro’s chapter as the owner of a Pompeian-style house in Panquehue (Chile). 6. The RIPOMPHEI Project has produced a web map showing buildings with a design or decoration inspired by the remains found at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae: https:// humanidadesdigitales.uc3m.es/s/ripomphei/map-browse [accessed 14 January 2022]. 7. Notable among other examples is the work of the Prussian Gustav Waehneldt in the neoclassical Catete Palace in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil (see Chapter 9 by Renata Senna Garraffoni) or that of the Swedish architect, Enrique Åberg in Argentina (Liernur, Aliata 2004). 8. Among others: Papel periódico de la ciudad de Santafé de Bogotá, 18/11/1791; Diario de Madrid, 8/7/1792. 9. See Chapter 4. Laura Buitrago is currently working on her doctoral thesis on these travellers and has already published some advances (2020). 10. Although the results have not yet been published, Renata Senna Garraffoni has supervised a research project entitled ‘Os Últimos Dias de Pompeia: A recepção de Pompeia no Brasil a través da produção cinematográfica de Arturo Ambrosio (1913)’ by Heloisa Motelewski, evidencing the significant circulation of this film in Brazil. See https://antigaeconexoes. wordpress.com/2021/06/15/pompeia-ressurge-nas-telas-o-templo-de-isis-no-cinema-mudo/ [accessed 7 February 2022]. 11. https://www.ign.es/web/resources/volcanologia/html/CA_noticias.html#20211225 [accessed 14 January 2022]. 12. By way of example: https://www.abc.es/sociedad/abci-volcan-exploto-cara-y-sepultohogar-202111142357_noticia.html; https://www.lavanguardia.com/historiayvida/historiaantigua/20210929/7755616/sobrevivir-desastre-pompeya-le-ensena-palma.html; https:// www.elperiodicoextremadura.com/opinion/2021/10/17/palma-pompeya-58433501.html; https://www.antena3.com/noticias/sociedad/erupciones-volcanes-que-cambiaron-rumbo-hi storia_202109216149aec46f9db70001d23d2c.html; https://elpais.com/ciencia/2021-10-31/ el-pueblo-que-renacio-de-las-cenizas-de-un-volcan.html [accessed 14 January 2022]. 13. Ep. VI, 16 and 20. Besides Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, many travellers also read Pliny’s letters in preparation for their visit to the site (Romero Recio 2012: 108, 110, 119 etc.) 14. Ampurias: Dugi 1930a, 1930b. Mérida: Cascales Muñoz 1920; Guitart 1925. Italica: Andrés Vázquez 1935, 1936. ‘We’ve got a Pompeii on our doorstep and we don’t appreciate it’ said a character in Carmen de Burgos’s novel, Los Anticuarios, about Italica: 234. During the Latin American exhibition held in Seville in 1929, Andrés Parladé, Count of Aguiar, was commissioned to excavate Italica and unearth the ‘Spanish Pompeii’: Rodríguez 2012: 123–41.

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Introduction

References Åberg, E. (1878), ‘La Casa particular en Pompeya y la de Buenos Aires’, Anales de la Sociedad científica argentina, 5 March: 114–25. Alonso Rodríguez, Mª. C. (2018), ‘La antigüedad al servicio del rey. La difusión del gusto pompeyano en la España del S. XVIII’, Cuadernos Dieciochistas, 19: 105–37. Andrés Vázquez, J. (1935), ‘Una Pompeya española. Las excavaciones en Itálica’, Blanco y Negro, 6 October: 35–41. Andrés Vázquez, J. (1936), ‘Excavaciones y descubrimientos en Itálica’, ABC Sevilla, 28 June: 6–8. Añón, C. and Luengo, M. (2003), El Capricho de la Alameda de Osuna, Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Madrid. Arias Anglés, E. (1992), ‘La decoración pictórica del palacete de Linares en el contexto de la pintura decorativa española’, in Casa de América. Rehabilitación del Palacio de Linares, I, Las Artes decorativas, Madrid: Electa: 81–105. Aymonino, A. (2012), ‘The fortune of the Borghese Dancers in eighteenth and early nineteenthcentury European art and decoration’, in Roma fuori di Roma. L’esportazione dell’arte moderna da Pio VI all’Unità (1775–1780), Rome: Campisano Editore: 477–92. Beard, M. (2021), Twelve Caesars: images of power from the ancient world to the modern, Princeton University Press. Bonet Correa, A. (2016), ‘Formación y semblanza de un artista neoclásico: el período de aprendizaje académico de Manuel Tolsá en España’, in Carlo di Borbone e la diffusione delle antichità, Naples: Electa: 100–9. Buitrago, L. (2020), ‘Viajeros colombianos en Pompeya. Las impresiones de Ángel Cuervo Urisarri’, Boletín de Historia y Antigüedades. Academia Colombiana de Historia, 107, 871: 127–44. Cacciotti, B. (2005), ‘La tradizione degli “Uomini Illustri” nella collezione di Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza ambasciatore tra Venezia e Roma (1539–1553)’, Annali del Dipartimento di Storia – Università degli studi di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’, 1: 191–254. Cascales Muñoz, J. (1920), ‘La Pompeya española (Mérida)’, Mi Revista, 15 January: 12–13. Chiva, J. (2012), El triunfo del virrey. Glorias novohispanas: origen, apogeo y ocaso de la entrada virreinal, Castellón: Publicacions de la Universitat Jaume I. ‘Cine Pompeya. Arquitecto Juan Pan Da Torre’ (1951), Revista Nacional de Arquitectura, September, 117: 5–7. Cruz, N. and Huidobro, G. (eds) (2018), América Latina y lo Clásico; lo Clásico y América Latina, Santiago de Chile: RiL editores. Dacos, N. (1969), La Découverte de la Domus Aurea et la formation de Grotesques à la Renaissance, Leiden: E. J. Brill. Dacos, N. (2008), Rafael. Las logias del Vaticano, Barcelona: Lunwerg Editores, 2008. De Burgos, C. (1918), Los Anticuarios, Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. De Franceschini, M. (2016), Villa Adriana Accademia. Hadrian’s Secret Garden, I, History of the Excavations, Ancient Sources and Antiquarian Studies from the XVth to the XVIIth centuries, Pisa-Rome: Istituto Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali. Del Molino, R. (2019), ‘Las Atenas hispanoamericanas. Antigüedad, progreso y reforma social en las ciudades de América latina (siglos XVI-XIX)’, Veleia, 36: 95–109. https://doi.org/10.1387/ veleia.20718. Dugi, E. (1930a), ‘La Pompeya española. Ampurias y sus ruinas’, La Nación, 5 June: 11. Dugi, E. (1930b), ‘Ampurias, la Pompeya española’, La Libertad, 5 June. Duplá, A., Dell’Elicine and E., Pérez, J. (eds) (2018), Antigüedad clásica y naciones modernas en el Viejo y el Nuevo Mundo. Madrid: Universidad del País Vasco/ Ediciones Polifemo. Espantaleón, J. (1892), Pompeya: drama histórico de espectáculo en cuatro actos, dividido en quince cuadros en prosa y verso, Madrid: Imprenta de José M. Ducazcal.

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts Farinella, V. (2020), Raffaello e la Domus Aurea. L’invenzione delle grottesche, Rome: Electa. Fusconi, G. (1994), La fortuna delle nozze Aldobrandini. Dall’Esquilino alla Biblioteca Vaticana, Rome: Città del Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1994. Guitart Trulls, B. (1925), ‘Termas, “hypocausta” y baños romanos en Mérida’, Arquitectura. Órgano oficial de la Sociedad Central de Arquitectos, August, 76: 177–88. Haskell, F., Penny, N. (1982), Taste and the Antique: Lure of Classical Sculpture, 1500-1900, New Haven-London: Yale University Press. Iacopi, I. (1999), Domus Aurea, Milan: Electa. Lasso de la Vega, M. (ed.) (2010), Palacios de Madrid, Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. Liernur, J. F. and Aliata, F. (eds) (2004), Diccionario de Arquitectura en la Argentina. Estilos, Obras, Biografías, Instituciones, Ciudades, Buenos Aires: Clarín. http://www.iaa.fadu.uba. ar/?p=11590&page=2 [accessed 1 May 2021]. Lleó Cañal, V. (2012), Nueva Roma. Mitología y humanismo en el Renacimiento sevillano, Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. MacCormack, S. (2007), On the Wings of Time: Rome, the Incas, Spain, and Peru, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Malamud, M. (2009), Ancient Rome and Modern America, Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell. Meyboom, P. G. P. and Moormann, E. M. (2013), Le decorazioni dipinte e marmoree della Domus Aurea di Nerone a Roma, 2 vols, Lovaina-París-Walpole MA: Peeters. Morózova, M. V. (2017), ‘La imagen del monarca en el arte español a mediados del siglo XVI’, Memoria y civilización, 20: 27–44. https://doi.org/10.15581/001.20.27-44. Mínguez, V. M. (2003), ‘Héroes clásicos y reyes héroes en el Antiguo Régimen’, in Chust, M., and Mínguez, V. M. (eds), La construcción del héroe en España y México (1789–1847), Valencia: Universitat de València: 51–70. Mínguez, V. M. (2013), La invención de Carlos II. Apoteosis simbólica de la Casa de Austria, Madrid: Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica. Moormann, E. M. (2015), Pompeii’s Ashes: The Reception of the Cities Buried by Vesuvius in Literature, Music, and Drama, Boston: De Gruyter. Nichols, M. F. (2017), ‘Domestic Interiors, National Concerns. The Pompeian Style in the United States’, in von Stackelberg, K. T. and Macaulay-Lewis, E., Housing the New Romans: Architectural Reception and Classical Style in the Modern World, New York: Oxford University Press: 126–295. Ortega, A. (2016), ‘Ecos de la Antigüedad. La tradición ornamental de la Academia de San Carlos’, in Carlo di Borbone e la diffusione delle antichità, Naples: Electa: 110–19. Paz Soldán and Unanue, P. (1971), Memorias de un viajero peruano. Apuntes y Recuerdos de Europa y Oriente (1859–1863), Lima: Biblioteca Nacional de Perú. Pomeroy, A. J. (2008), Then it was destroyed by the volcano. The ancient world in film and television, London: Duckworth. Rodríguez Hidalgo, J. M. (2012), ‘Itálica. La Pompeya española’, in Almagro Gorbea, M. and Maier Allende, J. (eds), De Pompeya al Nuevo Mundo: la Corona Española y la Arqueología en el siglo XVIII, Madrid: Real Academia de la Historia: 123–41. Rodríguez-San Pedro, L. E. (2017), Atenas Hispánica. Breve historia de la Universidad de Salamanca, Salamanca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Salamanca. Romero Recio, M. (2010), Pompeya. Vida, muerte y resurrección de la ciudad sepultada por el Vesubio, Madrid: La Esfera de los libros. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936), Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Romero Recio, M. (2015), ‘Los mitos de Pompeya: arqueología y fantasía’ in Sancho, L. (ed.), La antigüedad como paradigma. Espejismos, mitos y silencios en el uso de la historia del mundo clásico por los modernos, Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza: 121–34.

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Introduction Romero Recio, M. (2016), ‘Pompeii in Spanish Interior Decoration’, in Hales, S. and Leander, A. M. (eds), Returns to Pompeii. Interior Space and Decoration Documented and Revived. 18th–21st Century, Stockholm: Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae: 55–74. Romero Recio, M. (2020), ‘Roma e Pompei nei palazzi spagnoli del XVIII secolo’, in Capaldi, C. and Osanna, M. (eds), La cultura dell’antico a Napoli nel secolo dei Lumi Roma: Ricerche del Parco Archeologico di Pompei, 43, L’Erma di Bretschneider: 87–99. Romero Recio, M. (2022), ‘Arqueología romana y decoraciones palaciegas: las pinturas del antiguo Ministerio de Marina (Madrid)’, Librosdelacorte.Es, 24: 102–35, https://doi. org/10.15366/ldc2022.14.24.005. Romero Recio, M. (in press), ‘Modello, musa e diva. Pompei nella Spagna del principio del XIX secolo’, in P. D’Alconzo (ed.), Sguardi incrociati sull’antico: Napoli e l’Europa, dalla Rivoluzione alla Restaurazione (1790–1840). Patrimonio archeologico, prassi artistiche e architettoniche, collezionismo e musei. Salgado, S. (2016), ‘Libros a la mar. La biblioteca de la Academia de San Carlos’, in Carlo di Borbone e la diffusione delle antichità, Naples: Electa: 143–51. Simal López M. (2006), ‘Isabel de Farnesio y la Colección Real española de escultura. Distintas noticias sobre compras, regalos, restauraciones y el encargo del “Cuaderno de Aiello” ’, Archivo español del Arte, LXXIX, 315: 263–78. Vergara Cerqueira, F. (2014), ‘Atenas do sul: recepção e (re)significação do legado clássico na iconografia urbana de Pelotas (1860–1930)’, Almanaque do bicentenário de Pelotas, 2, Pelotas. Vergara Cerqueira, F. (2018), ‘The “Athens of Brazil” in the Northeast (19th and 20th centuries)’, in V. Zuin (ed.), Environments: technoscience and its relation to sustainability, ethics, aesthetics, health and the human future, São Carlos: Brazilian Humboldt Kolleg. Valenzuela, C. (2016), Grecia y Roma en el Nuevo Mundo. La recepción de la antigüedad clásica en cronistas y evangelizadores del siglo XVI americano, España: Ediciones Rubeo. Velázquez. Esculturas para el Alcázar (2007), Madrid. https://www.realacademiabellasartessanfernando. com/es/archivo-biblioteca/investigacion-y-estudios/velazquez [accessed 18 January 2022]. Wyke, M. (1997), Projecting the Past. Ancient Rome, Cinema and History, London: Routledge. Wyke, M. (2019), ‘Mobilizing Pompeii for Italian Silent Cinema’, Classical Receptions Journal, 11. 4: 453–75, https://doi.org/10.1093/crj/clz015.

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CHAPTER 1 THE ‘POMPEIAN HOUSE’ IN SPAIN: A SOURCE OF INSPIRATION BETWEEN REALITY AND UTOPIA 1 Mirella Romero Recio

Ever since the first excavations began at Herculaneum and Pompeii, scholars and others have been delighted to see how the Romans lived, how they organized domestic life and how their dwellings were laid out and decorated. Spurred by a love of an idealized antiquity, the desire to discover quickly segued into an urge to imitate, giving rise to a fashion for Herculanean and, later, Pompeian motifs in palaces and mansions (Romero Recio 2016). Published engravings, artists’ paintings and, later on, photographs and postcards of the houses all portrayed a type of domestic dwelling that inspired imitation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, first in royal and aristocratic palaces, then in bourgeois mansions, and eventually in private houses and public buildings.

The Pompeian house and nineteenth-century Spanish architects Several studies have analysed the evolving adaptation of the Pompeian model in bourgeois houses in Germany, France, England and Italy, which progressed from straightforward replication in the first decades of the nineteenth century to successful, Pompeii-inspired projects in the second half of the same century, and later, the development in the early twentieth century of what has been called the ‘myth of the Mediterranean courtyard house’ (Mangone 2016: 154–79; Mangone, Russo 2019: 1480–5). In the nineteenth century, the Pompeian house aroused enormous interest among fellows of the French Academy in Rome, housed in the Villa Medici (Pompéi. Travaux 1981; Savorra 2006: 24–31; Mangone 2015: 125–30). Domestic spaces could be studied better at the archaeological site in Campania than anywhere else in the world, which is why these constructions also attracted the interest of some Spanish fellows, as shown by the projects they carried out in 1849, after the Roman Republic had been proclaimed and they had been transferred to Naples. Young artists stayed at Pompeii so as not to waste time travelling back and forth, and had the opportunity to work assiduously at the site for several months.2 The architects Francisco Jareño and Jerónimo de la Gándara produced technical drawings of Pompeian houses that were acclaimed by the Spanish ambassador in Naples, the well-known writer Ángel de Saavedra, Duke of Rivas, and the architect Luigi Canina, among others. These projects consisted of drawings of four Pompeian walls, two at the House of Castor and Pollux and two at the House of the Black Wall, to which they added other projects carried out on their travels in Sicily and Greece. 17

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In recognition of their work (including Jareño’s drawing of the House of the Fountain), both received honourable mentions at the General Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1856 (Latorre Broto 2017–18: 11–12). Years later, Jareño, who was well known for having designed the neo-Hellenic building that houses the National Library and National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, argued that artists should engage in the study of ancient monuments not only ‘because of their origin, antiquity, style or beauty, but also because it can yield important discoveries that shed light on the science of construction’ (Jareño 1853: 115). In his brief article, the architect laid down a series of principles learnt during his formative years that would continue to exert immense influence throughout the nineteenth century, as shown in other prominent journals in this field of knowledge, such as the Boletín Español de Arqueología [Spanish Archaeological Bulletin]. One of the editors of this journal was José Amador de los Ríos, a professor at the Central University of Madrid who was noted for his work to protect Spanish heritage and who held highly influential positions such as Secretary of the Central Monuments Commission and Director of the National Archaeological Museum. The other was Antonio de Zabaleta, a professor at – and subsequently director of – the School of Architecture in Madrid, who had travelled in southern Italy (including the obligatory visit to Pompeii) and Sicily. He had also lived in Paris for several years, where he met several French architects, including Henri Labrouste and Constant-Duffeux, who were influenced by the architecture of antiquity. The second issue of the Boletín, published in 1846, contained an article signed by ‘R.’, in reality Amador de los Ríos (Prieto González 2004: 67–8, nt.5), in which, after discussing various archaeological remains – including Pompeii and Herculaneum – he stressed the benefits to architecture of archaeological studies (Amador de los Ríos 1846: 11). In light of the 1851 regulations that obliged fellows to draw and analyse a Hellenic building, up until 1870 architectural students continued to travel to Naples to study the Pompeian remains, which they largely considered to be Greek,3 and to evidence an interest in the houses as well as the other large public buildings. Such was the case of Domingo Inza (who drew temples and houses), Francisco de Cubas (who carried out an acclaimed restoration of the Temple of Jupiter), Luis Cabello y Aso (who concentrated on the triangular Forum) and Alejandro del Herrero y Herreros (who drew an unidentified mosaic, some baths, the House of Sallust and decorative details from the House of Pansa) (García 2004: 53–72; 2011: 181; Prieto González 2004: 115–331). A renowned member of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, Francisco María Tubino (1877: 84), proposed that Spanish architects should emulate the example of the fellows of the German Archaeological Institute and go to Pompeii to keep abreast of the excavations, but the institution did nothing to further such study trips. However, it did authorize summer visits, during which the fellows took advantage of the opportunity to visit sites in Pompeii. Nevertheless, some remarkable work on Pompeian houses was performed after this date. For example, while a fellow in Rome in 1923, the architect Fernando García Mercadal undertook a restoration project at the House of the Faun that was very well received and which testified to his interest in the study of domestic space 18

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and private as opposed to public life (García Mercadal 1926: 100–6; Sambricio 2004: 55–8; Rodríguez 2004: 132–43; Laborda 2008: viii–x, xxi–xxv). However, it was not only architects who were enthralled by domestic spaces. Many of the painters who visited the site were also swept up in the Pompeii craze that raged in the nineteenth century, heavily fuelled by Bulwer-Lytton’s successful novel, The Last Days of Pompeii (Arias Anglés, Gil Serrano 2003: 115–23; Romero Recio 2012: 62–88). Similarly, each and every one of the accounts by Spanish travellers who visited Pompeii evidenced their interest in the houses, which might be attributed greater or lesser importance but were always discussed in a context that placed greatest value on the information Pompeii yielded about domestic life.

Adaptation of the Pompeian house in the early twentieth century In the first decades of the twentieth century, the various rooms of the Pompeian house were adapted for private and public buildings in response to different interests. A good example of this is the ‘Pompeian terrace or gallery’ that the writer Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867–1928) had built at his house, located in Malvarrosa, a district in the city of Valencia, in 1902. The author of successful novels that were subsequently made into films, such as Mare Nostrum, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and Blood and Sand, Blasco Ibáñez admired antiquity and was fascinated by Pompeii, as shown by his articles describing his first visit to the site, published in the newspaper El Pueblo in 1894 and later compiled in his book En el país del arte (Blasco Ibáñez 1896: 167–84; Fernández Murga 1965: 33–8; Romero Recio 2012: 122–30; 2019: 73–87). In keeping with the writer’s tastes, the house was built in a ‘somewhat Pompeian style’, as Blasco Ibáñez himself indicated in a letter to his friend Joaquín Sorolla.4 According to an article by his daughter, Libertad Blasco-Ibáñez Blasco, published in 1977, the house had a large garden ‘strewn with sculptures, including Michelangelo’s Slave, the Medici Venus, the Venus of Arles, Apollo and a monument to Dante. There was also a large pond or lake for watering the garden, where the children, consisting of my brothers and I, bathed on days when the sea was rough’ (Blasco-Ibáñez Blasco 1977: 64–5). The Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation has several photographs of the garden which show that the rear façade of the house was divided into three sections or heights, each distinguished from the other by a different classical element. For example, the lower section sported a continuous meander frieze and decorative fluted pilasters dividing each space, creating an alternation between wall and opening. The pilasters also organized the space vertically, creating a structure inspired in the superimposition of orders in Roman architecture, a feature that can be seen in Renaissance buildings such as the Palazzo Rucellai in Florence. The capitals of the lower section were elaborately decorated with gargoyles, while those of the second section resembled Ionic capitals and were decorated with classical wreaths. The façade was crowned by a balustrade separated by small columns, and before it lay a garden area divided into what appear to be two circular 19

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spaces. The first of these, closest to the building, was bounded by a balustrade, while the second was enclosed by a continuous bench. Surviving photographs of the garden show some of the sculptures it used to contain, including a few of those mentioned by Blasco Ibáñez’s daughter. Standing on pedestals decorated with fluting and bas-reliefs, these included a reproduction of the Medici Venus, a copy of Michelangelo’s Slave to the left of a door in the rear façade, and another of the Terpsichore Muse by the sculptor Antonio Canova to the right of the same door. Another statue that can be seen from behind, in the centre of the circular space closest to the façade, seems to be a copy of Dante by Jerónimo Suñol y Pujol, of which we know that several plaster copies were made.5 Classical sculptures were often used to decorate the gardens of well-appointed homes, as can be seen in another well-known residence, Sorolla’s house in Madrid, discussed in Chapter 5 of this book. It is tempting to speculate that the pond mentioned by the writer’s daughter might have been designed as a kind of impluvium, which would have given an even more Pompeian air to a garden adorned with reproductions of classical sculptures or statues inspired by Graeco-Roman art, but unfortunately none of the photographs show this area of the garden. Meanwhile, the second section of the main façade of the house had a large terrace simulating an open atrium, which looked out over the sea.6 The front portico had five square columns with fluting on two-thirds of the shaft, volute capitals, two caryatids in the corners (sculpted by Rafael Rubio Rosell) and two more columns at the sides. The terrace floor was paved in imitation of an ancient mosaic, with a geometric design in which seven circles were framed by a meander border, and was furnished with a large Carrara marble table that the novelist had imported from Italy, the top of which rested upon four table supports carved in the form of griffins (Figure 1.1). These were based on the cartibulum in the House of Cornelius Rufus at Pompeii, albeit the table was not an exact copy since it had four rather than two supports. This style of marble table had become very popular after a reproduction was exhibited in the Pompeian Court – a purely domestic setting – at Crystal Palace in 1854, and images of it subsequently became widely available. For example, the atrium designed by Digby Wyatt appeared in Niccolini’s famous publication (1896, IV: tav. V).7 The celebrated painter Alma Tadema included the same piece in his painting The Sculpture Gallery (1874–5), faithfully replicating the decorative table supports. Chairs sited around the gallery were also Roman in style, with curved legs forming an X-shape, and both the wall and the ceiling were decorated with paintings. Some of these may have been painted by Sorolla, because in a letter to his friend he offered to ‘paint him something decorative’.8 Furthermore, many years later, Libertad Blasco-Ibáñez Blasco noted that the paintings were the work of Joaquín Sorolla and two of his disciples, Francisco Merenciano and Vicente Santaolaria, imitating the frescoes in the House of the Vettii and the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii.9 Thanks to photographs held by the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation, it has been possible to establish that the paintings on the walls of the house (which had been demolished and was built ex novo in 1997, attempting to reproduce its original structure) imitated scenes reminiscent of Greek vase 20

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Figure 1.1 Mario Blasco – the son of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez – seated on the Carrara marble table in the Pompeian terrace. © Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation. Held in the Blasco Ibáñez HouseMuseum (Valencia, Spain).

painting. However, those on the ceiling must have been the ones that, according to the writer’s daughter, were inspired by paintings at Pompeii, as the only one that it has been possible to identify (they appear poorly preserved in the photographs) is a copy of the painting that is in one of the two reception rooms along the long, east side of the peristyle in the House of the Vettii, which depicts the punishment of Dirce (Romero Recio 2019: 84–5, figs. 7–8, 11). Public buildings also included rooms more typical of a domestic setting. A good example of this is the so-called Pompeian courtyard that the architect Pedro Cerdán recreated in the Royal Casino in Murcia in 1893, taking as his model the atrium of Roman houses. Cerdán had been trained in classicism at the Madrid School of Architecture, where his teacher was Francisco Jareño, one of the architects mentioned earlier. Faithful to this style, Cerdán designed a Roman atrium with Ionic columns and a glazed compluvium supported by a metal structure for the Casino (a men’s club) (Romero Recio 2017: 82–3, fig. 13). In 1920, a statue of Venus, the work of the sculptor José Planes Peñalver, was placed on the spot that in an old Roman house would have been occupied by the impluvium. The courtyard was later decorated with 48 neo-Hellenic metopes 21

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sculpted by Anastasio Martínez Hernández between 1920 and 1922. These reliefs depict a variety of mythological scenes that did not seem to follow a predetermined iconographic programme. Pedro Cerdán would use this type of atrium again in 1924, in this case for a private dwelling, the house of the Carreño family in Bullas, also in Murcia (Fernández Sánchez 2015: 36–8).

The Pompeian house as utopian project in Ciudad Lineal (Madrid) The desire to feel immersed in the Roman world through imitation of the Pompeian house (albeit adapted to the needs of modern life, selecting and modifying the relevant rooms) went beyond the domestic sphere to encompass urban space, where such dwellings embodied utopian ideals. One of the most interesting projects to apply the characteristics of Roman urban planning, viewed through a Pompeian filter, was that proposed by Arturo Soria: Ciudad Lineal [Linear City].10 A town planner, politician and businessman, Soria was concerned about the poor living conditions of the majority of Madrid’s population, who occupied small houses without electricity or the most basic sanitation. To remedy this, in 1882 he proposed an idealistic urban planning project, which despite being somewhat utopian in nature, began to take shape in Madrid from 1894 onwards, although it never reached the dimensions that Arturo Soria had originally envisaged. Soria’s plan for Ciudad Lineal involved the creation of a city stretching along either side of a wide central street, which could be extended indefinitely. This city would be endowed with its own infrastructures (e.g. church, schools, shops, restaurants and theatres) to render it self-contained, but would also benefit from the great advances that had been made in the field of transport and communications, being connected to Madrid city centre via a tramway, the telegraph and the telephone. Rich and poor alike would live side by side in this new city, as the project aimed to allow everyone to share the same urban space, regardless of the size of the plots on which the houses were to be built. His slogan, ‘For every family a house; for every house a vegetable plot and a garden’, reflected Soria’s desire that all families, regardless of economic level, should have a decent house with a plot of land for growing plants, sited in an urban space full of trees and fresh air. After presenting his project for a railway-tramway link, a fundamental prerequisite for the development of Ciudad Lineal in order to provide rapid connections with Madrid city centre, in 1894 Soria set up a property development company (the Compañía Madrileña de Urbanización), initially with only five partners and himself as director. Work started in July of the same year, and continued – not without difficulties – until 1914, when the company went into receivership. By then, some 1,000 houses had been built, designed by various architects including Mariano Belmás and Jesús Carrasco, as well as public buildings such as a theatre, a school and a velodrome. In addition, an official newsletter had been launched in 1897, La Ciudad Lineal, ‘The official bulletin of the Madrid Property Development Company’, as its heading indicated.11 Initially issued fortnightly, and later monthly, it remained in publication until 1932 (Maure Rubio 1997: 11–29). It was used to publicize the 22

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new ideal of urban planning, announce general meetings and provide information on project progress, company income and payments, plots for sale and the housing models available, with associated construction costs. It also ran advertisements for companies specializing in services such as decorative painting or stained glass. After the company went into receivership, attempts were made to move the project forwards by attracting foreign interest. Conferences and exhibitions had already been held previously, such as the First Pan-American Scientific Congress in 1908, in Santiago de Chile, and the conference on urban planning held in Ghent to coincide with the Universal Exhibition of 1913. This latter event was attended by the diplomat Hilarión González del Castillo (1869–1941), who played an important role in publicizing Soria’s urban planning model abroad. As we shall see below, he was also responsible for the idea of using Pompeii as a model Roman city for application to the modern Ciudad Lineal. The scope of the Ciudad Lineal project is illustrated by the fact that Georges Benoît-Lévy created the Association Internationale des Cités Linéaires in 1925, which later merged with the Association des Cités-jardins and eventually became the Association Internationale des Cités-jardins Linéaires (Castrillo Romón 2016). The first mention of the possibility of replicating a Pompeian building in Ciudad Lineal was made in 1900. In an article published in the two June issues of La Ciudad Lineal, one of the newsletter’s most assiduous contributors, Pascual López, proposed the construction and operation of a Greek theatre. He had no doubt that the theatres excavated in Pompeii were Greek and comparable to those of Dionysus in Athens, Epidaurus and Syracuse: ‘the theatres of Pompeii – whether large and small – could very well be constructed in the “Ciudad Lineal”, for this circumstance alone would exert a strong attraction and draw many tourists and foreigners.’ Furthermore, Pascual López thought it important that this theatre should stage plays by Greek and Roman authors and should open with Aeschylus’ Oresteia, imagining the parade of the great final procession of the Panathenaic festival. He also suggested that the theatre should include operas and classical music concerts in the programme, but bearing in mind the more popular tastes of much of the potential public (more inclined to bullfights), he stressed the need to stage performances catering to contemporary culture, such as music groups, choirs (composed, he emphasized, of men, women and children) and religious music concerts (e.g. sacred music, masses, hymns and oratorios). Pascual López was not solely interested in entertainment, however; rather, his project reflected an educational mission to bring art closer to the working classes, in keeping with the design of Ciudad Lineal as an urban development where rich and poor, businessmen and workers, could live together in the same urban space. In his eagerness to demonstrate the viability of the project, he noted that for many Spanish architects ‘it would be an easy, pleasant task to reproduce an ancient monument, now that these have been so well studied and some, such as the theatres of Pompeii, have come down to us in a very good state of preservation.’ He was right, for as noted earlier, there were many well-trained architects in Spain who would have been glad to undertake such a task. The same newsletter published a response to Pascual López’s proposal, written by Hilarión González del Castillo, one of Ciudad Lineal’s greatest advocates. He had studied 23

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law in Oviedo before opting for a diplomatic career and joining the consular service in 1895, after which he lived abroad, in the Far East, for several years. He showed his support for Arturo Soria’s project by participating in the latter’s company, acquiring plots of land on which to build houses and publishing articles in La Ciudad Lineal.12 After spending several periods abroad, he settled in Madrid in 1908 and then devoted much of his time to publicizing this urbanistic ideal beyond Spain, often at international exhibitions and conferences (Alonso Pereira 1997: 49–63; 1998: 96–9; García & Guerrero 2018: 898–908). The first time González del Castillo referred to Pompeii in La Ciudad Lineal was in an unattributed article published on 20 November 1903, in which he noted Pascual López’s proposal to build a Greek theatre and in turn suggested the idea of replicating some of Pompeii’s houses in Ciudad Lineal, signing himself ‘Un Turista’ [A Tourist] (González del Castillo 1903). Almost a year later, ‘Un Turista’ wrote another article declaring that his ideal house in this new urban space would be a dwelling modelled on the House of the Vettii (González del Castillo 1904). There are several reasons for thinking that this ‘tourist’ was in fact González del Castillo, the most obvious being the fact that in a 1908 article which did carry his name, he cited the exact issue of the newsletter in which he had spoken of his desire to replicate the House of the Vettii in Ciudad Lineal (González del Castillo 1908: 645–7). González del Castillo already owned a property in Ciudad Lineal, which had been built in 1900 and had won a prize ‘for the best luxury house from 40,000 to 50,000 pesetas’ on 9 December of that same year at the Tree Festival, a large event where trees were planted and other recreational activities took place (La Ciudad Lineal, 20/12/1900).

Figure 1.2 La Tierruca. © Asociación Cultural Legado de Arturo Soria. 24

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Called La Tierruca, this large house had a porch supported by six Ionic columns and crowned by a frieze depicting a series of floral wreaths. In 1903 it was rented out as its owner was abroad, but that did not prevent parties from being held in its spacious garden where a theatre had been built (La Ciudad Lineal, 20/9/1902). The house was put up for sale in 1904 and its name was changed to El Descanso. In a 1903 article written from Naples within sight of the ruins of Pompeii, González del Castillo enthusiastically observed that: It would be very attractive, very easy and aesthetically pleasing to build one or more small houses on our plots of land that copied or imitated some of the houses in Pompeii, such as the House of the Vettii, Pansa or Tragic Poet, or the Villa of Diomedes, all original, artistic houses thanks to their Graeco-Roman architecture, the distribution of their rooms, their beautiful gardens surrounded by columns, the mythological paintings on the walls, their frescoes, their mosaics, and so on. What do our rich classes in Madrid want money for? He was primarily interested at this time in the possibility of replicating domestic spaces for the more well-off, and his only reference to any other type of building was to Pascual López’s proposal for the construction of a Greek theatre, albeit he only mentioned this in order to argue that it would be more appropriate to build a replica of a ‘Spanish building’ and therefore proposed copying the theatre of Sagunto (Valencia) rather than any of those preserved in Pompeii. As we shall see, some years later he advocated the construction of one of the Pompeian theatres in Ciudad Lineal, but he did not remind his readers that this idea had first been raised by Pascual López (González del Castillo 1913: 33, 64–9). In 1904, signing himself again ‘Un Turista’, González del Castillo went a step further in his ambition to copy a Pompeian domestic model, and at the risk of being accused of exhibiting ‘extravagant and elitist’ tastes, proposed the construction of a house imitating that of the Vettii family. In an article eloquently entitled ‘My future home. A Pompeian Villa in Ciudad Lineal’ (González del Castillo 1904: 1–2), he freely admired this mansion, which he considered far superior to the theatres, the forum or the baths. His impassioned argument bore witness to his obsession with this house, as he emphasized its spaciousness and comfort, its paintings, sculptures and garden, reconstructing it all in his imagination and evoking the daily life of the individuals who had once inhabited these rooms. As a result of such reveries, he had decided that it would be possible to reproduce the Vettii house in this future city as a model of well-being, comfort and good taste: My most ardent desire – which I hope to see realized one day – is to build a Pompeii-style house on the plots of land I own in the ‘Ciudad Lineal’, partly replicating as my model that most beautiful of dwellings, the House of the Vetti. I wouldn’t even mind if one of my associates, more fortunate than me, were to reproduce it first; on the contrary, I would be greatly flattered if several houses 25

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were built in the Pompeian style on our land, with variations according to the taste or wealth of each. Consequently, I shall describe this unique house to my readers and explain how I would replicate it on our plots, in the hope that my plan will encourage someone to build the first Pompeian Villa in the ‘Ciudad Lineal’. His project was not solely a personal ambition; on the contrary, he believed that this house could be built by anyone who wanted to construct one in this new city, and therefore his article detailed the most relevant features of the house that had so enthused archaeologists, experts and travellers. The house had only recently been excavated – between 1894 and 1895 – and it had then been restored so that tourists could see mosaics, paintings and objects in situ. As a result, it became tremendously popular, in Spain as elsewhere, as evidenced by articles in the press13 and accounts by travellers such as Rafael Balsa de la Vega, Carmen de Burgos, Adelardo Covarsí and Manuel Verdugo (Romero Recio 2012: 92, 134, 222, 237–8). It was not González del Castillo’s intention to build an exact copy of the House of the Vettii; rather, his goal was to construct a house that reflected the essence of this domus but was adapted to the needs of his time, replicating some of the rooms and decorating them with copies of the celebrated, recently discovered frescoes.14 The plan was for a single storey house with a roof terrace instead of a roof, which could be shaded by an awning in the summer. There would be four façades with a Pompeian-style portico on the main one that would be ‘a mixture of pure Greek and Roman style, with eight beautiful Corinthian columns copied from one of the temples in Pompeii, probably the temple of Apollo.’ The portico would open onto a large hall flanked by two rooms, one of which would be decorated with reliefs, mouldings and paintings depicting mythological themes, such as Ariadne abandoned by Theseus or Hero and Leander. A major element of the house would be the atrium, which would be covered, ‘making it a sort of Andalusian-style courtyard but with Pompeian decoration’, around which the rooms would be arranged and where the paintings of the Vettii house would be faithfully reproduced.15 González del Castillo also indicated that he would include a triclinium and a peristyle, a space that he again compared to the courtyard of typical Andalusian houses. After providing a detailed description of these spaces, he ended his article by advocating the construction of Pompeian villas in Ciudad Lineal and encouraging architects to turn to the past to popularize the legacy not only of Greece and Rome, but also of Gothic, Arabic, Renaissance and Plateresque architecture. It is interesting to note the importance given to the courtyard, likened both to an atrium and a peristyle, and these in turn to inner courtyards in Andalusian houses. As mentioned earlier, the design of a courtyard house similar to a Pompeian dwelling had gained increasing popularity in the early twentieth century, and González del Castillo’s idea echoed this trend. Curiously enough, Soria, the visionary behind Ciudad Lineal, also advocated the courtyard house, and in fact his family home, the Villa Rubín, was built along these lines (Alonso Pereira 1998: 173–5), albeit not in imitation of a Pompeian or Roman dwelling. Rather, his inspiration for this style of house, which had a large central space connecting all the rooms, was provided by convents.16 26

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In the 1908 article mentioned above, González del Castillo discussed the possibility of building a house in Ciudad Lineal inspired by that of the Vettii family, in particular replicating the peristyle. Although he maintained that this was the best house in Pompeii, he also thought it feasible to copy others, such as the House of Pansa, the Faun or the Tragic Poet, and to imitate the two theatres and the thermal baths, adapting them to the climate of Madrid. Without referring to his former interest in Roman theatres built on Spanish soil, and Pascual López, who had first proposed copying a Greek theatre, González del Castillo now suggested that such theatres could be used to hold open-air concerts, competitions, flower shows and, naturally, theatrical performances, as was already being done in France in Roman amphitheatres and theatres such as those in Orange, Nîmes and Arles. As for recreating the baths, his suggestion sprang from a desire to provide bathhouses with gymnasiums that would improve people’s health and sanitation. Pompeii offered a blueprint from which to extract original, useful and artistic ideas for his new urban project. Five years later, Hilarión González del Castillo gave four lectures at the Madrid Athenaeum where he again raised the possibility of reproducing Pompeian buildings. His talks, given between February and March 1913, were published in instalments in the newsletter, La Ciudad Lineal, and subsequently compiled and published as a monograph entitled Pompeya y la Ciudad Lineal [Pompeii and Ciudad Lineal], illustrated with the images of the city that he had shown in his lectures (González del Castillo 1913). Throughout the course of his talks, González del Castillo sought to bring Pompeii alive for the audience by describing the eruption of Vesuvius that had devastated the city, the excavations and the city’s shops, inscriptions, public buildings, streets and houses (especially, of course, the House of the Vettii, but also those of Pansa, the Citharist, Marcus Lucretius, the Faun and Diomedes). As he had announced in his first lecture, his goal was not merely to talk about the Campanian site out of frivolous curiosity, but to seek lessons in this ancient Roman city by demonstrating that ancient buildings could be reproduced in the twentieth century in order to beautify and be of use to the inhabitants of this new district in Madrid (González del Castillo 1913: 3, 56). Although it was not until his last talk that he explained the details of his plan, he had already mentioned some of the relevant issues in the three previous lectures. The first of these was the idea of restoring ‘ancient theatrical life’ by constructing theatres in imitation of those built in Pompeii, any other Greek city or even in Spain, such as those of Merida and Sagunto (González del Castillo 1913: 33). In order to carry out this mission successfully, he urged artists, architects and writers to study the idea, because the proposal would not only affect the urban framework and activities that would benefit the economy, but could also help improve customs through use of the theatre as an instrument to educate the people (a goal previously proposed by Pascual López in 1900). Thus, he believed that it was feasible to reproduce the Great Theatre, the Odeon, the amphitheatre and the baths (González del Castillo 1913: 64–76). In his opinion, the Great Theatre should be copied with a capacity for 5,000 people (which would render it financially viable), but with the addition of gardens and access walkways around the building. It could then be used to stage performances of the great musical works, oratorios, concerts, operas or shows with animals; in short, the opportunity should be seized of using a large open-air space, as was 27

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already being done in Roman theatres in France and Spain (in Catalonia, Greek tragedies such as Sophocles’ Philoctetes had been staged beside the sea). González del Castillo further suggested that the Odeon, built for 1,500 people, should be extended to include rehearsal rooms and a library. It too should be surrounded by gardens and could be reserved for dances, operettas, comic operas, zarzuelas (a typically Spanish musical genre) and concerts given by municipal bands, musical societies and choirs. As for the amphitheatre, it could have a capacity of 20,000 people. Its façade would be decorated with elements copied from ancient Greek and Roman monuments and, surrounded by gardens, it could host athletic competitions emulating the Olympic Games which were then being revived in Europe.17 It could also host running events, boxing and other activities such as Swedish gymnastics, tennis, football and Spanish folk dances such as the sardana and muñeira (typical of Catalonia and Galicia, respectively). Both the theatres and the amphitheatre alike were to be built and operated by private companies. In contrast, the baths were to be built by the public authorities as their function was related to hygiene and health; besides the baths themselves, they would also include state-funded gymnasiums and medical care. González del Castillo also devoted some considerable time to trying once again to convince architects, artists and, above all, individuals with financial means, of the merits of building houses in Ciudad Lineal inspired by Pompeian villas. It surprised him that a mansion imitating the House of Pansa had been built in New York – alluding to The Pompeia at Saratoga Springs – which he felt was much less luxurious or interesting, although he had recommended taking inspiration from it in his 1908 article. In his final talk, he reiterated the reasons he had already given in earlier publications for replicating the rooms and decoration of Pompeian houses by including an atrium and peristyle, whether open or glazed to protect against the cold, colourful façades with GraecoRoman columns, friezes, reproductions of Pompeian paintings and classical sculptures, and so on. Naturally, such houses would also be equipped with modern conveniences such as electricity, heating and telephones. According to the newsletter, his talks were a great success, and were attended by Ciudad Lineal partners and residents, to whom González del Castillo had given tickets for the event (Cirajas 1913), announcing that he would talk about buildings that could be replicated (M. 1913; Ribera 1913; Gallego 1913). However, it does not seem that any of the attendees were persuaded to construct Pompeian-style houses or monuments in the new district, although some houses did incorporate classical columns, including the already mentioned La Tierruca, the Villa Hispana, Villa Homs and Villa Fleta (in the porch) and Pérez Stella’s house (in the dining room) (Sánchez Fernández 2010: 145, 250, 283, 336). To date, it is not known whether González del Castillo gave similar talks to any other audiences. His project for Ciudad Lineal became increasingly linked to the notion of the Garden City, and he once again took his inspiration from the model of Pompeii, but this time for the construction of one of the most important urban spaces in the city, the forum, rather than for houses or other public buildings. In the project he presented at the Reconstruction Exhibition in Brussels, held shortly after the First World War (González del Castillo 1919: 14–15, 17), and another he presented at the National Engineering 28

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Figure 1.3 Proposed design for the construction of the Forum in Ciudad Lineal. González del Castillo 1920b: 440. Image held in the Biblioteca Nacional de España collection.

Congress, also held in 1919, in Madrid (González del Castillo 1920a: 196), this champion of Ciudad Lineal proposed the creation of a forum in the city centre that would form the civic and business heart of the city. Said forum would consist of a square measuring 240 x 560 metres furnished with gardens, statues and monuments and containing the principal public buildings (e.g. town hall, church). Through and from it would run a 60-metre-wide avenue called the Via Decumanus. The section leading to the railway station would be the decumanus maior, while that leading to the agricultural area would be the decumanus minor. Neither at Brussels nor Madrid did González del Castillo refer to Pompeii when making his proposal, but in the summary he published in the newsletter La Ciudad Lineal, he indicated that it was this city which had inspired him to include the forum and the Via Decumanus in his project (González del Castillo 1920b: 440–1). Perhaps he thought that 29

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his readers would remember his previous initiatives or that Pompeii would be more familiar to them than any other Roman city in terms of understanding the intended meaning of such spaces in Ciudad Lineal. It seems that all of González del Castillo’s projects inspired by ancient Pompeii (some of them borrowed from Pascual López’s 1900 publication) remained in the realm of utopia. The same newsletter, La Ciudad Lineal, that published his proposals also published two brief articles arguing against the use of Pompeii or any other place from a past era such as the Middle Ages for inspiration when building a house (Crespo 2017a, 2017b): ‘If architecture is not to go backwards, there is only one possible path: to make art a faithful expression of the needs of its time, tailored to what it should contain’ (Crespo 2017b: 828).

By way of conclusion Pompeii entered the domestic space soon after the first remains came to light, and it is here to stay. Both the utopian district of Madrid, dotted with dwellings, public buildings and urban spaces inspired in the city buried by Vesuvius, and advances in architecture alike have preserved the memory of the Pompeian house. Throughout the twentieth century and into the twenty-first, internationally renowned Spanish architects have been inspired by the site when designing or decorating houses. Examples include the Villa Andrea, designed by the architect, designer and painter Óscar Tusquets and built between 1989 and 1992 in Barcelona to serve as his private residence and studio. Of particular note in this classically-inspired house is its Doric portico leading to the garden, based on the Treasury of the Athenians at Delphi, its dressing room decorated in red and black stucco, reminiscent of Pompeian houses, and its mosaic of a jellyfish in the bathroom.18 Also worthy of mention are some of the houses designed in the twenty-first century by the architect Manuel de las Casas, who died in 2014. He too turned for inspiration to the Pompeian-style courtyard house – including an updated impluvium – for the Casa Edeline (Madrid) in 2004 and the Sánchez-Medina House (Toledo), for which he received the Castile-La Mancha Prize for Architecture in 2005 (Mucelli, Stefania 2006). Moving beyond the realm of utopian dreams, the Pompeian house has continued to inspire realistic projects in Spanish architecture.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. Hernández Latas, Guiral, Mostalac 1999: 10–13; García, 2011: 171–5; Romero Recio 2012: 52–3. 3. Archive of the San Fernando Royal Academy, Le-1-50-2. 4. Letter from Vicente Blasco Ibáñez to Sorolla, Sorolla Museum, inventory no. CS0872. See Romero Recio 2019: 78–87.

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The ‘Pompeian House’ in Spain 5. The Medici Venus can be seen in images DSC4395 and DSC4360, the Terpsichore Muse by Canova in DSC4380 and DSC4693 and a rear view of the Dante in DSC4693, all held by the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation. On this latter sculpture: https://www.museodelprado.es/ coleccion/obra-de-arte/el-dante/84bc3970-13a3-4f1f-819b-a56afa78e435 [accessed 11 October 2021]. I would like to thank the Director of the Blasco Ibáñez House-Museum in Valencia, Emilio Sales Dasí, for his help in providing me with the images and other useful guidance. I would also like to thank María Martín de Vidales and the sculptor Ricardo Rico for their help in identifying some of the sculptures. 6. Images from the Vicente Blasco Ibáñez Foundation: DSC4362, 4369, 4371, 4382, NKD1846, NKD1849 and 1161. 7. On the Pompeian Court: Hales 2006: 99–134. See Kockel, Schütze 2016: 542–3. 8. Correspondence Archive, Sorolla Museum, copy of Sorolla’s reply to Blasco Ibáñez, inv. no. CS7410. 9. Blasco-Ibáñez Blasco 1977: 64. It would not be surprising if some of these decorations were painted by Sorolla, given the influence that the Campanian archaeological site exerted on his work, as discussed by Ana Valtierra in Chapter 5. Mention was also made of the ‘Pompeian frescoes’ in the house in Las Provincias, 29/1/1928: 3. 10. There is abundant literature on Arturo Soria and the Ciudad Lineal, so I shall limit myself to highlighting the following references: Collins 1959: 38–53; Bonet Correa 1991: 95–117; Maure Rubio 1991; Sambricio 1992: 147–59; Alonso Pereira 1998. 11. In 1902, the heading was changed to the Revista de Higiene, Agricultura, Ingeniería y Urbanización [Journal of Hygiene, Agriculture, Engineering and Urban Development]. 12. His participation in the Company, acquisition of plots of land and construction of a house are all recorded in La Ciudad Lineal 5/2/1900; 5/3/1900; 20/5/1900; 20/12/1900; 20/9/1902; etc. 13. Among others, La Ilustración artística (20/04/1896), La Ilustración española y americana (30/3/1902), Alrededor del mundo (12/11/1903), La Escuela Moderna (/12/1911) and La Esfera (6/4/1918). Some of the articles are illustrated with photographs of the house. 14. In a footnote, he advised interested parties to refer to Niccolini’s work, purchase copies of the paintings from the Naples Museum and even consult the Spanish consul in Naples. The paintings recommended for reproduction are given in: Niccolini 1896, IV: tav. 33; Kockel, Schütze 2016: 615. In González del Castillo 1908: 647, he again recommended Niccolini’s publication on the House of the Vettii. 15. One of the sections in La Cuidad Lineal (30/12/1910) gave examples of houses around the world whose style could be imitated, including Firenze cottage, Daniel Guggenheim’s summer home in Elberon, New Jersey, which had a Pompeian-style hall imitating the atrium in the House of the Vettii. The image depicting this hall was taken from American Homes and Gardens (VI, no. 9, September 1909: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015028161 415&view=1up&seq=564&skin=2021&size=125 [accessed 8 October 2021]). 16. Soria 1900. Other examples of the courtyard house model include Federico Plana’s home (La Ciudad Lineal, 20/12/1900), and Francisco Gutiérrez’s home (La Ciudad Lineal, 20/10/1902). 17. Although no Pompeii-inspired entertainment building was ever built in Ciudad Lineal, the Graeco-Roman wrestling competitions in the Kursaal became very popular. These were widely reported in the press, as can be seen from the following selected examples: La Ciudad Lineal, 546, 30/6/1911; 30/8/1911; El Heraldo de Madrid, 23/7/1911; La Época, 20/7/1911; El Liberal, 14/7/1912; 21/7/1912, etc. 18. http://www.tusquets.com/fichag/44/11-villa-andrea [accessed 8 October 2021].

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References Alonso Pereira, J. R. (1997), ‘González del Castillo, teórico y propagandista de la Ciudad Lineal’, Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales, 29 (111): 49–63. Alonso Pereira, J. R. (1998), La Ciudad Lineal de Madrid, Madrid: Fundación Caja de Arquitectos. Amador de los Ríos, J. (signed R.) (1846), ‘Arqueología’, Boletín español de arquitectura, 2, 16 June: 10–11. Arias Anglés, E., Gil Serrano, A. (2003), ‘Los últimos días de Pompeya de Lord Lytton y la pintura ‘Pompeyista’ española’, Goya, 293: 115–23. Blasco Ibáñez, V. (1896), En el país del arte. (Tres meses en Italia), Valencia. Blasco-Ibáñez Blasco, L. (1977), ‘La Malvarrosa. Lo único que heredé de mi padre’, Blanco y Negro, 19 October: 64–7. Bonet Correa, A. (1991), ‘Paisaje urbano, Ciudad Lineal y Masonería’, Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales, 89: 95–117. Castrillo Romón, M. (2016), ‘La participation espagnole aux réseaux urbanistiques internationaux 1910-1930’, in Inventer le Grand Paris. Relectures des travaux de la Commission d’extension de Paris. Rapport et concours 1911-1919, Bordeaux: Ed. Biére: 57–70. doi: 10.25580/ IGP.2013.0003. Cirajas, N. M. (1913), ‘D. Hilarión G. del Castillo en el Ateneo. Pompeya y la ciudad Lineal’, La Ciudad Lineal, 10 March: 80. Collins, G. R. (1959), ‘The Ciudad Lineal of Madrid’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 18.2: 38–53. Crespo, P. (2017a), ‘¿Cómo se hace una casa? La casa y la habitación’, La Ciudad Lineal, 10 April, 661: 811–12. Crespo, P. (2017b), ‘¿Cómo se hace una casa? La casa es el espejo del alma’, La Ciudad Lineal, 20 April, 662: 827–8. Fernández Murga, F. (1965), ‘Pompeya en la literatura española’, Annali dell’Istituto Universitario Orientale, Sezione romanza, Naples, 5–51. Fernández Sánchez, P. (2015), Casa de la Familia Carreño en Bullas. Análisis Históricoconstructivo y de patologías. Proyecto Fin de Grado (Ingeniería de la edificación). Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena. repositorio.upct.es/bitstream/10317/5150/1/tfg773.pdf [accessed 11 October 2021]. Gallego, E. (1913), ‘Notas bibliográficas. Pompeya y la Ciudad Lineal’, La construcción moderna, 15 December, 23: 368. García González, M. C. and Guerrero, S. (2018), ‘Spain in the international urban networks around the First World War’, in 18th International Planning History Society Conference Yokohama, Japón, 15/19 julio 2018, International Planning History Society Proceedings, 18.1: Looking at the World History of Planning: 898–908. https://doi.org/10.7480/iphs.2018.1.2738. García Mercadal, F. (1926), ‘La Casa del Fauno. Pompeya’, Arquitectura, 83 (March): 100–6. García Sánchez, J. (2004), ‘Arquitectos españoles del siglo XIX en Grecia y Egipto’, Academia, 98–9: 53–72. García Sánchez, J. (2011), Los arquitectos españoles frente a la Antigüedad. Historia de las pensiones de Arquitectura en Roma (siglos XVIII y XIX), Milan: Hugony Editore. González del Castillo, H. (signed Un Turista) (1903), ‘Desde Nápoles’, La Ciudad Lineal, 20 November, 181: 2–4. González del Castillo, H. (signed Un Turista) (1904), ‘Mi futura casa. Una villa pompeyana en la Ciudad Lineal’, La Ciudad Lineal, 30 September, 212: 1–2. González del Castillo, H. (1908), ‘Desde Italia. Pompeya’, La Ciudad Lineal, 29 February, 334: 645–7. González del Castillo, H. (1913), Pompeya y la Ciudad Lineal. Conferencias de Don Hilarión González del Castillo en el Ateneo de Madrid. Febrero y marzo de 1913, Madrid: Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal. 32

The ‘Pompeian House’ in Spain González del Castillo, H. (1919), Projet de Cité Linéaire Belge inspiré par la cité linéaire espagnole inventée par Mr. Arturo Soria y Mata. Rapport présenté à l’Exposition de la Reconstruction à Bruxelles, Madrid: Imprenta de la Ciudad Lineal. González del Castillo, H. (1920a), ‘Proyecto de ciudad lineal’, Primer Congreso Nacional de Ingeniería celebrado en Madrid los días 16 al 25 de Noviembre de 1919, IV, Madrid: 194–7. https://biblioteca.juaneloturriano.com/Record/Xebook1-9528/Read?_=00655F28-5526-37369C65-295ED4A8C65C [accessed 22 October 2021]. González del Castillo, H. (1920b), ‘Congreso Nacional de Ingeniería. Mi proyecto de Ciudad Lineal’, La Ciudad Lineal, 10 January, 701: 437–41. Hales, S. (2006), ‘Re-casting Antiquity: Pompeii and the Crystal Palace’, Arion, 14 (1): 99–133. Hernández Latas, J. A., Guiral, C., Mostalac, A. (1999), Álbum de Pompeya de Bernardino Montañés, 1849, Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico. Jareño, F. (1853), ‘Arquitectura’, Revista de Obras públicas, 9: 115–16. Kockel, V., Schütze, S. (2016), Felice Niccolini. Houses and Monuments of Pompeii, Köln: Taschen. Laborda, J. (2008), in García Mercadal, Artículos en la revista Arquitectura 1920-1934, Edición de J. Laborda Yneva, Zaragoza: Institución Fernando el Católico. Latorre Broto, E. (2017–18), ‘Jerónimo de la Gándara: obra gráfica desconocida y documentación inédita’, Academia, 119–20: 9–31. López, P. (1900), ‘Grandes proyectos en la Ciudad Lineal’, La Ciudad Lineal, 5 June: 1–2 and 20 June, 78–9: 1. M. (1913), ‘El Sr. González del Castillo en el Ateneo’, La Ciudad Lineal, 20 February: 58–9. Mangone, F. (2015), ‘Pompei, ginnasio dell’architettura europea, 1815-1914)’, Osanna, M., Caracciolo, M. T. and Gallo, L. (eds), Pompei e l’Europa. 1748–1943, Milan: Mondadori Electa: 125–30. Mangone, F. (2016), Immaginazione e presenza dell’antico. Pompei e l’architettura di età contemporanea, Naples: Artstudiopaparo. Mangone, F., Russo, R. (2019), ‘El mito de la casa pompeyana entre los siglos XIX y XX’, La casa. Espacios domésticos, modos de habitar, Madrid: Abada: 1478–92. Maure Rubio, M. A. (1991), La Ciudad Lineal de Arturo Soria, Madrid: Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Madrid. Maure Rubio, M. A. (1997), ‘La Ciudad Lineal: el nacimiento de una revista’, Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales, 29 (111): 11–29. Mucelli, E. and Stefania, R. (2006), ‘Tracce di un antico recinto. Due progetti di case a patio di Manuel de las Casas’, Parametro. Rivista internazionale di architettura e urbanistica. 2006, 261: 86–9. Niccolini, F. (1854–96), Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei, Naples. Pompéi. Travaux et envois des architectes français au XIX siècle, Roma, 1981. Prieto González, J. M. (2004), Aprendiendo a ser arquitectos. Creación y desarrollo de la Escuela de Arquitectura de Madrid (1844–1914), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Ribera, E. (1913), ‘Eugenio Ribera y la Ciudad Lineal’, La Ciudad Lineal, 20 October, 536: 336. Rodríguez, D. (2004), ‘Fernando García Mercadal. La arquitectura y el mar’, in Roma y la tradición de lo nuevo. Diez artistas en el Gianicolo (1923–1927), Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, 55–8. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936), Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Romero Recio, M. (2016), ‘Pompeii in Spanish Interior Decoration’, Hales, S. and Leander, A. M. (eds), Returns to Pompeii. Interior Space and Decoration Documented and Revived. 18th–21st Century, Stockholm: Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae: 55–74. Romero Recio, M. (2017), ‘L’influenza dell’antichità romana in Spagna: lo stile pompeiano nei secoli XVIII e XIX’, Rivista di Studi Pompeiani, 28: 75–87. 33

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts Romero Recio, M. (2019), ‘La Antigüedad romana vista por dos escritores anticlericales: Carmen de Burgos y Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’, Veleia, 36, doi: https://doi.org/10.1387/veleia.20752: 73–94. Sambricio, C. (1992), ‘De la Ciudad Lineal a la Ciudad Jardín. Sobre la difusión en España de los supuestos urbanísticos a comienzos del siglo’, Ciudad y Territorio. Estudios Territoriales, 94: 147–59. Sambricio, C. (2004), ‘Arquitectos españoles pensionados en la Roma del primer cuarto del siglo XX’, in Roma y la tradición de lo nuevo. Diez artistas en el Gianicolo (1923–1927), Madrid: Sociedad Estatal para la Acción Cultural Exterior, 55–8. Sánchez Fernández, D. (2010), Un paseo por la Ciudad Lineal, Madrid: La Librería. Savorra, M. (2006), ‘La casa pompeiana e la tradizione Beaux-Arts’, Parametro. Rivista internazionale di architettura e urbanística, 261: 24–31. Soria, A. (1900), ‘Teoría de la habitación’, La Ciudad Lineal, 5 November, 88: 1–2. Tubino, F. M. (1877), ‘La Academia Española de Bellas Artes en Roma. II’, La Academia. Revista de cultura hispano-portuguesa, latino-americana, 1 (11 de febrero): 82–4.

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CHAPTER 2 ECHOES OF POMPEII IN MEXICO: ACADEMY, SOCIETY AND ART 1 Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez

Ever since the eighteenth century, the discoveries at Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae have excited wonder worldwide. Each archaeological find provided fresh information about the level of culture that these ancient Roman societies had attained, making a profound impression on cultural and social spheres around the world. Reception was immediate. The findings influenced many nations, and Mexico was no exception, as evidenced in its art, language, literature and various aspects of daily life. The testimonies are numerous and date from the eighteenth century to the present day, but it was the nineteenth century that witnessed the greatest impact.

The Academy Reception in Mexico began via Madrid in 1786, when at the request of various academics, Charles III approved the dispatch of a selection of casts to the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in New Spain, which had recently been inaugurated (Brown 1976: 58; Fuentes 2002: 34). As a result, busts from the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum and others from Pompeii were brought to the New World for use as models. The San Carlos Academy’s art and library collection increased over time thanks both to its own acquisitions and to its boarding students, who from 1850 onwards visited London, Paris and Rome in order to complete their education and, as part of their obligations, sent books they had purchased or engravings and drawings of historical monuments that they had made themselves (Fuentes 2016: 56; Báez 2009: 74). The San Carlos Academy’s programme of student placements with European artists expanded, and the Mexican students’ ability impressed some renowned figures. One such was Antonio Cipolla, who in 1854 tried to sign a contract with José Bernardo Couto, director of the Academy, for Ramón Rodríguez Arangoiti, a student resident in Rome, to produce a collection of thirty-six architectural drawings illustrating details of the Greek, Roman, Pompeian and Renaissance styles (Soler 2000; Garibay 1990: 16–23; Acevedo 1985: 96–7). Couto apparently did not respond; nevertheless, Cipolla donated ‘two collections, one of plaster casts, collected from various monuments in Rome, Pompeii and Greece and another of watercolours of the classical orders’, for the benefit of the Mexican students (Soler 2000: 36). Thus, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the students were furnished with an innovative repertoire of reproductions, books and instruction that would inspire architects, engineers, painters and decorators in Mexico (Luzón 2016: 86–99; Fuentes 2002: 15–32). 35

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The Pompeian style soon appeared on the Academy students’ curriculum. According to the syllabus, before they could sit their examinations, students had to master and create samples of the: Ionic order, its symbolism and its forms in various architectural traditions; special study of this order will examine the architecture of Pompeii, in different entablatures, in the wealth and decoration of doors, windows, bases and pediments [. . .] In composition theory, Pompeian architecture will be applied in porticoes, vestibules, staircases, covered rooms with flat roofs and proportions including the basilicas. Chávez 1900: 566 Consequently, study of the new style was not only theoretical, but also practical, and it was disseminated through school exhibitions and the works produced by the students at the end of the course, as evidenced by a report in the newspaper El Ferrocarril entitled ‘Una visita a la exposición de Bellas Artes’ [A visit to the exhibition of fine arts], dated 15 January 1870, which reads: ‘The Ionic capital from the temple of Erechtheion is among the most beautiful of the fragments of Greek architecture; it is faithfully rendered in the copy presented by Mr. Llano and was very warmly received [. . .] The Pompeian Ionic capital by the same person is also conscientiously executed and obtained first place.’ (El Ferrocarril 1870: 2) The exhibitions were open to the public, who gradually absorbed the style and discoveries in Pompeii and Herculaneum. A prime example of Pompeii’s influence on Mexican architecture, painting, decoration and gardening is the Chapultepec Castle, which underwent extensive remodelling in 1864 after being chosen as a place of residence by Maximilian of Habsburg and his wife, the Empress Carlota. When the couple moved to Mexico, they brought with them Carl Gangolf Kaiser (architect), Julius Hofmann (decorator) and Wilhelm Knechtel (gardener) as members of their imperial court. These men instructed and worked with Mexican artists to adapt the citadel of Chapultepec Castle to the taste and requirements of the emperors, taking as their models the House of the Faun, the Villa of Diomedes and various of the paintings at Herculaneum, as can be seen in the architectural modifications made by the San Carlos Academy students, Ramón Rodríguez Arangoiti, Santiago Rebull, José María Obregón and Petronilo Monroy. The iconographic programme that Maximilian of Habsburg proposed for Chapultepec Castle was undoubtedly influenced by his visit, in August 1851, to the ruins of Pompeii and Naples Museum, which according to his Memoirs, had made a profound impression on him: The museum’s greatest artistic treasures are the wall paintings from Herculaneum and Pompeii. They demonstrate that the Romans were true masters of the art of drawing, full of vigour and originality. This incomparable collection contains the most beautiful classical paintings, the most extraordinary historical paintings and even some wonderfully displayed domestic objects. Ancient art was suddenly 36

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revealed to me in a new light: I had often felt that the paintings of the ancients had not come down to us, when, lo and behold, I found myself transported into the midst of them, and was stunned with surprise and wonder. We did not have time to study everything in detail, but I saw enough to completely revolutionize my ideas, and to understand, finally, that the Romans, however much they may have been disciples of the Greeks, are also deserving of our admiration in this branch of art. What masters, indeed, their best artists of the time must have been, if towns as small as Herculaneum and Pompeii possessed such beautiful things! Habsburg 1869: 60 As with many other visitors, Maximilian of Habsburg was captivated by the beauty and the rich seam of knowledge yielded by the archaeological work being carried out in the towns around Vesuvius, and it was the frescoes in Pompeii that fascinated him the most, for in his Memoirs he writes: ‘We must place the famous dancers, drawn on a dark background in such a vaporous and poetic manner, among the most beautiful of frescoes. What a masterly talent in the movement of the figures! What grace and what delicacy in the depiction of the garments!’ (Habsburg 1869: 60) It was the art and lifestyle in Pompeii that Maximilian selected as the inspiration for his new residence in Mexico. Ramón Rodríguez Arangoiti and Carl Gangolf Kaiser were in charge of all the restoration and remodelling work except for the citadel, where the design was the work of Rodríguez Arangoiti alone (Drew 1983: 73–82); Julius Hoffmann executed part of the interior decoration and Santiago Rebull was in charge of the fresco paintings on the walls, the coffered ceilings, the rugs, the stelae and the copies of sculptures from antiquity (Leonardi 1983: 213–14; Leonardi 1999). Decoration in the citadel included a reproduction of the Pompeian frescoes depicting dancers, from the Villa of Cicero, which had so entranced the Emperor of Mexico and are depicted in La Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (I, tavs. XIX, XX, XXII and XXIV).2 These frescoes were completed by Rebull himself and include La Bacante del Lirio [bacchante with lily], La Bacante de la Copa [ bacchante with glass], La Bacante del Pandero [bacchante with tambourine] and La Bacante del León [bacchante with lion]. The Bacchante of Tirso [bacchante with thyrsus] (see Figure 2.3), which also forms part of the ensemble, was painted by Petronilo Monroy, a student invited to collaborate by Rebull (Fuentes 2016). Meanwhile, Wilhelm Knechtel restored the gardens in keeping with the style, using Mexican plants, fountains, statues and light to transform the citadel into a space for leisure similar to the Pompeian countryside (Knechtel 2012: 125–32). Using the same style, he also renovated a house located in Cuernavaca, known as the Jardín Borda, which the emperors used as a country retreat, and he collaborated in the decoration of the Olindo house and garden, in Acapatzingo, a town near Cuernavaca. The spaces reserved for the emperors’ rooms are distinguished by their privacy, interior gardens and association with leisure (Knechtel 2012: 167–9). The architecture and art of Pompeii were introduced in Mexico via various constructions, some of which were remodelled in a manner that, at the time, corresponded to modernity, as described in the report 37

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published by the newspaper El Monitor Republicano, entitled ‘El Teatro de Iturbide’ [the Iturbide Theatre], which reads: The Iturbide Theatre [. . .] is changing its face; the magic wand of art is transforming it. The portico is decorated in the Pompeian style [. . .] in keeping with the current fashion, while inside, there are statues of all sizes and conditions, mythological paintings, colossal laurel wreaths, pots with the rarest tropical plants, statues and busts of famous men [. . .] and the auditorium looks like a rotunda crowned by all the expressions of sculptural art. El Monitor Republicano 1881: 1 The new artistic expression spread throughout Mexico, where the Pompeian influence established a fresh decorative lexicon applicable to architecture, gardens, fountains, sculptures, halls, furniture, floors, finishes and mosaics, such as those found at the foot of the staircase of the former Archbishop’s Palace in the city of San Luis Potosí, originally built in 1673 but remodelled by Bishop Ignacio Montes de Oca y Obregón in 1892. This palace contains a half-landing staircase with divided flights, each of which has a reproduction of a Pompeian mosaic on its half-landing. The mosaic on the left-hand side is a replica of the cave canem located in the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, while the one on the right depicts a white dove with an olive branch in its beak, a mosaic inspired by the atrium in the House of the Faun, again in Pompeii.3 From the nineteenth century onwards, Pompeii and Herculaneum endowed Mexico with a new vision and knowledge of classical antiquity that permeated various cultural traditions and gradually influenced everyday life and the collective imagination.

Society During independent Mexico, Pompeii became increasingly popular, setting trends in a wide range of fields. European newspapers from Italy, France, England and Spain were the main vehicle for the reception of these discoveries, as their articles were used by the local press, which regularly reported on the event and findings, providing abundant and varied information, including news, anecdotes, accounts and literary, scientific and historical essays. These articles targeted different levels of readership, ranging from the most select intellectual circles to the general public. The accounts, therefore, encompassed volcanology, archaeology, Roman history and descriptions of the artefacts found; others combined the scholarly with everyday life. Mexican society was thus constantly bombarded with new information about the Italian excavations, and the numerous nineteenth- and twentieth-century periodicals and newspapers strove both to inform their readers and to hit the right note that would appeal to different audiences. This explains the existence of short accounts with a profusion of adjectives such as impressive, fascinating, brilliant, splendid and inexplicable, as well as words that expressed the converse, such as misfortune, chaos, catastrophe, sorrow, sadness and darkness. These 38

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reports captivated the attention not only of readers but also listeners, as it is well known that there were town criers who shouted or read the most compelling news to the general public, in exchange for a gratuity (Solano 1994: ix and xv). Consequently, knowledge of Pompeii and Herculaneum pervaded everyday life in society and came to influence popular semantics and semiotics, as can be seen in the article entitled ‘De una carta’ [from a letter], published in the newspaper La Libertad , the text of which reads as follows: At six o’clock in the morning, the sky, covered with leaden, purple clouds, barely released a few pale rays of sunlight, and the sun looked more like a globe of fire, a disc of burnished silver. There was a very fine rain, which is not strange, but what was astounding is that it was not water, but sand [. . .] All day long, since seven in the morning, the Tacana or Soconusco volcano and the entire mountain range have been invisible. I think one of the volcanoes in Central America must have erupted. What I see reminds me of the prelude to the destruction of Pompeii, Herculaneum and other cities in Campania in 79 AD. La Libertad 1880: 3 An association was frequently made between Pompeii and quakes, tragedy and fear, even in historical or scientific accounts. For example, in his Reconocimiento de Araro [survey of Araro] in Michoacán, Melchor Ocampo, a Mexican lawyer, scientist and liberal politician, related the following in 1845: ‘The 15th of the present month witnessed the first and greatest of the new tremors that have frightened locals here and in Zinapécuaro. The number of strong tremors, which residents say they have felt, varies [. . .] The radius to which these have extended is estimated as an average of eight leagues, but is Araro the centre of these quakes? I will try to encourage the local inhabitants to save themselves and most of their worldly effects in order to avoid the catastrophe of Pompeii.’ (Ocampo: 1900, t. 3, p. 365) In the Mexican narrative, the events and suffering at Pompeii were also used as to epitomize the concepts of opulence, tragedy or misery, as shown in the news item ‘El reverso del cuadro’ [the other side of the coin] in the newspaper La Voz de México, which reads: Four months ago, a newspaper was writing about the state of well-being enjoyed in the capital. Baths here, hotels there, recreational facilities further along; all Pompeian of course. The can-can in vogue, theatrical performances even in Holy Week, the promise that they will be repeated on Holy Thursday and Good Friday of next year. Everything was going swimmingly, but it was nothing but empty air. This same newspaper now tells us that Mexico was better off two years ago; that today everything is apathy, disillusionment, annoyance, misery, Pompeian misery! La Voz de México 1870: 3 The linguistic use of the word Pompeii was sometimes employed to the contrary, to the point of comedy or absurdity, as can be seen in the report ‘Calamares en su salsa. El 39

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chato Bucheli’ [squid in ink sauce. The myopic Bucheli], published in the newspaper El Noticioso on 9 August 1894, which reads: Mr. Bucheli enters the reading room, accompanied by his friend Navita, and while choosing some novels, the following dialogue takes place: (Bucheli) We’ll take this one: The last days of Pompeii (Navita) So what did she die of? And Bucheli replies: What a lack of culture! In someone to whom such an event is unknown! Pompeii was a lady who died of an eruption! El Noticioso 1894: 2 Clothing and personal grooming However, newspapers not only recreated the discoveries or adapted the story of Pompeii to the present day, but also recounted facts and described monuments and objects of daily life. Painters, engravers, decorators and printers began to publish and distribute postcards, engravings, paintings and books containing scenes and reproductions of the famous frescoes, which spurred a change in dress and grooming, mainly among women, who adopted the Empire dress made fashionable by Josephine Bonaparte (Edward 2018: 53–64). Fitted under the bust and then falling in a long, straight skirt down to the feet, the dress was made of gauzy cotton – and later silk – fabrics that revealed the body’s contours as the wearer moved. Footwear also underwent transformation as heels fell out of fashion to be replaced by leather or textile ballet slippers. Copied from the mosaics and sculptures that had been discovered in Pompeii, the new coiffure was simple and consisted of hair worn in ringlets with a middle parting and adorned with ribbons or diadems. Mexican women enthusiastically adopted this look, and it was frequently depicted in paintings, set against a Pompeii-style background with classical constructions in a peaceful setting, recreating life at the foot of Vesuvius, as can be seen in the portrait of Doña María Luisa Gonzaga (Figure 2.1), who is shown seated in a moment of tranquil leisure in an open air interior courtyard largely sheltered from public view, holding a book and a fan. This type of setting was frequently and strongly associated with Pompeii. The popularity and adoption of a Pompeian style in Mexican clothing was the subject of weekly columns. For example, the article ‘Charlas de los domingos: Semana Santa’ [Sunday chats: Holy Week], published in the Monitor Republicano newspaper, reads: ‘A woman’s costume obviously reveals her thoughts . . ., [. . .] but we have seen few sumptuous costumes this Holy Week, where novelty and extravagance were thin on the ground and respect for the mysteries of the Passion was maintained through the absence of the opulence seen on previous occasions [. . .] only brocade and patterned fabrics reminiscent of the Pompeian style were in evidence, and what dominated – what was the absolute queen of the show – was the straight, floor-length skirt known as the Pompeian.’ (Monitor Republicano 1881: 1) 40

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Figure 2.1 José María Vázquez, Portrait of Doña María Luisa Gonzaga Foncerrada y Labarrieta, 1806. © National Museum of Art, Mexico.

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A further element inspired by the paintings and objects found in Pompeii and adopted by Mexican women was the jewellery given as gifts, as exemplified in the case of the report ‘Regalos de boda’ [wedding presents]: ‘These are the gifts that Miss Carmen Sánchez received on the day of her civil marriage to Mr. Javier Algara, which we reported at the time, and whose cost is calculated at more than 40,000 pesos [. . .] a gold bracelet in the Pompeian style, six centimetres wide with a monogram of diamonds from Mr. Manuel Algara.’ (El Siglo Diez y Nueve 1890: 3) Pompeii was a common theme in Mexico, and there were even readers who drew direct parallels between the past and their present, implying a direct reception and appropriation of the city’s life, as can be seen in the article ‘Las uñas’ [fingernails] written by Juvenal and published in the weekly fashion section of the newspaper El Imparcial, which reads: On Thursday [. . .] yes, Thursday – if I am not mistaken – I went as usual to Mrs. X’s intimate get-together, where, as you my readers know, there is such divine talk about the fashions and manners of the ladies whose feet I kiss, etc. ‘How so late, my friend Juvenal?’ asked the mistress of the house (an exuberant centenarian who does not want give up), ‘Did you not know that tonight we are going to discuss the question of nails, and that we wish to hear your opinion, because we know you are such an unshakeable devotee [. . .]?’ ‘Of nails, ma’am?’ I allowed myself to interrupt. ‘No my dear, of fashion, calm yourself [. . .].’ A young woman [. . .] with a poet’s touch, who up until then had remained silent, asked for the floor to deliver a historical reflection. ‘Gentlemen,’ she said, ‘the curious thing about this question of nails is that despite modern culture, we have made little progress in this important matter. In the museums of Naples, which hold all the relics that are being excavated day by day from the ashes of the ill-fated Pompeii, you can see cases perfectly stocked for nail care; the same scissors, the same tweezers and the same clippers. This shows that the women of Pompeii were already polishing their nails thousands of years ago, that the art of beautifying oneself was already almost as advanced as it is today and that these bewitching women with their red chlamys were already adorning themselves with all the elements that we now call modern fashion.’ The audience applauded the speaker’s lyrical, historical introduction, and after clearing her throat, she continued. ‘This, gentlemen, is a stern lesson for us proud daughters of the nineteenth century [. . .] We believe that in our time the art of beautifying women has been refined, but it is the case that in ancient Pompeii, they already had curling tongs, eyeliner pencils, shaving products, hair dyes and who knows what else! Perhaps some other elements were buried in the catastrophe that today would amaze us, notwithstanding our advances.’ El Imparcial 1899: 2 Shows and public places The discoveries made in the Vesuvius area were also publicized in Mexico by means of shows about Pompeii that targeted both the educated and the general public. For example, 42

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the theatre review section of La Voz de México reported a performance of the opera Ione, also known as The last days of Pompeii, saying: On Sunday night, Petrella’s magnificent score ‘Yone’ was performed for the second time [. . .] At times, the music is majestic and imposing, at others, joyful and melodious. The scene takes place in Pompeii in the year 79 AD and is divided into four acts [. . .] the last [. . .] is the most spectacular. The scene depicts the exterior of the Pompeii amphitheatre. When Glaucus is led to torture [. . .] Yone’s march recalls to mind the shadow of death spreading over the heads of those destined to die. The thunder that can be heard announces to the frightened inhabitants of Pompeii that the terrible Vesuvius is about to spew forth fiery lava. La Voz de México 1889: 2 It seems that Ione was one of the most frequently performed operas. The information given in various newspaper advertisements from 1865 to 1892 suggests that multiple performances of Petrella’s opera were staged, reaching different generations and pleasing the Mexican public, as can be deduced from a review by Niceto de Zamacois, who wrote: Ione is one of those lyrical works that from the first bars reveal their author’s exceptional intelligence. This opera begins with a symphony that contains all the main motifs of the work, perfectly linked together [. . .] the score, which has justly immortalized the name of Petrella and is held in high esteem in the musical Republic, was first performed, with resounding success, at the National Theatre of Mexico on 28 October 1865, with the singers Miss Alba, la Sulzer, Tombesi, Padilla and Cornigo, the impresario being Mr. Biacchi, the company’s bass singer [. . .] the piece was staged with great mastery, the singers, chorus and costumes transported the audience to Pompeii and the music captivated the spectators, who felt the full fury of Vesuvius. Justifiably delighted by the singers, the audience called them back onto the stage at the end of the second and third acts to loud applause. El Monitor Republicano 1874: 1 For its part, the newspaper El Imparcial announced that on Sunday 21 July 1901, the Orrín theatrical circus was to present Lais or the female phoenix in the Villamil Arena in Mexico City, a magic show about which the following was reported: The ‘Biógrafo Lumier’ company is preparing a novelty for today’s matinee and evening performances. The show tells the story of the destruction of Pompeii 79 years after the beginning of the Christian era and the chance discovery of its ruins many centuries later by a farmer trying to dig a well. As part of this story, spectators will see an exhibition of Pompeii’s most curious objects and most 43

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interesting ruins. In addition, the programme includes a most novel magic show in which the body of a beautiful woman called Lais emerges from a small pile of ash. El Imparcial 1901: 3 It was as spectators in theatres, marquees and shows that the Mexican public learnt about the history and culture of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, while the music, dialogue, costumes, curious and interesting objects, photographs or lithographs of the ruins and, above all, the stage scenery conveyed the tragedy and a sense of contact with a past that the audience slowly became familiar with. Some artists, such as Antonio Poletti, the Roman magician, renovated their acts and advertised them in newspapers, for example: Grand Hall in the Tívoli del Eliseo. Calle del Puente de Alvarado, number 25. On Sunday, 25 July 1880, at four o’clock in the afternoon. Professor Antonio Poletti, magician to the main courts in Europe, has refreshed his acts and, wishing to please those who honour him with their attendance, will give two hours of illusion using natural magic that will transport his audience to different times in history. La Voz de México 1880: 3 Shows of this type attracted large audiences, so that sometimes the theatres too opened their doors, as was the case of the Ignacio de la Llave theatre in Orizaba, where on 31 December 1880, ‘Poletti, the Roman magician, the true founder of modern conjuring, brought with him marvellous new devices never before seen, with which he performed all kinds of pieces, including ‘The clock of Aztec thought’ and ‘The Pompeian column’ [. . .] his audience was impressed, especially the children, who were truly enchanted to the point of frenzy and clapped their hands in ecstatic delight.’ (La Voz de México 1880: p. 3) The frescoes of Pompeii were also appreciated at large shows, as the following report reveals: ‘At 9 am at house number 8 on Juan José Baz square, a magnificent balloon display began, with elegant, colourful balloons rising at intervals of 15 minutes, made expressly for this district by Mr. Rafael Pérez de León, and among those that attracted attention [. . .] was a 9-metre-long balloon decorated with Pompeian paintings.’ (El Municipio Libre 1897: 2) A further example can be found in the section ‘Sunday chats’ in the newspaper El Monitor Republicano, where among the events described on Sunday 26 October 1873 was the Festival of Peace and Industry, which is described as follows: Splendid as never before [. . .] more than 200 workers are preparing the decorations for the Main Square. The great hall of the exhibition is almost finished, and the Pompeian paintings, the multitude of mirrors and statues, the wide curtains, the slender seating for the ladies, will help this modest room pay tribute to industry and to the august guest it is about to receive with all possible honour. The hall 44

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contains three sections; the central one, supported by two orders of columns, is devoted to the objects exhibited; the part facing the Main Square is uncovered and adorned with Pompeian curtains, and in the middle there is a large portico with the symbols of the arts. El Monitor Republicano 1873: 1 The bullrings in Mexico City and Tlanepantla were also influenced by the same style, for the newspaper La Voz de México reported ‘Next Sunday will see the inauguration of the bullring in Tlanepantla. The ring could not be better, as it has been built in the Pompeian style.’ (La Voz de México 1886: 3) Commenting on the bullring in Mexico City, the newspaper El Siglo Diez y Nueve observed ‘The stands are marbled in yellow, purple and pale Pompeian blue.’ (El Siglo Diez y Nueve 1887: 3) Pompeian art was also extended to pools and baths, which served as places for family recreation. Thus, according to newspaper reports, the Pane baths, the El Peñón baths, the Chapultepec baths and the workers’ baths in Lagunilla all had gardens and elaborate mosaic finishes that reflected the influence of the Pompeian style. Some establishments, such as the Pane baths, distinguished themselves by using Pompeian stoves and offering their visitors shows such as a Pompeian water circus (El Siglo Diez y Nueva 1872: 3). The Pane baths, located on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City, consisted of an extensive complex of pools and gardens, and for the sake of decorum, the complex was divided into two wings, the right-hand one for men and the left-hand one for women, in the style of the Roman baths of antiquity. The only example of a private bathroom with Pompeian motifs that has been identified to date was located in Chapultepec Castle. Known as Carlota’s bathroom, its accessories, floor and wall mosaics, bathtub, marble base, ewer and porcelain basin recreated the sought-after Pompeian atmosphere. The various forms of reception in Mexico of archaeological discoveries at Pompeii evidence the importance given to and appreciation of classical culture in this country, forging associations and creating models for what would become the Mexican nation of today.

Art and the homeland In December 1869, the Fourteenth Exhibition of the National School of Fine Arts was held in Mexico City, the purpose of which was to celebrate the creation of the Mexican Republic. To this end, months earlier, artists had been invited to participate in a competition with the theme of national history (Romero de Terreros 1963: 373). True to the call, Petronilo Monroy, a graduate and professor at the San Carlos Academy, presented the painting Allegory of the Constitution of 1857 (Figure 2.2), a work that surprised the public because of its size (268 x 163 cm) and because it was the first time that the legal symbol of the Mexican nation, the Constitution, had been personified as a female allegory rather than being depicted in a narrative composition, as was customary. Monroy’s painting ran counter to centuries of tradition in which power or the body 45

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politic was represented by the image of a king; however, his entry was accepted because at the time, the restoration of a republican form of government in Mexico required the consolidation of a female figure to counteract the image of male power prevailing in the public’s imagination. Monroy’s allegorical Mexico was therefore considered ‘a resource used to depict the place that founds, sustains and nourishes the modern idea of nation.’ (Ramírez 2004: 59–77) In addition to its symbolic importance, the Allegory of the Constitution of 1857 evidences another distinguishing feature, which is that its compositional source was the Bacchante with Thyrsus (Figure 2.3). This had been painted many years ago by Monroy when Santiago Rebull had invited him to create the series of bacchante women in the Pompeian style that adorned the corridors of the citadel of Chapultepec Castle and which represented his first work to draw on the Pompeian fresco tradition. The structural similarities between both works as well as the modifications strongly suggest that the Bacchante with Thyrsus was the source of inspiration for the Allegory of the Constitution of 1857. In the Bacchante with Thyrsus, the composition is formed by an ascending diagonal from left to right that begins with the bacchante’s left foot, which is raised behind her, and continues through her left arm, extended upwards, to her left hand holding a thyrsus. The diagonal line, which conveys movement, generates a forced twist in the figure’s body, which is counteracted by a downward diagonal that starts with the tunic billowing out behind her right shoulder and continues to the leather cord holding her skirt in place. In the Allegory of the Constitution of 1857, the figure appears more balanced, an effect that the artist achieves by interchanging the side of the raised arm. However, the position of the legs is the same in both figures (the right leg pointing forwards and the left leg raised behind), with the exception that while the bacchante keeps one foot on the ground, the allegorical figure appears to float in the air. The thyrsus is replaced by an olive branch, a symbol of peace and reconciliation, and the leafy headdress is changed to a high-sided crown. Other elements showing iconographic variations include the subtle incorporation of the colours green, white and red in the allegory’s clothing – symbolizing the national flag of Mexico – and the inclusion of a stone tablet bearing the legend ‘Constitution of 1857’, evoking Moses descending from Mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments. The most obvious difference is the background in each painting. In the case of the bacchante, a dark colour is used that does not situate her either temporally or spatially, whereas the allegory of the constitution floats in a bright blue sky accompanied by a group of clouds, evoking the triumphal Nike of Samothrace. Finally, in the Allegory, Monroy conceals the figure’s breasts by adding a bodice to the skirt. A small pin creates a neckline and allows the artist to render the shape of the breasts beneath the fabric. The breast volume and chest structure are practically the same in both figures, with the exception that due to the change between one figure and the other in the arm extending upwards, the direction of the breast volume is reversed. Thus, the Pompeian bacchante, which is one of the first examples of the incursion of this style into Mexico, became the allegory of the Mexican Constitution with which

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Figure 2.2 Petronilo Monroy, Allegory of the Constitution of 1857, c. 1869, National Museum of Art, Mexico. © Wikimedia Commons (public domain). 47

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Figure 2.3 Petronilo Monroy, Bacchante, c. 1865. © National Museum of Art, Mexico.

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Petronilo Monroy portrayed a symbolic abstraction of the nation that embodied the political form of the Republic.

The legacy of Pompeii in present-day Mexico Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae represent events that had an impact on history, first because of their precipitous disappearance, second because of their rediscovery in the eighteenth century, and third because of the rapid reception of their cultural contributions in various nations. The reception and adoption of ‘Pompeian’ style occurred as soon as news of it began to reach New Spain, with the result that the stories of Pompeii and Mexico became intertwined, yielding an identity and conferring validity on events in the Americas. The findings sent reverberations throughout the social and academic spheres that are palpable in art, literature and language, and a major factor in their communication was the foreign and local newspaper reports that can now be consulted in the National Newspaper Library of Mexico, where 8,865 references to Pompeii, 6,813 to Herculaneum and seventy to Stabiae have been identified. An exhaustive analysis of these references has made it possible to identify literary works such as La destrucción de Pompeya [the destruction of Pompeii], by Niceto de Zamacois (Mexico, 1871), where the author adapts Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s famous text The Last Days of Pompeii to his own narrative, which evidences a historical didactic function since he creates his story through an explanation of the Latin terms and also adds a series of plates that are the work of Ramón Rodríguez Arangoiti, an engineer, draughtsman and graduate of the San Carlos Academy in New Spain. The text is divided into two parts and includes an appendix in the form of a tourist guide, which contains a map of Pompeii and a description of each place worth visiting. The success of Zamacois’s book transcended Mexico’s borders and awakened interest in Pompeii, the classical past and the cities around Vesuvius, both in Mexico and in other Latin American countries. José Blasio was private secretary to the Emperor Maximilian of Habsburg (1865–7) and the person responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the emperor’s residences. Consequently, he was well-positioned to write his book, Maximiliano íntimo [an intimate portrait of Maximilian] (1905), in which he gives a clear and lively description of the emperor’s artistic tastes, which tended towards the neoclassical, as well as his admiration for Mexican botany and his predilection for ‘Pompeian style’ gardens. Mexican archaeology was also influenced by Pompeii; an example of this was the project to explore and restore the Pyramid of the Sun and other monuments at the archaeological site of Teotihuacan,4 which in 1910 was presented as part of the activities commemorating the first centenary of Mexico’s independence. The archaeological expedition was the initiative of Justo Sierra, Secretary of Public Instruction and Fine Arts in the government of General Porfirio Díaz. On his trip to Paris, Justo Sierra was persuaded by the Duke of Lubat to exhume from the bowels of the earth what in France and Mexico was known as the ‘true Mexican Pompeii’ (Batres 1993: 45–6). Leopoldo Batres was the head of the exploration, and by 1909, he and his team of collaborators had 49

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identified and uncovered the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, together with the jaguar mural, the avenue of the dead and several areas destined for the pre-Hispanic ball game. This was the first expedition in which large-scale archaeology was carried out on pre-Hispanic monuments in Mexico, and in 1910, various local newspapers noted that ‘Mexican splendour has emerged from the ground as happened long ago in Pompeii.’ (García 1911: 134) The urban landscape in various Mexican cities contained aesthetic expressions of the ‘Pompeian style’ in the architecture and interior design of private houses, public buildings, gardens and historical monuments as emblematic as the obelisks commemorating the Heroic Cadets, the Benito Juárez Hemicycle, the monument to the Emperor Cuauhtémoc and the monument to Independence, also known as the Angel of Independence (winged victory), all located in Mexico City. Public gardens, meeting places and recreation areas in Mexico also came under the same influence, including the Alameda Central and the Ciudadela in Mexico City, the Neptune fountain in Querétaro (an eighteenth-century sculpture by the Celayan-born Francisco Eduardo Tresguerras) and the Jardín Reforma in the city of Guanajuato. In sculpture and painting there are hundreds of examples, among which the most outstanding are The Equestrian Statue of Charles IV by Manuel Tolsá (Pinoncelly 1974: 28); the Tlahuicole, a sculpture of a Tlaxcaltec warrior, known as the Mexican Achilles, by Manuel Vilar y Roca (Moreno 1969: 143) and The Bather, a beautiful painting by Juan Cordero (Escobar 2015: 21–35 and 127). Consequently, Mexico can boast a rich and varied cultural heritage inspired by Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae, which in turn is indicative of the historical ties that prevail today.

Conclusion The eighteenth- and nineteenth-century discoveries made in the cities of Pompeii, Herculaneum and Stabiae reverberated around the world, rekindling interest in Greece and Rome and ushering in the neoclassical period. The major powers, France, Britain and the United States, sought ideological parallels with the classical world. Meanwhile, Mexico already had a deep humanistic tradition based on knowledge of the classical languages and study of the humanistic, social or scientific works of the great authors of Greek and Roman antiquity. By the end of the eighteenth century, Mexico not only had a social sector that was more than sufficiently educated and informed to appreciate what Pompeii had to show the world, but also a people that even in the least expected places adopted the names that emerged along with the findings; thus, there are more than a hundred farms, ranches and estates called Pompeii, as well as analogies in everyday linguistic uses, such as calling the Paricutín volcano the Mexican Pompeii, and expressions such as ‘Pompeian misery’ or ‘Pompeian tragedy’. In short, Mexican society knew about, absorbed and recreated in everyday life the findings and news emerging from these ancient cities, which as Niceto de Zamacois observed, by dying, had become immortal (1871, IV).

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Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. We are grateful to Dr Mirella Romero Recio, who helped us to correctly identify the dancers. Chapter 6, written by Jesús Salas, discusses the role played by the San Carlos Academy in popularizing the neoclassical style. 3. Other chapters in this volume discuss the recurrent use of these houses as sources of inspiration (e.g. chapters 1 and 5) and the famous cave canem (chapter 4). 4. See Chapter 12 on the Latin American Pompeiis, by Ricardo Del Molino.

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Echoes of Pompeii in Mexico Pinoncelly, S. (1974), Manuel Tolsá: artífice de México, México: Departamento del Distrito Federal. Ramírez, F. (2004), ‘Reflexiones sobre la Alegoría de la Constitución de 1857 de Petronilo Monroy’ en Salvador Cárdenas Gutiérrez et al., La constitución mexicana y sus alegorías, México: Poder Judicial de la Federación, Suprema Corte de Justicia: 59–78. ‘Regalos de boda’ (1890), El Siglo Diez y Nueve, México: 17 October. Romero de Terrero, M. (1963), Catálogo de las exposiciones de la Antigua Academia de San Carlos de México (1850–1898), México: Imprenta Universitaria. Solano, F. de (1994), Las voces de la ciudad. México a través de sus impresos (1539–1821), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Soler, J. (2000), Los pinceles de la historia de la patria criolla a la nación mexicana 1750–1860, México: Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes. ‘Una visita a la exposición de Bellas Artes’ (1870), El Ferrocarril, México: 15 January. Available at: http://www.hndm.unam.mx/consulta/resultados/visualizar/558a36587d1ed64f16c6b7d9?resu ltado=2&tipo=pagina&intPagina=1&palabras=visita+a+la+exposicion+de+bellas+artes [accessed 16 October 2021]. ‘Yone’ (1889), La Voz de México, México: 12 December 1889. Available at http://www.hndm. unam.mx/consulta/resultados/visualizar/558a37847d1ed64f16d9bdc4?resultado=1&tipo=pag ina&intPagina=2&palabras=Yone [accessed 16 October 2021]. Zamacois, N. (1871), La destrucción de Pompeya, México: Imprenta de Ignacio Cumplido. Zamacois, Niceto de (1874), ‘Yone o Los últimos días de Pompeya’ en El Monitor Republicano, México: 27 March.

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CHAPTER 3 ART AND RHETORIC FOR AN EMPIRE: THE POMPEIAN STYLE IN PUERTO RICO AND THE UNITED STATES DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1 Daniel Expósito

In little over a decade, Spain and the United States promoted two major artistic and architectural projects. On the one hand, in about 1845 the Count of Mirasol, the captain general of Puerto Rico, commissioned a comprehensive refurbishment of Santa Catalina Fortress (San Juan), which at the time served as the official residence of the governors of the island. On the other, Captain Montgomery Cunningham Meigs, the superintendent of the extension and dome of the US Capitol (Washington DC) since 1853, would be placed in charge of the fine arts and decorative programme of the rooms and halls that would gradually give shape to the building’s splendid new wings. The information currently available on both building projects is frankly disparate, while their respective execution culminated in different formal solutions owing to their peculiarities. Be that as it may, both possessed a common denominator resulting from the historical circumstances: recourse to the Pompeian style as an aesthetic and rhetorical device. The relationship between both powers was relatively ambiguous in the mid-nineteenth century. Certainly, there were strong economic ties between both, since the United States consumed a third of the sugar produced in Puerto Rico and the islanders frequently travelled to the continent. Some like José Julián Acosta had even expressed their affinity for the new American republic as an example of freedom and the concession of rights that the Spanish colonial system had denied its trans-Atlantic citizens (Cubano-Iguina 2005: 87–9). But the US government’s interest in Spain’s possessions in the Antilles went way beyond mere commercial interests: in the 1850s, the country’s potential territorial expansion in Cuba had been debated on in Congress, as part of an ambitious programme in favour of the nation’s inherent progress, which foresaw the incorporation of other central and southern continental regions (Fryd 2001: 152–3). Spain’s progressively weaker position, resulting from the political instability that would plague the country during most of this period, together with the repressive measures adopted in its overseas possessions, went a long way to encourage such impulses, particularly in the final decades of the century. The explosion of USS Maine in Havana Harbour and the landing of US troops on the coasts of Guanica were no more than the inevitable consequences of a mature process that led to the consolidation of a new empire in the Western Hemisphere. The works of Santa Catalina Fortress and the US Capitol can be essentially framed in this context. It is common knowledge that the powers that can be discovered in the

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classical style form a highly efficient vehicle for disseminating ideas (Reyero 2015: 212), which both nations employed as a persuasive strategy with an eye to offering an image of authority, control and prosperity, not always consistent with reality. To this would be added the prestige of the Pompeian style, which was all the rage during the period and which served as the perfect vehicle for the visual transmission of such concepts. Accordingly, this chapter enquires into the decoration of several of the rooms in both buildings which, as will be seen, made allowances for a comprehensive iconographic discourse grounded in the style rediscovered in the famous Campanian city.

‘Resembling a product of Herculaneum and Pompeii’: the Pompeian style in San Juan de Puerto Rico As to Santa Catalina Fortress, its origins date back to the first half of the sixteenth century. After the transfer of the capital from the city of Caparra to the modern-day islet of San Juan in 1521 or 1522 (Moscoso 2020), the fortress was built for defending the bay. Under the imminent threat posed chiefly by the English and Dutch fleets, there was an urgent need to strengthen the defences of the recently established settlement. In 1540, almost two decades after the transfer of the capital, the new building, initially known as ‘La Fuerza’, was completed (Castro Arroyo 2005: 7). But, despite the swiftness of its construction, thenceforth its history would be inevitably marked by the city’s trials and tribulations over the following 200 years: the fortress came out the worse in the assaults led by Francis Drake (1596) and George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland (1598), while when San Juan was seized by the Dutch, captained by Bowdoin Henrick in 1625, it was so badly damaged that it had to be largely rebuilt, the plans for which were drawn up by the then governor (and military engineer) Agustín de Silva. Although there is no detailed information available on that reconstruction, to Castro’s mind, it is highly likely that it was limited to fundamental elements of its defences, thus guaranteeing the continued protection of that area of the bay (Castro Arroyo 1980: 222–3). It was not until the Royal Order of 27 November 1822 was issued that the fortress was officially transformed into the residence of the captains general of Puerto Rico (Castro Arroyo 1980: 224). Besides its military function, back in the seventeenth century it had already been put to a residential or merely political use, accommodating leaders and, additionally, housing civil and military governments. Yet, its military aspect had scarcely undergone any noteworthy modifications: neither is there much information in this respect, nor do most of the testimonies of the period have anything interesting to say about the building’s façade (Castro Arroyo 1980: 223–6). In this vein, reference is made to the pragmatic character of the improvements made by the engineers working on the island at the time, whose concerns, far from being of the aesthetic kind, had to do with purely functional matters. Nor did the fortress undergo any substantial modifications during the following century: changes continued to be constantly introduced which, apparently, were due more to the whims of the successive governors living there than to any pressing need (Hostos 1966: 226). However that may be, the truth is that, in 1834, the 56

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fortress continued to be a very austere building, thus reflecting its military origins (Castro Arroyo 1980: 224–6). It was not until about 1845 that the Count of Mirasol commissioned Lieutenant Colonel Santiago Cortijo to draw up new plans, starting with a series of renovations that would all but affect the building as a whole. In reality, the commissioning of this engineer formed part of a programme for upgrading and embellishing San Juan. The nineteenth century was undoubtedly a period of building and urban renewal in the capital. Indeed, there were several major projects that, promoted by the local authorities, the diocese and the captaincy general itself, would end up transforming the image of the city (Castro Arroyo 1980). Effectively, the series of lithographs signed by Los Precios Fijos allow for identifying some of the building projects: the lunatic asylum, the infantry barracks built in the district of Ballaja, the Conciliar Seminary of San Ildefonso and the city hall were authentic architectural milestones which, along with their unquestionable formal values, reflected the gradual abandonment of the fortified settlement in favour of a predominantly civil city (Expósito Sánchez 2020: 133). That impression would be further enhanced by the building of squares and promenades for the citizenry’s greater enjoyment, such as those of San José, San Francisco and the modern-day Plaza de Armas, which created a much needed feeling of space (Sepúlveda Rivera 1989: 270–5); although without forgetting the conspicuous presence of buildings representing the island’s colonial authorities, the most noteworthy of which being precisely the Palace of the Royal Quartermaster General and Santa Catalina Fortress itself. The design of the latter’s new façade, as well as the reorganization of the pre-existing rooms and the addition of others, would be decisive for the consolidation of its Palatine character. Cortijo would be placed in charge of supervising the works, a position that he presumably continued to occupy until at least 1848 (Castro Arroyo 1980: 226). Those works were not limited to the building’s spatial reorganization, but also included the decoration of a large number of its rooms. In this connection, those currently known as the Music Room, the Blue Room and, above all, the Court Room, deserve a special mention.2 In spite of the modifications resulting from the building’s use by different administrations, the essence that those rooms must have exuded in the mid-nineteenth century still lingers on. Small in size and with a more intimate ambience, the Music Room, next to the Reception Room, was located at a point halfway to the rooms on the north side of the enclosure (Castro Arroyo 2005: 40). Just below the crown moulding there is an unbroken sequence of laurel wreaths, running around the four walls of the room, linked by festoons of sorts stemming from the knots of the bows decorating the top of each one of them. The four long undulating ribbons of the bows extend in parallel with the wreaths, two above and two below them, thus reinforcing the horizontal character of the ensemble. The decoration of the Blue Room, the anteroom of the Hall of Mirrors, is simpler, being limited to a crown moulding with bas-reliefs in which palmettes framed in circles in low relief, at the base of which there are two small volutes, alternate with poorly executed plant motifs (lilies, perhaps?).3 This austere formality certainly contrasts with the decoration of the Court Room (Figure 3.1), which, by and large, is based on purely architectural elements: a series of 57

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Figure 3.1 Court Room, La Fortaleza, c. 1848. © Will A. Martínez Medina.

Ionian pilasters with fluted shafts are distributed throughout the room, while there are several doorways of a similar size between the pilasters connecting it with the passage and the adjacent rooms. Curiously enough, the order was applied unconventionally: dispensing with the three fasciae, the frieze, which rests directly on top of the abacuses of the capitals, runs around the room’s four walls. On top of the taenia there is a bed mould covered with plant motifs, with dentils and egg and dart moulding completing the cornice. The same motifs are reproduced on the first half of the double height ceiling, while curvilinear forms appear in the corners of the second half, following the shape of the room. As to the figurative aspects per se, the infants in relief cavorting throughout the frieze stand out: they appear in groups of two or three, grasping the wreaths occupying the spaces between them. A large number of scallop shells, containing several stucco allegories, crown each one of the spaces between the pilasters, over the lintels of the room’s doors and windows. So as to strike a contrast with the predominant whiteness of the room, very specific details have been picked out with gold leaf, thus creating an impression of material wealth. It is clear that, as far as we know, works of this type were unprecedented in Puerto Rico, for there is no evidence of other similar ones before the nineteenth century. Their exceptionality begs the question of who might have been the mastermind (or masterminds) behind this (apparently) decorative programme. Should it be attributed to the Count of Mirasol, to Santiago Cortijo or to both of them? And, above all, who executed that programme? It can be assumed that a work of these characteristics, promoted by the authorities and inaccessible to the general public, might have been more or less overlooked in the island’s (small) artistic circles of the period. Indeed, this is 58

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reflected by the dearth of information discovered hitherto.4 But it is evident that, since its conception, there was a clear objective that would justify the scope of this decorative programme and the resonance that it was expected to have, judging by an article appearing in the Gaceta del Gobierno de Puerto-Rico. Published on Thursday, 23 November 1848, the article contains a detailed description of the splendour and stylistic diversity of the Court Room, shortly after work on it had been completed. The throne, for example, featured a portrait of Isabella II, flanked by two small neo-gothic towers crowned by military trophies, which, in turn, were embellished with ‘gold adornments carved with small arches and battlements’. Additionally, there were ‘two steps . . . covered with crimson damask’ in front of the throne, which was also upholstered in the same material up to the cornice, for mounting it. While two ‘bronze’ lions, with bronze columns decorated with ‘silver ribbons and adornments’ at both ends, for the purpose of ‘fixing the drapery’, completed the ensemble. These were supplemented by other neo-gothic objects, such as the frames of the mirrors and features that offer an idea of the room’s magnificence, including the ‘Genovese flagstones’, a ‘completely gilded console’ and five ‘divans upholstered in crimson velvet’, among other things (‘Descripción’ 1848: 3). However, it is in the last part of the article in which there is a brief reference that has a lot to do with the matter at hand. According to the anonymous writer, ‘four grooved half columns equally spaced on the closing wall are surmounted by old bronze candelabras with candles, together with three sumptuous lamps with twenty lights, in which good taste vies with the rigidness of antiquity, seemingly products of Herculaneum and Pompeii . . .’ (‘Descripción’ 1848: 3). What was the reason behind that comparison to the famous ancient cities buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius? Could it be considered as a rhetorical device employed by the author of the description? Beyond the merely semantic aspects, it is impossible not to encounter certain nods to the Pompeian style in specific ornamental details of the Court Room. Effectively, the groups of infants in the frieze are striking attitudes similar to those of the most well-known female dancers from the ancient Campanian city:5 they can be seen floating against a neutral, empty background or leaning against the abacuses in different poses, while gaily grasping the ribbons hanging from the wreaths. Curiously, three of them are striking poses similar to those of the Three Graces: the two figures on each side are foreshortened, with their legs bent, while the central one, standing face on, is holding hands with his companions, one above and the other below him, thus forming a diagonal. Something similar occurs with the wreaths and the bows in the Blue Room, already described above: their arrangement inevitably brings to mind the classical style, and it would not be surprising if their author had used some or other publication (with its respective plates) on the Pompeian discoveries, which had been in circulation since the beginning of the century, as a reference.6 But the commendatory tone of the article appearing in the Gaceta, together with other ornamental issues relating to the Court Room, requires further explanation. The description lists the allegorical characters appearing in the scallop shells above the lintels of the room’s doors and windows: ‘Castile, Spain, the coat of arms of Puerto Rico, Minerva 59

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protecting the arts, Peace, Justice, Constance, Fidelity, Strength, Charity, Mars and Vigilance’ (‘Descripción’ 1848: 3). The order and association of the concepts included in the list are telling. The first three, for instance, reflect the power wielded by a territory (‘Castile, Spain’) over a specific geographical reality (‘Puerto Rico’). The case of Minerva is significant: it was the goddess who, practically since the dynasty of the Habsburgs, had been associated with the queen who, moreover, was linked to the arts, a traditionally female field (Reyero 2010: 6–7). Fidelity and Strength, for their part, might refer to the loyalty of the Puerto Rican subjects to the Spanish crown which, albeit physically absent, was personified by the captain general (residing in the building designated with that term) and, as already observed, by pictures like the portrait dominating the throne in the Court Room. Others, like Constancy and Charity, are virtues inherent to the Catholicism traditionally defended by the peninsula monarchs, while at the same time complementing the peace and justice guaranteed under the aegis of the crown. All of them are naturally symbols of official representativeness often found in contexts of this sort (Reyero 2010: 1–26), accompanied by the virtues inherent to good government which the captain general was supposed to possess. But what about Mars and Vigilance? So as to address these two ideas, it is necessary to consider the position of the Spanish empire in America during the first half of the century. It should be recalled that the emancipatory uprisings at the end of the eighteenth century, together with the subsequent foundation of the new republics, redirected the crown’s overseas interests towards Cuba and Puerto Rico. This led to the adoption of a series of socioeconomic measures that contributed to increase the development of both islands. The Royal Decree of Graces of 1815 was probably one of the most exceptional in this regard, whose implementation would favour both the settling of different populations on them and the spread of certain crops (Santamaría García, Ayala Casás and Bernabé 2012: 135–44). Even considering such progress, the colonial authorities’ distrust towards any hint of insurrection was evident: we know that the echoes of the developments in La Española in the wake of the Haitian revolution, in addition to the independence of Venezuela, were both omnipresent. There was also an underlying concern for the subversive pamphlets and loose sheets circulating illegally on the continent and the islands (Sevilla Soler 1986: 77). The developments in this regard during the term in office of Salvador Meléndez Bruna are well known: the sending of letters to the court informing about events such as those occurring during a meal at the Dominican convent of San Juan and the behaviour of some Franciscan friars were presented as something more than isolated episodes (Sevilla Soler 1986: 77–9). Nor did things change during the government of Miguel de la Torre y Pando. Neither is it a coincidence that in the painting commissioned from the US painter Eliab Metcalf for the plenary room of the capital’s city hall, he was portrayed as the guarantor of the safety and prosperity of Puerto Rico (Expósito Sánchez 2020: 132), nor that his government chose to monitor closely any development that might have triggered an uprising against the metropolis (Navarro García 1991: 181–4). Thus, the renovation work on the fortress which got underway a few years later would have coincided with a period of growth and convulsion, which, in turn, would explain the 60

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inclusion of both Mars and the figure alluding to permanent caution, which should prevail over the empire’s enemies, in the decorative programme of the Court Room. These were not the only improvements made to the building before the SpanishAmerican War. In 1858, Lieutenant Colonel José López Bago ordered renovation work to be carried out on the second floor which, to a great extent, completed that initiated under the supervision of Cortijo. In this vein, a decade later, the maintenance work on the fortress, carried out uninterruptedly since it had first been built, continued until the outbreak of that war (Castro Arroyo 1980: 235). But under no circumstances was there any major project on the same scale as that promoted by the Count of Mirasol. With him, the application of the classical style would consolidate the clearly persuasive strategies implemented by the colonial institutions that still remained on the island, as demonstrated by the eulogizing article appearing in the Gaceta. It could be claimed that the reference to those sumptuous lamps, whose austerity reminded the anonymous author of Herculaneum and Pompeii, would help to shore up a prestige more than necessary for the continuity, increasingly more under threat, of Spanish imperial power in the Antilles.

Towards a visual genealogy of naval power: the Pompeian style in the US Capitol, Washington, DC To the north of Rio Grande, in parallel with the decoration of the rooms of Santa Catalina Fortress, an even more important building project, inextricably linked to the ideas under discussion here, was already underway, namely, the extension of the US Capitol in Washington, DC. Work on the US Capitol had originally begun in 1793, following the design of Dr William Thornton, and in which other architects, including Benjamin Henry Latrobe and Charles Bulfinch would initially intervene formally and structurally (Reed 2005: 5–12). This was naturally a long and complex process, replete with political, aesthetic and social determinants in which presidents and senators, alike, played a decisive role and which would not be completed until practically the end of the nineteenth century. But in what state was this important building to be found in the 1840s? It was already concluded, of course, according to the designs of Thornton and his successors in the post, although the rapid growth of the young republic in the middle of the century now made it necessary to make room for the recently annexed states in the US Congress (Fryd 2001: 109). The architect who was consulted on the imminent extension was Robert Mills who, between 1846 and 1850, submitted several proposals to the Senate Committee of Public Buildings, for the purpose of increasing the building’s capacity. What first seemed like a direct commission would end up being put out to tender by the committee, resulting in the selection of five proposals. Of all these, that of Thomas Ustick Walter, a reputed architect from Philadelphia, would be ultimately chosen on 10 June 1851 by President Millard Fillmore, once Congress had approved the corresponding budget and given him the go-ahead to select the winning proposal (Reed 2005: 13). 61

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The appearance of Captain Montgomery Cunningham Meigs was another important step in the progression of the works. It was Senator Jefferson Davis, a member of the aforementioned committee and also the secretary of war in the eponymous department under the presidency of Franklin Pierce, who had named him superintendent of the extension of the US Capitol (Reed 2005: 22). The serviceman’s involvement in everything that had to do with the new building is irrefutable: his education and experience as an engineer more than qualified him for the post, and the attention that he paid to each and every detail of the works was reflected in both the rectification and improvement of the mechanical and material aspects introduced by Walter in his plans and the relocation of some of the rooms (Wolanin 1998: 38–9). Supervising the artistic programme aimed at embellishing the rooms included in the extension was one of the most awkward roles that Meigs assumed. The superintendent was responsible for commissioning several important sculptures, plus the bronze doors designed and made by Thomas Crawford and Randolph Rogers, respectively, in addition to staying in constant contact with some of the most renowned US artists who, at that moment, were in Europe, including Crawford himself and Hiram Powers (Weigley 1969/70: 88–90). The captain’s genuine interest in this stage of the project is striking. Although his artistic training had been brief, the fact that he was an assiduous reader, in addition to his consultations with personages like Governor Kemble, would gradually fill in his lacunas in this regard. The colour reproductions of Raffaello Sanzio’s and Michelangelo’s works in the Vatican had a powerful influence on him. Aware that the job with which he had been tasked was for the greater glory of the republic, he realized that the frescoes of both Late Renaissance artists were what he wanted for the new rooms (Wolanin 1998: 52). Shortly afterwards, and quite unexpectedly, ‘a lively old man with a very red nose’ (according to the description that he had jotted down in his diary) (Wolanin 1998: 53), called Constantino Brumidi, would be interviewed by the superintendent with a view to commissioning him to execute this ambitious pictorial programme (O’Connor 2004: 205). Who was that stranger whose credentials made such a favourable impression on Meigs? Born in Rome, Brumidi had received artistic training at the Accademia di San Lucca, where he had had the chance to study under the tutelage of Vincenzo Camuzzini and Filippo Agricola, among other teachers of this prestigious institution (Nazzaro 1998: 15). It is more than likely that he displayed exceptional skills during his years of learning. Certainly, it is no coincidence that, in 1840, he would form part of a group of young artists who, under the guidance of both masters, began work on the restoration of the murals of the Loggia della Cosmografia in the Papal Palace, nor that he and his companion Domenico Tojetti were responsible for the trompe l’oeil on the closing wall of that gallery (Nazzaro 1998: 16–17). His familiarity with fresco painting, however, dated back several years. Since 1836, Brumidi had been involved in the decorative programmes of some of the vaults and walls of the Villa Torlonia (Nazzaro 1998: 18–19), located in the Italian capital, displaying a notable formal eclecticism that wavered between motifs inherent to classicism and a neosecentista style (Mazzarelli 2012: 520) for the narratively more complex scenes. 62

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There can be little doubt that the favourable reception of those creations would have improved his standing in Roman artistic circles. To the portrait of Pius IX, commissioned by Cardinal Gabriele Ferretti in 1847, were added others of already deceased popes with a view to the reconstruction of the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls, which got underway at the time, as well as his work for the church of the Madonna dell’Archetto, all of which would consolidate his reputation as one of the best active painters of religious themes in the city (Nazzaro 1998: 20–1). So, when he arrived in New York on 18 September 1852, Brumidi already possessed a considerable artistic baggage which would pave the way for his subsequent presence in the US Capitol. Before his interview with Meigs, the Italian artist had already begun to make a name for himself in US ecclesiastic circles and with some of the powerful families on the east coast (Wolanin 1998: 49). Indeed, his relationship with the Catholic Church dated back to his life in Rome: it should not be forgotten that Brumidi was a member of the Civil Guard, in which he would reach the rank of captain. But his participation in the disturbances in several monastic complexes as of 1848 earned him an eighteen-year prison sentence, before being pardoned by the pope later on (Nazzaro 1998: 22). Throughout this process, the intermediation of two clergymen, the archbishop of New York, John Hughes, and the Jesuit John Norris, who had befriended the painter before his arrest, must have been fundamental. It has been suggested that it was they who precisely guaranteed the authorities that the convict would resume his career as a painter once he had been released (Reed 2005: 24), albeit in a completely different geographical context. During his imprisonment, Brumidi, for his part, had expressed his desire to travel to the United States for the purpose of broadening and upgrading his client portfolio (Wolanin 1998: 49). It is clear that, once on American soil, Hughes’ influence was decisive for obtaining major commissions, as was that of the reverend Benedict Sestini, S.J., who would become one of the artist’s closest friends (Anderson 1990: 736). Following a brief sojourn in Mexico, Brumidi set out for Washington, DC, where he arrived in 1854. The truth is that Brumidi met all the requirements established by Meigs for decorating the splendid wings of the US Capitol which were currently under construction. He was proficient in fresco painting, accustomed to conceiving, designing and executing major pictorial programmes on vaults and walls and was perfectly familiar with the classical style.7 His experience in the Vatican Loggia, as well as in the different mural ensembles which he had painted in Rome, must have greatly impressed the engineer, whereby small wonder that he finally decided to give that stranger an opportunity, despite the magnitude and formality of the artistic task that he would be expected to undertake. Meigs was ultimately convinced by a sketch for Calling of Cincinnatus from the Plow, the theme of one of the lunettes of the House Committee of Agriculture room (H–144) (Wolanin 1998: 54). Indeed, the engineer encountered in that scene all the elements that he was looking for, since it highlighted the Italian’s capabilities for drawing, composition and applying colour. In April 1856, Brumidi, accompanied by two assistants, concluded the cycle of frescoes in this room, with the endorsement of Meigs and the general acceptance of the congressmen. It is reasonable to assume that, notwithstanding the engineer’s initial uncertainty, the success of the decoration of this first room would lead 63

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to another commission, which was indeed the case: on 20 August, Meigs approved another of Brumidi’s sketches, this time for the Naval Affairs Committee room (S–127) (Wolanin 1998: 67). The room’s design allowed for plenty of flexibility when proposing different decorative programmes. Architecturally speaking, it is as contained as the adjacent rooms. Quadrangular in shape, it is symmetrically divided by a transverse arch into two very different sections, covered by groined vaults. Two doorways, on the north and east sides, connect the room with the north and west corridors, respectively, while another two of a similar size, set in the southern wall, connect the room with the adjacent one. In other words, it is located at the end of the west corridor of the Senate wing where the north corridor begins, which, in turn, is the main axis of the different spaces distributed in this direction. It seems apparent that the Italian artist was fully aware of what continuing the task that he had been assigned in the House Committee of Agriculture room would involve. It can be inferred that, in a way, he had already begun to conceive this and others rooms in the building as a semantic unit which, albeit with its particularities and Meigs’ constant supervision, was based on the classical style in which he had been so proficient since his initial years in Rome. This is what can be deduced from the sketch for the Naval Affairs Committee room and other subsequent ones for other spaces. In this sketch, he explicitly (and unprecedentedly) resorted to the Pompeian style, for, as far as we know, this had never before been expressed in this way in the United States.8 Brumidi’s watercolour highlights the two ideas that he had been toying with, which were similar but whose most tangible differences lay in their colour. In the left half of the room, red is the predominant colour, as can be seen at the two ends of the wall: the maidens are floating against an empty, solid red background, as with the frieze fragments distributed in the four panels of the vault. The right half does not differ much as regards the composition: blue is the predominant colour, with figures of similar characteristics floating against a solid blue background and the outer ribs of the vault covering this section of the room being picked out in the same colour. The decorative complexity of both designs doubtless reveals how skilled Brumidi was as a painter-decorator, especially with respect to the ceilings. Through the concatenation of an eclectic and complex repertoire of adornments (volutes, masks, laurel wreaths, putti, eagles, etc.), he constructed a series of geometrical forms (an octagon framed in a square with slightly concave edges, for instance) which seem to revolve around the cross between the ribs. As to the room’s decoration per se (Figure 3.2), this last option was finally chosen, including a number of changes that would affect the programme devised by the Italian artist as a whole.9 As a matter of fact, the choice of the Pompeian style could not have been more appropriate: the adaptation of its distinctive elements to the room’s architecture is clearly evidenced by the highly efficient pattern followed on the walls. The aforementioned maidens, each one of which carries an object relating to sailing, are depicted on the sides of the room’s doors. With the folds of their garments in movement and wearing different expressions and striking diverse attitudes, they are floating against a solid blue 64

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Figure 3.2 Naval Affairs Committee room, US Capitol, 1858. © Wikipedia (public domain). background, framed by a sort of ornamental border covered with plant motifs, with two cornucopias resting against a parapet of rose-coloured marble, from which flowers with very thin stems sprout in the lower part, while two swans with their wings outstretched occupy the upper part. A succession of volutes of different sizes and with several leaves stem from the curvilinear edge of the ornamental border, tilting slightly towards the sides in diagonal. As a transition to the lunette, there is a red frieze fragment featuring a four-pointed star, whose edges are connected with a filleted three-coloured stripe whose centre is broken by a circular shield bearing a white five-pointed star on a blue background. Oddly enough, just above this there is what seems to be an emblem representing a trident. All of this is united by a succession of festoons and a chain of laurels in parallel, which strike a balance between the vertical and horizontal adornments. This part of the wall is completed with a cornice with dentils, crowned by a split pediment with volutes, executed in trompe l’oeil. For their part, the doors and spaces between the pilasters are flanked by two candelabra on top of which there is a piece of entablature from which a segmental arch emerges. In turn, a countersunk pedestal leans against the cornice fragment, which allows for opportunely elevating this architectural frame above the lintel, while maintaining the proportions of the supports. It is precisely on this piece that a spandrel richly decorated with two putti with large wings rests. With a full or three-quarter profile, the legs of those children are formed by foliage, specifically acanthus leaves mixed with a large variety of flowers, which spread towards the edges of the frame. They have a laurel wreath in one hand and a shield in the other, with alternating red and white vertical stripes, plus a blue chief topped with a red bow with two knots and their respective undulating ribbons. In the lunette there is a greater use of trompe l’oeil for depicting classical-style architectural elements bounding a faux niche representing several historical scenes, covered with a line of panels, at the ends of which there are abutments simulating plants. By the same token, the vaults stand out owing to the profusion of details throughout: flowers, stems and leaves converge along the ribs creating notably stylized lines until 65

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almost reaching the key, decorated with a soffit, executed in trompe l’oeil, summarizing some of the motifs appearing on the walls. In the centre of the spaces between the pilasters, there are four figures in niches with a convex entablature, crowned by a split pediment with volutes which serves as a support for an eagle looking left and with outstretched wings. Two putti, similar to those described above, are holding up festoons on both sides of the cornice, which cascade onto the head of the eagle (which, interestingly, only has one of them in its beak), until entwining to form a large arched frame. It is those garlands that simultaneously jump from one niche to the next, forming several gaps in which diverse pairs of mythological creatures are portrayed. Should this vast pictorial repertory be attributed to the visual culture and the repertoires that Brumidi assimilated during his training and his subsequent career? The Italian artist referred to the frescoes of the Domus Aurea10 as one of the models employed in the design of this decorative programme. The truth is that repertoires like those published in the Vestigia delle terme di Tito e loro interne pitture (1776) must have served as inspiration for the composition of the vaults, the tritons and the putti with foliage for legs, specifically Plates 6, 37 and 38. Similarly, in the historical literature it has been observed that one of the maidens would have been unquestionably modelled on a maenad appearing in the House of Naviglio in Pompeii (Wolanin 1998: 70; Friedland 2019: 6). And it is known that Brumidi was familiar with the Pompeian style owing to the works that he performed in the Villa Torlonia during his days in Rome (bearing a striking resemblance, it warrants noting, to the lunettes of this room), whereby, in principle, that he chose this option should come as no surprise. But Friedland (2019) has recently discovered the book that served as a direct source for Brumidi for the composition of these murals, namely, Volume 1 of Die schönsten Ornamente und merkwürdigsten Gemälde aus Pompeji, Herkulanum und Stabiae, which was published in Berlin between 1828 and 1829. Its author, the German architect and painter Wilhelm Zahn, one of the many intellectuals who visited the two Campanian cities, stayed in Pompeii during two periods of his life, lasting four and ten years, respectively. During his first stay, he made precise sketches of the recently-excavated buildings and of some of the remains housed in the Royal Bourbon Museum of Naples, resulting in 100 colour lithographs making up the aforementioned book. Brumidi and Meigs had access to this works thanks to the collections of the Library of Congress which, at the time, was housed in the Capitol (Friedland 2019: 6–11), while the similarities between Zahn’s illustrations, above all Plates 13, 16, 64 and 88, and the Italian artist’s work confirm this source of inspiration. Nonetheless, it should not be assumed that the Die schönsten Ornamente was merely used as a stylistic formula for embellishing the room. There is not a shadow of doubt that, for Meigs, the Pompeian style was just another way of implementing a European decorative programme, closely linked to the Old Continent’s large palaces which he sought to emulate, and of making the recently opened rooms of the Capitol look as magnificent as possible. With respect to the commissions that Brumidi had been given in the building, his ambitions can be summarized in his famous remark in which he would claim that his greatest desire was ‘to make beautiful the Capitol’ (Burton 2014: 6). 66

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Both the aforementioned plates by Zahn and others by the same author provided, more precisely, the tonal range of the paintings following their discovery, which, as already observed, facilitated their translation and adaptation to the spatial needs of the room. However, it seems reasonable to assume that the captain and the painter must have borne in mind the reputation enjoyed by Pompeii and Herculaneum at the time, and how the finds at both sites had served as models when designing the interiors of European stately homes and palaces since the end of the eighteenth century. This prestige thus contributed to enhance the rhetorical effectiveness of the wall and ceiling murals, eloquently expressing and disseminating a series of concepts and ideas linked to the room’s function. So, what story do those images tell? A glance at the room’s perimeter allows for clearly identifying the objects held by the so-called ‘floating maidens’ (Friedland 2019): consecutively, there is a flag, a sextant, a pennant, a map, a compass and a telescope, an anchor, a barometer, a fishing line together with a fish and a net, as well as a pearl necklace. They are, as already observed, objects closely related to the nautical world, something that naturally makes sense considering the room’s early use. To these objects should also be added the solid blue background, which is a clear reference to the sea in which those maidens are floating. Nor should the direct references to the US symbols be overlooked, especially the white stars of the flag and the pennant. But, in actual fact, it does not seem that the majority of these objects (or even the maidens themselves) should be understood as complex allegories that are hard to interpret, but rather as common (and essential) elements of naval technology with which the congressmen were perfectly familiar. Nevertheless, the matter of the pearls strikes a discordant note in this interpretation: should these calcareous concretions perhaps be considered as a vestige of the commercial relevance and ambitions that they had awakened since the arrival of Columbus in the Antilles? (Martín Acosta 2011). Or should the fact that the principal figure is accompanied by two putti point to another meaning? The same cannot be said after analysing the iconographic programme of the vaults. Leaving aside the purely ornamental elements, the ensemble is certainly surprising. On the ceiling in the east sector, specifically on the central axes of the four spaces between the pilasters, the Titan Oceanus and Nereus, plus the goddess Venus and Tethys, are portrayed. The coincidences between such characters are clear: the union between the Titan Oceanus and the Titaness Tethys was an indispensable part of the creation of world, according to some classical texts, while Nereus, the nymph’s father, had been credited with educating the well-known Roman goddess. Each one of them is accompanied by a nereid and another mythological being or, at least, linked to mythology: on either side of the elderly Oceanus, for instance, the nymphs appear as dolphins that, in their formal aspect, derive directly from those painted by Raffaello Sanzio in The Triumph of Galatea (1510–11, Rome, Villa Farnesina); those flanking Tethys are aggressively confronting some tritons; in the case of Nereus, it is a tortoise and a sea creature that escort the nereids; while these, accompanied by swans, are located on either side of Venus. The pattern of the west sector does not exhibit any significant differences. Now it is Aeolus, Neptune, Amphitrite and America who are portrayed on the ceiling 67

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and, as before, the consort of the famous sea god and the female personification of the continent are also escorted by nereids and tritons. In contrast, Neptune is flanked by nymphs riding seahorses (animals, as is known, traditionally associated with him) and, more significantly, of the two flanking Aeolus, one is riding a sea goat (or Capricorn), while the other sits astride a pardalocampus (or sea leopard), which was copied from Plate 64 of Zahn’s Die schönsten Ornamente. An initial approach to the possible meaning of this programmatic discourse has placed the accent on the placement of each one of these characters (Friedland 2019: 3–5). Indeed, they were not arranged any old how: the female mythological characters placed perpendicularly to the perimeter wall, connecting with the west corridor, traverse the room tracing an imaginary line that ends in the female personification of America. In this way, Brumidi would be evoking the naval power that the United States already possessed at this stage of the century and which, at the same time, ‘derives from a line of powerful Graeco-Roman goddesses of the sea, supported by related male marine deities’ (Friedland 2019: 5), whose culmination would be up to the young republic. It would therefore be a visual genealogy that contributed to legitimize US sea power thanks, among other things, to its mythical origins. The idea that the placement of the figures led precisely to an additional stratum of that exegesis should not be ruled out: curiously enough, they are arranged in an east-west direction, which implies that their interpretation would start on the east side (with the divinities and creatures borrowed from the GraecoRoman imaginary, that is, from Europe), until being symbolically concluded in the Western Hemisphere, with the allegory of America. Was this a way of confirming that the fledgling republic not only derived from the classical world, but had also taken up the baton from it to become the ‘new West’? In 1858, the Italian artist finished work on the Naval Affairs Committee room. Its reception was controversial. Some congressmen and US artists rejected the style. The enthusiasm shown by Meigs, who would even go so far as to assert that Brumidi’s work way surpassed the Pompeian originals reproduced in Zahn’s plates, did not, however, prevent the appraisal of Brumidi’s work from improving over time. After his death in 1880, a brief obituary was published, describing the cause (an unfortunate fall from a scaffold), before judging his painting as being of ‘no special artistic significance. It is believed that his place can be more than filled by native talent’ (‘Art’ 1880: 128). His name fell into oblivion, and some artists like Charles Ayes Whipple and George B. Matthews even intervened in some of the Italian’s frescoes in a more or less aggressive fashion, repainting and transforming them (Wolanin 1998: 84–5). It was not until 1950, on the occasion of the publication of her monograph on the artist, that Myrtle Cheney Murdock posed the following rhetorical question: ‘How could a Government such as ours, that has rewarded so many for so much, forget the artist, Brumidi, and let him lie unhonored and unknown for seventy years in an unmarked grave?’ (1950: vii). This would mark the start of Brumidi’s reinstatement as one of the pioneers in the creation of the iconography of that nascent republic which, as of the signing of the Treaty of Paris in 1899, would displace the Spanish empire once and for all to become the Atlantic hegemon.

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Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. Even considering its relevance in the fortress, neither the Hall of Mirrors nor the main staircase are addressed here, owing to the fact that we have not observed any Pompeian elements in them. 3. Castro Arroyo (2005: 35) identifies them as ‘lilies, the heraldic flower of the Bourbons’. 4. De Hostos and Castro Arroyo, the only specialists who have performed an in-depth study on the building, do not attribute such interventions to any specific author, nor have they discovered any information that sheds further light on the matter. 5. We do not share the view held by Castro Arroyo (2005: 29), who describes them as ‘baroque cherubs’. 6. On the impact of the Pompeian dancers as a decorative model, see Chapter 6 by María Martín de Vidales in this book. 7. This familiarity with the classical style must have also included a thorough knowledge of mythology, as is specified in the treatises of the period, like that written by Francesco Carradori in 1802 for sculptor students (2002: 21). 8. The examples analysed by Nichols (2017) are subsequent to this room. For her part, Friedland (2019: 13) suggests that Brumidi might have been one of the pioneers in introducing the taste for Pompeian interiors in the United States. 9. The scene of Columbus and the Indian Maiden, which was ruled out, notwithstanding the fact that it had been planned for one of the lunettes, among others. 10. According to the belief at the time, Brumidi called the Domus Aurea the ‘Baths of Titus’ (Wolanin 1998: 69).

References Anderson, G. M. (1990), ‘Bernardine Wiget, S. J., and the St. Aloysius Civil War Hospital in Washington, D.C.’, The Catholic Historical Review, 76 (4): 734–64. ‘Art in the Cities’ (1880), The Art Journal (1875–1887), 6: 126–8. Burton, A. E. (comp.) (2014), To Make Beautiful the Capitol: Rediscovering the Art of Constantino Brumidi, Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office. Carletti, G. (1776), Vestigia delle terme di Tito e loro interne pitture, Rome: Presso Ludovico Mirri mercante di quadri incontro al Palazzo Bernini a Rome. Available online: https://www.doaks. org/resources/rare-books/vestigia-delle-terme-di-tito-e-loro-interne-pitture [accessed 12 October 2021]. Carradori, F. (2002), Elementary Instructions for Students of Sculpture, trans. M. K. Auvinen, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Castro Arroyo, M. A. (1980), Arquitectura en San Juan de Puerto Rico (siglo XIX), Río Piedras: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Castro Arroyo, M. A. (2005), La Fortaleza de Santa Catalina, San Juan: Patronato del Palacio de Santa Catalina.

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CHAPTER 4 POMPEIAN INFLUENCES ON THE ELITE OF SANTIAGO DE CHILE: VISUAL ARTS, ANTIQUITIES AND ARCHITECTURE NINETEENTH CENTURY 1 Carolina Valenzuela Matus

During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Pompeii and Herculaneum became a symbol of prestige and refinement for Latin American society. In Chile, interest in these sites was expressed in the accounts of travellers, the acquisition (or imitation) of Pompeian objects and the adoption of the Pompeian atrium in the most important mansions. These tendencies were combined with historicist and eclectic styles, with a predominance of neoclassical influences. The models in vogue in France, Italy and England were thus imitated by the local elites who followed Eurocentric models in the quest for a new national identity decoupled from the Spanish colonial past and identifying with the desire to achieve unlimited progress through the adoption of a liberal political ideology. In this chapter, primary and secondary sources are analysed to determine the scope and projection of Pompeian influences among the urban elites in Santiago, especially in the fields of the visual arts, antiquities and architecture, taking into consideration the private homes in which the possession of prestigious antiquities was associated with the political and economic elites, as well as the use of Pompeian and classical motifs on the façades and in the interior of the city’s most outstanding private residences. At the same time, the remodelling of Santa Lucia Hill as a public space or park, in tune with these new tendencies, reflected the intention of the political elites to transform the city according to the principles of Eurocentrism. Accordingly, the impact of economic and ideological factors on the adoption of classical models is also considered here. In Chile, the revenues from mining activities in the north and from estates and farms in the centre and the south had favourable repercussions for the elites. Following the current trend in Latin America, Chile began to participate in the international market by exporting raw materials and importing industrial products. This increase in income formed the basis of the country’s great fortunes. In the capital, Santiago de Chile, the entrepreneurs benefiting from this economic boom built imposing mansions in different artistic and architectural styles, combining neoclassical and historicist tendencies inherent to Romanticism, while also drawing inspiration from the architectural influences of Pompeii and Herculaneum and the pieces discovered at both sites, in order to vie for greatness and prestige. In doing so, Chilean society attempted to replicate the mores and customs of ancient Italy, plus those of France and England, through urban

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transformation, architecture, palatial adornments, upholstery, luminaires and gardens, which gave the capital an eclectic and neoclassical style in which the influence of Pompeii was considered and assimilated. Nonetheless, the economic boom was not the only reason behind the adoption of a Graeco-Roman style in architecture, antiquities and the visual arts. The classical influence, which had made itself felt in Chile and Latin America since the beginning of the process of independence, was associated with certain progressive ideals that contended that the colonial past was an inducement to build the new national states. In contrast, the classical tradition, grounded in the ideals promoted by the French Revolution, provided the elements with which to express an anti-Spanish feeling and to repudiate the former colonial era. Examples include certain intellectuals from the Americas, like Francisco de Miranda, who searched for the symbols of freedom for the Americas in the ruins of Greece. Especially sympathetic towards modern Greece, under the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, he drew parallels between this country and the colonial status of Latin America (Bocchetti 2010), seeing in ancient Greece the model of freedom which he cherished for the Americas. He also visited Pompeii in 1786, where he admired the bronzes and everyday objects, such as the carbonized food and jewellery, aspects that were subsequently admired by the Argentine politician Domingo Faustino Sarmiento during his visit to the site in 1847 (Romero Recio in press). The Argentine general and liberator of Argentina, Chile and Peru, José de San Martín, also perceived the similarities between the Greeks’ struggle against the Turks and the current state of affairs in the Americas, vindicating the adoption of classical values as opposed to those of the Iberian world. While, for his part, the Chilean politician Mariano Egaña recognized the importance of classical literature in bringing an end to colonial obscurantism (Taboada 2014). With the consolidation of independence, the classical legacy became tantamount to sophistication and education, associated with robust institutions and strongly related to the French and Italian models. In both Chile and the rest of Latin America, classical culture was an ideal historical benchmark. Sol Serrano remarked that, after the struggle for independence, ‘Chile had fought the Spaniards and had overcome their ignorance. The country is now destined to become a refuge for talent and enlightenment.’ The nascent republic ‘glitters in the arms of Mars and Minerva’ (Serrano 1994: 39), thus connecting intellectual achievements with the classical references to the Graeco-Roman gods. Therefore, the influence of Pompeian art and aesthetics in Chile should be framed in the context of the classical legacy that considered the Greek and Roman styles to be central to the French, Italian and English models. This Eurocentric tendency was consolidated by the liberal governments ruling the country from 1871 to 1891. During this period, the urban elites promoted an eclectic style with the intention of building a renewed national identity linked to Europe, reflected in travel, collecting and antiquarianism. Those travels served as inspiration for the architectural transformation of the capital, while collecting and antiquarianism resulted in the acquisition of unique pieces destined to embellish palatial homes and public spaces.2 74

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Classical taste: travel, collecting and antiquarianism As to the classical legacy, the discovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum left a lasting impression on the Latin American elites, above all with respect to the arts and collecting. Pompeii was by far the most well-known ancient Roman city, at least from an archaeological point of view. Besides the baths, dwellings, taverns, temples and public buildings – including a theatre and amphitheatre in the case of Pompeii – the furniture, tableware, mosaics depicting eating habits and even graffiti (Osgood 2019) are all impressive testimonies of the two ancient cities buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius. The news from Pompeii had a varied impact in Latin America as a whole. In Peru, the ongoing archaeological excavations in Pompeii and Herculaneum seemed to have prompted a similar interest in Incan culture. In this connection, Mariano Rivero and Juan Tschudi, authors of the book Peruvian Antiquities (1851), appealed to Peruvian intellectuals and artists to join forces with the government to dig up ‘the Peruvian civilization from the dust covering it, like Pompeii and Herculaneum in these times from the lava burying them for so many centuries’ (Rivero and Tschudi 1851: 309). Moreover, collectors from Cuzco were aware of the excavations in Italy, drawing analogies between the Roman finds and ancient Peruvian ceramics (Gänger 2014). Journeying to Pompeii and Herculaneum was obviously the best way of becoming acquainted with the discoveries made there. In Chile, various distinguished travellers visited the ruins and noted down their impressions, in an attempt to emulate the famous ‘grand tours’ of privileged European travellers during the eighteenth century. One of the first Chileans to make the journey was Nicolás de la Cruz y Bahamonde, Count of Maule, who arrived to Naples in 1797 (Romero Recio 2012). According to Mirella Romero, ‘The Count of Maule praised the perfection of the art of the Greeks and, before visiting Pompeii, wandered through the excavations of Herculaneum and mentioned the possibility of purchasing the volumes of the Antichità di Ercolano, one of the first works to contain drawings of the antiquities, and which, moreover, was very hard to come by’ (De la Cruz and Bahamonde 1806–13 in Romero Recio 2012: 41). Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna travelled to Pompeii in 1871. One of his letters was published in the newspaper El Mercurio del Vapor under the title, ‘A Letter from Mount Vesuvius’, in which he offered a detailed account of his travel experiences. Nonetheless, one of the most remarkable travellers was the Chilean magnate Pedro del Río Zañartu from Concepcion (in the Bío-Bío region, in southern Chile), who travelled around the world four times (between 1880 and 1913), while paying Pompeii three visits, although there is only evidence of two of them in 1882 and 1912. After initially publishing his letters in the local newspaper El Sur, he then produced two books describing his travel experiences. He also collected objects from around the world, including Pompeian pieces, such as clay figurines and amphorae, for the purpose of exhibiting them in the museum at his hacienda in Hualpen – nowadays known as the Pedro del Río Zañartu Park-Museum (Cartes 1992). The Chilean elite’s burgeoning interest in antiquarianism and collecting above all classical pieces was driven by their desire to emulate European mores and customs and 75

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to participate in the antique market as buyers or sellers. The pieces imported from abroad were exhibited to a privileged few in private homes, while they sometimes ended up in auction houses, like Casa Eyzaguirre, dealing in art and antiquities, including furniture, sculptures and archaeological pieces. In some of their catalogues, it is possible to identify collectors, including Manuel Menchaca Lira and Maximiliano Errázuriz who both owned ancient Roman artefacts (Casa Ramón Eyzaguirre. Gran remate de la interesante colección de objetos antiguos, valiosas piezas arqueológicas, magníficas armas orientales, libros, etc. de Monseñor Manuel Menchaca Lira. July 1944). Similarly, Mercedes Herreros exhibited replicas of the busts of Julius Caesar and Homer at her home (Libro de Fotografías Casa Eyzaguirre. Remate de Mercedes Herreros, 8 and 9 September 1944.) Víctor Echaurren Valero, another good example of classical collecting and the influence of the Pompeian style, was a liberal politician and diplomat who occupied several public offices, while forming part of the Chilean legations in Washington, Paris and Rome and acting as an immigration official in Europe. It is known that Echaurren visited Pompeii, not because he himself left a written testimony, but thanks to an indirect source, namely, an anonymous group of guests invited to one of the splendid parties that he was accustomed to throwing at his palace, who left a description of the great ball to which they had been invited and, in passing, of his collections. The book in question allows for knowing how these antiquities were displayed at his palace and for confirming the existence of Pompeian pieces acquired during his visit to the archaeological site: There are four perfectly classified and ordered collections of Egyptian, Pompeian, Greek, Etruscan, Roman, Assyrian and Venetian antiquities. Noteworthy among the Egyptian pieces are some remains of mummies and funerary statues; as regards the Pompeian pieces, there are several mosaic fragments retrieved by Mr. Echaurren himself from the House of the Tragic Poet [also known as the Homeric House or the Iliadic House]; the Greek, Etruscan and Roman artefacts include numerous vases, amphorae, sprinklers and some utensils discovered in the catacombs; and finally the Venetian collection, the most complete of all, features ancient crystals, either authentic or copied. Descripción del Gran Baile de Fantasía dado en el Palacio del Señor don Víctor Echaurren Valero 1885: 14–15 The sumptuously detailed description of his collections can probably be explained by the fact that Echaurren had a reputation as an antiquarian and collector, and the great ball was more than likely a pretext for presenting them to potential customers in a relaxed atmosphere (Bergot 2007). The authors of the book not only described the pieces in Echaurren’s collections, but also offered information on where they had been discovered. As indicated in the aforementioned passage, they would have been found in the House of the Tragic Poet, excavated between 1824 and 1825, a traditional Roman atrium-style house famous for the mosaic that reads CAVE CANEM (beware of the dog) at the main entrance.3 The house contains elaborate mosaics, particularly the one depicting actors about to perform which gave its name to the house. The decoration of 76

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the hall is also outstanding, with extensive frescoes of mythological themes, including episodes of the Iliad (Cooley and Cooley 2004: 263). As already noted, Echaurren’s intention was to use these collections to create an art museum, but, regrettably, most of the antiquities were lost when his palace was looted and destroyed by fire during the Chilean Civil War of 1891. In Chile and Latin America, alike, private collections, containing unique pieces, contributed to construct their owners’ social identity, which was fundamental in the reigning ambiance of ostentation in which novelty and curiosity set the tone (Marcaida 2014). In addition, the fact that they were capable of forming collections was a symbol of power denoting their political and social determination to flaunt their wealth and their ability to manage them and to connect with a renewed Eurocentric tendency. The possession of Graeco-Roman antiquities, mostly acquired on their trips to Europe, but also through local antiquarians who imported pieces from abroad, greatly enhanced the prestige of these collectors. In the case at hand, their purpose was in all likelihood related to their owners’ eagerness to associate themselves with the country’s upper echelons of power. The collections of Víctor Echaurren and Pedro del Río Zañartu in Hualpen had social and political connotations, even though they were only shown to a privileged few, while, as already noted, the Pompeian pieces and other foreign antiquities bolstered their position and prestige. Unlike the fate of most of Echaurren’s collections, looted or destroyed during the civil war, del Río Zañartu was more fortunate, for, after his death, his palatial residence was converted into a museum – which continues to be a heritage and cultural benchmark in Hualpen – whose exhibits include the Pompeian pieces that he himself collected. The classical influence can also be glimpsed in the National Museum in Santiago de Chile, one of the most important nineteenth-century public institutions. Under the management of the German naturalist Rudolph Philippi, the museum’s objectives included scientifically ordering the objects of the natural world and searching for a model of European progress, while also exhibiting the Graeco-Roman and Oriental antiquities which it had acquired through exchanges with European museums (Urizar 2016). Despite the fact that there were no antiquities from Pompeii or Herculaneum, the presence of other classical pieces contributed to reproduce a Eurocentric and positivist model (Garrido 2018), while revealing the museum’s intention to compete with its European counterparts through the possession of antiquities, plus many other objects from the natural world.

The Santiago elites and the Pompeian influence in palatial homes and public spaces The purpose of the trips that these privileged Chileans made to Europe and their acquisition of Graeco-Roman antiquities was to reinforce their identification with European culture, especially with respect to France, Italy and England, the classical 77

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tradition becoming the hallmark of prestige, prosperity and good taste. Accordingly, these new elites decorated their homes with Pompeian motifs, as part of a broader influence that included the Graeco-Roman and Oriental styles that gave pride of place to a potpourri of Mediterranean influences. During the nineteenth century, the Pompeian style was not only to be found in the capital, but also in country houses in the Central Valley (for an in-depth study of this topic, see María Gabriela Huidobro’s chapter in this book). In the case of the city of Santiago, the Pompeian style formed part of other European influences in vogue. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, most of the main private houses in Santiago were fairly simple, with a predominance of the colonial style. The city’s colonial social, political and commercial life revolved around the Plaza de Armas, the main square in which the most important administrative and religious buildings stood. In the midnineteenth century, the city experienced a period of transition towards modernity (Manzini 2011) which also involved the quest for a new national identity. As already observed, the wealth generated by mining in the north and agriculture in the centre and the south, on which some of the country’s major fortunes were based, also played an important role. These entrepreneurs built mansions in the capital, on which Pompeii exerted an artistic and cultural influence as part of an eclectic artistic taste combining the neoclassical style with different foreign artistic expressions. During this time, the ‘Francisation’ of architecture was visible in the prevalence of the neoclassical style, in opposition to the colonial aesthetics that had predominated in the Chilean capital for three centuries. This tendency resulted in a less original architecture, according to the testimonies of the period. For example, the traveller Theodore Child was surprised by the lack of authenticity. He saw sumptuous buildings, albeit lacking in originality, identifying the Pompeian, Tudor and Turkish styles, the last with domes and minarets (Pinto 2008), while most of the adornments on the façades were plaster mouldings, thus creating a false sense of grandiosity (Manzini 2011). The classical influence could also be glimpsed in some public building, like the Exhibition Palace (National Museum), the Parthenon of the Quinta Normal, the refurbished Governor’s Palace (Central Post Office) and the National Congress, as well as in the plans for remodelling Santa Lucia Hill. The construction of palatial homes for the elites was facilitated by the arrival of foreign architects in Santiago, most of whom were engaged by the Chilean government to execute public works. The most prominent French architects included Claude François Brunet des Baines, responsible for building the Municipal Theatre, Lucien Ambroise Henault, who drew up the plans for the National Congress and the Central House of the University of Chile, the engineer Ernest Ansart, who collaborated in the city of Santiago’s first urban development plan, and Paul Lathoud, who designed the Pavilion for the 10th Industrial Exhibition in 1875 (National Natural History Museum). To these should be added Ricardo Brown, who built the neoclassical Central Post Office, Fermín Vivaceta and Manuel Aldunate, the latter in charge of the definitive design for remodelling Santa Lucia Hill and responsible for completing the Central Market, initiated by Manuel Vivaceta in 1868 (Cáceres 2007). 78

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It was also these architects who were mainly responsible for designing the palatial homes of the elites of Santiago along the lines of the new European models (Municipalidad de Santiago 2004). The most important of these stately residences lined the main avenues – including Dieciocho de Septiembre, Ejército Libertador, República, España and Vergara, in addition to the streets Catedral, Santo Domingo, Compañía and Alameda – in specific areas of downtown Santiago, such as the Dieciocho district (Imas, Rojas and Velasco 2015). All these mansions built during the second half of the nineteenth century reflected a historicism and eclecticism in which it is possible to identify the Pompeian style. For instance, Claude François Brunet des Baines introduced Pompeian-style changes in the inner distribution of some of the mansions that he designed: ‘There is no porch and the coach-house gate serves as an entrance for the new types of vehicles. The central hall or vestibule, in the style of a Pompeian atrium, with rooms surrounding it, is sometimes the centre of family life, and as in a traditional courtyard receives light through a large sky-light’ (Cáceres 2007: 63). The Pompeian atrium, adopted at the heart of these mansions, along with other European influences, basically consisted of a central space, also known as a cavaedium, accessible from the street through a passage. These buildings modelled on the atriumstyle house, which probably first appeared in Pompeii in the third century bc , might have been an attempt at self-Romanization (Romero 2016). This is borne out by the variety of information available on buildings of this type, which helps to understand the dissemination of Roman architecture. This model can be easily identified in the Palace of Maximiano Errázuriz (built by the Italian architect Eusebio Chelli), which includes Doric and Ionic columns, evoking the Roman villages of the Renaissance, in addition to a magnificent hallway. Furthermore, Maximiano Errázuriz also owned a ‘full-fledged’ Pompeian house in Panquehue (a topic addressed by María Gabriela Huidobro in Chapter 10 of this book). Besides the incorporation of the atrium, the main façades of these palatial residences featured several elements relating to historicist tendencies, a good example of which is the Palace of Matías Cousiño, designed by the French architect Paul Lathoud in 1882. Imitating the style of the Second French Empire, the palace, especially its splendid hallway, exudes the classical influence. Other outstanding palaces reflecting these eclectic trends included those of Urmeneta and Irrarrázaval, the Concha Cazzote Palace, with its golden cupules and minarets, and the Edwards Palace in neoclassical and Italian styles. One of the most curious was the Alhambra Palace, owned by Francisco Ignacio Ossa. With the intention of conjuring up images of the famous Alhambra in Granada, he commissioned the Chilean architect Manuel Aldunate to draw up the plans in 1862. So as to reproduce the original structures as accurately as possible, materials and artisans were brought. Eclecticism predominates as much in its façades as in its interior design. In the Echaurren Palace, the interiors included Byzantine-style halls, an Italian boudoir, an Alhambra hall, a Louis XIV hall, a Henry XIV dining room and a Francis I library. It involved a bespoke design brought over from Europe and the novel use of electricity (Bergot 2007). Nonetheless, at the time all the palaces in Santiago followed similar tendencies with respect to their adornments. 79

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Figure 4.1 Cousiño Palace, 1900. View of the hallway. Medina Hall. FB1382. © National Library (Chile).

Regarding public works, it is also possible to identify the classical influence in the plans for the urban renewal of Santiago. The Chilean liberal governments promoted the adoption of European models (French or Italian) in public spaces so as to break with the Spanish colonial legacy, while also implementing new sanitation measures in a city in constant growth, giving priority to the creation of public squares and broad avenues. One of the most important initiatives aimed at transforming the city was implemented by Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, the mayor of Santiago between 1872 and 1875. In his La transformación de Santiago (1872), Vicuña Mackenna set out a number of practical ideas for converting the Chilean capital into a modern and progressive metropolis. In the nineteenth century, the word ‘transformation’ acquired a new universal meaning synonymous with urbanism and progress, at a moment when the Europeans and Americans were vying with one another to draw up the most ambitious plans for embellishing their main cities (Martínez 2004 and León 2017). In his book, Vicuña Mackenna specifically identified the main needs of the city, underscoring how important it was to improve its sanitation systems so as to create a more healthy environment. His proposals revolved around three main aspects: modifying Santiago’s urban plan with the construction of new avenues; guaranteeing the supply of drinking water and upgrading the city’s markets, slaughterhouses, schools, police stations and prisons; installing sanitation systems in popular neighbourhoods and establishing norms that forced land speculators to build cheaper dwellings for tenants, with a minimum level of comfort (Vicuña Mackenna 1872). 80

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The most grandiose plans for transforming Santiago involved the remodelling of Santa Lucia Hill, where French and classical influences were strong. This hill, called Huelén in Mapuche, served as a vantage point in the time of the Spanish conquistadors. It was then occupied by a military fortress and also served as a quarry, while its slopes were used as a cemetery for dissidents until 1854. In addition, it also had an astronomical observatory, whose facilities were subsequently purchased by the government for creating the first National Astronomical Observatory (Ossa 2017). Nonetheless, Santa Lucia Hill had scant appeal for visitors, whereby Vicuña Mackenna’s plans to remodel it, arguing that Santiago did not have any squares, except for the ‘plaza mayor’ which, in line with the liberal tendencies of the period which sought to break with the Spanish colonial legacy, he roundly repudiated. In contrast to that colonial heritage, the mayor imagined a different concept. ‘The most vast, hygienic and beautiful public square in all circumstances that is destined to embellish the capital is Santa Lucia Hill, which in itself will be none other than a cluster of esplanades and small squares, or better said, an airy square, divided by rocks instead of pavements, encircled with asphalt and macadam paths instead of hard and uneven cobblestones’ (Vicuña Mackenna 1872). His intention was to completely transform the hill, contending that it should not be the exclusive preserve of the elites: ‘Far from being a luxury, the Santa Lucia promenade is an essential work of democracy’ (Vicuña Mackenna 1872). As the less well-off were unable to afford the entrance fee, he allowed children in for free (Rivera 2013). Vicuña Mackenna also wrote a guidebook describing the hill’s main attractions, plus trails and roads (Ossa 2017). These plans for remodelling Santa Lucia Hill are comparable to those of the Parisian Parc des Buttes-Chaumont, opened in 1867, for the purpose of providing the working classes with a new space, namely, the same idea as that entertained by Vicuña Mackenna. The French influence on the remodelling of Santa Lucia Hill was blatant, especially through its statues and urns evoking the Graeco-Roman past in a neoclassical frame. Small wonder then that these neoclassical statutes and urns were ordered from the Val d’Osne art foundry in France. One of the most important in Europe, its products were very much in demand in South American countries since its establishment in 1835, especially during the last quarter of nineteenth century (Salazar 2018). Besides the statues and urns that Vicuña Mackenna ordered from the Val d’Osne art foundry’s catalogue, in 1873 he also ordered other statues from Paris foundries, including the Mercury, cast at the Doucel foundry, and two Roman-style columns with the goddesses Ceres and Minerva, acquired in Florence that same year. There were also reproductions of statues housed in the Louvre Museum, such as the Cupid, a copy of Cupid Carving his Bow from the Club of Hercules by the sculptor Edmé Bouchardon (1698–1762), plus the Polymnia and Diana the Huntress. In another nod to antiquity, the broader esplanade was called the Elysian Fields, while the Pompeian influence was visible over one of the gates, whose archway was crowned by a bronze statue known as the ‘English Thoroughbred’ based, as regards its aspect and measurements – always according to the mayor – on an equestrian statue of Nero purportedly discovered in Pompeii (Vicuña Mackenna 1874), although, in this case, without a rider. Purchased 81

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Figure 4.2 Equine statue in the Porsche, Santa Lucia Hill. In: Vicuña Mackenna (1874).

from the French sculptor Eugène Louis Lequesne, it had been brought over from Europe by Francisco Gandarillas, who then donated it to the park in 1874, where it was placed over the aforementioned entrance (El caballo desaparecido desde el Cerro Santa Lucía. [online] [accessed 4 October 2021]). Notwithstanding the fact that there were equestrian statues of all the Roman Caesars – starting with Augustus – Vicuña Mackenna’s claim is dubious to say the least. It seems that no statue of Nero had been documented in Pompeii, for, it should be recalled, Nero suffered damnatio memoriae, which meant that all images of him were destroyed. For this reason, only a few of them have come down to us: portraits of the emperor as a child, coins and statues saved from the destruction due to their distance from Rome, as is the case of an equestrian statue of the emperor found in Asia Minor (Turkey) (Fernández 2014). Besides, equestrian statues were very rarely unearthed in nineteenth-century excavations, so Vicuña Mackenna appears to have been way off the mark. Indeed, it is not known why he drew such a parallel, bearing in mind that the Santa Lucia horse had no rider – a matter that calls for further enquiry in view of the fact that subsequent authors citing Vicuña Mackenna have not questioned the statue’s Pompeian connection. In 1901, when the park’s entrances were renovated, the equine statue was moved to the Equestrian Club. Regrettably, as with many other of Santa Lucia’s statues and urns, it has since disappeared without trace. After its remodelling, Santa Lucia Hill became one of the most popular public places in the city. In 1902, the architect Víctor Villeneuve built the main entrance to the park, while a few years later its neoclassical style was enhanced by several additional works, specially commissioned for the celebration of the country’s centenary in 1910. 82

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During the initial decades of the twentieth century, the private residences of the city’s economic and political elites continued to reflect a classical influence, as did its public spaces, as part of a discourse of progress and modernity, thus picking up the baton from their predecessors in the previous century. In other words, the transformation of Santiago’s public spaces promoted by the political elites was consistent with that of the homes of its wealthiest citizens. The quest for a new national identity based on European models resulted in an architecture lacking in originality which, influenced by historicism and neoclassicism, combined the most extravagant styles. The classical legacy, including the Pompeian style, was a powerful symbol of Chile’s new national identity that glittered ‘in the arms of Mars and Minerva’, according to Sol Serrano. Meanwhile, the lower classes were relegated to the status of mere bystanders, an issue that ought to be fully examined in future studies in this field.

Conclusions In Latin America, the nineteenth century was a time of transition from colonialism to modernity promoted by its nascent national states. In this transition, the classical legacy, in general, and the Pompeian style, in particular, were expressions of the desire to construct a new identity, based on French, English and Italian models, that broke with the Spanish colonial tradition. This was brought to fruition thanks to those entrepreneurs who had amassed huge fortunes from mining and agricultural activities. Santiago was deeply affected by this change in mind-set and its wealthiest citizens materialized the new influences through the adoption of eclectic and historicist styles, in which Pompeian elements formed part of the whole as can be observed in their palatial homes and the city’s public spaces, like Santa Lucia Hill. The excessive combination of styles and the disappearance of many of these imposing buildings makes it difficult to identify the influence of a ‘pure’ Pompeian style in the city: the sources indicate that the central halls of these private residences were based on the Roman atrium-style house which, combined with other influences, was lambasted for its lack of originality and for employing materials of dubious quality to give an impression of grandiosity that was only superficial. In addition, the urban elites expressed their interest in Pompeii by collecting and displaying antiquities (originals or copies) obtained in Italy, which were very appealing to antiquarians and collectors, alike. It was a market in which not only the urban elites were deeply involved, but also public institutions like the National Museum, which not only purchased pieces, but also acquired others through donations. The accounts of the Chilean travellers who visited Pompeii and Herculaneum, published in newspapers and books, reveal the extent to which both archaeological sites had aroused the interest of the country’s local elites. The influence of the Pompeian style in the city of Santiago was closely linked to classicism and historicism as a whole, but it was not as predominant as in other Latin American metropolises, like Bogota and Mexico City. Be that as it may, its influence on the visual arts, antiquities and architecture denoted the elites’ transition to a Eurocentric model on which the urban transformation of Santiago into a modern liberal city was 83

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based. The arts, architecture and antiquities were at the service of the powers that be and reflected their ideals and goals. In this connection, the classical legacy, including the Pompeian style, was an expression of a new national identity constructed by the Chilean elites and of the hope of a brighter future.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. This intention to reflect a renewed national identity linked to Pompeii, in particular, and to antiquity, in general, has also been identified in other Latin American countries addressed in this book by Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño (Mexico), Gabriela Huidobro (Chile) and Renata Senna Garraffoni (Brazil). 3. The mosaic reading CAVE CANEM in this house was a motif often used in other Latin and Central American countries, like Mexico, as can be seen in Chapter 2.

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Pompeian Influences on the Elite of Santiago de Chile Boletín del Museo Nacional de Historia Natural, 67, 1: 1–9. Imas, F., Rojas, M. and Velasco, E. (2015), La ruta de los palacios y las grandes casas de Santiago. Santiago: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. León, R. (2017), Historia de Santiago, Curicó: Ediciones Nueve Noventa. Libro de Fotografías Casa Eyzaguirre. Remate de Mercedes Herreros, 8 and 9 September 1944. Manzini M, L. (2011), ‘Las viviendas del siglo XIX en Santiago de Chile y la región de Cuyo en Argentina’, Universum (Talca), 26.2: 165–86. Marcaida, J. (2014), Arte y ciencia en el Barroco Español, Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia. Martínez, R. (2004), Santiago Sur poniente: barrio universitario, desarrollo urbano y patrimonio, Santiago: Dirección de Obras Municipales de Santiago, Andros. Municipalidad de Santiago (2004), Santiago Sur Poniente, Barrio Universitario. Desarrollo urbano y patrimonio. Santiago: Dirección de Obras Municipales de Santiago. Ossa, B. (2017), El cerro Santa Lucía ayer y hoy: transformaciones, usos y apropiaciones del legado urbano de Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna. Colecciones Digitales, Subdirección de Investigación, Dibam. [online]. Retrieved from: http://www.museovicunamackenna.cl/647/w3-article-79565. html [accessed 25 November 2021]. Osgood, J. (2019), Roma, la creación del Estado-Mundo, Madrid: Desperta-Ferro. Pinto, J. (2008), ‘Proyectos de la élite chilena del siglo XIX’, Alpha, 26: 167–89. Rivera, P. (2013), La transformación del Cerro Santa Lucía (1872) por el intendente Vicuña Mackenna en relación a la gestión cultural. Tesis para optar al grado de Licenciado en Artes con mención en Historia y Teoría del Arte. Facultad de Artes. Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile. Rivero, M. and Tschudi, J. (1851), Antigüedades Peruanas, Vienna: Imprenta Imperial de la Corte y del Estado. Romero, A. (2016), ‘Tras las huellas del atrio. Reflexiones sobre el papel de Pompeya en la difusión del modelo arquitectónico’, in Calderón, M., España-Chamorro, S. and Benito, E. (eds), Estudios arqueológicos del Área Vesubiana II, Oxford: BAR Publishing. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936), Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Romero Recio, M. (in press), ‘Relatos de un viaje a Italia: aproximación a la experiencia de dos viajeros americanos en Pompeya y Herculano’, in Del Molino, R., Buitrago, L. and Parra López, A. M. (eds), Ecos Pompeyanos: Recepción e influjo de Pompeya y Herculano en España y América Latina, Bogotá: Universidad Externado de Colombia. Salazar, C. (2018), ‘Fundiciones de Arte Val D’Osne à Santiago du Chili’. [online]. Retrieved from: https://urbatorium.blogspot.com/2009/09/founderies-dart-du-val-dosne-santiago.html [accessed 2 November 2021]. Serrano, S. (1994), Universidad y nación: Chile en el siglo XIX. Santiago: Editorial Universitaria. Taboada, H. (2014), ‘Centauros y eruditos: los clásicos en la independencia’, Latinoamérica Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos, 59, 2: 193–221. Urizar, G. (2016), Museo Nacional. Construir, representar, educar y divulgar las ciencias naturales en Chile (1813–1829), PhD thesis. Barcelona: Universidad de Barcelona. Vicuña Mackenna, B. (1872), La transformación de Santiago: notas e indicaciones respetuosamente sometidas a la Ilustre Municipalidad, al Supremo Gobierno y al Congreso Nacional, Santiago: Imprenta de la Librería del Mercurio, de Orestes L. Tornero. Vicuña Mackenna, B. (1874), Álbum del Santa Lucía. Colección de las principales vistas, monumentos, jardines, estatuas i obras de arte de este paseo, dedicado a la Municipalidad de Santiago, por su actual presidente Benjamín Vicuña Mackenna, Santiago: Imprenta de la Librería del Mercurio. [online] Retrieved from: http://www.memoriachilena.gob.cl/602/ w3-article-8035.html [accessed 5 November 2021]. Vicuña Mackenna, B. (1871), ‘Cartas del Vesubio. Una visita a Pompeya (correspondencia especial del Mercurio), Nápoles, 9 de marzo de 1871’, El Mercurio del Vapor, Valparaíso, 16 May 1871. 85

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CHAPTER 5 JOAQU Í N SOROLLA AND POMPEII: THE IMPACT OF A TRIP ON HIS LIFE AND HIS OEUVRE 1 Ana Valtierra

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Valencia 1863–Madrid 1923) visited the archaeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, as well as the National Museum of Naples. Awarded a grant to further his studies in Rome in 1885, while travelling throughout Italy he could not avoid the influence of Pompeii. He wandered all over the site making sketches and copies of different aspects, which were more or less detailed depending on his personal interests. The Spanish painter’s trip left a lasting impression on him, which can be glimpsed in some of his works, including Danza Báquica (Bacchic Dance), Resting Bacchante and even in the reproductions of famous sculptures discovered in Pompeii, with which he decorated the gardens of his house, currently the Sorolla Museum (Madrid). This facet of Sorolla’s trip to the Vesuvian cities has yet to be studied, despite its evident importance, for it would always be present in his life and his oeuvre.2 Many of the sketches of diverse aspects of the archaeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum, plus the National Museum of Naples – some rough (two simple lines emulating the Pompeian streets), others meticulous and even his impressions of visitors and the museum staff – which he made during those visits have come down to us. It had an influence not only on his paintings, but also on his house and gardens replete with reproductions of Pompeian motifs. His trip to Pompeii became an experience of learning and discovery that had a direct impact on his oeuvre, playing a decisive role in shaping the tastes of one of the most famous figures of the history of international art, but, nonetheless, which continues to be one of the Valencian genius’s least known facets.

His stay in Italy: a brief summary of his training and how he obtained a grant One of the most interesting episodes of Sorolla’s life was his visit to Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum, thanks to the grant that he was awarded to further his studies in Rome. It is a story of self-improvement and talent in which he managed to make headway in the competitive art market of the period. He began to work in the family business, while attending evening drawing classes at the Artisan School, where the Valencian sculptor Cayetano Capuz, a disciple of the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Valencia, taught (Ossorio y Bernard 1883–4: 129). In October 1878, he started to attend the School of Fine Arts of Valencia, where he received an academic training in which the archaeological discoveries in Pompeii and 87

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Herculaneum carried a lot of weight, and where the plaster casts of those works were habitually employed in class. Gonzalo Salvá Simbor (1854–1923), who instilled in him a taste for painting outdoors, was the most outstanding of his masters. After a stay in Madrid, he returned to Valencia where he made the acquaintance of Ignacio Pinazo (1849–1916), under whose wing he continued his training and who stressed the importance of painting outdoors. This relationship was fundamental for Sorolla and his subsequent connection with Pompeii, since it was Pinazo who taught him how to paint a picture successfully, which would encourage him later on to enter the competition for obtaining a grant for furthering his studies in Rome. Specifically, this was the National Exhibition of Fine Arts of Spain in 1884, in which he exhibited a painting entitled, The 2nd of May, an historical theme relating to the Peninsular War, from 1808 to 1814. It was a wellknown theme in Spanish painting which some of the most prominent artists, such as Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828), had portrayed time and again, thus contributing to elevate this episode to the status of a national myth (Demange 2004: 112–13). In this painting on canvas, Sorolla chose to represent the exaltation of the defence of the Monteleon artillery park (Madrid) by the Spanish troops under the command of Luis Daoiz and Pedro Velarde, both of whom dominate the centre of the composition (Orihuela 1991: 131; Díez 2015: 551). Even though it was a relatively common theme in Spanish painting, Sorolla, following the instructions of his mentor Pinazo, managed to introduce a new development that grabbed the attention of the panel of judges: he painted directly with natural light, specifically in one of the corrals of the Valencia bullring. This was an important innovation in that he was depicting a historical episode from life. This new development applied to the history genre gained him national recognition and he was awarded the second medal, which prompted him to sit the exams for obtaining a grant from the Valencian provincial council to further his studies in Rome. He was awarded the grant after submitting the work – whose theme was obligatory for all those taking part in the competition – The Shout of the Palleter (Diputación Provincial de Valencia 1884). As before, it was a historical theme relating to the Peninsular War, which in this case depicted the outbreak of the uprising in Valencia. Thanks to this work, the young painter achieved his goal of continuing his artistic studies in Rome in January 1885. At the end of the summer of that same year, and following a brief sojourn in Paris, he embarked on a journey through Italy, making coloured sketches of the places that he visited. These extant sketches confirm that he was in Pisa, Florence, Venice and Naples from the autumn of 1885 to the spring of 1886.

The sketches of his trip: the importance of colour and architectural perspective After opening on 5 August 1873, the Spanish Academy in Rome began to receive twelve grant students for three-year periods. During the first year, they were expected to remain in Rome, but as of the second they were allowed to travel to other parts of Italy, always with the prior permission of the director (Bru Romo 1971; González and Martí 1987; 88

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Casado Alcalde 1990; Reyero 1992). Interest in the Vesuvian cities, plus the remains exhibited at the National Museum of Naples, was fostered by this institution and the opportunity that it offered students to travel throughout Italy to complete their art studies. This was not only owing to the circumstances, but also because many of the academy’s directors had travelled to Pompeii and their fascination with its remains was reflected in many of their works. This was the case of Vicente Palmaroli, the director of the Spanish Academy in Rome from 1882 to 1892, who sent some students, including Enrique Simonet and Eugenio Álvarez Dumont, to copy the Pompeian frescoes (Romero Recio 2012: 72–3). In other words, the academy’s directors explicitly invited and urged grant students to journey to Naples and Pompeii to learn how to copy those works. The archaeological sites of Pompeii and Herculaneum had an impact on the works of the painters visiting them, thus contributing to their dissemination. No exception, Sorolla wandered through both copying some of the frescoes or producing sketches of some or other street or view of the ancient Roman cities, which, dated 1886, are currently housed at the Sorolla Museum in Madrid. By and large, they are rapid sketchbook impressions of aspects that caught his attention, but we know where he made them because he made a note of this on some of them. With respect to this trip, there are six extant rectangular sketchbooks, whose sheets are stitched to their spines with thread or string and bound in beige fabric-covered cardboard with pencil holders. They have been dated to the period during which Sorolla was travelling through several regions of Italy in 1886, because in one of them he himself annotated ‘Pompeii’, referring to the place that he was sketching. This same sketchbook also contains another drawing with a caption alluding to the National Museum of Naples, thus corroborating his interest not only in the archaeological sites per se, but also in the pieces that had been recovered from them and were now exhibited at the museum – in all likelihood initially at the behest of the director of the academy that had awarded him the grant and which, as already noted, expected students to visit these areas as part of their training. One of the sketches that confirms Sorolla’s visit to Pompeii is drawn with ink and pencil on laid paper, whose recto depicts in landscape format an architectural interior with four figures on the left on top of an elevated plane. Under the scene, Sorolla jotted down ‘Pompeii’ (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 10606). It is a quick sketch highlighting the oblique plane on which the four figures are standing, the characteristic lines of the Pompeian urban landscape which particularly caught the attention of artists owing to the play of perspective that enabled them to depict it in their works. A drawing of one of the exhibition rooms, which he identified as ‘Napoli. Museum’ with a handwritten note, bears witness to Sorolla’s visit to the National Museum of Naples (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12455). It is an oblique view of the doorway of a room and the wall in which it is set, with a sofa in the foreground, behind which there is a double-wing door with a lintel, one wing of which is open. Leaning against the jamb of a second door there is a male figure in profile sitting on a chair, surely a caretaker or guard. This is good evidence of a common practice: the custodians (curators) of the individual collections of the Naples Museum sold descriptions of the collections and admitted visitors. The flagstones are marked and this larger second door leads to another 89

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exhibition room on the right in the background, the only visible element of which being a rectangle, representing a window or, more probably one of the paintings that were exhibited in the building at the time. Indeed, the desire to have a national archaeological museum exclusively devoted to collections of antiques, because they were gradually occupying more of the museum’s available space, ultimately led to the transfer of the picture gallery to Capodimonte in 1957. Accordingly, in the building that currently houses the National Archaeological Museum of Naples Sorolla would have had the opportunity to view some of the paintings that were subsequently transferred to this palace, the collection thus being divided into two, as it still is. In the same vein, there are other drawings which, although Sorolla did not expressly identify them with the architectural and urban remains of the two Vesuvian cities, due to their placement in the sketchbooks and the type of structures depicted, correspond to this typology. This is the case of the sketch of what is surely a ‘Pompeian’ building (understanding the term ‘Pompeian’ with the due laxity of the period in reference to the architecture of the Vesuvian cities and, more widely, as will be shown, to all the art of the Bay of Naples, even the ‘non-Roman’ kind), in which it is possible to distinguish a colonnade with grooved shafts and Corinthian capitals and a decorated wall (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12462). The themes of the frescoes decorating the Pompeian buildings must have made a considerable impression on the painter. The appearance of both Greek and Roman classical architecture was erroneously associated with whiteness and naked stone, for the houses, temples and public buildings, among others, of the Classical Age were painted with bright colours. The artwork in Sorolla’s sketchbooks is drawn in ink and pencil, as already observed, rapid impressions of aspects that caught his attention, perhaps with an eye to using them later on in his works. But it should be stressed that in many of these sketches he noted down the colours that he observed. As to this specific sketch, in the area depicting the colonnade on the left it is possible to glimpse the word ‘red’ and below this the word ‘yellow’, indicating the colour of the frescoes. So, it is safe to claim that it is a sketch of the architecture of the ancient Campanian cities, since painting buildings of this type was customary in the Roman Age, but not, for example, in that of the Renaissance or subsequent ages in which building systems very much inspired by the Roman world would be employed.3 Similarly, in another drawing of a plinth on which two columns with grooved shafts rest the painter jotted down ‘red’ (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12470). This habit of noting down the colour of the architectural elements on black and white sketches is repeated in another of two columns with grooved shafts, whose lintel bears the word ‘gold’. Another indication surely of colour appears on the right, although it is difficult to make out (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12463). These colour descriptions have to do, as before, with the two archaeological sites, while also highlighting the interest that the polychrome architecture aroused in him during his visits to both, perhaps even more so than the architecture per se. This is evidenced by the fact that the columns are much more roughly sketched than in the previous case, it being impossible to distinguish clearly the type of capital and with only the flutes of the column on the right being visible, leaving the one on the left as a rough outline. Sorolla insisted on colour in most of his architectural sketches, in which he tended to reflect the Pompeian architecture from markedly linear perspectives. There is yet another 90

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sketch (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12491) of a column with a partially grooved shaft, on which the painter wrote ‘yellow’. It is believed that this structure might have belonged to a house, inside which it is possible to glimpse a fountain with a circular basin in a square pool in the background. It is interesting how there are colours that, in these initial years of his training, Sorolla annotated insistently on his sketches, including yellow, or gold, a colour that he would use consistently in different shades throughout his career: ochre, Naples yellow, cadmium yellow, chrome yellow, a pigment of an organic nature or yellow lacquer. Furthermore, he was also accustomed to employing a combination of several yellow pigments in his works (Juanes and Gómez 2008: 138–43). In other cases, it appears that it was the architectural structure per se or its magnificence that caught Sorolla’s attention. An example of this is one of the drawings on which he jotted down ‘baths’, featuring a large vaulted roof and a bench along the length of the decorated wall on the left (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12492). Although they have yet to be identified, assumedly he was copying an area of the women’s baths. Specifically, it may be a view from the northwest of the women’s apodyterium of the Stabian Baths in Pompeii (fourth–third century bc ), chiefly excavated in the period between 1853 and 1857, and subsequently in 1865. Sorolla reproduced the barrel vault roof, the walls with their built-in benches and the rectangular cubicles for leaving clothing. To these should

Figure 5.1 Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Women’s apodyterium of the Stabian Baths in Pompeii. Drawing inventory no. 12492. © Museo Sorolla. 91

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be added the small cold plunge pool, whose entrance can be seen in background on the left, a characteristic aspect of these women’s baths that did not have a separate frigidarium. There is also an oblique view of a round arched door opening on to a wall with mouldings (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12452). Although it is difficult to pinpoint the area where they were made or even to claim that, more than ‘Pompeian’ per se, they are ‘Pompeian in style’, the sketches falling into this category have usually been associated with parts of structures found in Pompeii or Herculaneum. Firstly, because of the classical Roman architectural style that the sketches exude, owing to the notable play of perspective, which grabbed (and still grabs) the attention of visitors, in relation to the structural elements and streets. And, secondly, due to the fact that in the painter’s bound sketchbooks they are to be found in the part devoted to his general overview of the Bay of Naples. As Romero Recio (2012: 73) observes, ‘The importance attached to Pompeii probably relegated the finds from other sites in the Vesuvian area to second place, while for many of the museum’s visitors just as everything that was exhibited there came from Pompeii, so too were all the interior decorations “Pompeian” in style.’ It was not only possible to observe Sorolla’s continued interest in architecture in his oeuvre, but years later he would also participate actively in the design of his house and gardens in Madrid, repeatedly making sketches of how he wanted them to appear (De Santa-Ana 1985: 267–75).

Coloured sketches, tracings and copies of ‘Pompeian’ decorations Sorolla’s concern for colour is exceedingly complex in some of the tracings and sketches that he made on his trip, during which his relentless urge to draw led him to reuse some of the sheets on both sides, and even to draw lines on the same sheet to separate different impressions. As to the copies made by placing tracing paper directly on top of the Pompeian decorations, there is one especially interesting one in the group labelled ‘Loose drawing by Sorolla and anonymous authors’, also with the annotation ‘Pompeii’ (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12640). In the top part, he painted part of a frieze with mythological motifs in which it is possible to distinguish a centaur and a female figure, a garland of plants and a bust front on. In the lower part there is an armoured figure in profile riding a horse raising one of its forelegs. Underneath, separated by a line, there is a frieze with waves drawn schematically and, in the top left-hand corner, another with geometric motifs. Perhaps the most striking aspect of this sketch is the existence of a colour code on the right-hand side, so as to be able to interpret the image in its full splendour. Specifically, in both the top and bottom drawings he annotated a series of symbols (crosses, diamonds, circles, etc.), next to which he added the name of the colour to which they corresponded. These symbols are distributed in different parts of the drawings so as to recreate or remember them. Neither is it a predetermined code, nor a pattern that is repeated, whereby the need for a legend on the side of each drawing, even those made on the same sheet. Since Sorolla made a note of the most representative or striking colours, before dealing with the rest, the symbols used in one drawing are not the same as those employed in another, even 92

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when they occupy the same sheet. Furthermore, he specified the colours with a fair amount of precision, differentiating ‘red’ from ‘crimson’, and clarifying that brown was really ‘coffee coloured’. Here, it can be clearly observed that he was already fully aware of the importance of tonality, which his palette would reflect throughout his career. Curiously, he then coloured this sketch, namely, he used it as a template for an oil on board (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 82) featuring the same horseman and even the same decorations sketched in colour, whose origin authors traditionally place in Pompeii or Herculaneum (De Santa-Ana 2009: 43). On the one hand, this work bears witness to how these sketches with their colour codes had a direct application, which, in the peace and quiet of his studio, Sorolla then coloured in. But, on the other, and as regards an aspect on which the accent has been placed here from the very start, this designation of ‘Pompeii’ referred more to a style than to a provenance, and that the fame of this site eclipsed the remains that travellers saw there (Romero Recio 2012). In this specific case, the painting of the horseman with the decorations in the top and bottom parts corresponds exactly to the fourth-century-bc painting of a Samnite horseman from the site of Paestum and currently housed in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. In other words, it is not a copy of a Pompeian, or even Roman, painting, but encapsulates the perception of the new discoveries that pervaded the age.

Figure 5.2 Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Samnite horseman from the site of Paestum. Drawing inventory no. 82. © Museo Sorolla.

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It is not the only colour copy of these Roman frescoes, which not only included figures, but also details of faux architectural elements. This is the case of an oil on chamfered board (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 79) of a red wall, painted using the encaustic technique, divided into rectangles with a garland on a black background on the left, plus a number of horizontal stripes with grotesques forming rinceaux (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 80). Even though it is not known whether they were copied in Pompeii, Herculaneum or the National Museum of Naples (De Santa-Ana 2009: 42), they both reflect that trip and the huge influence that the remains of the Roman cities buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius had gained. In his sketches, Sorolla was not only interested in all that was strictly related to colour, but also in the structure and form of a number of sculptures. This is the case of the verso of a drawing representing a three-quarter view of a herm formed by a bust and an estipe (pseudo-pilaster in the form of a truncated inverted pyramid) with scratches which seem to point to the existence of an inscription engraved on it (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12469). In the Roman imperial world, these sculptures characteristic of ancient Greece4 were hugely popular among the wealthier classes for decorating their houses and villas. Occasionally, they had square holes in their shoulders in which rails were inserted, for the purpose of hanging curtains indoors, or garlands. In the case of the herm sketched by Sorolla, not only the holes, but also the rail itself, are clearly visible. This drawing is of one of the portrait herms that served to pay tribute to the masters of the house, to wit, their freemen or slaves dedicated them to the genius or the iuno of the dominos or the domina (Wrede 1986: 77), whose best examples can be found in Pompeii and Herculaneum (Rodríguez Oliva 1985: 177–82), normally appearing in domestic contexts.5 This can be deduced from that profile of a bald man with protruding ears and the inscription on the front of the pedestal. In 1886, the year in which Sorolla visited the National Museum of Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum, there is evidence that several of these herms had already been discovered, which coincide with the profile that the painter drew, namely, a bald head, or one with very short hair, with protruding ears. Despite the proliferation of sculptures of this type, it warrants noting that Sorolla drew one of the most well-known pieces unearthed at the site, namely, the herm of the banker L. Caecilius Iucundus, in whose house many documents relating him to that profession were found (Regio V, Insula 1, 26). It is possible to arrive at this conclusion because not only the sketch has come down to us, but also a reproduction of the bust fixed to a pedestal which is currently housed in the Sorolla Museum (inventory no. MSM-20231). In other words, he was so fascinated by the piece that he not only sketched it, but also commissioned a copy of it for his house. Not only the sculptures among the decorative elements caught his attention, but also other small objects whose state of conservation and minute details must have surprised him. For instance, he sketched a door knocker from various perspectives, which we know belonged to the site owing to the fact that, as before, the painter jotted down ‘Pompeii’ on it (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 12485). He identified and copied these small details which he then adapted in his paintings or included in the decoration of his house, in which he took exhaustive interest. 94

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Sorolla’s house and gardens in Madrid: always present recollections of his trip to Pompeii As a result of his success in the exhibition of the Hispanic Society of America in New York in 1909 and the money that he had made, Sorolla decided to build a house with gardens for his family and himself, which would also serve as a studio and which, in the future, could be converted into a museum. This ‘domestic paradise’6 which he designed himself, and of which there are countless sketches, was not only meant for pleasure, but also as a source of inspiration for the pictures that he would paint once it had been built. Whereby the painter supervised everything down to the smallest detail, including the vegetables that would be planted, to which he would subsequently devote several paintings. In the studied spatial organization of the gardens of Sorolla’s house, sculptures played a fundamental role, because they indicated where the exits were or highlighted transit areas (Luengo Añón 2017: 115–18). Although the painter drew inspiration from a variety of sources when designing the gardens,7 the classical world would play an essential role, a place where his passion for collecting and travelling would be expressed in its purest form, organizing, deciding and establishing where everything should be placed. He participated actively in the construction of both his house and gardens in Madrid, where he included some reproductions of Pompeian pieces that he had commissioned. He also imported copies of some of the works that he had seen during his trip, as if they were souvenirs, which he used to embellish his gardens in imitation of the Pompeian villas. Therefore, Pompeii was omnipresent throughout his daily life, since these sculptures not only reminded him of his trip to the Bay of Naples, but he would also paint them from different perspectives. By the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, private gardens had not only become the subject of paintings, but places in which to work. At the time, many artists, including Manet, Monet,8 Renoir and Sorolla himself, to name but a few, liked to work in the privacy of their own gardens. Many of these painters would participate in their construction, thus creating a living and working environment in which not only to enjoy the company of family and friends, but also to paint with complete stylistic and formal freedom (Marco Mallent 2010: 271–3).9 Gardens thus became one of the most prestigious themes of modern art, on par with cafes and theatres (Llorens 2012: 74). In his gardens, Sorolla displayed reproductions of Pompeian sculptures that, as already noted, he would subsequently include in many of the pictures that he painted there. Noteworthy in this respect is the Faun, one of the universally renowned sculptures discovered in the impluvium, which lent its name to the house in which it was found (House of the Faun), one of the most luxurious second-century-bc domus in Pompeii (Regio VI, Insula 12). It represents a naked faun, advancing with arms raised and torso bent backwards, as if dancing. There is a photograph taken in c. 1908 (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 80607) in which Sorolla is chatting with a person in his studio on Miguel Ángel Street in Madrid (Díaz Pena 2015: 357). Between them there is a low, small table, 95

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Figure 5.3 Gardens of the house of Sorolla, currently the Sorolla Museum. © Isabel Rondón Caballero.

covered with papers on which the bronze reproduction of the Pompeian Faun steals the limelight. Before building his house (the modern-day museum), Sorolla had lived in rented accommodation. The last house that he rented was located on Miguel Ángel Street, to which he had moved in 1904 and which already combined living quarters, a workshop and a garden. As of 1905, given the money that he was making from his work, he purchased a plot in the same neighbourhood and began work on its design. The painter and his family moved into the modern-day Sorolla Museum in December 1911, but this reproduction of the Pompeian Faun was already in his possession when he was living in the rented house on Miguel Ángel Street in Madrid, even before it had been built. Sorolla also had a copy of the Satyr with Wineskin, discovered in the House of the Centenary in Pompeii, dated to between the end of the second and the beginning of the first century bc . It was placed on a peristyle and was an element of a Dionysian group. It is a representation of this character linked to the naked Bacchic cortege, wearing a cork oak diadem. His posture is striking, for he is bending backwards so as to pour the contents of the wineskin, which he is squeezing with his left arm, into an imaginary cup (Pons-Sorolla 2019: 75). These two sculptures, perhaps the most striking in the collection, not only formed part of the life of the Sorolla family in their gardens, but also became the central characters of some of the pictures that the artist painted there. As already observed at the beginning of this section, this is so because Sorolla, as with other modern artists at the 96

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time, painted in his gardens and depicted his gardens in his pictures, performing studies on flowers, on light and even on how that light affected the Pompeian bronzes. These two sculptures, which were originally located at the entrance from the second to the third garden, are now housed in the museum after being painstakingly restored, their place in the gardens being taken by two copies. This can also be seen in the oil on canvas entitled, The Gardens at the Sorolla Family House, painted in 1918–19 (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 01237), which offers a view of the second garden from the third, with a column and the reproduction of the Faun seen from behind in the foreground (Pons-Sorolla 2001: 522; De Santa-Ana 2002: 177).10 That same year, he painted another view of his gardens (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 01268) from a different perspective in which this separation between the gardens, with the columns and the two reproductions of the Pompeian sculptures – the Faun and the Satire with Wineskin, surrounded by the garden’s exuberant vegetation – can be seen. The light caressing the plants, bronzes and columns also allowed Sorolla to play with his palette to study its impact on them. These Pompeian works would also be reflected in the many pictures that he painted of his family in this space. This is the case of one of the last portraits that he painted of his wife Clotilde, in 1919–1920, in which she is posing next to the Fountain of the Secrets (De Santa-Ana 2002: 385). In the background there is a bed of stocks, which fascinated him so much, and the columns through which it is possible to distinguish one of the Pompeian sculptures which, although only depicted from the waist down, can be identified as the Satire with Wineskin. It can therefore be claimed that the painter’s trip to Naples and Pompeii left a lasting impression on him, which would always make itself felt in his life and his oeuvre, repeatedly appearing in both. Although it was doubtless these two works that had the greatest influence on his life and work, in the museum’s correspondence archive there is letter that Alfred Emerson sent to Sorolla (CS1695), dated 16 February 1911, in which he refers to the copies of the bronzes housed in the National Museum of Naples, cast in the workshop of M. M. Sabatino de Angelis et Fils. Of varying artistic quality, they include a rough, 14 cm-high reproduction of the Apollo Citharoedus (Ruíz Bremón 1993: 74) and the Drunken Silenus, in which the original’s lost glass cup has been replaced with one of bronze (Sorolla Museum, inventory no. 20237). In other cases, these reproductions would form part of the decoration of Sorolla’s house and gardens, acquiring prominence not only in the daily life of the painter and his family, but also in the works that he would produce over the following years.

The recreation of Pompeian ambiances in the oeuvre of Sorolla Sorolla was apparently already interested in Roman artistic scenes before his trip to Italy, judging by the picture entitled, Mirándose en la fuente (Looking at Herself in the Fountain), which he had painted in Valencia back in 1883 (Romero Recio 2012: 75). The Pompeian influence on some of his works, after having visited the site and Naples, is however undeniable. Pompeii was always present in his life and his work, as an enclave that had 97

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left a deep impression on him and which would always accompany him. But he also performed historicist reconstructions, recovering Pompeian elements in the genuine style of Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, the painter who had the greatest influence on the image of antiquity in the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century, particularly on Spanish artists (Arias Anglés and Gil Serrano 2003: 116). In 1886, now as a grant student in Rome, he painted the oil on canvas entitled, Messalina in the Arms of the Gladiator (BBVA Collection, inventory no. P00889), a scene depicting the wife of the Roman Emperor Claudius lying half-naked on a carpet placed on the ground, while offering a garland to a gladiator, who is obviously the victor because he is crowned with a laurel wreath. This representation of Messalina as an unfaithful wife – who, we have been led to believe, bedded many men (actors, gladiators, nobles, soldiers, etc.) – is one of the most hackneyed in traditional historiography. Sorolla was influenced by this vision of the empress which, rather than avoiding or questioning it, he leveraged to portray a scene replete with sensuality and eroticism. Nakedness takes centre stage under the historical-legendary excuse of ancient Rome, as was expected of a grant student at the time. The decoration is still a combination of rather undefined styles, but which rather accurately places the action in the Circus Maximus, for it is possible to glimpse the Aventine in the background. The frieze painted on a red background does not yet seem to conform to Pompeian aesthetics, the drawing being very pronounced. Additionally, there are the two Attic red-figure vases in front of the frieze, the closest being a Campanian krater which served for mixing wine with water, thus emphasizing the debauchery and dissipation with which the empress was rightly or wrongly associated. In this work, it is possible to observe an aspect that would be repeated in Sorolla’s paintings inspired by Roman and Pompeian ambiances, namely, the use of archaeological pieces found during the excavations and exhibited in museums as real objects painted in his pictorial recreations. The artist copied or reproduced the pieces that most interested him and even purchased or brought originals with which to decorate his house. In these cases, he not only based his work on direct observation, but also on photographs of reproductions of works of art which he employed as props for faithfully reflecting historical events. The helmet appearing in bottom right-hand corner of the painting was the type of piece that he would have seen during his visit to the National Museum of Naples. Indeed, there is a albumen print, dated 1880, of two Pompeian helmets exhibited at the museum. He used this photograph to produce an oil on canvas of a helmet on its own,11 as a sort of preliminary study, which would later serve as inspiration, without being an exact copy, for the one appearing in Messalina in the Arms of the Gladiator (Díaz Pena 2011: 93–4). We also have a sketch made in oil on panel of the same Greek pottery that appears in the painting. It is dated 1886 and was used in other paintings (Pons-Sorolla 2019: 69).12 As to his visit to Pompeii and the National Museum of Naples, the work Resting Bacchante (Fine Arts Museum of Valencia), a study of a nude – an obligatory exercise for grant students – with a Pompeian influence, is especially relevant. The woman is lying on a kline, wearing a floral crown and with another covering her pubis. She is resting after 98

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playing a tympanum adorned with ribbons, a tambourine which was normally used by the maenads in the entourage of Dionysus, which is lying on the left. Two colours stand out: the red kline and the yellow background, which coincide with the Pompeian colours that the painter jotted down on his architectural sketches of the ancient Roman city. In the foreground there is a smoking brazier of which only the top half is visible. Nonetheless, its three legs formed by figures with one arm outstretched and the other akimbo can be clearly discerned. It is the brazier discovered in the sacrarium of the Complesso di Giulia Felice (Regio II, Insula 4), on 15 June 1755 (National Archaeological Museum of Naples, Inventory no. 27874),13 representing three ithyphallic satyrs. A vast domus occupying the entire block at the end of the Via dell’Abbondanza, an announcement indicating that Julia Felix had started to rent rooms there, following the earthquake in 62 bc, was discovered during the archaeological excavations. In other words, she was one of the leading entrepreneurs in the Roman city.14 In Resting Bacchante, Sorolla combined Pompeian architectural elements, which were clearly distinguishable because of their colour and form, with archaeological pieces known at the time. The theme of the paintings was Roman, but they were also based on academic studies of nude poses. In this case, the adorned woman is lying on the kline in a ‘laissez faire’ posture, after having danced until exhaustion. The most striking accessory are the garlands of flowers, very much to the taste of the historicist painting heir to Alma-Tadema, but which of course were not prototypical of this type of ancient iconography. Also under the powerful influence of his visit to the Bay of Naples, Sorolla painted Bacchic Dance, an oil on wood, which is currently in a private collection, signed, dedicated and dated Rome 1887 (González and Martí 1987: 213). He yet again used the polychrome architectural elements in yellow and red that had captivated him to such an extent during his visit to Pompeii as benchmarks, while including a dedication in the shape of a Pompeian-style graffiti on the wall (Benito and Montoya 2016: 131). In front of the twocoloured column, a man and a women are dancing wildly. They appear to be in full

Figure 5.4 Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida: Resting Bacchante. @ Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia. 99

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enthusiasmós in which both have abandoned their ordinary state and have entered into communion with Bacchus. Their bodies sway and spin to the rhythm of the music that they themselves are playing, crowned with flowers, maintaining their bodies in agile movement to the point that their feet hardly touch the ground. The male figure on the left is playing the diaulos attached to his face with a ribbon. The female figure, wearing a white dress, the lower part of which is decorated, which leaves one of her shoulders uncovered and through which it is possible to glimpse her breasts in movement, is moving to the rhythm in even more gay abandon. On the ground, paved with tiles with a very pronounced perspective, Sorolla signed the work without breaking the oblique view or illusion of architectural depth. The Spanish reception of Pompeii and Herculaneum is a topic of academic interest that, on many occasions, has been set aside in favour of that of northern and European countries and the United States, which is curious to say the least considering that it was a Spanish monarch who was responsible for the first excavations and the international publication of the results. In the specific case of the painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, it is evident that, in light of the foregoing, his trip to Pompeii had a huge impact on his private life and work in which it would be present throughout his career. Despite being one of the most important international painters of the period, the love that he professed for Pompeii, which endured in his legacy, seems to have been overlooked in the history of art. Nonetheless, it is unquestionable that an important part of his production was linked to that trip and that site and that he was incapable of escaping from the Pompeian influence which led him to paint pictures with his particular pictorial style, similar to that of the works that Alma-Tadema was producing with such success. It is therefore necessary to recover this aspect of the life and oeuvre of Sorolla, insofar as it enables us to gain deeper insights into his production. Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. On the occasion of an exhibition held at the Prado Museum, Díez and Baron (2009) authored a detailed study and catalogue of his paintings, and their work forms an essential point of reference for understanding this formative period. Romero Recio (2019) mentioned that, according to the daughter of Blasco Ibáñez, Sorolla and some of his disciples painted the frescoes inspired by Pompeii on the Pompeiian terrace of his house in Malvarrosa (in this respect, see chap. 1). 3. Bernadino de Pantorba (1970: 22–31) insists on how uninterested the artist was in Renaissance art. 4. Originally very commonplace in ancient Greece, herms were placed on paths and at the entrances of markets, as apotropaic elements. They normally featured the head of the god Hermes (the Roman Mercury), the protector of travellers and traders. 5. These portrait herms were not restricted to domestic settings, but were also to be found in temples and in the funerary world, some examples having been unearthed in Pompeii (Peña Jurado, 2000). The portrait herm per se was a Roman invention (Richter 1984: 15–16; Wrede

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Joaquín Sorolla and Pompeii 1986: 75; Schröder 1993: 37). The specific type that served to pay tribute to the masters of the house, this custom then being introduced into the private sphere (Peña Jurado 2000). 6. This is how the painter called it in a letter that he sent to his wife Clotilde from Alicante on 31 December 1918 (correspondence archive of the Sorolla Family, Sorolla Museum Foundation, CFS/1942). 7. Owing to space constraints, it is impossible to offer a more detailed description of the gardens of Sorolla’s house in Madrid, although those with an interest in this topic can consult the catalogue of the exhibition Sorolla, un jardín para pintar (2018). 8. Monet presented himself to his contemporaries as a great garden painter, thus highlighting the prestige of the garden theme as an essential part of modern art. On the historiographical debate on the ‘garden painter’, see Beamer and Willsdon (2016). 9. There are a reasonable number of pictures painted in the privacy of the gardens of Sorolla’s mentor, Ignacio Pinazo in Godella (Valencia) and those of Sorolla himself in Madrid. 10. Although it does not come from Pompeii, the Roman sculpture of the figure wearing a toga also occupied a central place in this area of the house, thus bearing witness to the painter’s penchant for Roman pieces, of which he owned originals and copies. 11. An oil on canvas study of the helmet has also come down to us (Inv. Sorolla Museum 155; P 652; BPS 555). See Pons-Sorolla (2019: 69). 12. In this painting, Sorolla went to great lengths to create the right atmosphere, which is evidenced by the ‘colour notes’ housed in the Sorolla Museum (Delgado Bellón and Luca de Tena, 2020: 59–60). This krater has been identified by Fenoll and Robles (2021: 259). 13. The NW area was excavated between 1755 and 1777; the excavations were then continued between 1851 and 1852; and between 1948 and 1954 the perimeter as a whole was unearthed (Parslow 1995: 115–32). 14. The announcement that Julia Felix was renting baths, shops and dining rooms in her property to distinguished people, indicated that the interested parties should contact her (CIL IV, 1136). See D’Ambra (2012: 406–8).

References Arias Anglés, E. and Gil Serrano, A. (2003), ‘Los últimos días de Pompeya de Lord Lytton y la pintura Pompeyista española’, Goya: Revista de arte, 293: 115–23. Beamer, R. and Willsdon C. A. P. (2016), ‘Chronologie’, in A. Dumas and W. H. Robinson (dirs), Painting the Modern Garden: Monet to Matisse, London: Royal Academy of Arts. Benito, E. A. and Montoya, R. (2016), ‘Pompeya imaginada. La pintura española de tema pompeyano de los siglos XVIII y XIX’, in M. Calderón, S. España-Chamorro and E. Benito, Estudios Arqueológicos del Área Vesubiana II, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports, 125–35. Bru Romo, M. (1971), La Academia Española de Bellas Artes de Roma (1873–1914), Madrid: Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores. Casado Alcalde, E. (1990), Pintores de la Academia de Roma. La primera promoción, Barcelona: Dominic Currin. D’Ambra, E. (2012), ‘Women in the Bay of Naples’, in S. L. James and S. Dillon, A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, Chichester: Blackwell Publishing, 400–13. De Santa-Ana, F. (1985), ‘¿Sorolla arquitecto?’, Archivo español de Arte, 58–231: 267–75. De Santa-Ana, F. (1999), ‘Sorolla y el jardín de su casa madrileña’, Jardines de España (1870–1936), Madrid: Fundación Cultural Mapfre, 71–90.

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts De Santa-Ana, F. (2002), Museo Sorolla. Catálogo de Pintura, Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. De Santa-Ana, F. (2007), La Casa Sorolla. Dibujos, Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura. De Santa-Ana, F. (2009), Catálogo de pintura del Museo Sorolla, Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura. Demange, Ch. (2004), El dos de mayo: mito y fiesta nacional, 1808–1958, Madrid: Marcial Pons. Delgado Bellón, L. and Luca de Tena, C. (2020), Sorolla femenino plural, Madrid: El Viso. Díaz Pena, R. (2011), Sorolla y la fotografía, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos: Madrid (Tesis Doctoral Inédita). Díaz Pena, R. (2015), La colección de fotografía antigua del Museo Sorolla, Madrid: Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte. Díez, J. L. (2015), Pintura del Siglo XIX en el Museo del Prado. Catálogo general, Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado. Díez, J. L. and Baron, J. (2009), Joaquín Sorolla 1863–1923, Madrid: Museo Nacional del Prado. Fenoll Cascales, J. and Robles Moreno, J. (2021), ‘Tras los pasos de Sorolla en Roma. La identificación de una cratera griega en su pintura’, Ars Longa. Cuadernos de Arte, 2021. González, C. and Martí, M. (1987), Pintores españoles en Roma (1850–1900), Barcelona: Tusquets. Hunker, J. ed. (1909), Eight essays on Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida, Nueva York: The Hispanic Society of America. Juanes, D. and Gómez, M. L. (2008), ‘La paleta de Sorolla a través de algunas pinturas analizadas de museos y colecciones’, Bienes culturales: revista del Instituto de Patrimonio Histórico Español 8: 133–46. Lorente Sorolla, V. and Menéndez Robles, M. L. (2006), Sorolla y la otra imagen en la colección de fotografía antigua del Museo Sorolla. Llorens, T. (2012), ‘Jardines últimos’, in T. Llorens et. al., Sorolla jardines de luz, Madrid: El Viso, 71–9. López Fernández, M. (2017a), ‘Sorolla y los pintores jardineros de su generación’, in Sorolla, un jardín para pintar, Madrid: El Viso, 20–9. López Fernández, M. (2017b), ‘Un jardín en cuatro actos’, in Sorolla, un jardín para pintar, Madrid: El Viso, 64–113. Luengo Añón, A. (2017), ‘Ejes, perspectivas y elementos’, in Sorolla, un jardín para pintar, Madrid: El Viso, 114–37. Marco Mallent, M. (2004), Del jardín construido al jardín pintado. Aproximación a la temática del jardín en la pintura de Pinazo, Sorolla y Benlliure, Valencia: Universitat Politècnica de València. Marco Mallet, M. (2010), ‘Jardines pintados. La imagen de la naturaleza recreada’, Studium: Revista de humanidades, 16: 249–74. Muñoz, A. (1998), Joaquín Sorolla. Viajero a la luz, Valencia, Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo. Orihuela, M. (1991), ‘El Prado disperso. Cuadros depositados en Gerona, LLagostera, Olot, Figueras, Lérida, Poblet, Mataró, Sitges, Sabadell y Villanueva y Geltrú’, Boletín del Museo del Prado, XII (30): 89–141. Ossorio y Bernard, M. (1883–4), Galería biográfica de artistas españoles del siglo XIX, Madrid, Imprenta de Moreno y Rojas. Pantorba, B. de (1970), La vida y obra de Joaquín Sorolla, Madrid, Extensa. Parslow, C. C. (1995), ‘Additional Documents Illustrating the Bourbon Excavations of the “Praedia Iuliae Felicis” in Pompeii’, Rivista Di Studi Pompeiani, 7: 115–32. Peña Jurado, A. (2000), ‘Las hermas en el mundo clásico: estado actual de la cuestión’, Anales de Arqueología Cordobesa, 11: 203–16. Pons-Sorolla, B. (2001), Joaquín Sorolla. Vida y obra, Madrid, Fundación de Apoyo a la Historia del Arte Hispánico. Pons-Sorolla, B. (2017), ‘Un jardín para vivir, un jardín para pintar’, in Sorolla, un jardín para pintar, Madrid: El Viso, 48–63. 102

Joaquín Sorolla and Pompeii Pons-Sorolla, B. (2019), Sorolla. Catálogo razonado: colección de pinturas del Museo Sorolla, Madrid: El Viso. Praz, M. (1982), Gusto Neoclásico, Barcelona: Gustavo Gili. Reyero Hermosilla, Carlos (1992), Roma y el ideal académico la pintura en la Academia Española de Roma, 1873–1903, Madrid: Consejería de Educación y Cultura. Richter, G. M. A. (1984), The Portraits of the Greeks, Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936), Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Romero Recio, M. (2019), ‘La Antigüedad romana vista por dos escritores anticlericales: Carmen de Burgos y Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’, Veleia, 36, doi: https://doi.org/10.1387/veleia.20752: 73–94. Rodríguez Oliva, P. (1985), ‘Un nuevo testimonio de los Hermes-retratos de la Baetica: la pilastra hermaica de Osqua (Málaga)’, Baetica, Anejos V: 165–90. Ruíz Bremón, M. (1993), Catálogo de escultura. Museo Sorolla, Madrid: Ministerio de Cultura. Schröder, S. F. (1993), Catálogo de la escultura clásica del Museo del Prado. Retratos, Madrid: Museo del Prado. Wrede, H. (1986), Die antike Herme, Mainz: P. von Zabern. Wrede, H. (1987), ‘Die spätantike Herme’, JbAChr, 30: 118–48.

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CHAPTER 6 THE REFLECTION OF THE ANCIENT WORLD IN PICTORIAL SCENES: THE QUEST FOR THE POMPEIAN ATMOSPHERE IN SPANISH COSTUMBRIST PAINTINGS 1 María Martín de Vidales García

The discovery of the cities buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius transformed the conception of what had been hitherto understood as the ancient world, while its novelty was constantly reflected in European artistic circles. Accordingly, in several European countries – including Spain, of course – there are many examples of works of art inspired by Pompeii and Herculaneum, reproducing the classical models disseminated through the finds at the two Campanian sites. The aesthetic elements and principles that had been identified in the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum were regularly used with a view to enriching the different artistic expressions at the time. From the second half of the eighteenth century and, above all, throughout the following one, Pompeian motifs became commonplace in Spanish art. The interest aroused by such an archaeological discovery characterized and drove the development of Spanish neoclassicism, which had been late in appearing in comparison to other European countries. Indeed, so as to establish this stylistic current it was essential for the country to assume an enlightened cultural and economic policy, which was achieved to a great extent thanks to King Charles III. One of the most important initiatives in this respect was the king’s promotion of the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando, whose creation had been postponed until 1744, when its preparatory board was created (García Melero 1998: 20). Its activity was essential for the training of artists, for it became the main vehicle through which they assimilated neoclassicism (García Sánchez 2016). On the other hand, an attempt was made to collect the largest number of plaster casts of well-known ancient sculptures so as to serve as models for the artists studying there. These included the plaster casts in the Park of the Buen Retiro, which Charles III had received from Pompeii and Herculaneum and which he had decided to donate to the academy in 1776 (Alonso Rodríguez 2016). These plaster casts, together with others that were gradually acquired, formed the sculpture gallery of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Luzón Nogué 2010: 277 ff.).2 Secondly, the opportunity that the academy offered its students to compete for a grant in the Urbs Aeterna played an essential role. It was as of the end of the eighteenth century that this grant was prolonged so as include sojourns in Sicily and Naples. As grant students in Rome, young Spanish artists thus had the chance to travel to southern Italy, for among all the expressions relating to the classical world included in the itinerary of this ‘Grand Tour’, the Vesuvian sites certainly stood out. 105

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It was these two aspects, namely, the gallery of plaster casts of classical sculptures and the experience that some Spanish artists gained in Italy, that were mostly responsible for that budding interest in the ancient world in artistic circles, which, moreover, coincided with the impact that the discoveries in Pompeii were having at the time. In a complementary manner, it should be borne in mind that, after ascending to the Spanish throne, Charles III founded the Royal Porcelain Factory of the Buen Retiro, while ordering the extension of the Neapolitan factory at Capodimonte (Naples). As a result, all the most representative models of Pompeian decorative art began to arrive in Madrid (Romero Recio 2016: 55). In turn, these models were disseminated in different publications on the discoveries that were being made in the excavations and which circulated in several countries. Travellers arriving in Campania with an eye to visiting the famous cities were responsible for some of these publications, although it was no easy task. They had to comply with the provisions established by Carlos III who, jealous of the treasure under his custody, established strict rules for those visiting the two archaeological sites. Nonetheless, several unofficial works on the novel excavations – including Le notizie del memorabile scoprimento dell’antica città di Ercolano vicina a Napoli (Anton Francesco Gori 1748), Descrizione delle prime scoperte dell’antica città di Ercolano ritrovata vicino a Portici (Marcello Venuti 1749), Memoirs concerning Herculaneum, the subterranean city, lately discovered at the foot of Mount Vesuvius (William Fordyce 1750), Lettres sur les peintures d’ Herculaneum (1751) and Observations sur les antiquités de la Ville d’ Herculanum (1754) (Charles Nicolas Cochin, 1751–1754) and, lastly, Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques et romaines (Anne-ClaudePhilippe de Tubière, Comte de Caylus, 1752–67) – were successfully published. These works were supplemented by information that led to the publication of the famous book known as the Antichità di Ercolano Esposte (D’Alconzo 2015: 15). Thenceforth, accounts of the excavations became increasingly more frequent. After having visited the Villa of Cicero in 1764, Johann Joachim Winckelmann disseminated news about these excavations in his correspondence. Specifically, he expressed his opinion on some of the frescoes, like the Dancing Maenad from the House of Naviglio, as well as on the four female dancers and the group of centaurs from the Villa of Cicero, in a letter that he wrote to the Honourable Heinrich Count von Brühl in 1762: The most beautiful figures represent female dancers and centaurs, each about a Spanne long, on a black ground. The work of a great master, they are as fleeting as a thought and as beautiful as if they were drawn by the Graces. Next come two pieces that belonged together, with slightly larger figures. On one of them a young satyr tries to kiss a girl, and on the other an old satyr is in love with a hermaphrodite. Nothing more voluptuous can be imagined, and nothing could be painted more beautifully. Otherwise, a few still-lives are unsurpassable for the genre. Winckelmann 2011: 83 On the other hand, many of the drawings and watercolours reproducing the archaeological remains were effectively disseminated by publishing them as engravings. 106

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Furthermore, the control measures were gradually relaxed and, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, artists were now permitted to draw some of the areas that had already been excavated, provided that they did not indicate the exact measurements of what they were representing (Romero Recio 2012: 59). So, it was impossible to prevent the fame of the discoveries from spreading, thus promoting the definition of a new artistic taste, in the frame of neoclassicism, in which recourse was had to the most representative motifs, compositions, styles and themes of the ancient Campanian cities as regards architecture, frescoes, sculptures and other artistic expressions. Called ‘Pompeianism’, it was swiftly and successfully disseminated in Spain. It is possible to determine that it was the artists themselves who were directly responsible for promoting this new stylistic current, for they resorted to the Pompeian influence in their works (Barón 2007: 30). One of the most important aspects that they had in common was the fact that they had all been grant students in Rome, which had allowed them to establish a direct link with antiquity and, more specifically, with Pompeii.3 The painters awarded grants by the Spanish Academy in Rome were obliged to copy classical works of art as assignments for evaluating their progress. This practice was associated with the idea of the perfectionism that they were supposed to acquire thanks to their education. The classical works that they copied included examples from Pompeii, such as the copy that Eugenio Álvarez Dumont made of the fresco Telephus Suckled by a Deer and that which Simonet Lombardo made of the fresco Bacchus and Ariadne (Casado Alcalde 1992: 44). In the mid-eighteenth century, one of the most prominent was José del Castillo who travelled to Rome in 1751, thanks the patronage of D. José Carvajal y Lancaster (Morales y Marín 1994). After spending several years in Italy, he returned to Madrid where he started to work at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara. He produced many designs for tapestry cartoons, including compositions of a markedly Pompeian style. The most outstanding include the Allegories of Painting, Architecture, Fame, Music, Astronomy and Arithmetic, painted as cartoons that were destined to decorate the boudoir of the Princess of Asturias in the Royal Palace of El Pardo (c. 1775, Museum of El Prado. La arquitectura y la música on loan to the Supreme Court).4 He also produced several oil paintings depicting the seasons, featuring rich Pompeian adornments, like, for example Adorno pompeyano: el Invierno (Pompeian Adornment: Winter) (1785–90, Museum of El Prado, on loan to the National Archaeological Museum). Although two of his most noteworthy works were two oils on canvas, painted in 1776, portraying two of the female dancers from the Villa of Cicero (Museum of El Prado, on loan to the Supreme Court). One of them corresponds to the figure appearing in Plate XXIII of Book I of the Antichità, while the other resembles the figure appearing in Plate XXIV of the same book. These female dancers, known as the ‘danzatrici’, appear in a series of frescoes found in Pompeii in what has been called the Villa of Cicero, one of the first to be excavated in 1748. They can be described as a series of female figures with a similar composition, insofar as all seem to be floating, each one accompanied by a different attribute. Their dynamism, which is evidenced by the attitude of their bodies and their flowing robes, justifies their relationship with a rather more frantic type of dancing, to wit, that of the 107

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bacchantes or maenads, whereby their name. Owing to the fact that they were included in the Antichità, they rapidly gained fame, becoming one of the most popular Pompeian motifs in Europe.5 In Spain, the female dancers from the Villa de Cicero can be habitually found in the decorative programmes of many buildings, especially as of the second half of the nineteenth century. In other words, the ‘danzatrice’, along with the rest of the motifs from the villa, represented the Pompeian style in the country. In several works, Romero Recio (2016, 2017) has analysed this classical pictorial decoration, stressing the idea that Pompeii and Herculaneum had become a direct source of inspiration for artists at the time. The most well-known examples are perhaps the decorative programmes of the ‘Houses’ of Charles IV. On the one hand, in the Prince’s House in El Escorial, designed by Juan de Villanueva, mention should go to the decoration of the vaulted ceiling of the Hall of the Tower, in addition to the Pompeian Room in the palace per se, in which there was a copy of the pair of dancers appearing in Plate XVII of Book I of the Antichità and the figure depicted in Plate XXII of the same book (Jordán de Urríes 2006). On the other, in the House of the Labrador in the grounds of the Palace of Aranjuez the decoration plays an essential role, above all in rooms like the Ball Room whose walls are entirely covered with Pompeian motifs, including the female maenads and the acrobatic satyrs from the Villa of Cicero (Romero Recio 2017: 77). This type of decoration was also employed in buildings belonging to royal families and aristocrats, in an attempt to adapt them to the current European fashion. In Madrid there are other important examples like the decoration of the Navy Headquarters and the Naval Museum, which belonged to the former office of Godoy in the Palace of the Marquis of Grimaldi or the State Secretaries’ Palace in the Plaza de la Marina, the Pompeian Room and the Ball Room in the Palace of Santoña, the Don Quijote Room in the Palace of Buenavista, the Casa de las Alhajas (Jewel House), whose main hall was decorated with many Pompeian motifs, including the female dancers, the Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain, known as the Palace of the Marquis of Cuba, and the Palace of Linares, currently the House of America. However, this decorative trend was not exclusive to the capital, for there are examples in other Spanish provinces, such as the Theatre of Saragossa, decorated by Bernardino Montañés, the Royal Casino of Murcia (whose decorative programme is mentioned by Mirella Romero Recio in Chapter 1), the Palace of Pedralbes in Barcelona and the Royal Water Closet in the City Hall of Segovia. In light of these examples, it can be claimed that the models corresponding to the Villa of Cicero, particularly the representation of the dancing maenads, were motifs that gradually became more commonplace in Spanish decorative programmes. These models were normally respected, literally copying the figure or motif in question and without including any variations on the theme; although, on certain occasions, artists interpreted them, using the same compositional schemes, but with more specific contributions, like, for example, attributes, as can be observed in the decoration of the doors of the Pompeian Gallery in the Palace of Linares and in that of the ceiling of Godoy’s office, where the female figures are based on the dancing maenads from Pompeii, but with attributes relating each one of them to a sign of the zodiac (Morales y Marín 1994). 108

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Nevertheless, the Pompeian dancers did not only appear in the murals of buildings, but were also employed as a motif in other artistic expressions like painting. For the decoration of the Queen’s Casino, José de Madrazo and Juan Antonio Ribera y Fernández devised a series of allegories alluding to the passing of time: the series of the hours and that of the seasons. Ribera painted the Allegories of Dawn, Night, Autumn and Summer, while Madrazo depicted the Allegories of Midday, Afternoon, Winter and Spring (c. 1819, Museum of El Prado).6 The compositional scheme of the allegories is similar in all the paintings, although the specific technique of both artists can be perfectly distinguished, Ribera’s sensitivity being clearly expressed in a neoclassical and stylized execution. The allegories are depicted by females figures in apparently classical attire, accompanied by an attribute that differentiates each one from the rest and associates each one with the meaning that it is meant to convey. The composition is therefore very similar to that of the dancers of the ancient Campanian cities. The figures seem to be floating and to create the sensation of movement, while their robes reinforce the work’s dynamism and link it in a more direct fashion to antiquity, due to the way in which they envelop their bodies. Throughout the nineteenth century there were other Spanish artists whose works evinced their interest in antiquity, inasmuch as they depicted Roman scenes related, in a way, to Pompeii and Herculaneum. The painter Alejo Vera y Estaca, who had had a hand in the decoration of the Palace of Santoña, was one of the artists who produced works of this kind, like, for example, Una tienda de joyas en Pompeya (A Jeweller’s Shop in Pompeii) (1871, whereabouts unknown), in which a group of women are purchasing jewellery in a shop in the Vesuvian city. In this work, the artist expressed the social distinctions which, to his mind, were representative of Pompeii and which coincided with the characterization of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie. Hence the need to represent daily scenes in which it was possible to glimpse Roman opulence. In 1875, he also produced another work entitled, Una Vestal (A Vestal) (Museum of El Prado, on loan to the National Royal Academy of Pharmaceutics), portraying a women under that guise. In contrast to the highlighted female figure in the foreground, the rest of the room, representing the inside of a Roman domus possibly inspired by Pompeii, is in the shadows. In 1884, the artist Maximino Peña Muñoz produced a painting on the same theme, Vestal romana cuidando el fuego sagrado (A Roman Vestal Attending to the Sacred Fire) (Figure 6.1, private collection), although on this occasion the space is represented more clearly and it is possible to make out the Pompeian-style decoration on the wall (Cerrillo Rubio 1993). On the other hand, Vera y Estaca also produced works unrelated to antiquity in which he used Pompeian motifs. An example of this is the painting St Cecilia and St Valerian (1866, Museum of El Prado), in which the walls delimit the interior in which the scene takes places, decorated according to the initial style of Pompeian frescoes employing their most frequent colours, namely, red, copper and black. In addition, there are decorative elements on the walls themselves, specifically animals and candelabras that stress even more its relationship with Pompeii. For his part, the painter Eduardo Rosales Gallinas included classical decorative elements, inspired by Pompeii, on the pillar located behind the group of women in the work entitled, Stigmatization of St Catherine of Siena (1862, Museum of El Prado). Rosales had completed a stay in Italy 109

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Figure 6.1 Maximino Peña Muñoz: Drawing of the work Vestal romana cuidando el fuego sagrado. Image held in the Biblioteca Nacional de España collection.

without a grant, which he funded with the proceeds of his first important work García Aznar, V Count of Aragon (1857, Museum of El Prado), whereby his oeuvre often contained classical elements (El siglo XIX en el Prado 2007: 486). Vera y Estaca also painted pictures of imaginary architectural elements from the city of Pompeii, representing above all interiors alluding to different styles of painting.7 Paintings of this type were also common in Europe at the time. For instance, the French artist Felix Duban painted pictures of imaginary architecture based on that of Pompeii, in which he drew inspiration from the archaeological remains, albeit depicting the spaces without respecting their original layout. One such work is the pencil and watercolour entitled, Architectural Fantasy in the Style of Pompeii (1856, Museum of Orsay), which portrays typically Roman furniture and utensils, plus the most common architectural 110

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elements of the period, such as Corinthian columns. Furthermore, emphasis is placed on one of the walls of the room, painted with a fresco featuring a female figure modelled on the dancing maenads from the Villa of Cicero. Mention should also go to another of the works of Vera y Estaca, A Pompeian Lady in Her Boudoir, which is only known to us thanks to an engraving published in the Ilustración española y americana (22 August 1877: 121), for the original has since been lost (Romero Recio 2012: 77–8). It represents six figures in a classical-style room. The main character is seated, the light falling on her highlighting her presence and illuminating the simple tunic covering her body. The rest of the figures surrounding her form a sort of cortege attending on her while she is at her ablutions. The placement of the dressing table has been related to that of Julia, the main character in Edward BulwerLytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (Arias Anglés and Gil Serrano 2003). There is a young woman playing the lyre who can be identified as the Muse Erato, in light of the sculpture of Cupid with bow on a pedestal beside her. The compositional scheme of the Muse appears to have been borrowed from that which had been used for representing the Erato in the sculpture collection of Christina of Sweden, as with the attire worn by the same character. These sculptures had been drawn by Maffei, before being included in Bernard de Montfaucon’s edition of the work L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures (1719) (Plate LVII), along with a brief summary of the Muse, highlighting the figure of Cupid (De Montfaucon 1722: 112). Vera y Estaca was certainly familiar with this book, due to the importance that it acquired in the dissemination of European antiquity, and, therefore, with classical elements. The painting seems to represent a typical scene in a nineteenth-century middle-class home, although the most striking aspect is the Pompeian-style decoration of the space, the same style that had been used in the interiors of the aforementioned buildings in Spain. The artist even included two Pompeian frescoes. The one on the right reproduces Plate XV of Book I of the Antichità, to wit, a faun trying to kiss a bacchante who is lying on the ground, while the subject of the other cannot be clearly identified. As to compositions of this type based on the toilette of Roman ladies, it should be recalled that they were commonplace throughout the nineteenth century. The scene usually took place in an interior which was depicted following the criteria of Pompeian architecture. In around 1895, Juan Jiménez Martín painted a picture on a similar theme. His A Roman Lady at Her Dressing Table portrays the toilette of an upper-class lady who is accompanied by a group of maids (Museum de El Prado, on loan to the Congress of Deputies). The artist resorted to a compositional scheme similar to that used to represent the toilette of Diana, with the goddess in the centre surrounded by nymphs waiting on her. One of the maids is combing her hair, another is bringing her food, another is holding her robes and, in the background, another three are holding musical instruments waiting for the sign to begin to entertain their mistress. The attire of all the figures denotes their high social status and, in this case, hardly any part of their bodies is left uncovered in a highly decorous scene. The room’s architecture and decoration are characteristically Roman. Specifically, two Pompeian frescoes can be distinguished on 111

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the main wall. On the one hand, one of the dancing maenads from the Villa of Cicero, represented in Plate XVIII of Book I of the Antichità and, on the other, another Roman fresco depicting three maenads in movement (De la Puente 1989: 21). As with the painting by Vera y Estaca, this scene is borrowed from Lytton’s book, alluding to the moment when Nydia visits Julia in her private rooms (Arias Anglés and Gil Serrano 2003). Another of the dancing maenads from the Villa of Cicero, specifically the one appearing in Plate XIX of Book I of the Antichità, appears as a decorative motif in the work that Manuel Ramírez Ibáñez produced during his first year as a grant student in Rome, which won him an honorary mention (Roma y el ideal académico 1992: 108). It was a composition in this style that would acquire huge importance in nineteenthcentury Spanish painting. Baño pompeyano (Pompeian Bath) (1880, Museum of El Prado, on loan to the Fine Arts Museum of Badajoz) depicts two Roman women sharing this intimate space. The atmosphere reflected by the artist conveys a sensation of tranquillity. The women are naked, with only a sort of transparent fabric covering their pubis, which gives them even more warmth. The light enhances the work’s foreground in which the two women are sitting or reclining at the edge of what is assumedly the baths per se; while in the darker background it is possible to glimpse Pompeian-style architecture, a sensation which is reinforced by the representation of a female dancer on the wall. At an international level, the baths or thermae theme was fairly popular. For example, only two years before Domenico Morelli had painted a similar picture entitled, The Baths of Pompeii (1861, International Balzan Foundation). Other similar works include Théodore Chassérieau’s Il Tepidarium (1853, Museum of Orsay), Alessandro Pigna’s Frigidarium (1882, Modern Art Gallery of Rome) and Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s A Favourite Custom (1909) (Ceballos-Hernansanz 2016). However, not only the dancing maenads from the Villa of Cicero decorated the ancient interiors represented at the time, for certain artists also resorted to other Pompeian frescoes. For instance, Agustín Salinas Teruel produced the work Ofrenda a los lares (An Offering to the Lares) (1884, private collection) while in Rome with a grant, this time awarded by the provincial government of Saragossa (González and Martí 1996). In the painting, a Roman women is performing an offering before a bronze sculpture on a pedestal. The room in which the scene is played out is painted red, characteristic of Pompeii, while on the wall to the left there is also a Pompeian fresco depicting Ares and Aphrodite, discovered in the House of the Wedding of Hercules, also known as the House of Mars and Venus. The influence of Pompeii on Spanish painting can also be appreciated in other aspects. Artists portrayed figures in what they believed to be Pompeian settings. Decorative elements served as a tool that allowed them to refer directly to the site, but they did not always resort to them. When taking a closer look at the representation of the women appearing in the works analysed above, their high social status stands out. More than Roman women, those appearing in a sensual setting appear to be nineteenth-century ladies, while, in contrast, those devoting their time to ablutions or pleasure seem to belong to the upper classes, in scenes whose many details coincide: music, flowers, incense, warm ambiences and so forth. 112

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Furthermore, the depictions of women extol their beauty; the body, the toilette and the canons inherent to the nineteenth century are all present in these works. Under these premises there are works in which the Pompeian ambience is recreated, but this only serves as a pretext to represent the female body. In 1876, Casto Plasencia y Maestro painted the picture Motivo decorativo: Ninfa de las mariposas o escena pompeyana (Decorative Motif: Nymph of the Butterflies or a Pompeian Scene) (Figure 6.2). It is a rough draft that he made for the picture entitled, Game of Love, which he dispatched as his second work when he was a grant student in Rome. Resorting to the iconographic scheme of the recumbent or reclining Venus, appearing in the sixteenth century, it portrays a young woman with a naked torso, the rest of whose body is covered with a robe. Reclining on a divan, she is observing a butterfly in her hand. Above her legs there is a second figure, a boy or young man who is associated with the representation of Cupid and who is amusing himself by making soap bubbles. Not only the tripod in the foreground relates the scene to Pompeii, but also the painting’s execution in which the colour and pencil strokes employed to depict the two figures adjust to the Pompeian style characteristic of the nineteenth century (Gómez Dieste 2003: 364). The artist reflected all the sensuality of the female body – rather banal in the composition – thus enhancing the sexual connotations of the scene. Germán Hernández Amores chose a similar composition for Pompeyana después del baño (A Pompeian Woman after Bathing) (Figure 6.3, 1881, whereabouts unknown). A naked woman is reclining on some cushions, with her back to the observer, recalling the

Figure 6.2 Casto Plasencia y Maestro, Motivo decorativo: Ninfa de las mariposas o escena pompeyana. © Museo de Zaragoza. Photo Eduardo González Bayod.

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Figure 6.3 Germán Hernández Amores, photograph of the work Pompeyana después del Baño. © J. Laurent y Cía. Archivo Ruiz Vernacci, Instituto del Patrimonio Cultural de España, Madrid, Ministerio de Cultura y Deporte.

composition of Ingres’ Grande Odalisque (1814, Museum of the Louvre), a work that surely served as inspiration. Nevertheless, there are some differences, for Amores only shows the profile of her face, while Ingres’ odalisque has a three-quarter profile and is actually looking at the beholder. Amores had travelled to Paris in 1849 and during his stay there had the opportunity to assimilate the style of great painters like David and Ingres (Páez Burruezo 1995). On the other hand, the composition’s setting is replete with elements referring to antiquity, like, for example, the small amphora that the woman is holding in her hand. Furthermore, the relationship with Pompeii can also be observed in the decoration of the room’s wall, on which it is possible to distinguish a sea monster, a characteristic Pompeian decorative motif, and also in other elements such as the brazier in the centre of the painting. The work Escena clásica (A Classical Scene) (private collection) representing two women, painted by Francisco Masriera y Manovens in 1902, is of the same style. One of the women is lying face down on a divan, listening to the music that her companion is playing. However, she has an empty gaze and her features reflect concern or, perhaps, merely boredom. The scene is rounded off by decorative elements hinting at the ancient world, which include a tripod that yet again relates this work to Pompeii. It was not necessary, however, to represent intimate scenes to portray the female body, as shown by Germán Hernández Amores when depicting the naked body of a woman in his picture Esclava de Guerra (A Slave of War) (1884, Museum of El Prado). Nor were they necessary to represent female figures in relaxed attitudes and without respecting the decorum governing female behaviour. In 1882, Juan Luna y Novicio, who had been born 114

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in the Philippines, but was trained in Spanish artistic circles as a disciple of Vera y Estaca, who he accompanied to Rome, produced the work The Roman Ladies (private collection). This scene represents two young Roman women, resting on a sort of podium or stairs, enjoying a moment of relaxation. One of the shoulders of the woman leaning against the wall is bare, while her companion, lying on the ground, is leaning on the former’s lap exhibiting a deep cleavage. The composition certainly has a sensual air about it, for they are resting on the street in attitudes in which they do not appear to be in control of their bodies, but have let themselves be carried away by the pleasure of the moment. Likewise, the Pompeian style, which had been developed in the nineteenth century, can be observed in the scene through the use of colour, the body language of the two women, the treatment of their robes and the incorporation of classical elements. In 1898, Luna y Novicio painted another picture featuring the same style, namely, Figura femenina (A Female Figure) (Víctor Balaguer Library Museum). In this work, a young women crowned with a wreath, which gives her a classical air, is sitting on some steps next to a jar with classical motifs. The figure that Francisco Pradilla Ortiz depicted in the work A Boy Playing the Flute (1880, whereabouts unknown) is also wearing a headdress, this time an ivy wreath which, together with the red background, brings to mind the Classical Age and, more specifically, the well-known Pompeian walls painted that colour. The centre of attention are the facial features of the boy, whose cheeks are puffed out after drawing in air to play the aulos or double-reed pipe. Alma-Tadema had already represented this instrument in his work Pompeian Scene or The Siesta (1868, Museum of El Prado), as with Arcadio mas Fondevila in his Painting of a Pompeian Child (1879, National Museum of Catalonia). Pompeian-style works of art also depicted love scenes. Ulpiano Checa, who had stood out for his The Last Days of Pompeii (1900), a highly intense and aggressive work, produced others belonging to this genre, including episodes in which young Pompeians express their love, as can be seen in Two Lovers of Pompeii (1890) and Ancient Flirting (1893), both housed in the Ulpiano Checa Museum. Both works also portray Pompeian exteriors and interiors, for Ulpiano Checa did not only represent historical themes, but also explored other genres, like costumbrist and portrait painting, through the exaltation of painting and colour (Nieto Alcaide 2007: 17; Benito García 2019). The models of Pompeian frescoes were a resource employed by artists even in the twentieth century. Indeed, this tendency can be observed in the oeuvre of Pablo Picasso. The Spaniard was in Paris when he received an invitation to work for Serge Diaghilev’s ‘Ballets Russes’, for which he would design the costumes and sets for several productions, including the ballet Parade (1917). His participation in this ballet marked a turning point in the development of the avant-gardes. Involving three groups of circus artists, Parade was conceived as a satire on the entertainment industry and its companies. Nevertheless, it is possible to observe a certain relationship with the ancient world. The group of people involved in this ballet met in Italy with the aim of preparing it, for which reason they had the opportunity to visit cities that would influence their perspective, including Rome, Naples (Romano 2017: 201–2) and, more importantly for 115

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the issue at hand, Pompeii. Besides the famous photo of Pablo Picasso and Leonide Massine taken among the ruins, specifically the House of Marcus Lucretius in March 1917, the importance of their visits to the site lay, above all, in the direct relationship that this experience allowed Picasso to establish with the ancient world and which he subsequently expressed in his works. An analysis of Picasso’s designs for the ballet reveals references to Neapolitan theatre and traditional culture, the production of nativity scenes and the puppet shows that he would have seen on the streets of Naples, and even to African civilizations (Romano 2017: 203–6). There are also some noteworthy references to the Pompeian frescoes in the Spanish painter’s oeuvre. For example, the pencil and watercolour sketch on which the design of the costume of the female acrobat appearing in the ballet was based (1917, Picasso Museum, Paris) allows for drawing parallels with the compositional scheme of the female dancer in Plate XXII of Book I of the Antichità. The figure is floating above the ground, striking the same attitude as in the classical fresco. Without a shadow of doubt, Picasso’s relationship with Pompeii can also be directly observed in the drop-curtain of Darius Milhaud’s ballet Le Train Bleu, depicting his Two Women Running on the Beach (1924, Victoria and Albert Museum, London). Inspired by the bacchantes, it has the same dynamic character, circumventing the rules, as reflected in the Roman paintings. Gallo (2015: 392–4) considers that the model might have come from the Villa of the Mysteries in Pompeii, although it is not clear whether Picasso visited it. On the other hand, there is also a reference to a polychrome marble composition from the House of the Coloured Capitals depicting a maenad striking the same attitude as Picasso’s bacchante.8 In short, the ancient Campanian cities exerted a strong influence on Spanish painting during the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the following one. The ‘danzatrice’ had become famed decorative motifs employed to embellish the principal buildings of the period. These decorative programmes allowed the female figures to be identified with classical architecture and, in particular, with that of Pompeii. But the intention was not to relate to them, but, more often than not, to attempt to recreate the Pompeian ambience itself. This also occurred in painting. Artists tried to evoke Pompeii in their compositions and, to this end, they resorted to painting scenes with imaginary architectural elements featuring those aspects most commonly associated with the excavations, including the frescoes from the Villa of Cicero. Although, in light of the foregoing, they were not the only motifs employed. In their works, Spanish artists included other elements, like floral decorations, garlands, i candelabri motifs and frescoes, discovered in other areas of the excavations. They did not limit themselves to reproducing the unearthed buildings, but also conjured up the Pompeian ambience per se in the scenes themselves, for they did not pay so much attention to archaeological rigour, as to recreating an ancient atmosphere. They attempted to reproduce daily situations, perhaps as if they had actually occurred in Pompeii one day? In sum, costumbrist paintings relating to the Campanian excavations became hugely popular. As to the themes there were several main ones. Firstly, the baths or thermae, in which naked, or scantly clothed, women were portrayed in very sensual attitudes, alternating spaces and also including decorative motifs in them. Secondly, toilette scenes featuring a 116

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woman surrounded by others waiting on her were frequent. Those compositions representing moments of relaxation, in which the figures tended to appear lying down or reclining in sensual attitudes and with little clothing, also prevailed. As already noted, Casto Plasencia’s Motivo decorativo evinces a certain relationship with the iconographic scheme of the recumbent or reclining Venus, but also noteworthy were those compositional schemes that were employed to depict eastern odalisques who, to some extent, shared the same aspects. In this current, scenes of love or flirting were also another important theme. Lastly, it is possible to observe representations of individual figures, costumbrist scenes, landscapes and so forth, in all of which the intention of reflecting the Pompeian ambience was present. The female presence was a common denominator. A large proportion of the works in this style are linked to the female world through the scenes represented, by their meaning and by their sexual connotations. Many women are portrayed naked or displaying most of their bodies, enveloped in transparent fabrics that highlight their curves, in relaxed attitudes in which their sensuality is emphasized. The pictures analysed above stand out for depicting daily and, above all, banal scenes. For which reason it should come as no surprise that it is women who are the main characters. Moreover, Spanish artists did not tend to represent men in works of this type, unlike other international painters such as Alma-Tadema who was indeed accustomed to depicting male figures in Pompeian scenes. As a matter of fact, the two paintings of this type in which the main characters are men, except for the representations of boys playing the aulos, portray gladiators, in which brute force and violence predominate, as in Juan Luna’s Spolarium (1884, National Museum of the Philippines) and José Moreno Carbonero’s Gladiators After Combat (1882, Museum of El Prado, on loan to the Museum of Malaga). Although this last work represents the moment after the combat and it is impossible to discern any cruelty, there is a certain amount of tenebrism linked to the harshness or strength that gladiators represented. They lack both the colourfulness and the treatment of space characterizing the Pompeian-style works, their style being very neutral. The paintings analysed here denote how artists strove to represent Roman society in an attempt to express their admiration for antiquity, extolled through neoclassicism and the development of historical painting throughout the nineteenth century. Thus, painters mirrored Roman society from the perspective of the upper classes, emulating behaviours, spaces and even interests, achieving all this through idealization. This tendency to idealize the classical world was fundamental in the process of exalting the discovery of Pompeii, which would be supplemented by publications, plays, musicals and films, for example. It is only necessary to recall the influence that Bulwer-Lytton’s book would have. Even the depiction of slaves was subordinated to idealization, as can be seen in the painting by Hernández Amores in which the woman is depicted following the canons of beauty of the period in a warm and welcoming ambience. The painters that led this tendency revealed the influence that international artists exerted on them. Domenico Morelli, Federico Maldarelli, Alma-Tadema and Gustave Boulanger were some of the fundamental benchmarks for Spanish painters. As already noted, it should be taken into account that all the Spanish painters mentioned 117

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here were grant students in Rome, while some of them also had the chance to stay in Paris, which at the end of the nineteenth century had become the new epicentre of European art. The trip to Italy and the visit to Pompeii had both become mandatory for artists, a trend that was even followed by the first avant-garde artists. Picasso reflected that classical footprint in his oeuvre, emphasizing the Pompeian character in some of his works, alluding, as has been done since the very start, to the frescoes discovered in the excavations and, in the same way, reflecting the classical style in his compositions, very different from his other stages of production, like cubism. The enhancement of Spanish neoclassicism was fundamental for disseminating the Pompeian models. Numerous examples can be found in architecture, but painting was one of the expressions in which a greater effort was made to strengthen the bonds between contemporaneity and antiquity.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. On the plaster casts, see Chapter 7 by Jesús Salas. 3. As regards Spanish grant students in Rome, see also Chapter 1 by Mirella Romero Recio. 4. José del Castillo also drew inspiration from some of the engravings of the Antichità for the decoration of the Oval Boudoir of Maria Luisa of Palma in El Escorial (Sanz de Miguel 2012). 5. Determining precisely the original placement of these frescoes in the area of the excavation in which they were found is a complex task. According to Rosaria Ciardiello (2012: 135), historiography has paid greater attention to identifying whether or not the house really belonged to Cicero than to understanding how they were arranged. The fact that they have been recorded in the Antichità at least allows for knowing what they were originally like. 6. All these allegories are housed at the Museum of El Prado, except for Autumn whose whereabouts are unknown. 7. Vera y Estaca represented some of the remains of the city Pompeii itself in small-format compositions which allowed for glimpsing the architectural details characterizing this complex. Casa romana en Pompeya (A Roman House in Pompeii), Interior de una casa pompeyana (The Interior of a Pompeian House) and Detalles arquitectónicos (Architectural Details) are three of these works that are currently to be found in private collections and which have been referenced by Pedro Alarcón S.A. | Arte Antiguo & Moderno Servicio de Asesoramiento y Seguimiento de Arte, whose experts are of the mind that they were painted by Vera y Estaca in situ, namely, in Pompeii itself. https://www.pedroalarcon.com/casaromana-pompeya-alejo-vera [accessed 22 December 2021]. 8. The influence of the Pompeian frescoes on the oeuvre of Picasso can be seen in some of the paintings that he produced during his so-called ‘classicism’ period, such as Two Swimmers (1921) and The Pan Pipes (1923).

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References Alonso Rodríguez, M. C. (2016), ‘Yesos del Museo Herculanense para Carlos III: la copia y su valor en la difusión de las antigüedades’, in Carlo di Borbone e la diffusione delle antichità. Catalogue of the exhibition held simultaneously at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid), the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Faculty of Arts and Design UNAM (Mexico) from 14 December 2016 to 16 March 2017. Milan: Electa: 64–75. Arias Anglés, E. and Gil Serrano, A. (2003), ‘Los últimos días de Pompeya de Lord Lytton y la pintura “Pompeyista” española’, Goya, 293: 115–23. Barón, J. (2007), ‘Pintura y escultura españolas del siglo XIX en las colecciones del Prado’, in El siglo XIX en el Prado. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of El Prado from 31 October to 20 April 2007. Madrid: Museo del Prado: 20–101. Benito García, A. (2019), El pintor Ulpiano Checa (1860–1816), Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Colmenar de Oreja. Casado Alcalde, E. (1992), ‘El mito de España y los pintores de la Academia de Roma’, in Roma y el ideal académico. La pintura en la Academia Española de Roma 1873–1903. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid) from 9 September to 15 October 1992. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid: 39–58. Caylus A. C, Conde de (1752–67), Recueil d’antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grecques et romaines, Paris. Cerrillo Rubio, L. (1993), Maximino Peña. Vida y obra, Soria: Ayuntamiento de Soria. Ceballos-Hernansanz, M. A. (2016), ‘Visión de las termas romanas a través de la obra pictórica de Lawrence Alma-Tadema’, Boletín de la Sociedad Española de Hidrología Médica (1) 31: 13–34. Ciardiello, R. (2012), ‘La ricostruzione delle decorazioni dalla Villa di Cicerone a Pompei’, AMOENITAS Rivista Internazionale di Studi Miscellanei sulla Villa Romana Antica, 2: 135–50. Cochin, C. N. (1751–4), Lettres sur les peintures d’ Herculaneum (1751) and Observations sur les antiquités de la Ville d’ Herculanum (1754), Paris. D’Alconzo, P. (2015), ‘Facing Antiquity, Back and Forth, in Eighteenth-Century Naples’, Music in art XL, 1–2: 9–43. De la Puente, J. (1989), Pintores Castellanos y Leoneses del Siglo XIX, Valladolid: Junta de Castilla y León. De Montfaucon, B. (1722), L’Antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, Paris. El siglo XIX en el Prado. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of El Prado (Madrid) from 31 October 2007 to 20 April 2008. Madrid: Museo del Prado: 20–101. Fordyce, W. (1750), Memoirs concerning Herculaneum, the subterranean city, lately discovered at the foot of Mount Vesuvius, London. Francesco Gori, A. (1748), Le notizie del memorabile scoprimento dell’antica città di Ercolano vicina a Napoli, Florence. Gallo, L. (2015), ‘Catálogo’, in Pompei e l’Europa 1748–1943. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples from 27 May to 2 November 2015. Milan: Electa: 392–4. García Melero, J. E. (1998), Arte español de la Ilustración y del siglo XIX. En torno a la imagen del pasado, Madrid: Encuentro Ediciones. García Sánchez, J. (2016), ‘La enseñanza de la Antigüedad en la Real Academia de San Fernando durante el reinado de Carlos III’, in Carlo di Borbone e la diffusione delle antichità. Catalogue of the exhibition held simultaneously at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid), the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and the Faculty of Arts and Design UNAM (Mexico) from 14 December 2016 to 16 March 2017. Milan: Electa: 76–85. Gómez Dieste, C. (2003), ‘Siglo XIX’, in M. Beltrán Lloris and J. A. Paz Peralta (eds), Museo de Zaragoza. Guía, Zaragoza: Gobierno de Aragón: 352–88.

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts González, C. and Martí, M. (1996), Pintores españoles en Roma (1850–1900), Barcelona: Tusquets Editores. Jordán de Urríes, J. (2006), La casita del Príncipe de El Escorial, Cuadernos de restauración de Iberdrola (XII), Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional-Iberdrola. Luzón Nogué, J. Mª., (2010), ‘La galería de esculturas de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando’, in El arte del siglo de las Luces, Madrid: Galaxia Guttenberg: 277–92. Morales y Marín, J. L. (1994), Pintura en España. 1750–1808, Madrid: Cátedra. Nieto Alcaide, V. (2007), ‘Presentación’, in Ulpiano Checa fantasía y movimiento. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid) from 5 to 30 September 2007. Madrid: Museo Ulpiano Checa: 17–8. Páez Burruezo, M. (1995), El clasicismo en la pintura del siglo XIX: Germán Hernández Amores, Murcia: Ayuntamiento de Murcia. Roma y el ideal académico. La pintura en la Academia Española de Roma 1873–1903. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando (Madrid) from 9 September to 15 October 1992. Madrid: Comunidad de Madrid. Romano, C. (2017), ‘Picasso a Napoli: tra arte popolare e teatro tradizionale’, in Picasso Parade. Napoli 1917. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of Capodimonte-Antiquarium (Pompeii) from 11 April to 10 July 2017. Milan: Electa: 200–9. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Ecos de un descubrimiento. Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936), Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Romero Recio, M. (2016), ‘Pompeii in Spanish interior decorarion’, in S. Hales and A. M. Leander Touati (eds), Returns to Pompei. Interior space and decoration documented and revived 18th–20th century, Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae, series in 4, 62: 55–74. Romero Recio, M. (2017), ‘L’influenza dell’antichità romana in Spagna: lo stile pompeiano nei secoli XVIII e XIX’, Rivista di studi pompeiani, 28: 75–88. Sanz de Miguel, C. (2012), ‘El Gabinete del Óvalo de María Luisa de Parma en El Escorial: José del Castillo y sus imágenes inspiradas en la Antigüedad clásica’, Reales Sitios, 192: 28–32. Venuti, M. (1749), Descrizione delle prime scoperte dell’antica città di Ercolano ritrovata vicino a Portici, Venice. Winckelmann, J. J. (2011), Letter and report on the Discoveries at Herculaneum, in C. C. Mattusch (trans.), Los Angeles: The J. Paul Getty Museum.

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CHAPTER 7 THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERIES OF POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM, AND THEIR RECEPTION THROUGH PLASTER COPIES AND PHOTOGRAPHY 1 Jesús Salas Álvarez

Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the reception of discoveries at Pompeii and Herculaneum was influenced by changes in the visual arts and by the contribution in the nineteenth century of photography, which was responsible for bringing images of the Vesuvian towns to the attention of scholars and the general public alike. This same period also witnessed changes in how the visual arts and art history were taught, with increasingly greater emphasis being placed on the pictorial representation of Herculaneum and Pompeii, with the result that most of the surviving visual records of the excavations carried out in this part of Italy are photographs. The discovery of the ancient Vesuvian towns marked a turning point in the study of archaeology and antiquities, as it heralded the emergence of the discipline as we know it today, as separate from the history of art with which it had previously been lumped, albeit not sharing the same methodology or objectives. The discoveries also had an impact on knowledge of Roman antiquity, as the works of art and everyday objects unearthed in their archaeological context revolutionized the view of ancient history, which until then had mainly been based on classical texts, a series of decontextualized finds and inscriptions on Roman monuments scattered around the Mediterranean. In some way, these finds helped breathe new life into the monuments that stood testimony to Rome’s presence throughout the Mediterranean basin. However, it was undoubtedly news of the results of the excavations that rapidly aroused the interest of historians, antiquarians and the curious in general, who were immediately drawn to see the two towns at first hand, bringing back souvenirs – paintings, engravings, photographs and sculptures (often forged ad hoc) – with which to decorate their homes in their countries of origin, or sketches that were later used as inspiration for the neoclassical architecture, paintings, sculptures and furniture produced in Europe and Latin America. The discoveries also spurred a worldwide change in how the fine arts were taught, shifting away from simple copying of ancient works as a means to learn, as exemplified by sculptures and plaster casts, and towards their use as a teaching resource to illustrate lectures in higher education, as occurred in the twentieth century with the emergence of slide projectors.

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The importance of classical sculpture as a decorative element in Neapolitan palaces: originals and plaster casts The unearthing of the ruins of the ancient Vesuvian towns came about as a result of the policy of archaeological excavations implemented by Charles VII of Naples following his accession to the Neapolitan throne in 1734. His goal was to use the finds as a means to legitimize his rule and to position his kingdom at the forefront of European culture at the time (Ciardiello 2009: 137). This policy had already been deployed previously at the Spanish court by Philip V, father of the Neapolitan king, who began to take a great interest in collecting ancient sculptures after his marriage to Elisabeth Farnese (Cacciotti 1994; Elvira Barba 2011). His interest was not solely aesthetic – acquiring decorative elements for the royal palaces – but also political, aimed at transmitting the values of Graeco-Roman antiquity to the young princes (Almagro and Maier 2010), and was shared by Maria Amalia of Saxony, wife of Charles of Bourbon, whose father had acquired the sculptures found in Herculaneum by Emmanuel Maurice of Lorraine, Duke of Elbeuf, in 1711 (Alonso 2012a: 314). Charles VII of Naples began excavations at Herculaneum in 1738 (Fernández Murga 1989; Alonso 2012b; Alonso 2016; Alonso 2018), followed in 1748 by work at Pompeii and Stabiae, and in 1750 at the Villa of the Papyri, the results of which have been the subject of numerous publications. The objects found were originally destined to decorate the rooms and courtyards of the Palace of Portici. However, the constantly increasing number of finds spurred the creation of an institution that would be responsible for curating, studying and publishing the discoveries, a task which fell to the Accademia Ercolanense, created in 1755 after the model of the Accademia Etrusca di Cortona and headed by Bernardo Tanucci, Secretary of State of Naples. Among the new institution’s tasks was publication of the Antichità di Ercolano Esposte, the first volume of which appeared in 1757, and the creation of the Ercolanese Museum (1758) in Portici (Allroggen 1983; Allroggen and Kammerer 1983) , the site where the works would be exhibited once they had been restored (Alonso 2012b: 86; Alonso 2012c; Alonso 2016: 83–5; Kockel 2016: 10). The idea was to endow Naples with a unique museum that would serve as a magnet for travellers and intellectuals from all over Europe. Charles VII of Naples always viewed the antiquities that were found as the property of the kingdom and therefore as forming his own private collection (Allroggen 1993: 37); hence, all the discoveries were intended to exalt the glory of the monarch. This sense of ‘national ownership’ would explain why publication of the finds only took place after they had been meticulously studied and why the volumes of the Antichità were not widely distributed (Grant 1984: 165–67; Allroggen 1993: 36–7; Dyson 2008: 37), as the king used to give them personally as gifts to members of his family, nobles, aristocrats, high-ranking officials and some ambassadors. Despite these obstacles, the finds were widely reported at the time in news items and correspondence published in periodicals (Alonso 2016: 81), although these were never accompanied by images. The main news reports appeared in the Mercure de France and 122

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its Spanish version Mercurio Histórico y Político,2 and a work even appeared in Mexico entitled Relación del marabilloso descubrimiento de la ciudad de Heraclea, o Herculanea, hallada en Portici, Casa de Campo del Rey de las Dos Sicilias, sacada de los mercurios de septiembre, y noviembre del año passado de 1747 [Report of the marvellous discovery of the town of Herculaneum, found in Portici, the country retreat of the King of Sicily, as reported in the Mercurio gazettes of September and November of last year, 1747] (1748) (López 2008: 77–8; Alonso 2016: 81; López 2021). As mentioned earlier, the Villa of the Papyri was discovered in 1750 thanks to the work of Alcubierre and Karl Weber. The excavation unearthed ninety bronze and marble sculptures and busts of animals, athletes, runners, philosophers (Pseudo Seneca, Epicurus, Isocrates), poets (Sappho), gods (Artemis, Apollo), the Doryphorus, Amazons and even some historical figures (Seleucus)3 (Mattusch 2005), which were Roman copies of Greek originals. The sculptures found and their location in the villa’s rooms and two peristyles, faithfully recorded in a detailed plan drawn up by Karl Weber (Alonso 2005: 26), shed light on the villa owner’s interest in collecting Greek works of art from the classical and Hellenistic periods (Mattusch 2011), which had previously been known only from references in classical texts. Casts were soon made of the sculptures and busts in an imitatio antiquitatis, or antiquity fever, with the intention of instilling good taste, educating the general public and furthering the progress of the fine arts (Campano 2020: 491). Thanks to the studies by J. J. Winckelmann, this trend spread throughout Europe, via academies and institutions, and gave rise to neoclassicism. The discoveries exerted an unquestionable influence on the decorative arts, engendering a neo-Pompeian style with models that were copied by painters and sculptors all over Europe (Alonso 2018: 106), and on the interior decoration of numerous Spanish palaces (Romero Recio 2016) for more than a century, although Mario Praz has argued that the enthusiasm with which Europe received the discovery of Herculaneum did not herald the immediate beginning of a fashion (Praz 1982: 86 et seq.).

Classical sculpture as a decorative element in Spanish royal palaces In 1759, Charles VII renounced the Neapolitan throne and relocated to Spain in order to ascend to the Spanish throne. Although he left the excavation works and the publication of the results well in hand, his successor Ferdinand I’s interest in the future of the Ercolanese Museum waned following his departure (Allroggen 1993: 36). On his arrival in Madrid, Charles III of Spain encountered a royal palace still under construction, the old palace having been destroyed in a fire on Christmas Eve of 1734. The successive architects responsible for the project had opted to build in accordance with the new aesthetic canons of the time, and to decorate the rooms with sculptures in the classical tradition. While the works were being completed, the monarch resided in the Buen Retiro Palace, a building which he too decided to decorate with classical sculptures. Accordingly, in 1761, he commissioned Camillo Paderni, director of the Portici Museum, to buy a 123

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series of sculptures in Rome (Alonso 2003) and to send casts of the sculptures found in the Villa of the Papyri, as attested by a letter that Charles III sent on 31 March 1761 to Bernardo Tanucci: . . . I see you say that Paderni has told you of my desire to have plaster casts made of the most noteworthy objects displayed in the Palace and the Portici Museum, which is true, because thus I would at least have the pleasure of seeing as far as possible those things that you know are so much to my liking and taste, and so I am certain that you will help me achieve this, because I know how much you desire to please me in everything4. Alonso 2005: 27–8 This idea must be seen in relation to the king’s interest in the excavations and the restoration work carried out on the objects that were found, which is evidenced in his correspondence with Bernardo Tanucci. This interest is all the more striking because work on the volumes in the Antichità di Ercolano Esposte that would document the busts and statues had not yet been completed, and they would not be published until 1767 and 1771, respectively. Decorating a palace with plaster casts of sculptures was nothing new for Charles III. As a child, he had known about the casts decorating the rooms of the old Royal Alcázar, which had been brought back by Diego Velázquez (Luzón 2007) on his return from his second trip to Italy (1649–51) but which had been destroyed in the fire of Christmas Eve 1734.

The Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the dissemination in Spain of the sculptures of Herculaneum and Pompeii This fascination with casts also extended to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts, which had been founded in 1752 by Charles III’s half-brother, Ferdinand VI, had retained its links with the monarchy through the Secretary of State and was responsible for shaping all artistic life in Spain, including the fine arts (Bedat 1989: 94–6). With this latter aim in mind, the academy had adopted an educational approach imported from France, in which the idea prevailed that the human body was the subject most worthy of imitation. The Plaster Room played a decisive role in this method of learning, as it housed reproductions of statues from Hellenistic Greek and Roman antiquity, as well as some from the Renaissance period, which had been purchased in Rome in 1744 and were exhibited for copying (Bedat 1989: 40–1). The arrival of the painter Anton Raphael Mengs at the academy in 1763 heralded a marked change in the institution’s direction, which wholeheartedly embraced the neoclassical canons of its new member. According to the Winckelmannian postulates advocated by Mengs, it was sculpture that represented the true expression of classical ideals and of ‘good taste’, because ‘. . . the true path was to produce an original imitation 124

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of the beauty of Nature and to constantly study the reproductions from antiquity held in the Academy . . .’5 (Bedat 1989: 324). In 1765, the casts of forty-five busts and statues from the Villa of the Papyri arrived in Madrid, having been sent from Naples by Camillo Paderni, who personally accompanied the shipment. These were intended to decorate various rooms in the Royal Palace and the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, although no details of where they were placed are known.6 In 1775, Charles III visited the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. After hearing from the academy members how difficult it was to find new plaster casts of classical sculptures for teaching purposes, he decided to donate the collection of casts from Herculaneum that were kept in the Buen Retiro Palace, and these were delivered on 5 January 1776 (Bedat 1989: 125–6 and 329; Alonso 2005: 26; Negrete 2014: 86). Forty-five large busts, some with plaster pedestals; two medium; seven small; a model of a horse with its armed rider; an almost life-sized roe deer; a statue of Venus two feet tall; another of Apollo a little larger; two bas-reliefs of a circular figure about one foot7 in diameter; another square one of a little more than a foot; another oblong one almost the same; a life-size statue of Mercury seated on a rock; another life-size statue of a young man standing; and another, also life-size, of Bacchus reclining on a rock, and a skin of wine. Bedat 1989: 329 A few months later, this collection was expanded when Anton Raphael Mengs donated his own collection of sculptures and casts, given by the artist to the monarch on condition that they be deposited in the Academy of Fine Arts as models for training new artists (Bedat 1989: 329; Negrete 2015: 29–30). By this means, the institution acquired a significant collection of sculptures that was beyond the reach of most cultural institutions of its time and which included pieces as unique as the Laocoön, the Belvedere Torso and the finds from Herculaneum, as can be seen from the inventories known to date from 17948 and 18049. It is worth noting that the University of Göttingen (Germany) was the first to assemble a collection of plaster casts for the instruction of students, in 1767 (Negrete 2015: 30). One might wonder what policy the institution applied when distributing these casts among the various academies that were emerging at this time in Spain and New Spain, all of which adhered to its guidelines, for there were clearly two groups. On the one hand, in 1777, the Academies of San Carlos in Valencia (founded in 1768) and of the Fine Arts in Seville (created in 1771) only received plaster casts of the sculptures donated by Anton Raphael Mengs: ‘Laocoön, large Belvedere Apollo, small Apollo, Antinous, of the Venus, of the faun, of the Borghese gladiator and of the shepherd of La Granja’ (Beltrán 2003: 60–2; Luzón 2015: 9). In contrast, the San Carlos Academy of Fine Arts in New Spain, founded in Mexico in 1781, received not only casts of sculptures that had belonged to Mengs but also casts from the Villa of the Papyri, which were sent in 1790. What was behind this difference? The only possible explanation is that Mexico was the capital of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, and that this distinction should be framed within the 125

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context of the administrative reforms carried out by Charles III in America and the series of archaeological excavations being conducted in the area (Alcina 1995: 83–97; Almagro 2010: 57–63; Cabello 2012: 267–74; León and Gil 2017; López 2017; Matos 2017; López 2021).

The role of the San Carlos Royal Academy in Mexico and the distribution of classical antiquities in America In 1778, Jerónimo Antonio Gil y Manguino was appointed engraver to the Royal Mint in Mexico, where in 1781 he founded what was called the Provisional School of Drawing. The resources that he brought with him from Spain were fundamental at this time: eight bas-reliefs, twelve plaster cast heads and six small figures (Ángulo 1935: 88), together with drawings, medals and books to support his work (Luzón 2010: 64–5). Thanks to the portrait of Gil by Rafael Ximeno y Planes, it has been possible to identify some of these materials, notable among which is a bust of one of the sons in the Laocoön group. Gil surrounded himself with a series of Mexican-born professors who, after the creation of the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts in New Spain in 1783,10 were replaced by professors from Spain (Báez 2020), the intention of the new institution being to encourage a return to classical forms and the good taste instilled by neoclassicism in Europe (Fuentes 2002: 22).11 A notable teacher in the field of sculpture was the Valencian, Manuel José Arias Centurión, who after his death in 1788 was replaced by his disciple Manuel Tolsá in 1790. The creation of this academy, the first of its kind on the American continent and the first public art museum, was made possible by the support Gil received from the viceroy, Matías de Gálvez y Gallardo, who during his brief tenure showed great interest in the work of the newly created institution, as evidenced by the portrait of him in the National Museum of the Viceroyalty of New Spain, which was painted around 1800 by Andrés López. In the background of this painting, one of the sculpture teachers is giving a class to some students, who are copying a sculpture of the Borghese Gladiator that had formed part of Mengs’s collection and had arrived in Mexico in 1790. In 1785, Jerónimo Antonio Gil asked for new plaster casts to be sent to the academy to enable him to carry out his task. However, he was not to receive them until 1790, when the new director of sculpture, Manuel Tolsá, arrived at the academy accompanied by sixty-three crates containing said sculptures, which had been cut into numbered pieces for re-assembly once at the San Carlos Academy: fifty-five complete figures, one hundred and seventy-three heads, four arms, three legs, fourteen hands and twenty-six feet (Ángulo 1935; Bargelini and Fuentes 1989: 27–8; Báez 2009; López 2021: 74). An analysis of the pieces received in 1790 (Bargelini and Fuentes 1989: 89–91) shows that ninety-two of them were copies of antiquities. There were two sculptures from Herculaneum, the Seated Hermes and Silenus Inebriated, and eleven reliefs, the vague descriptions of which prevents their exact identification, but the majority came from Anton Raphael Mengs’s collection (Negrete 2014; Cervera 2014; Luzón 2015: 9). 126

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The work of the San Carlos Academy had a significant impact on the Viceroyalty of New Spain, as demonstrated by the words of Alexander von Humboldt when he visited the academy’s premises while on his trip to Mexico in 1803, and saw the ‘. . . Belvedere Apollo, the Laocoön group and other more colossal statues . . .’, which the academy used to ‘. . . foster a taste for elegance and beauty of form among artists’ (Humboldt 2011: 79–80). The shipment of plaster casts to Mexico and the creation of a new institution represented an important milestone in the Bourbons’ cultural policy in Latin America. The academy was the first to be founded on the continent, and in the years prior to Mexican independence, the largest. For example, the Pennsylvania Museum of Fine Arts was not founded until 1807, at which time it had only twenty-five sculptures.12 With the outbreak of the War of Independence in Spain (1808) and the subsequent independence of Mexico (1810–21), the ties between the Academies of San Fernando in Madrid and San Carlos in New Spain were cut, and the Herculaneum casts were forgotten in both institutions. More serious was the case of the Mexican academy, as many of the casts were destroyed and all that remains of them are the students’ drawings.

Plaster casts of sculptures in the first half of the nineteenth century After the Napoleonic Wars and the beginning of the Restoration, numerous plaster cast collections were founded across Europe. Some were created as independent museums, as in the case of Bonn (1827), Munich (1830), Berlin, Florence and Madrid (Almagro 2000). Others were created as annexes to existing museums, such as the Louvre and the British Museum, others were associated with particular sculptors, such as the Antonio Canova Museum (1844) and that of Bertel Thorvaldsen (1848), and still others were established in art schools or universities, as was the case of La Sapienza in Rome (Picozzi 2013). Virtually none of them housed any trace of Herculaneum, except for the National Museum of Artistic Reproductions in Madrid, which held a few copies of everyday objects from Herculaneum. The reason for this was that the discoveries made by German, French and British archaeologists in Greece in the first half of the nineteenth century, including pieces from the Parthenon and the temples of Aphaia in Aegina, of Bassae and of Zeus in Olympia (Gran Aymerich 2001: 56 et seq.), had shifted the balance towards collecting casts of works from archaic and classical Greece, which now became abundant in all these institutions. These plaster cast collections were gradually incorporated into university settings, as demonstrated by a study of the plaster cast collection created in Rome by E. Löwy (Picozzi 2013) in accordance with the German model of Archäologie der Kunst (1830) proposed by K. O. Müller, who had argued that casts should be used as a resource for teaching archaeology and the history of ancient art at this university. The plaster cast collection was subsequently enhanced by a large collection of photographs and slides of sculptures, monuments and archaeological sites. 127

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Photography and its use to record the ruins at Pompeii In the first half of the nineteenth century, changes in the use made of plaster casts were paralleled by the emergence of photography, a new artistic technique that gave rise to a series of transformations in perceptions of the world and which was rapidly adopted as an additional resource in the study of sculpture, painting and architecture. Every photograph reflects the time when it was taken and the unique intention of its author; nevertheless, photographs served to democratize museums, monuments and archaeological sites because their rapid, widespread dissemination enabled an increasing number of people to share in the experience of past cultures (Burke 2001: 16). Neither archaeology in general, nor the Vesuvian towns in particular, were unaffected by this development, as from the moment of its inception, photography became inseparable from and complementary to archaeology. Until then, past civilizations had only been depicted in the works of artists or the accounts of travellers, but now, images reached a wider, general public through the medium of photography. The discipline of archaeology was one of the most enthusiastic adopters of the new technique because despite all the difficulties entailed in its execution, the results were far superior to archaeological illustration (Frizot 1994: 77). In fact, photographs superseded sketches and drawings as a means to record a monument or a find because they were more objective and quicker to execute. Thus, elevations, plans and drawings came to be viewed as complementary, providing information of a different nature (González 2007: 64). Then as now, a fascination with the ruins of Pompeii as a surviving image of a longvanished past drew crowds of tourists who were keen to return home with souvenirs of their visit, and among the nineteenth-century middle classes, photographs in particular acquired an important role as mementoes (Manodori 2012: 8; De Carolis 2019: 11). Following the annexation of Naples to the Kingdom of Piedmont in 1860, the Grand Tour as formerly conceived disappeared, and this was reflected in the souvenirs that the new visitors took home with them after a trip to Italy, as engravings and lithographs gave way to photographs and postcards. Not only were such images cheaper, but they also reached a much wider audience through reproductions in newspapers, magazines and books. Universities, academies and museums shared this growing interest in photographs and acquired them in large numbers as valuable items13 with which to increase their collections. In addition, universities and academies used them as complementary teaching resources for the study of art history and the fine arts, while in the case of museums and again academies, they served as a source of information when cataloguing works of art. The earliest known photograph of Pompeii is a daguerreotype taken by Alexander John Ellis in 1841, now held by the Getty Foundation. It shows a view of the Street of Tombs,14 which at the time was one of the access roads to the ruins of the town (Lyons 2005; Miraglia 2015: 32), because in the nineteenth century there were several accesses to the excavations, although the main one was in Porta Marina. An analysis of this work shows that it is very similar to the paintings, lithographs and engravings that had been 128

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made of this part of the town since the eighteenth century, and which had been so popular among those taking the Grand Tour. For example, a lithograph by Giacinto Gigante now held in the Prado Museum depicts the same subject matter, and just like the photographs, could also be purchased by visitors.15 This type of image should be seen as part of the early period of photography of Pompeii, in which the photographers – artists, archaeologists, painters, writers, most of whom were amateurs – followed in the footsteps of eighteenth-century artists and their vedute, attempting to capture the same sweeping panoramic views (Bouqueret and Livi 1898: 205) as those depicted in paintings and drawings, and largely favouring the same motifs. Hence, for the most part, these early images focused on the excavations conducted by Roque Joaquín de Alcubierre and Francisco de la Vega, showing the aforementioned Street of the Tombs, the Large Palaestra, the Temple of Isis, the House of Sallust and the Greek Theatre, today known as the Odeon. All of these photographs served a dual purpose, that of reproducing the beauty of the ancient sites and that of providing reliable information, as can be seen in the images taken by the French architect A. Normand, who combined the feelings evoked by the ruins with an understanding of Roman architecture, or P. Jeuffrain, who during his visit to the town in 1852 paid greater attention to the picturesque than to the structures of Pompeii (Frizot 1994: 79). The first aerial view of Pompeii was the work of Alfred Guesdon, a painter and architect trained at the School of Fine Arts in Paris. In 1848, he produced an album of forty-five plates containing panoramas and views of cities, including an aerial view of Pompeii, which was published in 1849 under the title L’Italie a vol d’oiseau (A bird’s eye view of Italy) and was sold in instalments (Gamiz and García 2018: 31–2). It is not known how this image was produced; it could not have been based on a map of the town, since the most complete maps at that time were the one by Wilhelm Zahn (1844) and the Pianta degli scavi della citta di Pompei (1845),16 both of which were two-dimensional representations that did not include the three-dimensional details provided by Guesdon (Gamiz and García 2018: 35). It has been speculated that he used a hot-air balloon, but at the time, photography required a long exposure period, which would have ruled out use of a balloon because of the associated movement in the air. Consequently, his method remains a mystery (Besse 2013; Gamiz and García 2018: 35). The second half of the nineteenth century witnessed a change in photographers’ interest in the Pompeian ruins, which in most cases appeared almost deserted, but nevertheless, photographs proved the best way to record the new archaeological discoveries made by Giuseppe Fiorelli and the Scuola Archeologica di Pompei (Barbanera 2015: 60–5), as evidenced in the surviving works by Jules Andreaux, Bernoud Alphonse, Giacomo Brogi, Robert Rive, Michele Amodio, Achille Mauri, the Fratelli Alinari17 (De Carolis et al. 1990; Miraglia 2015) and in particular, Giorgio Sommer (De Carolis 2019) – to whom I shall return below – who even managed to take the first stereoscopic photographs of the site (Figs 7.1 and 7.2) (Manodori 2012; Callegari 2017). These photographers also undertook ‘photographic expeditions’ in which they seemed particularly drawn to depicting an almost empty town where the focus is on panoramic views of the site, public buildings and the unique decorations unearthed in the various 129

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Figure 7.1 Stereoscopic photograph of the Forum in Pompeii. Taken around 1860 by G. Sommer. Private collection of J. Salas.

Figure 7.2 Stereoscopic photograph of the Amphitheatre in Pompeii, taken around 1870, from the photography studio of G. Sommer (reference no. 343). Private collection of J. Salas. domus being discovered at the time. Their pictures were then included in the various catalogues of photographs they had in their Neapolitan studios, which could be purchased by travellers as souvenirs of their visit.18 The aim was undoubtedly to broadcast the role that the ruins of Pompeii would henceforth play as a symbol of the new kingdom of Italy, a message first heard on the occasion of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s visit to Pompeii on 22 October 1860, immortalized by Giorgio Sommer (De Carolis 2019: 18), during the course of which he declared the Museum of Naples and the archaeological sites of Herculaneum and Pompeii to be ‘beni nazionali’. It was at that time that Giuseppe Fiorelli took charge of the excavations and began to apply a new archaeological method based on excavating entire blocks of the town applying the principles of geological stratigraphy. This enabled him to acquire information about the roofs of the buildings – with a view to their subsequent restoration – and the 130

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bodies of the victims of the eruption (Barbanera 2015: 60–5). The photographers present at the time recorded the progress of the excavations, transmitting the results via the lenses of their devices. Among them was Giorgio Sommer (1834–1914), whose ever expanding catalogue of photographs contained images for sale of Herculaneum and Pompeii that depicted streets, public and private buildings with their unique bronzes, statues, busts, marbles, mosaics and instrumentum domesticum, the paintings found by Fausto Nicolini and the objects exhibited in the Museum of Naples (Sommer 1903). Indeed, Sommer’s photographs became the best vehicle for disseminating Fiorelli’s finds: the House of Holconius Rufus (1860), the House of Cornelius Rufus (1862) and the Lupanar (1862), which in turn renders them a chronological benchmark when studying the progress of the excavations, images of which were added to the successive editions of his catalogue. Spanish cultural and academic institutions soon added these photographs depicting the progress of the excavations to their collections, as can be seen today in the photograph libraries of the Ateneo de Madrid19 and the University of Seville20 (this latter library founded in 1907 by Francisco Murillo Herrera), and in the collection assembled by Enrique Lafuente Ferrari at the San Fernando School of Fine Arts (Casajús, Diéguez, Pena 2008). All of them provided teaching resources for the classes in history, history of arts, fine arts and archaeology taught at Spanish universities of the time.

By way of conclusion In the mid-eighteenth century, plaster casts of the sculptures found in Herculaneum and Pompeii became a point of reference and a source of inspiration for Spanish and Latin American artists when creating their works, as did, in the nineteenth century, photographs of the ruins at both sites. This influence was reflected not only in the decorative elements used to adorn royal palaces and public buildings in Spain (the Royal Palace) and Latin America (the San Carlos Academy in Mexico), but also in paintings and sculptures modelled on the finds unearthed in the Vesuvian towns, as evidenced in paintings by Manuel Domínguez and Alejo Vera, for example, or by the Equestrian Statue of Charles IV in Mexico City. As mentioned earlier, the Herculaneum site played an important role in the widespread distribution of plaster casts in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, thanks to the discoveries at the Villa of the Papyri. These casts were used for two main purposes: to decorate palaces and to teach the fine arts. These elements are perfectly traceable in Europe (Italy and Spain) and America (especially in the San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Mexico), although they exerted hardly any influence in some countries on the American continent, with the obvious exception of the Getty Villa in Malibu, albeit this is a later, twentieth-century building. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, coinciding with the start of the excavations by G. Fiorelli, photography and photographers made their presence felt in Pompeii, supplanting painters and artists. These photographers not only documented the 131

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excavations, but also created the first photographic catalogue of Pompeii’s archaeological heritage, which was soon widely distributed. Both photographs and plaster casts alike became fundamental resources for teaching the fine arts and archaeology in Spain in the early twentieth century. Scholars in these disciplines argued that despite being exhibited in museums and collections, ancient works remained living objects. This same idea prevailed in faculties of philosophy and arts and in the schools of fine arts that were founded in various provincial capitals. For these, the creation of photograph libraries with collections of images of Pompeii and Herculaneum and artistic works inspired by their ruins was fundamental, to serve both as a practical teaching resource and as models for artists in training. Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. The first news report appeared in the Mercurio Histórico y Político, January 1739, XIII: 56–7. This periodical can be consulted in the repository of the Complutense University of Madrid http://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009328286 [accessed 11 October 2021]. 3. A catalogue of the sculptures, giving the year in which they were found, is available at https:// sites.google.com/site/ad79eruption/herculaneum-1/villa-of-the-papyri/catalogue-ofsculptures [accessed 30 October 2021]. 4. The original letter is held in the General Archive of Simancas, State Section, book 321, fols. 84–90, and is transcribed in Carlos III 1988: 217. 5. Junta Particular de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes, dated 5 November 1786. 6. Camillo Paderni also brought with him a collection of sculptures that he had acquired in Rome for Charles III. See Alonso 2003. 7. Spanish measure of length equivalent to 27.8635 cm. 8. López Enguidanos 1794. 9. Inventario de las Alhajas y Muebles existentes en la Real Academia de San Fernando (1804). Archive of the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts. Manuscrito. – Signatura 3–616. Available at https://www.realacademiabellasartessanfernando.com/assets/docs/catalogos_ historicos/1804-1814_transcripcion.pdf [accessed 30 October 2021]. 10. The original statutes are available at https://bvpb.mcu.es/es/consulta/registro.do?id=406285 [accessed 30 October 2021]. 11. On the San Carlos Academy, see also Chapter 2 of this volume by Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño. 12. Catalogue 1807. 13. For example, the US Library of Congress, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery of Victoria, the Harvard University Art Museums, the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco and the J. Paul Getty Museum are just a few of the institutions outside Europe that number photographs by Giorgio Sommer among their collections. 14. The photograph is entitled Pompeii, the West Side of the Street of Tombs with the remains of the Ancient Inn, and it forms part of a series of eight daguerreotypes taken by Ellis with the

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The Archaeological Discoveries of Pompeii and Herculaneum intention of including them in a book to be entitled Italy Daguerrotyped and illustrated with architectural views, but the project never came to fruition (González 2007: 168). 15. In 1846, Stefano Lecchi was the first Italian to take a photograph of Pompeii, depicting the Casa del Forno or, as he called it, the Pompeii Bakery (Caccialanza 2020: 54–5). 16. Of unknown author, held in the National Library of France https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ ark:/12148/cb40713929t [accessed 15 October 2021]. 17. https://www.alinari.it/it/ [accessed 15 October 2021]. 18. In 2006, I published a paper on the visit of the Arapiles frigate to Italy (Salas 2006: 611), in which I argued that the architect Ricardo Velázquez Bosco had made a lithograph of the House of the Faun (VI, 12. 2). In fact, the lithograph was based on a photograph by Giorgio Sommer, number 1209 in his Catalogue (Sommer 1903: 42). 19. https://www.ateneodemadrid.com/Biblioteca/Coleccion-digital/Placas-devidrio?search=Pompeya [accessed 30 October 2021]. 20. https://citius.us.es/fototeca/ [accessed 30 October 2021].

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CHAPTER 8 POMPEII AND HERCULANEUM IN CUBA: THE IMPACT OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS ON THE ISLAND’S VISUAL ARTS 1 Federica Pezzoli

Havana . . . when examined closely, bears some resemblance to Pompeii . . . it would not be surprising to discover the House of Pansa or of Cornelius Rufus in the Cerro – which is the Faubourg Saint-Germain of Havana. The inner courtyard surrounded by marble or stucco columns, the font and the small garden in which the great lord of Cuba spends the evening with his family, seem to have been copied from the plans of a Pompeian villa. These words, which link the splendid country residences of the suburban quarter of the Cerro (Philippou 2014: 115; Coyula Cowley and Rigol Savio 2015: 193–214), in the Cuban capital, to those of the famous city buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius, appeared in the Mexican newspaper Diario del Hogar, on 22 October 1898.2 Indeed, European travellers arriving in Havana at the end of the nineteenth century would have been able to observe the consequences of the mass introduction of neoclassicism in (not only) domestic architecture: the builders of the most important and luxurious dwellings of that century had adopted the courtyard surrounded by galleries (or cloistered courtyard),3 featuring in Roman and, of course, Pompeian domus, as a characteristic element of these new buildings. Nonetheless, it warrants noting that they had adapted the neoclassical courtyard to local requirements: by choosing Doric columns, rather than pillars to support the round arches of the galleries, they had taken into account the small size of these spaces and the need for light and the circulation of air in the surrounding rooms (Weiss 1996: 348; García Santana 2005: 59–62). In relation to these galleries, already in 1841 the Diario de la Marina offered an account of the villa of the Count of Santovenia, built in the Cerro between 1832 and 1841 by Manuel Eusebio Martínez de Campos, the fabulously wealthy owner of sugar mills in the province of Matanzas: ‘Its sumptuousness is dazzling not only because of its tropical architecture, but also because of the treasures that it contains; . . . the interminable series of columns with graceful capitals in the style of a Pompeian mansion’ (Weiss 1996: 417–18). These two allusions to the houses of Pompeii in the press appear to be linked to the dissemination of the knowledge of the excavations and ruins of the two ancient Campanian cities in Cuba – irrespective of whether this was through news appearing in the press or in almanacs,4 or through the journeys of the scions of the Creole elite in Italy5 – which provided an archaeological frame of reference so as to recognize the floorplan and characteristics of ancient Roman dwellings, but not to a conscious or 137

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comprehensive development programme for building ‘Pompeian’ mansions on the island. Accordingly, this chapter focuses, on the basis of the subject matter of a paper by Luisa Campuzano (2014: 93–7), on other examples of the most direct influence of Pompeian decorative motifs in nineteenth-century Cuba, in the framework of the adoption of a neoclassicism which was adapted to the island’s geographical context and contributed to foster a local ‘good taste’.6

Nineteenth-century Cuba and the dissemination of and the taste for the neoclassical style The dissemination of the neoclassical style and the taste for Pompeian architecture in Cuba was linked to a series of political, economic, social and cultural factors emerging on the island between the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century. From 1817 and 1819, the Spanish monarchy, which feared the spread of revolutionary ideas on the island and that the black population might revolt against the authorities, following the conspiracy of the black Creole José Antonio Aponte in 1812, issued two royal decrees that introduced important changes: the first, entitled ‘on white colonization’, encouraged the immigration of Spaniards and (white) foreigners, who were guaranteed advantageous living conditions;7 the second, dated 10 February 1818, established the right of free trade with foreign countries, thus bringing the island’s commercial isolation to an end (Weiss 1996: 325; García Santana 2005: 63–4). This opportunity for opening up to Atlantic trade was accompanied by widespread sugarcane cultivation – a result of the Haitian Revolution of 1791 – which led to the building of new sugar mills, above all in eastern Cuba. The mass production and sale of sugar, together with coffee and tobacco, gave rise to an affluent class of rural owners who, as with the industrial and trade magnates, invested part of their vast profits in the construction of magnificent urban and country villas, which drew inspiration from the new fashions arriving from Europe and North America. During that important economic boom, which peaked in the second third of the nineteenth century, engineers, architects, Creoles and foreigners were hired not only to build the railroad, its stations and public buildings. In Havana, they also participated in a far-reaching civil building programme, whose implementation was especially vigorous during the period from 1834 to 1838, when Miguel Tacón y Rosique was the captain general of the island. Employing public funds and granting concessions to private entrepreneurs, alike, Tacón encouraged the construction of public and private buildings, featuring the theatre named after him – which will be discussed further on –, a promenade and the New Prison and the Market (Weiss 1996: 335, 387–90, 392–7; Philippou 2014: 118–20). At that moment of economic splendour, which had an important impact on building programmes, laws were passed favouring the dissemination of education and the promotion of culture and the fine arts. In 1818, the Free School of Drawing and Painting was founded, under the auspices of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, 138

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whose name was changed to the National Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro in 1832. Its mission was to revamp and improve the arts on the island through the good offices of (white) painters trained at European academies, including its first director, the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Vermay, rejecting previous works produced, by and large, by free black artists of African provenance. Indeed, as José Antonio Saco (1946: 41) declared, ‘Down to an absolutely deplorable misfortune, practically all the arts on our island are in the hands of coloured people’ (Saco 1946: 41; Paneque Duquesne 2020: 141–2; Neill 2012: 293–5). In its lecture halls, well-educated white students8 would learn to draw by imitating engravings that reproduced European masterpieces and plaster casts of ancient sculptures. The newspapers, controlled by the Creole and peninsular elite, also fostered ‘good taste’ and the fine arts – principally relating to the modernity and neoclassicism promoted by European academies – in daily life (Neill 2012: 305). In response to the same demands, in the 1840s there was an attempt to found a theoretical-practical school of architecture, once again under the auspices of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, whose biennial programme would include architectural drawing and composition courses: despite having been given the go-ahead by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid back in 1841, it was never brought to fruition because of the lack of a suitable venue (Paneque Duquesne 2020: 272–3). As of the 1850s, the white Creole elite, who in the first half of the nineteenth century had become aware of their own economic, social and aesthetic identity, began to implement a policy of open confrontation with the Spanish monarchy, which as of 1868, led to nearly thirty years of wars of independence in Cuba. Those wars did not completely undermine the island’s economy or cities which, like Matanzas (García Santana 2009: chaps. 2 and 3), were enlarged and renovated according to the new taste for neoclassicism. Thanks to the aforementioned aspects as a whole, neoclassicism, and with it the Pompeian style, promoted by the white Creole and peninsular elite and originally linked to a process of ideological renewal developed in the classrooms of the Seminary of San Carlos and San Ambrosio, under the guidance of the enlightened bishop of Havana (originally from Salamanca) Juan José Díaz de Espada y Landa (1802–32), were disseminated in Cuba in three ways. Firstly, through the works performed by the Spanish military engineers tasked with fortifying the island’s cities. Secondly, through the foreign artists and architects who, as of 1817, began to arrive in Cuba, above all from France, and who rendered their services in different places. And, lastly, through the US traders who, protected by the free trade laws, settled on the island, bringing with them an interpretation of neoclassicism in wood, such as the round arches equipped with fan blinds or the gorge cornices adopted in the Deep South of the United States (particularly in New Orleans) (García Santana 2005: 63; 2008: 218).

Gioacchino Albé, Daniel Dall’Aglio and Antonio Meucci The artists and painters who, as of 1818 under the law on ‘white colonization’, made the most of the opening of Cuba to the world, its thriving economy and the Cuban elite’s 139

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penchant for ‘good taste’, travelled to the island in search of fortune, included Frenchmen, Spaniards and Italians. As highlighted in the studies performed by Roselló (2002, 2009, 2019), the Italians began to arrive on the island in the 1830s. Specializing in miniatures, portraits and murals, genres very much in fashion in Europe at the time, they offered their services to the Italian opera companies that performed at the theatres of Havana. Some of them also collaborated with the aforementioned National Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro, with one of their number, Ettore Morelli, becoming its director in 1857 (Paneque Duquesne 2020: 229). Three of those artists, Gioacchino Albé, Daniel Dall’Aglio and Antonio Meucci, are worthy of greater attention insofar as they had a hand in the Pompeian-style9 decorations conserved in one of the island’s nineteenth-century buildings. Born in Bologna in 1800 and, in all probability, a disciple of Antonio Basoli, Albé was a decorator and set designer.10 He arrived in Havana in 1835 and, the following year, married Antonia Valdés, with the also Italian painters Luigi Tartarini and Mario Bragaldi acting as witnesses. He worked regularly at the Tacón Theatre, which he decorated, with another Italian, in 1835, as soon as it had been built. The last extant piece of information relating to him is dated 1850, when, together with another compatriot, he made the backdrops for Meyerbeer’s opera Les Huguenots, much acclaimed by the public and the press. A piece of news and a press announcement, published in the newspaper Faro Industrial de La Habana, on 1 May 1843 and on 4, 6 and 7 September 1846, respectively, confirm that it was he who painted the ceilings of the Aldama Palace in Havana – which will be covered in the following section – designed by the Florentine Antonio Meucci11 (Roselló 2005: 77; Herrera López 2007: 112), another Italian colleague at the Tacón Theatre. Furthermore, when this theatre had to be repaired after the hurricane in October 1846, Albé was commissioned to decorate one of the drop curtains, brought from Italy, which depicted a garland of flowers and, in the bottom part, Medusa (Cruz Díaz 1999: 3). In view of the formal and technical similarities to the decorations of the Aldama Palace, Pedro Herrera López (2007: 37, 46 and 112) asserts that Albé also decorated the ceiling of a small parlour of the house that was the residence of José Eusebio Alfonso Soler, the uncle of Miguel Aldama, currently located in Old Havana, on calle San Ignacio, 503, on the corner with Santa Clara. Regrettably, this circular ceiling, depicting candlesticks and masks surrounded by tondos, was demolished and the only image available is to be found in the book by Herrera López (2007: 37). As already noted, the Roman painter, decorator and also architect Daniel Dall’Aglio was one of Albé’s colleagues at the Tacón and Principal Theatres in Havana. Born in 1811 (Fernández 2008: 218, n. 1) and almost certainly academically trained, in 1834 he embarked for Havana, together with the aforementioned Tartarini, as a painter hired by an Italian opera company, probably linked to the La Pergola Theatre in Florence, which was going to perform at the Principal Theatre. It seems that Dall’Aglio only remained on the island for a few months, before returning a second time in 1837, after which he stayed until 1871, when he requested a passport to travel to Mexico, where he ended his life. In 1838, he was hired by the recently opened Tacón Theatre as a painter of backdrops and sets, where he began to collaborate with Albé and Meucci, while continuing to work at 140

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the Principal Theatre. The drop curtain that Dall’Aglio painted for the Tacón Theatre was first used on 31 March 1839, being considered as ‘the best of its class that has been seen hitherto in Havana’ (Rey Alfonso 1988: 5), although nothing is known about what it depicted. As will be seen further on, it is plausible that around that date Dall’Aglio travelled to the city of Trinidad to decorate the halls of the Cantero and Borrell Palaces, even though there are some doubts and that these commissions, together with the paintings of the living quarters of the Guáimaro sugar mill, for the same client, might have been carried out at the end of the 1850s. He was certainly in Havana in 1844, for he was commissioned as an architect to design the new theatre of the city’s Philharmonic Society of St Cecilia, while decorating the building with Albé. According to the news appearing in the Avisador de Comercio on 9 August 1849, together with another Italian painter, José Baturone, Dall’Aglio decorated the stage of the new theatre in Puerto Príncipe, namely, the Principal (Roselló 2009: 32–3). In 1858 or 1859, Dall’Aglio and Baturone yet again worked together on the interior decoration of the Tacón Theatre, which had been damaged by the explosion of the navy arsenal on 29 September 1858 (Rey Alfonso 1988: 21). The artist then moved to Matanzas, probably in 1860, where he stayed until 1871. In this city, he was responsible for two masterpieces of Cuban neoclassical civil and religious architecture: the Esteban Theatre, now the Sauto Theatre – on which more will be said further on – and the church of St Peter the Apostle in the district of Versalles, work on which started in 1867 and which for Weiss is ‘the most important nineteenth-century religious building on the island’ (Weiss 1996: 429). Despite the success of the Esteban commission, in 1864 part of Dall’Aglio’s fees were still outstanding and, according to the news appearing in La Aurora del Yumurí on 29 May of the same year (Fernández 2008: 221), he was in financial straits. Perhaps to improve his finances, in 1866 he painted the drop curtain and eight decorations for a small theatre in Bemba (modern-day Jovellanos), in the province of Matanzas. After the building of the church of St Peter the Apostle, he emigrated to Mexico where he probably participated in, or supervised, the building of another theatre, the Iturbide, and where he died before 1888, the year in which, now deceased, he was mentioned in La Aurora del Yumurí on 27 March. The last Italian artist whose biography deserves a brief mention is the aforementioned Antonio Meucci, a colleague of Albé and Dall’Aglio from his Havana days and the author of the designs for the decorations of the Aldama Palace (Roselló 2005: 63–93). This eclectic was born in Florence in 1808, where, as of 1821, he attended the Academy of Fine Arts for six years: there, he not only studied drawing, painting and sculpting, but also mechanics and chemistry, having the opportunity to perform experiments in the laboratories. This knowledge enabled him to be hired as an assistant machinist at the La Pergola Theatre in Florence and to acquire the skills that he would subsequently demonstrate when, probably for political reason, he had to abandon his hometown and emigrate to Cuba, embarking in Livorno on the same ship as Dall’Aglio. In Havana, together with his wife, who was a costume designer, he worked as a machinist and stagehand at the Principal and Tacón Theatres, earning an additional income thanks to his many inventions, such as water 141

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purification filters and a new electroplating technique. As with his compatriot Dall’Aglio, Meucci also had a knowledge of architecture, since, when the Tacón Theatre was damaged by the hurricane in 1846, he was named director general of the reconstruction works. Meucci left Cuba in 1850, embarking for the United States.

The Aldama Palace The first building featuring Pompeian decorations discussed here is the Aldama Palace, located in Havana, facing the Plaza de la Fraternidad Americana, and currently housing the History Institute of Cuba. It is one of the most significant houses of the colonial period, the successful attempt of a wealthy family belonging to the peninsular and Creole elite to create a dwelling embracing neoclassicism and its ‘good taste’, all the rage in Europe and the United States since the end of the eighteenth century. According to Philippou (2014: 116), it could even be regarded as an example of the reworking of the classical style, also employed at the time in buildings linked to the representation of Spanish central power (e.g. the refurbishment of the Palace of the Captains General and the Tacón Prison), as a reflection of the desire for autonomy in Cuba, which looked more to France and Italy than to Spain (Ramos 1995: 56). The building, defined as ‘the most artistic . . . to have been built in the city during the nineteenth century’ (Herrera López 2007: 106), actually comprises two dwellings,12 which are linked by an elegant portico with Doric columns and a length of 56 m: a larger house, in which the owner lived, and another smaller one, behind the first, almost certainly occupied by one of his daughters and her husband. The chosen plot, close of the Military Camp or Camp of Mars, was located outside the walls of Old Havana. The main personages associated with the palace’s history, as will be seen in light of the brief summary provided below, were members, at least with respect to the youngest generation, of that well-to-do liberal Creole class who sought to express their identity and aesthetic ideals through their magnificent homes, which were not now identified as before with the street on which they were located, but with the names of their owners. Domingo Aldama Aréchaga, the palace’s builder and owner, who had been born into a poor family in Spain and had emigrated to Cuba at an early age, had amassed a huge fortune in the slave trade, thus allowing him to set himself up as a landowner with the purchase of four sugar mills in the province of Matanzas and sundry properties in Matanzas, Guanabacoa and Havana, as well as shares in the railroad company. As of 1834, the year in which Miguel Tacón was named captain general of the island, he was unable to play a political role on par with his economic clout, because efforts were made to distance the economic elite of the Havana area from public offices and institutions (Aguilera Manzano 2010: 13). Accused of being a traitor by the Spanish government and deprived of his assets for a time, in 1869 Aldama decided to emigrate with his family to the United States, where he died in New York in 1870 (Herrera López 2007: 118–9). When aged fifteen, Miguel (1820–1888), one of the four children born from Aldama’s marriage to the wealthy Rosa Alfonso y Soler, continued his schooling in Germany, 142

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where he became acquainted with Alexander von Humboldt, and subsequently in England and France. On returning to Cuba in 1840 or 1841, he very successfully managed his parents’ sugar mills, taking a stance in favour of the abolition of the black slave trade and the introduction of free white labourers of Spanish origin. Named Marquis of Santa Rosa by Isabella II in 1864, he renounced the title because of his republican ideals. Initially a member of the annexationist movement and then the reformist movement, in 1868, with the outbreak of the Ten Years’ War, he was one of the main proponents of the secessionist cause (Herrera López 2007: 114–8; Pérez 2006: 82–3). Lastly, the Venezuelan Domingo del Monte Aponte (1803–1853), the son-in-law of Domingo Aldama, who in all likelihood lived in the palace’s smaller house, emigrated to Cuba with his family in 1811, became a doctor of law in Madrid in 1828, was a prominent intellectual, journalist, writer and organizer of literary gatherings, in which the most prominent Cuban authors participated (Pérez 2017: 40), and a member of the aforementioned Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country and the Academies of History of Paris and Madrid. Additionally, he fought for the abolition of the slave trade, being accused by the Cuban government of being the leader of the Conspiracy of La Escalera, owing to his friendship with the English consul David Turnbull (Herrera López 2007: 36). Settling in Paris in 1843 and then, after being absolved of all charges, in Madrid in 1844, he died in the Spanish capital in 1853.13 Del Monte was involved, at least initially, in the building project of the palace, insofar as in a letter, dated 25 October 1838, that he sent to his co-brother-in-law, he declared that ‘our father-in-law . . . intends to build a small house with simple and elegant architecture, which, if he follows the plans with which I have already provided him, will be best and one and only in Havana in which it is possible to glimpse intentions and indications of respect and love for the fine arts’ (Herrera López 2007: 21). These plans had been drawn by the Venezuelan engineer Manuel José Carrerá Heredia, a friend of Del Monte, which were first modified and finally rejected because of their cost. As Alicia García Santana (2012: 242–4) has demonstrated, it was the French architect Jules Sagebien (1796–1867) who was commissioned to draw up the final plans of the palace and who revealed his culture and refined taste in his work (García Santana 2011: 28–39). Having emigrated from France to Cuba in 1818, and after a brief stay in New York, he pursued his profession chiefly in Matanzas, where shortly after his arrival on the island in the retinue of another Frenchman Esteban Best, he built the first neoclassical building in the city, that of the land Customs House, which was completely refurbished in 1911 (Pérez Orozco et al. 2015: 40–1; García Santana 2009: 117–8), thus giving rise to a new architectural period, under the influence of neoclassicism. In the proposal submitted to Aldama, Sagebien modified the floorplan of the stately mansion-warehouse, typical of the eighteenth century, by including a colonnade with an architrave (García Santana 2012: 249; Weiss 1996: 346). While the carpentry by John Lambden and the flooring by the Italian marble mason Francesco Bertolidi, with materials from Italy, followed Sagebien’s plan, it is more than probable that the murals, conceived, as observed above, by Antonio Meucci and then painted by Albé, perhaps with the collaboration of Dall’Aglio or Mario Bragaldi and Luigi Tartarini, were commissioned and completed 143

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when the palace had already been finished, namely, between 1844 and 1846, since there is no reference to them in Sagebien’s papers (García Santana 2012: 245; 2010: 205; Herrera López 2007: 47). Some of those paintings, featuring classical and, especially, Pompeian motifs (Weiss 1996: 350 and 376; Campuzano 2014: 47), can still be seen. Precisely, nowadays, ‘paintings are only found on eight of its ceilings and the wall of a premises . . . we know that there were other rooms with ceiling paintings and not only on the main floor, but also on the mezzanine, where none have survived’ (Herrera López 2007: 45–6 passim). This state of affairs was initially the result of the vandalism of the Spanish volunteers who occupied and pillaged the building on 24 January 1869, in reprisal for the adhesion of Miguel Aldama and Leonardo del Monte, the son of Domingo, to the secessionist cause, and subsequently of the damage caused to the palace when it was converted into a tobacco factory, with its offices and workshop. The Pompeian motifs, which the painter-cum-decorator Albé described as being ‘in the style of Raphael . . . with figures, arabesques and gilded elements’ (Herrera López 2007: 47) in an announcement offering his services, appear, for example, on the ceiling of the dining room (Figure 8.1) on the top floor of the house intended for Domingo del Monte. Here, it is possible to observe, together with the faux architectural elements which give the whole a feeling of depth and order, the presence of female masks framed by red medallions, small Cupids inside tondos placed symmetrically in the four corners of the ceiling, gold polygonal spaces containing fine candlesticks that emerge from the heads of

Figure 8.1 Ceiling of the dining room on the top floor of the house of Domingo del Monte. © Julio A. Larramendi. 144

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female busts and from which plant motifs sprout: above them, there are small figurines of youthful tight-rope walkers, flanked on both sides by floating maidens. The decorators also painted Pompeian motifs on the ceiling of the top floor passage that connected the house of Domingo Aldama with that of Domingo del Monte: on a light green background there are female masks framed by hexagons which, on the long sides, are accompanied by opposed griffins, in addition to geometric and plant motifs which create a mosaic and stucco effect (Weiss 1996: 350, Fig. 632). The main hall of Aldama’s house features Cupids in different poses which surround a central painting framed by faux architectural elements and a cornice in which the figure of Jupiter enthroned appears (Weiss 1996: 350, Fig. 633 and 635). Finally, the ceiling of the music room is decorated with Renaissance panels executed in trompe l’oeil, each one with a rosette, gold rectangles occupied by plant motifs and a bird in the centre, and, in the central section, Terpsichore holding a lyre in her right hand and a laurel in her left, with a Cupid offering her a musical score at her side (García Santana 2012: 245). It is evident that, by selecting these Pompeian motifs, in line with the prevailing European taste for neoclassicism, and placing them mainly in reception rooms, Meucci, Albé and their collaborators intended to give the building a refined air of cosmopolitan ‘good taste’, in accordance with the wishes of their clients who followed the model of the elegant and modern houses in the United States and in cities like Paris and London, which they themselves had seen on their travels. Indeed, as Weiss (1996: 376) notes, ‘The decoration of the Aldama Palace was truly that which corresponded to a building of that type in Europe.’ On the other hand, by commissioning foreign painters with academic training (true in the case of Meucci, probable in that of Albé) and classical knowledge to decorate the rooms of his houses, Domingo Aldama showed his readiness to distance himself from what had been considered as art in Cuba until the beginning of the nineteenth century – to wit, the work of uneducated artisans – and to align himself with European and North American standards.

The Cantero Palace The second case study of a building decorated with Pompeian motifs, located in Trinidad, a city in the central south of the island and declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1988, represents one of the best extant examples of the neoclassical houses that proliferated in this urban centre during the first half of the nineteenth century, in parallel with the development of the sugar industry and trade (García Santana 2010: 153). Built between 1828 and 1829, it first belonged to the planter José Mariano Borrell y Padrón (1767–1830), the owner of the Guáimaro sugar mill and the man who, in 1827, achieved the highest sugar production in the world. It is not clear who designed the palace, but, in view of several architectural innovations, García Santana (2012: 223) assumes that a possible candidate might have been the Scotsman Vitruvio Steegers, the master builder of Trinidad in 1828. The palace, which was sold to María Montserrate de Lara in 1842, owes its current name to her second husband, the physician and musician Justo Germán 145

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Cantero. Currently housing the city’s history museum, the palace has one floor, a neoclassical courtyard with galleries on all four sides and a central fountain, and a high tower dominating the urban landscape. On its façades, high pilasters sustain a Doricinspired entablature painted in grisaille, with triglyphs and metopes. One of the elements most frequently employed in nineteenth-century houses in Trinidad were murals, which were not only a simple way of concealing cheap building materials, but also of reflecting, above all in drawing and dining rooms, the opulence and taste of their owners. To this end, anonymous painters, many of them mulattos, were hired, sometimes providing them with books from which to copy motifs (García Santana, Angelbello, Echenagusía 1996: 278–81). In the case of the Cantero Palace, José Mariano Borrell y Lemus (1813–64), the son of the above-mentioned Borrell y Padrón and the richest man in the city, in addition to a collaborator of the Spanish crown,14 commissioned the Italian painter Dall’Aglio, then living in Havana, to decorate it.15 A piece of news published in the Correo de Trinidad on 6 February 1839 (García Santana 2010: 199) allows for assuming that the commission was carried out shortly before this date, although the fact that the Italian painter decorated another house, that of the Guáimaro sugar mill, owned by Borrell y Lemus himself, shortly before 1859, has led Luisa Campuzano (2014: 97) to opt for the 1850s, perhaps the most probable option. Dall’Aglio designed a highbrow decorative programme for the palace as a whole, employing Pompeian and neoclassical elements. His focused his efforts on the principal reception rooms, namely, the main hall and the small hall (Figure 8.2), separated, in accordance with the distinctive feature of the houses of Trinidad at the beginning of the nineteenth century, by rounded arches (García Santana 2012: 222). In the main hall, a frieze was painted on the top half of the four walls, depicting the Muses – numbering ten for the sake of decorative symmetry – against a blue background and framed, alternating with symmetrical mythological paintings which, on the long walls and in the corners, reproduce griffins, Cupids combating them and, in the centre, a lyre. In contrast, above the doors of the short walls, through which the rooms are accessed, there are griffins and, in the centre, a winged genie. The doorways are surrounded by faux architectural elements, which create an illusion of depth, while the front of the columns feature classicist decorations with reddish plant motifs alternating with blue geometric figures. This classical-Pompeian ensemble as a whole, which visitors to the palace encountered as soon as they had crossed the threshold of the main door, must have impressed them and have borne witness to the ‘good taste’ and wealth of the owners, who no longer sought out unschooled local painters, but foreign artists trained at academies. In the small hall, which served as a more intimate reception room, Dall’Aglio opted for a simpler decoration. He chose a regular geometric frieze, reproduced faux architectural elements around the doorways and decorated the central part of the columns with meanders in pinkish frames, thus contrasting with the blue background. The rooms also have framed doorways and geometric and floral friezes (García Santana 2010: 199, Fig. 69.7.3; Campuzano 2014: 97). There are plant garlands which, in turn, serve as a support for the framed scenes or small landscapes featuring architectural elements and statues. In 146

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Figure 8.2 Main hall and small hall of the Cantero Palace. © Julio A. Larramendi. one of these scenes, located on the wall of the doorway through which the tower is accessed (García Santana 2010: 199, Fig. 69.7.3, second on the right in the bottom half of the page), there are three male figures which, to a certain extent, resemble the Cupids playing with a rope in Plate XXXIII of Book I of the Antichità di Ercolano.16

The Borrell Palace The third building featuring Pompeian decorations is, like the Cantero Palace, located in Trinidad, on calle Medialuna 18, and whose name is owing to the fact that in 1859 it belonged to the aforementioned José Mariano Borrell y Lemus, Marquis of Guáimaro, who had purchased and refurbished it back in 1841. Nowadays, it is the headquarters of 147

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the Office of the Curator of Trinidad and the Valley of the Sugar Mills. As García Santana, Angelbello and Echenagusía (1996: 276, n. 39) have observed, it is a typical eighteenthcentury house, modified in the nineteenth century with the addition of galleries and the hallway under the two-storey tower. The author of the murals was yet again Daniel Dall’Aglio, insofar as there is a strong resemblance between the paintings of the living quarters of the Guáimaro sugar mill, undoubtedly the work of the Italian painter (García Santana, Angelbello and Echenagusía 1996: 291) and those of the Borrell Palace. As he had already done in the Cantero Palace, Dall’Aglio reserved the most elaborate decorations for the drawing room, where he depicted a series of Pompeian and neoclassical themes (Campuzano 2014: 96–7; García Santana 2010: 287, Figs 68.7 and 68.8). Effectively, the top part of the four walls, whose bottom section is divided into squares by lines, plant motifs and a faux cornice, display Cupids in different postures, framed in blue octagons, which reproduce, to some extent, those appearing in Plate XXXVI of Book 3 and Plate LIV of Book 4 of the Antichità di Ercolano. Surrounding them, in the top and bottom parts of the frieze there are faux architectural element and bas-reliefs, which create an illusion of depth. Next to the Cupids on the short sides, rectangles frame an ensemble formed by two lions (only the top part of them) and, in the central part, a vase of flowers from which plant motifs sprout (García Santana 2010: 192, Fig. 67.1). On the ceiling’s main cross-beam there are faux Renaissance panels with rosettes, while the inner face of the rounded arch is also decorated with rosettes and acanthus leaves. In the dining room, Dall’Aglio divided the walls into canvases – the solution also chosen for the drawing room – on which he painted pictures, surrounded by real gilt wood frames: they are bucolic landscapes and scenes depicting classical ruins (statues, sphynxes, temples and porticos) (García Santana 2010: 199, Fig. 69.7.2), with a certain romantic air about them, which bear a very strong resemblance to those that the painter subsequently reproduced in the living quarters of the Guáimaro sugar mill.

The Esteban Theatre To conclude this tour of nineteenth-century Cuban buildings featuring Pompeian decorations, it is worth mentioning the Esteban Theatre, now the Sauto Theatre, in the city of Matanzas, on the north coast of the island, not far from Havana, which was refurbished in 2019. The reason behind this mention, which is not strictly related to the Pompeian style, but rather to neoclassicism, lies in the fact that this coliseum represents one of the last works of Dall’Aglio as an architect and as a decorator and painter, in addition to one of the main examples of Cuban neoclassicism in civil architecture. In Matanzas, founded at the end of the eighteenth century and nicknamed the ‘Athens of Cuba’, the process through which, between the first and second half of the nineteenth century, as a result of the economic boom, the city’s aspect was gradually adapted to the neoclassical ‘good taste’ professed by the affluent middle-classes, mainly linked to the sugar industry, as a factor in the construction of their modern and cosmopolitan identity, 148

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can be clearly seen. This came about thanks to the urban development of areas outside the city centre, the creation of new neighbourhoods (Pueblo Nuevo and Versalles), the revamping of public spaces and the improvement of the buildings in the area between the rivers (García Santana 2005: 123–4). Indeed, as the newspaper La Aurora de Matanzas declared in 1831, ‘There has always been a norm in architecture consisting in imitating the ancient or, better said, in copying the works of Greece and Rome’ (García Santana 2005: 128). According to García Santana (2005: 127; 2009: 112–39), the city’s new image was gradually forged, in the realm of civil architecture, chiefly thanks to the works of the French architect Jules Sagebien who, it should be recalled, was the author of the plans of the Aldama Palace and, to a lesser extent, to those of the other engineers working in Matanzas. With his theatre and church of St Peter the Apostle in Versalles, Dall’Aglio also played an important role. The need to build a new theatre to replace the existing one, the Principal, began to be proposed in the 1850s. Matanzas had effectively become the island’s second port, its population had tripled and the foreign opera companies which wanted to perform there encountered a building with deficient acoustics and a limited seating capacity. As shown by the available documents, in October 1858 it was decided to create a joint stock company to defray the cost of the building project. After being put out to tender, the proposals submitted by Daniel Dall’Aglio and Francisco Piqué were chosen for further evaluation. On 1 May 1860, the board of directors opted for the former and work on the new theatre began on 15 October. In the building, opened in the plaza de la Vigía in April 1863 and considered as being ‘worthy of any European capital’ (García Santana 2012: 274), Dall’Aglio was not only in charge of the architectural aspects, probably drawing inspiration from the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, but also of the decoration as a whole. In addition to placing marble statues of Greek goddesses in the lobby, whose main function was to isolate the auditorium, the Italian artist painted the first eight decorations and the figures and ornaments on the ceiling. In accordance with the type of building, he chose the Muses as the subject, as he had already done in the drawing room of the Cantero Palace, this time eight in number (García Santana 2012: 277).

Conclusions The foregoing analysis of three examples17 of Pompeian decorations allows for arriving at several initial conclusions. All the case studies are linked to Italian painters (one of whom, Meucci, was certainly academically trained, while as to the other two, this was likely) who, on arriving in Cuba in the 1830s, employed their knowledge of classical and Pompeian antiquity not only to work in theatres, but also to decorate private houses. It is not known whether, before travelling to Havana, they had had the opportunity to visit the excavations of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Be that as it may, in their formative years they would have seen reproductions of Pompeian themes, which became an essential component of their 149

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iconographic repertoire and which could be combined according to their own taste and the desires of their clients. These artists were commissioned to decorate the mansions of the Creole elite, of different political leanings, who sought, through their elegance and luxuriousness, to distance themselves from the traditional artistic culture (mainly in the hands of the island’s coloured population) and, in contrast, to embrace European (especially Italian and French) and North American academic art. At least in the case of the Aldama-Del Monte family, the intention was probably to build a modern and cosmopolitan Cuban identity, capable of distinguishing itself from, and competing with, its peninsular counterpart.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. I owe this reference to Elvia Carreño Velázquez, PhD, the authoress of Chapter 2 of this collective book. 3. It is interesting to note how this type of inner courtyard was also related to a convent, and not to Pompeii, in the house designs proposed by Arturo Soria in the Ciudad Lineal in Madrid, as observed in Chapter 1 by Mirella Romero Recio. 4. To offer just one example, in the Memorias de la Real Sociedad Patriótica de La Habana (1838) there is a short section devoted to the excavations of Pompeii (finds made in 1837, risks for the conservation of the mural paintings already discovered). 5. Mention should go to the case, which I shall address in another forthcoming paper, of the citizens of Matanzas Eusebio and Antonio Guiteras Font, who visited Pompeii in the first half of the 1840s (Aguilera Manzano 2010). 6. I am much obliged to professor Luisa Campuzano, PhD, the photographer Julio Larramendi and Karen Reyes of the Casa Malibrán Documentation Centre of the Office of the Curator of Trinidad for their assistance in collecting the data, information and images for this chapter. 7. In 1817, as a result of the development of sugar industry, slaves of African origin accounted for 35 per cent of the Cuban population (Neill 2012: 297). 8. These student selection criteria, to which there is no official reference in any of the academy’s statutes, were discussed at internal meetings of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country (Neill 2012: 307). Alejandro Ramírez himself, the main promotor of the academy, which was named ‘of San Alejandro’ in his honour, created the Committee on the White Population in 1817. 9. The basis for the choice of these buildings has been the paper (2014) by Luisa Campuzano, PhD. 10. In the Archivio Storico Ricordi there are sketches of opera stage designs made by Albé, before he travelled to Cuba https://www.digitalarchivioricordi.com/en/iconografia?relatedPeople=G ioacchino+Alb%C3%A9 [accessed 21 November 2021]), some of them relating to classical themes (Aureliano in Palmira, La Vestale, Niobe). Furthermore, on the website Storia e Memoria di Bologna, where he appears with the surname of Alba, it is recalled that Basoli mentioned that he was one of his collaborators in 1816 and that nothing more is known about him in Italy as of 1820 https://www.storiaememoriadibologna.it/alba-gioacchino481254-persona [accessed 21 November 2021]. 150

Pompeii and Herculaneum in Cuba 11. According to Roselló (2005: 77), they were both given the commission thanks to the success of the sets and effects that they had designed for Antonio García Gutiérrez’s comedy Mazulme, premiered on 16 April 1843. 12. This aspect is reflected in the building licence, dated 22 January 1840, which states the following: ‘I grant Don Domingo Aldama the necessary licence for building two houses’ (Herrera López 2007: 29). 13. For an overview of this person, cf. Martínez Carmenate 1997; Morán 2016. 14. On 18 August 1851, Borrell y Lemus voted in favour of the death penalty for the Cuban patriot José Isidoro de Armenteros and his companions, and, on 5 June 1860, the queen Isabella II granted him the title of Marquis of Guáimaro for services rendered to the Spanish crown. 15. García Santana, Angelbello and Echenagusía (1996: 293) highlight the presence of two types of decorations in the building, since under the highbrow ones of Dall’Aglio, it is still possible to glimpse traces of others, of the popular sort, perhaps contemporary to the building of the house, in the valances of the main and small drawing rooms. 16. I owe this piece of information to the editor of this book. 17. It is conceivable that some decorations representing Pompeian themes existed in the house located on calle Martí 62, on the corner with María de Valdivia, in the city of Sancti Spíritus (García Santana 2008: 263, Fig. 401, above). Built between 1848 and 1855, it belonged to Félix Rodríguez Valdivia and Teresa de la Cruz González, husband and wife and owners of ranches, slaves and several residences. Refurbished during the final decade of the twentieth century, it is currently the premises of the Provincial Branch of the National Office of Tax Administration. Regrettably, these paintings were lost during the building’s restoration. I am much obliged to the Office of the Curator of Sancti Spíritus, in particular to the historian María Antonieta Jiménez, for the information on the history of the house, and to Javier León, who made an inventory of the murals of the houses of Sancti Spíritus for his MA thesis, for the data on the conservation.

References Aguilera Manzano, J. M. (2010), El pensamiento liberal cubano a través del diario de viaje de Eusebio Guiteras Font, con trascripción de S. Lupi, Sevilla: Junta de Andalucía. Campuzano, L. (2014), ‘Pompeya en paredes y páginas cubanas del siglo XIX’, Cuadernos de italianística cubana, 21: 93–101. Coyula Cowley, M. and Rigol Savio, I. (2015), ‘La calzada del Cerro: esplendor y ocaso de La Habana neoclásica’, in L. Gómez Consuegra, O. Niglio (eds), Conservación de centros históricos en Cuba, 1, Roma: Aracne Editrice: 189–223. Cruz Díaz, U. (1999), Diccionario Biográfico de las Artes Plásticas, La Habana: Pueblo y Educación. Fernández, D. (2008), Historia del Teatro Sauto (1863–1899), Matanzas: Ediciones Matanzas. García Santana, A., Angelbello, T., and Echenagusía, V. (1996), Trinidad de Cuba, patrimonio de la Humanidad. Arquitectura doméstica, Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala. García Santana, A. (2005), ‘La ciudad de La Habana. Arquitectura doméstica de La Habana Vieja’, in J. R. Soraluce Blond, R. López Machado (eds), La casa cubana: colonia y ecletismo, A Coruña: Universidade da Coruña Servizo de Publicacións: 31–72. García Santana, A. (2008), Las primeras villas de Cuba, con fotografías de J. A. Larramendi, Ciudad de Guatemala: Ediciones Polymita. 151

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts García Santana, A. (2009), Matanzas. La Atenas de Cuba, con fotografías de J. A. Larramendi, Ciudad de Guatemala: Ediciones Polymita. García Santana, A. (2010), Trinidad de Cuba. Un don del cielo, con fotografías de J. A. Larramendi, Ciudad de Guatemala: Ediciones Polymita. García Santana, A. (2011), ‘Julio Sagebien, arquitecto de Matanzas, ingeniero de Cuba’, Arquitectura y Urbanismo, 32 (1): 28–39. García Santana, A. (2012), Treinta maravillas del patrimonio arquitectónico cubano, con fotografías de J. A. Larramendi, Ciudad de Guatemala: Ediciones Polymita. González-Ripoll Navarro, M. D. (1999), Cuba, la isla de los ensayos. Cultura y Sociedad (1790– 1815), Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas. Herrera López, P. A. (2007), El Palacio Aldama. Una joya de la arquitectura habanera, La Habana: Ediciones Boloña. Martínez Carmenate, U. (1997), Domingo del Monte y su tiempo, La Habana: Unión. Morán, F. (2016), ‘Domingo del Monte. ¿“El más real y útil de los cubanos de su tiempo?” ’, Dirasat Hispánicas, 3: 39–65. Neill, P. (2012), ‘Founding the Academy of San Alejandro and the Politics of Taste in Late Colonial Havana, Cuba’, Colonial Latin American Review, 21 (2): 293–318. Paneque Duquesne, O. (2020), La Academia de Bellas Artes de San Alejandro de La Habana (Cuba): fundación, evolución y producción pictórica (1818–1899), PhD thesis, Universidad de Granada. Pérez, L. A. (2006), Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. Third Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pérez, L. A. (2017), Intimation of Modernity: Civil Culture in Nineteenth-Century Cuba, Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. Pérez Orozco, L. et al. (2015), Matanzas en el visor del tiempo, La Habana: Editorial Universitaria Félix Varela. Philippou, S. (2014), ‘La Habana del siglo XIX. “Todo lo sólido se desvanece en el aire” ’, Quiroga, 5 (enero-junio): 110–27. Ramos, M. A. (1995), ‘Cinco siglos de historia: arquitectura y urbanismo en Cuba’, in F. J. Préstamo y Hernández (ed.), Cuba: arquitectura y urbanismo, Miami: Ediciones Universal: 13–98. Rey Alfonso, F. (1988), Gran Teatro de La Habana, cronología mínima (1834–1987), La Habana: Banco Nacional de Cuba. Roselló, R. (2002), ‘Presencia italiana en Cuba: 1492–1902’, in D. Capolongo (ed.), Emigrazione e presenza italiana in Cuba, 1, Roccarainola: Circulo Culturale G.B. Duns Scoto: 15–30. Roselló, R. (2005), ‘Antonio Meucci y sus años habaneros’, in D. Capolongo (ed.), Emigrazione e presenza italiana in Cuba, 4, Roccarainola: Circulo Culturale G.B. Duns Scoto: 63–93. Roselló, R. (2009), ‘Una multitud de pintores italianos en Cuba’, in D. Capolongo (ed.), Emigrazione e presenza italiana in Cuba, 8, Roccarainola: Circulo Culturale G.B. Duns Scoto: 23–47. Roselló, R. (2019), Presencia italiana en Cuba: 1492–1902, Bloomington, US: Xlibris. Saco, J. A. (1946), La vagancia en Cuba, La Habana: Publicaciones del Ministerio de Educación. Weiss, J. E. (1996), La arquitectura colonial cubana. Siglos XVI al XIX, La Habana – Sevilla: Instituto Cubano del Libro.

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CHAPTER 9 EXCAVATING THE PAST AND FRAMING NEW IDENTITIES IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: VESUVIUS, POMPEII AND MODERNITY IN RIO DE JANEIRO 1 Renata Senna Garraffoni

While Napoleon Bonaparte busied himself with the expansion of his dominions across European territory, in early 1808 the Portuguese royal family arrived in Bahia, Brazil – and soon thereafter, moved to Rio de Janeiro, turning the city into the capital of the Portuguese kingdom. The royal family’s move to Brazil was, in fact, an event of major social, political and cultural impact; after all, in order for them to be duly installed in their new home, a number of changes were made in the city, in addition to the signing of treaties that altered the country’s political position within the context of the times. Dating from that epoch was the founding of several important institutions, such as the Botanical Gardens, the Bank of Brazil and the Royal Press – in addition to the organization of library collections which would later become the country’s National Library, and the signing of a treaty to open ports to friendly nations (Tratado da Abertura dos Portos às Nações Amigas). Nonetheless, the transfer of the royal court did not mitigate conflicts, neither in Portugal nor Brazil. On the contrary, the years that followed were characterized by considerable political and economic instability as well as social turmoil. Thus, in 1821, slightly more than a decade after the royal family set itself up in Rio de Janeiro, D. João VI returned to Lisbon, leaving his son as regent. In 1822, D. Pedro I proclaimed Brazilian Independence, becoming Brazil’s first emperor. He remained as such until 1831, at which point he abdicated to the throne, leaving it to his son, D. Pedro II, who, still a child, would not be able to take over. This unprecedented situation was dealt with through the formation of an interim government, another turbulent moment that culminated in the anticipated declaration of legal age for Dom Pedro II, enabling him to accede to the throne in 1841. He remained there until the Proclamation of the Republic, in 1889. This brief summary serves to exemplify how the history of nineteenth-century Brazil was marked by a plethora of political, economic, social and cultural changes. In a brief span of less than 80 years, the country moved from colony to empire to republic. Such major changes and conflicts undoubtedly account for the fact that, from a historiographic point of view, it has generated extensive research and consolidated debate. In this regard, the chapter I offer here is but the modest contribution of a scholar who comes from the fields of Classical and Reception Studies and remains in awe of the array of relationships that nineteenth-century Brazilian society established with Pompeii and Vesuvius.

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In order to weave the necessary connections, I began from some rather generic information that I had at hand, the fact that the empress Teresa Cristina was the first person to bring collections of Pompeian artefacts to Brazil, to the study of the cultural and artistic impact of Vesuvian cities on daily life in Rio de Janeiro. In developing this research within the ambit of the RIPOMPHEI project, I was able to note that the relationship between Rio de Janeiro residents and Vesuvian cities was intensified by the actions of the empress, albeit not restricted to the latter: both before and after her activities to foment the development of Classical Archaeology in Brazil, interactions with Pompeii and Vesuvius were as lively as they were in other regions of the Americas or even within Europe, despite specificities. Thus, considering both the absence of a volcano, and of Graeco-Roman civilization, within Brazilian territory, an understanding of the ways in which Pompeii and Vesuvian cities came to take part in Rio de Janeiro daily life and public debate, causing significant cultural impact, requires attention to the way news about them circulated on this side of the Atlantic. New technologies were fundamental in this diffusion: both the telegraph and photography enabled more agile circulation of images and senses, producing both news reports and the diffusion of travel accounts, spreading interest in ancient art and literature, suturing perceptions of adventure and awe emerging amongst the Rio de Janeiro elites in the midst of the intense political, social and economic transformations of the times. Hence, in order to comprehend the impact of the Vesuvian excavations, and most particularly, the sense of awe that their discoveries inspired, the reflections that were wrought regarding an unpredictable volcanic nature that destroys at the same time that it preserves, we must pay attention to the particular intersection of science and newspaper reports. This perspective enables us to perceive both the profuse imagery generated on the classical past as well as its relations with the Rio de Janeiro of the times. With this as my context, my argument, over the course of the chapter, is that reading nineteenthcentury Rio de Janeiro newspapers provides a reliable parameter for understanding the fascination that the Vesuvian cities stirred among the learned elites of the capital during the imperial period. It is through them that we find out as Pompeii was being excavated, Rio de Janeiro residents were reading about the discoveries, about how Teresa Cristina negotiated the collections, about the plays that were being staged at local theatres with antiquity-inspired motifs, about the stores that were selling ceramics inspired by the artefacts that had been found in the Vesuvian region – and even about news of a youth, Antônio Silva Jardim, a radical republican and abolitionist who had played an important role in republican struggles and against the monarchy and died while on his Grand Tour, in an accident on Vesuvius. The volume of news appearing in the press, as well as travel accounts and photography were, therefore, highly significant, although there is little in the way of studies that weave such connections between antiquity and modernity. This is exactly the issue that I will explore here. Starting from some considerations on the excavation of Pompeii, I examine the important role played by the newspapers in disseminating archaeological works over the course of the nineteenth century, and then go on to deepen the discussion on how Teresa Cristina’s activities encouraged the circulation of images of Pompeii in Rio de 154

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Janeiro. The focus on Teresa Cristina is, from my point of view, highly relevant, as it comprises an aspect of the peculiarities of how Rome was received within the Brazilian context: it is through the political activities of the empress, a woman, that the bases for the development of studies on art and ancient culture, through Pompeian cultural material, emerge. This is an aspect of Brazilian history that has, to date, been only scantly studied, although the echoes of her initiatives resonate over the course of the twentieth century and continue until today – after all, academic studies that, in Brazil, take Pompeii as their central object of study are in no short shrift. Analysis of this nineteenth-century phenomenon thus becomes a way not only to perceive how certain segments of Brazilian society understood the Romans but also to discuss the cultural transformations and the conflicts that were expressed through the different approaches taken to classical culture.

Excavating Pompeii: encounters between Naples and Brazil News on the excavation of the Vesuvian area had been followed since the eighteenth century, having begun in 1709 with the discovery of the remaining structures of the Herculean Theatre, from which innumerous artefacts were sent on to France. In the Pompeian case, which interests us here, the first digs date back to 1748, with the confirmation that it was in fact a city buried by Vesuvius in ancient times occurring around 1763 (Berry 2009: 41). Hence, in the nineteenth century, the period that the present analysis covers, there had already been almost half a century of excavations, and a large amount of material discovered, revealing such important findings as the Villa of Diomedes and the Temple of Isis (Romero Recio 2010: 133). This signifies that, even without a systematic organization of the excavations, news on discoveries circulated with fluidity, particularly amongst travellers. At the turn of the nineteenth century, to the extent that the region was being consolidated as a unique place to access the Roman past, political conflict intensified. This was due especially to Napoleonic expansion, which meant that excavations and dissemination of their results were permeated by a wide range of tensions and interests. Throughout the nineteenth century, such strife continued to generate fluctuation in work, with moments in which important discoveries were made and others in which there was almost no work being carried on at all. As it is not my intention here to provide a thorough analysis of the context of excavations over the course of the nineteenth century, I would like to emphasize several events that I believe are relevant to our understanding of the fluctuation in excavation work and its implications for the dissemination and circulation of news. We should take into consideration, for example, that between 1806 and 1815, the region was under Napoleonic control; in 1816, the Bourbonic monarchy was restored and that closer to the century’s end, in 1860, Italian unification took place. These tensions generated considerable economic and social instability, at a time in which scientific procedures were just beginning to be constituted and the field of classical archaeology had not yet solidified. In this context, Cooley (2003) finds that political issues were superimposed and became the guiding force of site 155

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management – particularly regarding what was to be done with the material that was discovered. It is for this reason that, although Pompeii had been managed by different people throughout the period, Cooley chooses to highlight the work of Fiorelli, whose entire career unfolded amidst scientific development and political conflicts – hence, a clear demonstration of the intersection of the two. Having taken on the coordination of excavations in 1843, he became involved in a plethora of problems, and was even sent to jail; yet if on the one hand, his political activities both removed him from and restored him to his position at the head of the excavations or in collaboration with the National Archaeological Museum of Naples – depending upon the period – on the other hand there is no doubt that it was he who produced the first substantial interpretations of the city, in addition to having organized a series of publications that systematized dissemination of archaeological data. Between 1860–4, for example, Fiorelli published his three volume Pompeianarum Antiquitatum Historia (PAH), a work that compiles his accounts of excavations of the city of Pompeii and its houses, as of 1748. From this experience came, in 1876, Notizie degli scavi di antichità, a journal that persists until today, providing information from the field. This concern for systematizing and introducing work was fundamental to the early definition of policy on the publication of archaeological bulletins and reports from the excavations of the region (Garraffoni and Grillo 2020). Just as political tensions had an impact on decisions regarding excavations, so too did they define access to them. During French control of the region, for example, the Grand Tour was interrupted. Pompeii did not return to the archaeological itinerary until 1815. Furthermore, its reopening did not lead to increasing numbers of visitors. According to Cooley (2003), the public that visited the ruins was still very limited, largely restricted to members of the nobility. This situation did not undergo significant change until 1860, with Italian unification. At this point, admission fees for entrance to the archaeological site began to be charged, yet the ancient city became the object of interest of a much wider public, no longer circumscribed to the gaze of a small set of families. Amidst a plethora of political issues and their ramifications, I would like to emphasize one in particular: the meeting of the kingdom of Naples and Brazil, resulting from the marriage of D. Pedro II, emperor of Brazil, to Teresa Cristina, in 1843. Teresa Cristina was born in Naples in 1822, daughter of the Duke of Calabria, Francis, who later became King Francis I of the Two Sicilies. His mother was infanta Maria Isabel de Bourbon, daughter of King Charles IV of Spain. Because of her connections to her motherland, Teresa Cristina, throughout her life as empress of Brazil, played a very important role in organizing the exchange of Graeco-Roman artefacts between the museums of the two nations. Whether due to the pieces that she took with her to Brazil as part of her dowry, her activities during the 1850s linked to what was at the time the Bourbon Museum (today’s National Archaeological Museum of Naples) or through the excavations that she financed, Teresa Cristina was to a large extent responsible for the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro’s endowment with a collection of Pompeian artefacts. This collection was fundamental in awarding Brazilians unprecedented contact with Roman cultural material, becoming the first major collection of Roman artefacts on 156

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Brazilian soil. Thus, it enabled a broader base of access to this past, beyond the nobility of members of the elites who had been able to venture out along the routes of the Grand Tour. In this sense, we can assert that it was through Teresa Cristina that antiquity and modernity crossed paths so intensely in Brazil, making an impact on artistic and cultural fields. And one way in which we are able to perceive the magnitude of this phenomenon is through the newspapers of the time, to which I will now turn.

From Naples to Rio de Janeiro: ancient Romans in Rio de Janeiro newspapers In recent research, Anita Almeida (2017) presents an interesting view on the relationship of Rio de Janeiro elites to Vesuvius and, consequently, to the Roman cities that were buried by its eruption. A scholar of news of calamities as they were rendered in Rio de Janeiro newspapers for the nineteenth century, she argues that a cult to Vesuvius can be detected over almost 90 years of news reporting. The oldest piece of news she finds dates back to 1812, to the Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, recounting the eruption that took place in June of that year, also connected to the profuse reporting related to Teresa Cristina’s marriage to D. Pedro II (1843). Such stories petered off toward the end of the century, with the last bit of news causing repercussion being that of the death of Antônio Silva Jardim in 1891. In addition to establishing these three points of reference, Almeida argues that news of Vesuvius can be understood as a tool for the creation of a notion of cosmopolitanism within the daily life of Rio de Janeiro. Both grandiose and terrible in nature, Vesuvius, over the early decades of the nineteenth century, became a symbol of the region of Naples. Narratives of its eruptions marked the constitution of a new type of news report, that of natural disasters.2 This new category became the basis for a novel formation of public opinion, shot through with a new perception of connection to the world beyond, one emerging from the development of new technologies, such as the telegraph. This meant that, over the course of the century, the time gap between the volcano’s eruption and the publication of news items on it drastically decreased. In addition to the technical issues at stake, there is also, in Almeida’s view, emergent construction of a relevant place for science itself, as explanations of seismic movement were rendered in a language evermore technical. Almeida’s research is on Vesuvius, on science and technology, but it does not neglect other cultural themes which drew my attention. She highlights a series of other news items that have to do with the Ouvidor Street Cosmorama and its images of Vesuvius, as well as exhibits of replicas, paintings and theatre sets, making it possible to assert that there was a bounty of visual images in Rio de Janeiro that referred to the volcano, even before Teresa Cristina’s arrival. Intrigued by the considerable amount of information that was available, I resorted to the National Digital Newspaper Archives of the National Library, where in fact I found a wide range of accounts of and materials on nineteenthcentury Pompeii: newspapers, books and photo collections put together by travellers or 157

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even Teresa Cristina herself. As a rich and varied documentary archive for the study of a Pompeian visual record not only in Rio de Janeiro but in all of Brazil, I believe it is relevant to sketch out some commentary on this record, as well as clarifying my own methodological focus.3 In relation to the survey that appears here, it is important to clarify that my broader research project covers a wider period, spanning 1850 to 1950.4 At the present, initial juncture, an idea of what the circulation of illustrated books was, in Rio de Janeiro, at the time is gleaned – for example – from the fact that the National Library includes works such as Estampas de Roma e Pompeia (1793),5 Suite des vues pittoresques des ruines de Pompeii et un précis historique de la ville (1819),6 Le case e di monumenti di Pompei (1854),7 Les fresques de Pompei (1936),8 among the variety of titles that came out between the eighteenth and mid-twentieth centuries. All these works, in addition to analysis and descriptions, are replete with images and drawings of a variety of Roman ruins, with special attention paid to Vesuvian cities. In addition to books and travel accounts, there is an important photographic archive on Pompeii, that of Thereza Christina Maria. This specific archive, bearing the name of the empress, includes more than 23,000 photos belonging to the imperial couple, donated to the National Library. Among them, many come from their trip to Naples and Pompeii,9 as well as over 100 photos by Michele Amodio of his visits to the latter, between 1867–73. With regard to news reporting, there is a voluminous amount of information which increases significantly in the early twentieth century, particularly with regard to archaeological discoveries. As news themselves are widely varied and surprising in the amount of information they make it possible to explore, they become the object of more detailed inquiry. We have organized our survey by theme and have, up to the present moment, been able to map out around 500 different news items appearing in different parts of the country that in one context or another mention Pompeii, Herculaneum or Vesuvius. Given the fact that the purpose of the chapter is to deepen insights into Rio de Janeiro and the relevance of Teresa Cristina’s cultural policies, the data that I have selected come from the various newspapers that circulated in the imperial capital between 1850 and 1889 (the year of the Proclamation of the Republic). Using Pompeii and Vesuvius as keywords, I have been able to reconstruct the following picture10: there are 48 news items that speak of archaeological findings at Pompeii or that provide information on it, 25 news items referring to Vesuvius’s volcanic activity, 70 references to literary narratives (poetic or humorous) in which Pompeii appears, 12 advertisements of products that make direct reference to Pompeii, two plays and 18 travel accounts of trips to Pompeii made by important figures, including the royal couple, coming to a total of 175 news items. These news items both nourish the Rio de Janeiro imaginary on the excavation of the Vesuvian region and constitute a visual record – and consequently, forms of elite identity that emerge around aesthetic perceptions and tastes.11 In this regard, I am guided by Anita Almeida’s approach, in my understanding of the roles that newspapers play. Bringing news about themes that are not native to national territory, such as the eruption of a volcano or the Roman past, newspapers place readers within an international context, 158

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creating perceptions of cosmopolitanism and, I would add, learned knowledge of the arts and of archaeology, relating science to aesthetics, creating lifestyles within modernity inspired by antiquity. Reading the series of news that appear in these papers, it becomes evident that Vesuvian cities nourished a taste for travel among the upper classes and promoted their inclusion within a zeitgeist of the ‘romantic sublime’, provoking tensions between ideological and literary experiences and creating political and identity narratives that propagated imperial values, aspects which I will turn to with greater detail next12.

Teresa Cristina: empress and archaeologist As I have already mentioned, Teresa Cristina, princess of the Two Sicilies, married D. Pedro II in 1843. However, as the wedding took place by proxy, it was actually a portrait of the empress done by José Correia de Lima, a disciple of Debret’s, that circulated widely in Brazil. On its first plane, we see a beautiful young woman; in the background is smoke-spewing Mt Vesuvius, creating a contrast between youthful beauty and the mortifying nature of an old volcano (Figure 9.1). The portrait, in addition to connecting the empress to Vesuvius through the suggestion of place of origin – whether through colours, or the very framing of the picture and the relationship it creates between nature and civilization (via monarchy) – became well-known in Brazil, remaining so until today, due to the polemics in which it is shrouded. Widely-reproduced in school history books, it is generally accompanied by commentary on the beauty of the young woman, allegedly

Figure 9.1 José Correia de Lima, Dª Teresa Cristina, c. 1843. © Museu Imperial/Ibram/MTur/ nº07/2022/MUS.

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drawing the monarch’s attention. Yet there are those that assert that the young woman of the portrait was not Teresa Cristina, and even that D. Pedro was disappointed when he met her in person. It is hard to separate fact from rumour, as both are today component parts of the social memory that surrounds the image; the anecdote even appears in the most important of existing historical biographies of D. Pedro (Schwarcz 1998). Curiously, this is practically all the news to be found about the empress; it is, in and of itself, an expression of the gender inequality inherent to a good part of the studies that have been done on the imperial couple.13 Often described as the silent empress, research on the development of art and science in Brazil during the period focus customarily overlooks her, concentrating instead on the figure of D. Pedro II. It is a well-known fact that D. Pedro II was a traveller, a fan of the sciences – and of archaeology, in particular – a scholar of the ancient world, an Egyptologist recognized by his French peers and supporter of the Brazilian Institute of History and Geography (Instituto Histórico e Geográfico do Brasil). His actions have been studied from different angles by Brazilian historians, whether from the perspective of politics, culture or even the satirical take of his opponents and detractors.14 The fact remains that while there is a long tradition of studies on the emperor, little work on the empress has been done; few and far between are the studies that have highlighted her decisive participation on the archaeological and cultural scene of nineteenth-century Brazil.15 Evelyne Azevedo (2018), in a recent study, points to this silence and presents a series of fundamental data that allow us to rethink the empress’s role in relation to Brazilian cultural politics. She highlights the fact that Teresa Cristina’s relationship to artefacts of classical antiquity had already been felt since her arrival in Brazil, as she brought thirteen bronze objects with her as a diplomatic gift. Yet it is not until 1854 that her activity as the cultural mediator of collections came to the forefront, through her acquisition of 260 pieces from the Bourbon Royal Museum. This became the most important collection of Pompeian artefacts in Brazil, part of the stock of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. In addition to these negotiations, Azevedo (2018: 118–19) argues that not only did Teresa Cristina carry out exchange of materials, sending Brazilian pieces to Italy (and although some of the latter disappeared before arriving at their destination); she also financed archaeological excavation on property of her own, on European soil. Several objects to be found in Brazil come from these excavations, such as the bust of Antinous that Azevedo (2018: 119) highlights, which was discovered in 1878 and donated by the empress to the National Academy of Fine Arts, and can be found today at the National Museum of Fine Arts, in Rio de Janeiro. Thus, her activities, from 1854 until her 1888 journey to Pompeii – exhaustively documented in photos and news reports – constitute almost three decades of intensified presence of Greek and Roman artefacts on Brazilian soil, emphasizing in particular those coming from the Naples region. Therefore, the increased news reporting of the time on the Vesuvian cities come as no surprise: there had been widespread political and cultural efforts to bring them to public attention. Hence, as the pieces began arriving to Brazil, turning the National Museum into an important South American centre of 160

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information on Roman antiquity, news can be read that connect archaeological discoveries with the creation of a particular elite taste for antiquity. Some examples enable us a better understanding of how these issues intersect. For such purposes, I have chosen four pieces of news on archaeological findings and an advertisement of ceramic pieces for lovers of ancient art, reproduced below: Among the objects recently discovered in Pompeii are: a small silver Juno head, finely-crafted, and a body, also in silver, but damaged; a bronze bit, a lamp of the same metal (whole) with a cover, suspension locks and an eraser; a patera; a large and beautiful vase with wings, finished by a winged genius with a cornucopia; other small bronze vases; a bronze seal with the name of the owner of the house in which these objects were found: ‘Lucius Cornelius Diadumens’ Correio Mercantil, e Intructivo, Politico, Universal, 1864, Issue n. 77. Recent excavations in Pompeii have revealed a temple devoted to Juno, and approximately 300 skeletons. The temple contained many statues of marble and bronze. Correio Mercantil, e Intructivo, Politico, Universal, 1865, Issue n. 238. Archaeological treasures – in the ruins of Pompeii, a safety box has just been found, made with sheets of iron sheets, bronze bas-reliefs, and a gold ball similar to those currently used in watch chains, to keep hair or a portrait miniature. This ball, according to experts, is the one that rich children wore around their necks until they were 16 years old, when they took on the virile toga. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1867, Issue n. 280. A house was discovered in Pompeii with a very well-preserved parlor. Among the paintings found there was a fresco, portraying a Narcissus who is looking at himself in the water, seated on a stone, and surrounded by nymphs and little loves. Jornal do Commercio, 1884, Issue n. 3. For lovers of art – The Milliet house, on Ourives Street n.19, received a copious collection of Majolian ceramics, in which vases and pots of antiquarian taste and shape can be found, following the models encountered in excavations carried out in Pompeii and Herculaneum. Jornal do Commercio, 1880, n. 89. In addition to such news, the travel accounts of V. de Benalcanfur are also worthy of consideration. The first that I was able to find was published in the Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1876, number 51. It is an extensive recounting of his trip to Naples, rendered in great detail with descriptions on the wealth of the city and its palaces; it also weaves commentary on the Bourbons’ significance for the development of the region as well as fierce criticism of their opponents. Amidst such commentary, Pompeii and Herculaneum appear at the foot of the Vesuvius. When compared to the rest of the narrative, ancient 161

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cities make only a brief appearance; the volcano is more important, with its menacing appearance, its cloud of smoke, its fury that turns cities into twins joined in tragedy, buried by the same eruption. Yet some time later, in issue 98 of that same year, the narrative takes the National Archaeological Museum of Naples as its focus. In this new publication, interesting details are given. Several of its rooms and their contents are described, with an emphasis on sculptures and paintings and making mention of the ‘secret cabinet’. I have chosen to reproduce an extract on the latter, given its significance regarding the way this nobleman sees art and Roman artefacts: (. . .) In this ‘secret cabinet’, off limits to ladies, and where under the rule of the Bourbons no foreigners are permitted to enter without the express permission of the ambassador of their nation, one can see the half-erased marble paintings of a Pompeian magnifying glass, the grouping, in marble of a satyr and a goat found in Herculaneum, monstrous phalluses, remains of pagan religions, golden collars of admirable craftsmanship and design, comprised of phalluses suspended by golden padlocks and statuettes of priests in singular attitudes, proving that Roman eyes were neither particularly prudish nor susceptible (. . .). Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1876, Issue n. 98. This small selection of news and of the fragment of an account is enough to provide an idea of what captured the attention of readers of the time: metal objects (gold, silver and bronze), sculptures and paintings, amulets to ward off evil, ‘skeletons’ and, from a thematic point of view, pagan mythology and religiosity. These elements together call our attention insofar as they help to construct narratives of beauty and estrangement, of the tensions between life and death, Christianity and paganism, but with a constant focus on the affluent strata of society, where knowledge and wealth merge. Sculptures and paintings, sometimes described in great detail, while on other occasions merely numbered and referenced in terms of their monetary value, appear both in advertisements and in personal travel accounts. Bringing together science, art and political commentary, newspapers allow us to reflect upon the constitution of a visual record and a taste for the old, attached to political perceptions of a new nation that becomes organized as an empire. After all, notes on archaeological excavations express notions of what should be valued within antiquity, and it is for this reason that Juno’s lovely body, made of silver, is, albeit incomplete/broken, more worthy of detailed mention than, for example, ceramic objects. This ancient aesthetic and perception of wealth create a notion of beauty appearing in advertisements of vases of Pompeian and Herculanean style meant for art lovers, a range of pieces inspired in Roman antiquity meant for the new tastes and fashions that circulated through the city. All of this can be gleaned from V. de Benalcanfur’s account, insofar as it provides clues of his political position – in his praise of the Bourbons and of excavation endeavours in the region – as well as awarding Brazilian readers access to the well-guarded secret cabinet, published a description of it in widely-circulating newspaper. Between newspapers and Teresa Cristina’s efforts to design cultural policies for the exchange of pieces between museums and build a permanent collection at the National 162

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Museum of Rio de Janeiro, there are also a number of tensions we should explore. If on the one hand, the focus on news reports was on art objects crafted in metal (and in gold, silver and bronze in particular), thereby spawning an aura of wealth and power that combined beauty, mystery and mythology, on the other hand, the artefacts that came to Brazil through the empress’s endeavours were more connected to everyday life, and not always made of precious metals. The collection in this regard had, in its origin, a value that was more historical, archaeological and artistic than financial in nature. In order to get an idea of its size, before the tragic fire that took place in 2018 at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, this very diversified collection contained 771 objects from the GraecoRoman past even including Etruscan artefacts, and of which two-thirds had been acquired through the direct mediation of the empress.16 These acquisitions came primarily from two different sources: pieces coming from the National Archaeological Museum of Naples and from excavations that the empress herself financed, in Veii. In other words, the empress not only negotiated exchanges but financed excavations on Italian soil, a fact which explains the diverse nature of the collection, portraying different periods of the Graeco-Roman past. We should highlight the fact that most pieces were largely related to the needs of daily life (instrumentum domesticum) although there were some less usual artefacts from Pompeii.17 Marina Cavicchioli (2004), in her research on Pompeian erotic art, devotes special attention in her catalogue to 30 pieces, all of which are phalluses, in their different compositions and functions, but most meant as amulets that were supposed to bring good luck and wealth and ward off evil. I emphasize this issue, because even though the collection might have had limited access on Italian soil, as V. de Benalcanfur points out, it had a singular presence in Brazil, whether due to the accounts published in Rio de Janeiro newspapers or through their physical presence within the collection that had been put together through Teresa Cristina’s efforts. If at another time objects of this sort stirred shock and indignation among certain members of the elites, in the decade of 2000, over a century later, they were finally subjected to systematic analysis by Cavicchioli. Starting from gender studies, Cavicchioli places these objects within academic debates that see them as apotropaic, that is, as holding magical powers linked to fertility, procreation and prosperity, and thereby important for understanding the daily beliefs of the popular strata of society – especially considering that some of the objects in the collection are made of ceramics and were not necessarily items belonging to the wealthy. These observations, even of a preliminary nature, enable us to take a new look at the period and at the reception of such archaeological findings on the other side of the Atlantic. Teresa Cristina was at the centre of the construction of a cultural policy on the part of an empire that was taking hold in the Americas, involving itself in fields in which art and science came together. Such connections became possible due to an ability to produce international excavation agreements, as well as to disseminate them, through the photography that was done at archaeological sites and to the active role of the material in stimulating the building of the Museu Nacional’s permanent collection. At the time, Brazil had no universities of its own and only a few isolated faculties, its museums, libraries and institutes were very restricted and largely male environments; 163

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this colours the importance of the empress’s activities in mediating relations between Rio and Naples, making way for new aesthetics and relationships between the Roman past and the Brazilian present of the period, in addition to inspiring research that was to occur so many decades later. This context enables us to argue that, in addition to the relevant role that the empress held as a force behind the construction of the Museu Nacional’s permanent scientific collection, helping to legitimate Brazil’s position within scientific study of antiquity in the eyes of European nations, she also made a fundamental contribution to the construction of a visual imagination of the ancient world. Her work widened Brazilian access to a variety of pieces on the Graeco-Roman context. An important part of the collection came from Pompeii, including frescoes from the Temple of Isis. I now go on to the last point that I would like to explore in this chapter, which is how this visual imaginary is materialized in Rio de Janeiro architecture.

The Catete Palace: one monument, many stories The paintings, part of Teresa Cristina’s collection, described in detail in the travel accounts that were published in newspapers or printed in the books that circulated during the period appear in the city of Rio de Janeiro, exhibited in a singular manner, in 1866, in the Palace of Nova Friburgo, which is why I bring the latter into focus here. The building, today’s Catete Palace, was built between 1858 and 1867 by the coffee trader and plantation owner Antonio Clemente Pinto, Baron of New Friburg, and became a monument of major historical, architectural and artistic significance. Located on one of the corners where two of the city’s then most important streets crossed, it was meant to serve as a place of residence for the baron, one of the richest men of the Brazilian empire at the time, and his family. Projected by Prussian architect Gustav Waehneldt, its refined late neoclassical style, emphasizing polychrome, flaunts the influence of the Florentine Renaissance as well as some aspects of eclectic style, particularly its two main halls, Pompeian and Moorish. The building’s three floors are divided following Renaissance pattern: the first floor is for services, the second for the luxurious events and banquets of the nobility and the third accommodates the bedrooms of the members of the family (Rodrigues 2016: 28).18 Rodrigues (2016) argues that the neoclassical style adopted for the construction of the Palace is the expression of the consolidation of an architectural project that was in vogue in Rio de Janeiro from the time the Royal Portuguese family arrived in Rio, yet then coming under the influence of the Pompeii excavations. The main modification that Rodrigues points out is the presence of colours – after all, the excavation of the Vesuvian region brought with it an ancient Rome that was no longer crafted solely in white marble, but now included the colours of the paintings that had been discovered on the wall of elite homes. In a detailed study of the Palace, the author explains that of the seven halls to be found on the second floor, five contain paintings in Roman style, of mythological inspiration, and one of them is quite specifically named as the Pompeian Hall, of interest 164

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Figure 9.2 Pompeian Hall. © Acervo Museu da República/IBRAM/Secult/Ministério do Turismo.

here because of its direct relationship to the Vesuvian city (Rodrigues 2016: 71). The Pompeian Hall served as backup for the Great Hall and the Venetian Hall, that is, at the heart of the social life that was carried out on the premises, where festivities were held. The entire space is decorated by scenes based on the artistic discoveries of Pompeian excavations, and in particular, the homes of members of the Roman elite. There are two types of paintings: those that are horizontal and close to the ceiling, imitating temples and gods, and similar to the fourth style described by Mau Rodrigues, and those that are on the walls, vertical, and ornamented, closer to the third style (figure 9.2).19 The example of the Palace is highly significant, not only because it is an expression of the neoclassical architecture that proliferated in Brazilian cities during the imperial period but in Rio de Janeiro specifically, as the capital of the empire, and also insofar as it indicates the changing perceptions of Rome that were brought about by Pompeian excavation. The use of red, which for decades marked Vesuvian cities, is worth special mention. Furthermore, the building was the place of residence of the baron himself; for a short time after his death, it functioned as a hotel, and then, still in the late nineteenth century, served as the seat of the Brazilian republican government, and later, the stage of President Getulio Vargas’s 1930 suicide. It may initially seem strange that a place built by a baron became a historical marker of the Republic, housing as it did Roman style paintings of the Vesuvian region. Yet a more attentive gaze explains the phenomenon: Roman antiquity was a period of dispute between Republicans and Monarchists, and to a certain extent, the Catete Palace, as a historical monument whose significance spans so 165

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many decades, is expressive of the tensions and changes that pervade the way the Roman past has been read and received. To make my point clearer and better explore these connections, I shall focus on José Murilo de Carvalho’s (2014) renowned study, A formação das almas [The formation of spirits] in which he discusses the diversity of ideas that circulated throughout Brazil as of the second half of the nineteenth century, culminating in the 1889 Proclamation of the Republic, and the new symbols and images that emerged from such disputes. Among the various political and ideological battles that were involved, Carvalho highlights and discusses three currents: American liberalism and ideals of US independence, French Jacobinism and positivism. He argues that, from the clash of such ideas comes a burst of symbols and images that nourish a number of different identities. These conflicts were fundamental in organizing the past, present and future of a nation and for this reason, each current of thought contained within it specific ways of ‘reading’ Graeco-Roman culture. After all, Brazilian politicians and intellectuals sought in classical culture the means to create new notions of citizenship and freedom that they might find in the paintings, and in a new national language that was taking shape at the end of the monarchy. Taking the perspective that Carvalho suggests into account, I understand that late nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro became the stage of discursive battles and that the new meanings that were given to the Roman past became part of elite political interaction. In my view, Carvalho’s considerations on the broader political debate of the times help us to understand the new role that the Romans took on within this new nationalism: no longer the days of the Caesars, but those of their own republicans. As Brazil itself was in the process of moving from empire to republic, a reshaping (rather than exclusion) of the classical tradition became an element of a new imaginary. To understand people’s world views, ways of imagining, dreaming and organizing their individual and social lives in the new nationalism we shall, as Hamilakis (2007) has already proposed, be aware of the ambiguities of the process. Ancient material culture and its physicality shaped concrete reality and produced localities of the nation at the end of nineteenth century (Hamilakis 2007: 33). In Brazil, curiously, the Roman material culture of Campania came to the country largely through the hands of an empress, and the presence had to undergo resignification in order to acquire resonance during the republican period. It is for this reason that I believe that the Catete Palace becomes a good example of the complexities and particularities of Pompeii’s reception in Brazil: financed by a rich baron, designed by a Prussian, inspired in Renaissance buildings and paintings of Pompei, it preserves the official memory of the Brazilian Republic and is given a name taken from the indigenous Tupi-Guarani language, Catete. It thus becomes clear that the reception of Pompeii and Vesuvius are a part of the history of Brazil. Yet a better understanding of the encounter between ancient Romans and modern Brazilians continues to be a challenge, due to the quantity of intersections that are possible. It is an instigating challenge and, although studies on the theme are still incipient, there is a clear indication that it is a fruitful field for studies on the reception of classical antiquity within Latin American contexts and for a closer look at still unexplored facets of Brazilian historiography, such as Teresa Cristina’s role in the cultural policies of her time. 166

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Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. Regarding natural catastrophes see Ricardo del Molino, this volume. 3. Many collectives from the permanent archives of the National Library of Rio de Janeiro are available at http://bndigital.bn.gov.br/acervodigital/ [accessed 7 October 2021], to which I was limited by the Covid-19 pandemic which made it impossible for me to access the material in loco. Although some material is protected by copyright restrictions, most is freely available, facilitating my access, despite extenuating circumstances. My research, as part of the RIPOMPHEI project, was aided by the assistance of undergraduate in History at the Federal University of Paraná, Heloisa Montelewski Trippia, to whom I here express my gratitude. It was through some of Heloisa’s research using keywords that we were able to discover the abundant amount of available information. In addition to the data I use in this chapter, our joint efforts generated the research project that Heloisa is currently carrying out under my supervision, entitled Os Últimos Dias de Pompeia: A recepção de Pompeia no Brasil através da produção cinematográfica de Arturo Ambrosio (1913), financed through a Programa de Ensino Tutorial (PET/MEC/SESU) scholarship. She examines the reception of Pompeii in silent film, as exemplified by Arturo Ambrosio’s film, Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (1913) and its circulation in Brazil during that time. 4. This chapter focuses specifically on the imperial period, but our archival research, within the context of the RIPOMPHEI project, is more extensive (covering 1850–1950). Our purpose here is a more discrete look at Teresa Cristina’s cultural policy. We cover part of the imperial period, the so-called First Republic (1889–1930), and the Vargas era Vargas (1930–45), traditional markers within Brazilian political history. 5. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_iconografia/icon146307/icon146307. pdf [accessed 7 October 2021]. 6. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_iconografia/icon1513875/icon1513875. pdf [accessed 7 October 2021]. 7. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_iconografia/icon604257/icon604257. pdf [accessed 7 October 2021]. 8. http://objdigital.bn.br/objdigital2/acervo_digital/div_iconografia/icon25752/icon25752.pdf [accessed 7 October 2021]. 9. https://www.bn.gov.br/explore/colecoes/thereza-christina-maria Part of the collection on Egypt and Pompeii can be visited through an online exhibit at the library: http://bndigital. bn.gov.br/exposicoes/uma-viagem-ao-mundo-antigo-egito-e-pompeia-nas-fotografias-dacolecao-d-thereza-christina-maria/ [accessed 7 October 2021]. 10. We limit our focus here to the city of Rio de Janeiro, but a more complete survey provides information on newspapers in circulation in cities in the following states: São Paulo, Paraná, Bahia, Maranhão, Pernambuco – thus reaching northern, northeastern, southern and southeastern regions of the country. 11. These new forms of elite’s identities based in Pompeian values can be found in other Latin American countries, see in this volume Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño (Mexico), Carolina Valenzuela and Gabriela Huidobro (Chile) or Federica Pezzoli (Cuba). 12. It is worth mentioning that the present research took monarchic identity discourses as its point of reference, but in a forthcoming work of mine, I examine the republican discursive

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts turn that took place with the 1891 death of Antonio Silvia Jardim, a man who was a fervent critic of the monarchy, in Vesuvius. 13. This highly intriguing aspect of Brazilian historiography led María Martín de Vidales García, another member of the RIPOMPHEI project, to dig further into the phenomenon, noting that this view has only very recently been contested; see ‘Intercambios Transoceánicos: del interés a la nostalgia. Teresa Cristina de Borbón y su actividad cultural en Brasil’, forthcoming. 14. There is extensive bibliographic production on D. Pedro II. For more on the specific issue here, his relationship to antiquity, see, among others, Bakos (2004); Funari and Funari (2010); Costa (2012). 15. See Avella 2014. 16. Unfortunately, the 2018 fire devastated the collection, comprised of ceramic objects including many small pieces. Most recent reports, such as the one published in the Revista da Fapesp, claims that close to 30 per cent of the collection of Graeco-Roman objects have been recovered through two years of work of restoration of items found amongst the ashes of the museum. Cf. https://revistapesquisa.fapesp.br/dois-anos-depois-do-incendio/ [accessed 7 October 2021]. 17. As a major portion of the material was lost during 2018 fire, a remaining possibility is to resort to photos published in theses’ catalogues, e.g. Cavicchioli 2004; Santos 2015. 18. After the baron’s death, the Palace was turned into a hotel. On 18 April 1896, during the presidency of Prudente de Moraes (at the time in interim regime under vice president Manuel Vitorino), the palace was acquired by the Federal Government to serve as presidential headquarters, located at the time at the Itamaraty Palace. The Catete Place, through a presidential act of 8 March 1960, was then organized as home to the Museum of the Republic, inaugurated on 15 November of the same year. More information on the Museum and the Palace is available at http://museudarepublica.museus.gov.br/galeria-virtual/ [accessed 11 October 2021]. 19. At present, the paintings on the walls of the hall persist as when they were painted in the nineteenth century. The paints seem to be inspired on the ones at House of M. Spurius Mesor and House of Epidius Sabinus (see Ling 1991), as the excavations were undertaken almost at the same time the Palace was built. It is important to also emphasize Fausto and Felice Niccolini catalogue, which was first issued 1854 and became an important reference. The ceiling underwent modification, which took place when the Palace became the seat of the Republican Presidency.

References Almeida, A. (2017), ‘Pavoroso espetáculo: o culto ao Vesúvio no Rio de Janeiro oitocentista’, Topoi, 18, 36: 490–513. Avella, A. A. (2014), Teresa Cristina de Bourbon: uma imperatriz napolitana nos trópicos 1843– 1889, Rio de Janeiro: Eduerj. Azevedo, E. (2018), ‘A coleção Teresa Cristina: idealização e falência de um projeto cultural para o Brasil’, Concinnitas, 19, 34: 116–25. Bakos, M. (2004), Egiptomania. O Egito no Brasil, São Paulo: Paris Editorial. Berry, J. (2009), Pompeya, Madrid: Akal. Carvalho, J. M. (2014), A formação das Almas – O imaginário da República no Brasil, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. Cavicchioli, M. (2004), As Representações da Sexualidade na Iconografia Pompeiana, Master Dissertation at Campinas State University. 168

Excavating the Past and Framing New Identities Cooley, A. (2003), Pompeii, Bath: Duckworth. Correio mercantil, e Instructivo, Político Universal, 1864, Issue n. 77. Correio mercantil, e Instructivo, Político Universal, 1865, Issue n. 238. Costa, K. (2012), Anacronismo em Charges: as análises da Egiptomania, Master Dissertation at PUC/RS. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1867, Issue n. 51. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1867, Issue n. 98. Diário do Rio de Janeiro, 1867, Issue n. 280. Funari, P. P. and Funari, R. (2010), ‘Ancient Egypt and Brazil: a theoretical approach to contemporary uses of the past’, Archaeologies, 6: 48–61. Garraffoni, R. S. and Grillo, J. G. C. (2020), ‘Mosaico de Alexandre na Casa do Fauno em Pompeia: ontem e hoje’, Classica – Revista Brasileira de Estudos Clássicos, 33: 175–92. Hamilakis, Y. (2007), The Nation and its Ruins: Antiquity, Archaeology, and National Imagination in Greece, New York: Oxford University Press. Jornal do Commercio, 1880, Issue n. 89. Jornal do Commercio, 1884, Issue n. 3. Ling, R. (1991), Roman Painting, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Niccolini, F. and F. (1854/2016), Facsimile of Le case ed i monumenti di Pompei, Cologne: Taschen. Rodrigues, M. V. (2016), Salão de Banquetes do Palácio do Catete: a invenção de uma tradição clássica nos trópicos. História Comparada entre as representações imagéticas de Pompeia e as do Palácio do Catete, Master Dissertation at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. Romero Recio, M. (2010), Pompeya. Vida, muerte y resurrección de la ciudad sepultada por el Vesubio, Madrid: La Esfera de los libros. Santos, S. (2015), Espaços femininos na Magna Grécia e Sicília: estudo comparativo da iconografia dos vasos da Coleção Teresa Cristina e de vasos italiotas, siciliotas e áticos dos séculos V–IV a.C. PhD thesis, Rio de Janeiro: Museu Nacional/UFRJ, 2015. Schwarcz, L. (1998), As barbas do Imperador: D. Pedro II, um monarca nos trópicos, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

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CHAPTER 10 POMPEIAN ECHOES IN RURAL HOUSES IN CENTRAL CHILE: THE QUEST FOR NEW IDENTITIES 1 María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar

In February 1818, inspired by other Hispano-American colonies, Chile gained its independence from the Spanish Crown, inaugurating a sovereign political regime laid down on republican principles. This process exerted a profound impact not only on Chilean politics but also on various sociocultural aspects of the new nation. Throughout the nineteenth century, Chileans spared no effort to forge discourses and practices that would foster a sense of belonging and identity, striving to distance themselves from their colonial past and the cultural mores that bore traces of their Hispanic background. The Chilean socio-economic elite in particular endeavoured to emulate enlightened European society, especially that of France, Great Britain and Italy, and aspired to associate themselves with the discursive and aesthetic forms that were being re-defined in accordance with the new liberal republican nature that Chile was pursuing. Architecture was one of the fields involved in this process. From the second half of the nineteenth century onwards, buildings and houses in major cities and rural areas of Central Chile were erected in architectural styles which differed sharply from those that had previously prevailed. Thus, the simple, functional features of the old colonial houses gradually gave way to the new, foreign architectural styles gaining momentum thanks to ongoing economic growth in Chile and the arrival of artists and architects from Europe and the United States (Secchi 1952: 12). The invitation extended by the Chilean government to French architects, such as Claude Brunet Debaines, Lucién Henault and Paul Lathoud, and the Italian Eusebio Chelli, together with the arrival of other influential architects, such as the German Johan Theodor Burchard and the British Roger Fleming, spurred two significant developments in architecture in Chile. One was the creation of the first school of architecture, which slowly served to professionalize this discipline in the country. The other was that major public and private projects began to reflect a highly progressive influence that spread from Santiago, the capital, to the rest of the central territories in Chile (Pereira 1956: 11–17). Besides their participation in the construction of public buildings, these architects also contributed to the emergence and development of a new kind of bourgeois architecture. In the second half of the nineteenth century, cities such as Santiago and Valparaíso witnessed the construction of elegant bourgeois mansions. Although simple, such houses were of monumental proportions and evidenced classicist and historicist inspiration (Pereira 1956: 12–15; De Ramón 1969: 54; Riquelme 1996; Waisberg 1978: 10). 171

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It was these palaces and mansions that became a clear symbol of the Chilean elite’s prosperity; wealthy families endeavoured to emulate modern European models as closely as possible instead of forging a uniquely Chilean identity or faithfully replicating the country’s traditions. In the quest to consolidate the country as a republic and embrace the idea of modernity – simultaneously distancing the nation from its old colonial past – such families (which now formed a cultural community) turned to non-Hispanic European examples for inspiration, and in so doing, fostered a sociocultural sense of belonging among their peers equalling that of their counterparts on the Old Continent. These mansions contributed substantially to the creation of a diverse and eclectic architectural landscape. Former absolute historicism thus gave way to Gothic, Romanesque and Baroque manifestations; to Islamic and Eastern styles; to Renaissance and neoclassical fashions, Pompeian among them; as well as to the subset of ancient Greek and Roman elements; all of which were favoured by a Romantic trend (Pereira 1956: 23; Bergot 2009: 23). After visiting Chile in 1891, the American correspondent Theodore Child criticized the sheer lack of originality in residential architecture in Chile as well as its vanity: A similar absence not only of originality but of the most elementary ideas of appropriateness to the end, of utility, of comfort, of personality, in short of any kind, may be noticed in many of the private mansions which wealth and vanity have erected. One man has built himself a Pompeian house, magnifying the proportions to a scale the model was never intended to support. Another citizen delights in a gloomy pseudo-Tudor home. A third has thought that nothing could be more original than a Turco-Siamese villa with gilt domes and minarets of the roof. Child 1891: 112 The residences built in the second half of the nineteenth century reflect their owners’ aspirations to transcend local limits by espousing global trends. By means of these large mansions, the Chilean sociocultural elite gave expression to a distinctive architectural aesthetic that enabled them to visually proclaim their pre-eminence vis-à-vis other groups and social classes in the country and to align themselves with the contemporary European culture of the times (Bergot 2009: 32–3; Peliowski 2018b: 485–9). Although this trend became particularly evident in the main cities,2 its traces can also be seen in the rural sectors of Chile’s Central Valley. The colonial architectural style typical of Hispanic tradition and represented by the estate owners’ houses (known as casas patronales) had prevailed in this region until the early nineteenth century. However, by the latter part of the same century, the rural world witnessed the construction of new mansions that mirrored the neoclassical and historicist trends sweeping though the cities, some of which imitated the architectural and ornamental style of ancient Pompeii, as will be discussed throughout this chapter. These were not isolated cases; on the contrary, they formed part of a trend which by then had become global. In the nineteenth century, European architectural culture embraced Pompeian domestic architecture as a model to imitate, reinvent and apply to 172

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palatial residences and bourgeois dwellings (Mangone and Russo 2019: 1478). Eager to adopt Old World trends, some Chilean families also embraced this model. The Pompeian style echoed in these residences and mansions should be viewed and understood in the context of the Chilean elite’s quest for new identities.3 Indeed, these houses can be viewed as a result and reflection of the country’s ongoing cultural transformation, its recent republican status and its aspirations to progress and prosperity. The families who financed these constructions recalling archetypical Pompeian architecture considered this model a symbolic alternative that would enable them to leave the colonial style behind and connect with an idealized European cultural tradition, in the hopes of emulating it. In this respect, architectural works can neither be analysed as an isolated object nor understood independently of their context. From a historical perspective, their creation and execution were always framed within a social, economic, cultural and ideological landscape which they in turn materialized and reflected (Peliowski 2018a: 77; Leach 2010: 31–5). Such is the case of the Chilean casas patronales and their echoes of Pompeii.

The estate house tradition in the Chilean Central Valley Up until the mid-nineteenth century, Chilean rural architecture had slavishly replicated traditional forms almost without exception. Additionally, since the seventeenth century, the country’s Central Valley, located between the cities of La Serena and Concepción, had been economically and socially bound to agriculture. As a result, architectural development in the countryside went hand in hand with agricultural development, spurring the emergence and growth of multiple sociocultural communities harmoniously tied to their natural and productive environment (Benavides 1981: 1). Agricultural activity revolved around large estates, where peasants, tenants, workers and the families of the estate owners, or patrones, all lived. The estates contained both work and living spaces: houses, church, school, workshops, warehouses, stables, barns, patios, orchards and gardens, all of which abutted the casa patronal, a mansion symbolically representing the power and pre-eminence of the patron (Guarda 1969: 11). These estate houses and their traditional style have been considered utterly characteristic of Chilean residences (Secchi 1952: 7). Expressions of non-professional architecture that gradually developed to cater for the family’s needs, such houses still exist today in the Chilean countryside. They typically had thick adobe walls plastered with lime, gabled roofs with clay or terracotta tiles and floors covered with clay or wooden floor tiles, and were built around a main patio, with other secondary ones connected by corridors. Generally of a simple design, they had no great ornamentation or stylistic pretensions (Benavides 1981: 34–6; Guarda 1969: 22–8), being instead functional residences, often characterized by precariousness and material poverty. Although not the only architectural style in Chile, this was the predominant model in the rural Central Valley for at least two centuries. Consequently, it was regarded by Chilean society as a symbol of the colonial world and Hispanic culture. 173

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The construction of houses on large estates continued until the end of the nineteenth century, maintaining the overall style. However, Chile’s seismic nature (responsible for damaging numerous houses) and the subdivision of some of the properties prompted the construction of new houses in the latter decades of the nineteenth century, and these diverged from the traditional style to instead reflect the historicist tendencies of their time (Benavides 1981: 86). Thus, in some central rural areas near the cities of Santiago and Valparaíso, mansions resembling European villas began to be built, surrounded by gardens and parks. In several cases, the same foreign architects who had been in charge of constructing urban mansions were also involved in the construction of the rural ones. These residences differed sharply from the colonial style, especially in terms of ornamentation and volume. Although the layout around courtyards was maintained (in keeping with the style of Andalusian, Roman and Pompeian houses) and corridors continued to play an essential role in structural layout, houses built in these styles were roofed or closed with glass, adding other levels to redefine their role from a domestic to a social one (Secchi 1952: 11–12). Aesthetically, these new residences reprised some architectural elements, but employing far greater complexity and creativity (Benavides 1981: 88–9). Lintels, pillars, beams, fountains, floors, doors and windows were now subject to historicist design, endowing elegance and reinforcing the idea of prosperity closely associated with this type of house and its inhabitants; the same idea of prosperity with which Pompeian architecture was also associated. It may be for this reason that some of these residences incorporated elements that clearly evoked the model of the ancient houses near Vesuvius, in structure, ornamentation and setting alike. This was made possible by nineteenth-century Chile’s historical context and cultural climate, as illustrated by the following description of some of these residences.

Pompeian spaces in Santiago: the residence of José Arrieta Pereira The first of these houses was Uruguayan diplomat José Arrieta Pereira’s residence, which reveals the traces of the Pompeian artistic and architectural model in Central Chile. Originally located on the rural outskirts of the city of Santiago, the house is still known today as the Arrieta House and Park. Although this mansion now stands in a peripheral urban area, until the early nineteenth century it occupied a rural space. In colonial times, this property, nestled in the foothills of the Andes range, belonged to the Jesuit order. However, following the expulsion of the Society of Jesus in 1767, it was owned by a series of private individuals. Built in the traditional Hispanic style, it is a large, one-story rectangular house distributed around corridors (Peña 2008: 172). In the 1820s, the property was purchased by Juan Egaña Riesco, a jurist, politician and intellectual who had played a leading role in Chile’s struggle for independence and republican vocation. Together with his son Mariano, he embarked on a project to transform it into a hub of cultural and leisure activities. The letters between Mariano and Juan Egaña reflect 174

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their shared dedication to this ambitious vision (Almeyda 1948). Intended to resemble a museum, the mansion was richly equipped with a handsome library containing an extensive collection of books by the best classical and modern authors as well as pieces of art imported directly from Europe. These latter included reproductions of several Graeco-Roman sculptures, such as Diana The Huntress and Apollo Belvedere, which clearly reflect these intellectuals’ admiration for the ancient world (Guzmán and Yáñez 2013: 140). Gardens were created in the park, one of which was designed in the Italian Renaissance style, with a wide array of ornamental structures and fountains (Imas and Rojas 2011). This was the first garden in Chile to be designed ex profeso using layouts that reflected the romanticism that was gradually gaining popularity in the country (Trebbi 1997: 17). The property was later known as the Quinta de las Delicias (Mansion of Delights) and became a rendezvous for the various intellectuals and political leaders of the time. The property was then bought in 1870 by José Arrieta Pereira, who resolutely set out to renovate the house and its gardens. By then, historicist architectural trends had reached their apogee among the wealthy families of Santiago, and the Arrieta family was no exception. His project gave space and emphasis to classical elements that evoked ancient Graeco-Latin culture. The residence was extended by adding two additional stories and various rooms bearing a resemblance to a palace. Some of the furnishings were imported from France, and the interior reflected a predominantly Gothic style (Imas and Rojas 2011). This architectural project was indeed embedded in the context of the cultural and ideological trends that inspired the Chilean elite. The gardens of the house were also redesigned. An Italian design was used in the gardens to the rear of the house, accentuating the neoclassical style, and more particularly, echoing ancient Pompeii. Just like the horti present in some peristyles and courtyards of Pompeian houses (Moreno 2020: 17–18), José Arrieta’s garden contained water features, trees, shrubs, decorative statues and architectural structures that evoked the ancient Graeco-Roman world: a torso of Hercules, a reproduction of the Venus de Milo, the Venus de Medici, Bacchus, Mercury, the Rape of Proserpina and cherubs, in addition to columns, kraters and marble and iron vases (Imas and Rojas 2011).4 A statue of a faun adorned a rectangular pool, which was fed by waterfalls flowing down cascades and crowned by sculptures of Diana and Apollo. At the back, a colonnaded pavilion topped by a tympanum and located on a rise heightened the classicist and Graeco-Latin atmosphere of the gardens. Immediately behind it, a pathway emerged, lined by new sculptures and leading to a Pompeian courtyard. The entrance to this octagonal space was crowned by a semi-circular arch and, again like the horti of Pompeii, the courtyard was enclosed by walls decorated with frescoes. Vases, sculptures, friezes and a fountain in the centre also formed part of the decoration (Imas and Rojas 2011). The frescoes on the walls were reminiscent of the Third Pompeian Style. Visually separated by geometric motifs, the main spaces portrayed various figurative scenes from ancient mythology. In keeping with the Pompeian style, the peripheral spaces were decorated with floral elements such as garlands, as well as other elements such as lamps and masks (Figure 10.1). 175

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Figure 10.1 Child in the Pompeian courtyard in the Arrieta Park, Santiago, Chile, c. 1905. © Brügmann Heritage Archive.

Indeed, this courtyard represents a unique case in Chile, leaving no doubt about the style on which it was inspired, or its owner’s admiration – shared by other members of the Chilean elite – for ancient classical culture and particularly for Pompeian domestic architecture and art. The garden marks a prelude to this influence, condensed in a courtyard resembling a hortus and containing all the distinctive elements of the ancient luxurious Vesuvian houses – water features and fountains, sculptures, frescoes and friezes. As a consequence, the Arrieta family’s house and gardens reinforced their status as the centre of cultural life for Santiago’s elite, as the Egaña family had once been. José Arrieta’s son, and heir to the property, continued the cultural activity that brought life and joy to this house, especially by organizing musical gatherings. The ambience and activities in these spaces, together with the Pompeian courtyard, must have captivated and amazed all the guests, in a transhistoric atmosphere which was closely linked to the classical tradition and neoclassical trends in the European world so important to nineteenthcentury Chile. José Arrieta’s selection of style and setting for his garden was not random; rather, it was a reflection of his personal preferences and tastes. When he bought the Quinta de las Delicias, Arrieta already owned a palatial residence on Agustinas Street, in central Santiago, but this was destroyed by fire. To replace it, in 1875, Arrieta commissioned the French architect, Paul Lathoud, to design and build a new mansion. The façade of this new residence clearly reflected an Italianate inspiration. Meanwhile, although the interior has been described as ‘Versaillesque’ (Imas, Rojas and Velasco 2015: 40), the decor of the main social spaces, such as the entrance hall and the interior courtyard, evoked the artistic and architectural style of ancient Pompeian houses. The Brügmann Patrimonial Archive contains photographs showing the interior of this mansion around the time of its construction. The entrance to the hall was framed by two Corinthian capital columns and opened onto a space decorated with marble 176

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sculptures and oil paintings. The walls sported frescoes reminiscent of the wall frescoes in Pompeii, while the floor was covered with mosaic designs subdivided into geometric spaces with floral motifs, garlands and pictorial representations of domestic artefacts such as candelabras and vases. The ceiling too was subdivided into geometric spaces framing other pictorial scenes. The interior courtyard was conceived in a very similar style and had a fountain in the centre surrounded by plants. Once again, there was mosaic floor, and the walls were subdivided into lower, middle and upper levels, as in the houses in Pompeii. The lower level was painted with floral motifs, creating the illusion of a garden with grass and flowering plants, while the middle level looked as if it had been made out of bricks and the upper level was decorated with various abstract figures. All of the windows in this courtyard were framed by semi-circular arches, and there was a false window in their midst creating the illusion of a new space beyond. The entire construction seemed, therefore, to mimic the model of the Fourth Pompeian Style, characterized by architectural illusionism and the use of trompe l’oeil. Unfortunately, the mansion was demolished in the twentieth century, and the evidence of its Pompeian influence is only preserved in scarce photographic records from 1875. The Arrieta residence and park were sold by the family in 1954, after which the property was largely abandoned, several works of art were looted and some spaces, such as the Pompeian courtyard, slowly deteriorated. In 1990, the house was purchased by a Chilean university which has undertaken a programme of restoration and conservation. Nevertheless, the Pompeian courtyard has unfortunately been lost due to the abovementioned deterioration. However, its former splendour can still be appreciated thanks to the photographs held in the Brügmann Heritage Archive, whose work has contributed enormously to preserve the memory of this striking example of cultural trends in late nineteenth-century Chilean high society.

Maximiano Errázuriz’s Pompeian house Although Chile’s Central Valley was and remains a heavily agricultural region, with an abundance of fields and vineyards, the area of Panquehue, in the valley of the Aconcagua River, remained uncultivated until 1870. That year, Maximiano Errázuriz Valdivieso (1832–90), a prominent businessman and politician, bought an extensive tract of land with the intention of creating a vineyard. Maximiano Errázuriz and his family were fervent admirers of European culture and art, and as such, accurately represent the Chilean elite’s aspiration to identify with the culture of the Old World. It was this admiration that prompted Maximiano Errázuriz to send his sons to England for their education (Medina 1964: 245). In addition, he himself made frequent trips to Europe, especially France and Italy, accompanied by his wife and daughters. On these occasions, they bought various works of art: paintings by Italian masters, tapestries, furniture and ancient and modern sculptures and objects. These were then all shipped to Chile to form part of the Errázuriz family’s superb collection. Some 177

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of these pieces were associated with ancient Roman culture, such as busts of Virgil, Heliogabalus, Catiline, Galba, Otho, Adriana and Faustina (Bergot 2019: 80). To house these works of art, in 1872 Errázuriz commissioned the Italian architect Eusebio Chelli to design and construct a palatial residence on the main thoroughfare in Santiago. This new residence was built in a neoclassical style, with elements that evoked the Italian villas of the Renaissance (Bergot 2013: 267; Medina 1964: 244). This choice of style was not random; Amelia Errázuriz, his daughter, had argued that the old family residence, built in the Hispanic colonial style, was unequal to the magnificence of the collection of European art they intended to assemble there (Errázuriz 1925: 38). The neoclassical style, in contrast, was coherent with the family’s cultural aspirations and republican sympathies through which they sought to distance themselves from the colonial past. From the outset, this neoclassical mansion, known as the Errázuriz Urmeneta Palace, was widely admired in Santiago society for its proportions and elegance. Furthermore, as noted by Bergot (2019: 75–7), the art collection it held acquired public renown, endowing the mansion with considerable significance both as a sociocultural centre and as the family’s expression of identity. However, Errázuriz was devastated by the untimely death in 1871 of his wife, Carmen Valdés, and never really got over his loss. Thus, in around 1883, he decided to sell the mansion and move to the countryside, seeking what some of his biographers have called a ‘mystical’ environment (Medina 1964: 245; Merino 1997: 110). Prior to moving, Errázuriz donated some of his works of art to the Santiago archbishopric and kept the remaining pieces for the new house he had built among the vineyards at Panquehue. After purchasing the land in Panquehue in 1870, Errázuriz not only set about creating a vineyard, but also planned the construction of a village to house workers. Villa Errázuriz, as it was known, was a model village which included a school, a chapel, an administrative building and accommodation. A luxurious residence was built alongside these facilities to receive the Errázuriz family’s guests and house his famous art collection. Thus, the Villa Errázuriz architectural project retained the layout of the traditional haciendas and casas patronales, even though the owner’s residence was built in a very different style. Possibly inspired by the artistic styles that Errázuriz so admired, and by the European and republican model they represented, the mansion departed sharply from the old architectural model of the colony. Its structure, exterior and interior decor all evoked classical Graeco-Latin art and architecture, strongly echoing the aristocratic houses of Pompeii. The architect in charge of this project was Roger Fleming Tolson, an Englishman recorded in some Chilean archives as Rogelio Tolson. He is believed to have arrived in Chile after running into economic difficulties in his home city, Manchester, which prompted him to flee to the Chilean region of Valparaíso in 1886. By the 1890s, there are records of his prolific activity as an architect, engineer and fireman in that region, as well in the community of Panquehue to which he also belonged. Some photographs of Roger Tolson also show the Panquehue house, and these images successfully convey Errázuriz’s deep admiration and liking for the classical Roman 178

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Pompeian style. Unfortunately, the house was destroyed by an earthquake in 1906. However, photographs of its exterior, gardens and interior rooms, taken around 1894, together with descriptions by visitors in the same period, paint a detailed picture of the mansion’s Pompeian influence. Villa Errázuriz was surrounded by a peristyle of simple white columns. The interior walls of the peristyle, which faced the corridor or gallery, were painted in colours and decorated with friezes in the middle and upper levels, the whole framed by lintels with reliefs. The friezes depicted animals and mythological figures – bulls pulling a chariot, griffins, chimeras and stars (Figure 10.2). Next to the house, a space identified as a bathing gazebo evokes the layout of the horti. A fountain decorated with mosaics was located in the centre of a garden divided into three spaces by columns and half-height walls and scattered with plants, flowers, sculptures and busts.

Figure 10.2 Architect Roger Tolson and others at the Pompeian house of Maximiano Errázuriz in Panquehue, Chile, c. 1894. © National Historical Museum of Chile.

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To one side of the gazebo, a rectangular building with a gabled roof – whose fourcolumned portico crowned by a tympanum evoked the most classical ancient GraecoRoman temples – stood splendidly on a platform. This was the gallery that housed Maximiano Errázuriz’s collection of works of art and conferred both sumptuousness and sacredness on this space. Several works of art were also housed in the interior of the Panquehue mansion, especially oil paintings and busts of characters from antiquity, which decorated the various rooms. The walls of the rooms were clad with coloured marble, and the ceilings were divided by square and rectangular mouldings with reliefs. In addition, the cornices were decorated with geometric motifs. Throughout its years of existence, but especially in the 1890s, illustrious guests were welcomed in the Errázuriz residence in Panquehue, including Monsignor Álvaro Casanova, the Argentine minister Norberto Quino and the Spanish naval officer Fernando Villaamil, who praised Errázuriz’s collection in his book Viaje de circunnavegación de la Corbeta Nautilus [Around the world aboard the Nautilus corvette] and recalled the honour of dining in the art gallery. Curiously, Maximiano Errázuriz never lived in the house he had commissioned (Merino 1997: 111), instead pursuing an ascetic life of service to others. In the last years of his life, he dwelt in the vineyard’s administrative building and devoted his time to helping his workers, especially during a plague outbreak. Eventually, he fell severely ill and died in 1890. This mansion had housed not only the Errázuriz family but also their European art collection, one of the most outstanding in the cultural spheres of the Chilean elite. The residence had been built in a style in keeping with the works of art it was intended to house, drawing inspiration from Pompeian and Roman architecture to create an aesthetically and symbolically appropriate setting. Its design eschewed the local tradition of the Panquehue vineyards and reinforced its owner’s identification with the European cultural universe and tradition that he so admired.

The Pompeian house of the Santa Rita vineyard Very early on in Chile’s colonial history, the Maipo Valley, located to the south of Santiago, became known as a fertile, attractive region. Since the late sixteenth century, the lands south of the Maipo River had been called the Maipo Estancia (estate), and this was where the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors, the first owners of these lands, gradually engaged in agriculture and raised livestock. Later, in the mid-seventeenth century, Antonio Chacón Quiroga, then the owner of these lands, had the first house and first chapel built on the estate, both made of adobe. Chacón Quiroga also began the production of brandy and wine in his recently established vineyards (Rodríguez 2015: 10–14). After a severe drought in 1724, the estate was bought by Fernando de Astorga and from then on was known by the name of Santa Rita (Rodríguez 2015: 17–18). In 1764, it 180

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was acquired by Melchor Jaraquemada, who also owned the adjacent lands, so that Santa Rita was extended and new vineyards, mills, houses and livestock were added. In the early nineteenth century, the estate was heavily farmed but had been divided up into several smaller properties as a result of inheritance claims. One of these farms, known as Las Casas de Santa Rita, was acquired in 1845 by Manuel María Figueroa, who put considerable energy into increasing the number of irrigation channels and improving the vineyards by introducing French vines (Rodríguez 2015: 22–5). When Figueroa died in 1880, his widow, Enriqueta Fornés, sold the property to the politician and businessman Domingo Fernández Concha. By then, the vineyard was seriously neglected (Del Pozo 2004: 17). Spurred by some of his life experiences, including the untimely death of one of his sons, Fernández Concha engaged in charitable work and social action in addition to his political and business activities. Consequently, upon acquiring Santa Rita, he set out to improve the living conditions and education of the workers living on the property. As a result, the estate – which until then had consisted of an old casa patronal, housing for employees and tenants, barns, fields and paddocks – underwent major modernization (Rodríguez 2015: 28). Fernández Concha enhanced his vineyard with new vines he bought from his friend Maximiano Errázuriz, from the Panquehue vineyards. In addition, wine production was modernized and the estate’s activity was expanded to the manufacture of new products. Moreover, the workers’ and tenants’ houses were renovated, and a school and a theatre were built for them. Fernández Concha’s project also included the construction of a new residence, on a plot of land close to the old house, which was still standing. As in the previous cases, rather than replicating a traditional colonial house, Fernández Concha elected to embrace the European trends so popular among the Chilean elite as a means to leave behind their Hispanic past, inaugurate a new era and flaunt their economic and cultural prosperity. To this end, Fernández Concha hired the German architect Theodor Burchard, who had already made a name for himself among the families of the Chilean elite for the construction of residences and public buildings in the cities of Santiago and Valparaíso. Burchard opted to build this new residence on a rise, with a new park opening out below, the design of which was entrusted to the French landscape designer Guillaume Renner. Completed in 1883 and currently housing the Hotel Casa Real de la Viña Santa Rita, the mansion evokes the colonial style in its basic design, with its adobe structure and tiled roof, but with the added splendour of an unmistakably Pompeian influence. It is structured around three corridors surrounding a central courtyard, in the middle of which there is a fountain decorated with small sculptures of sea gods. The entire house is painted in Pompeian red on the outside, punctuated by the white frames of the doors and windows. The façade of the central corridor is fronted by a peristyle with square pillars, on which rectangular reliefs are carved, painted in olive green and ivory, and topped with blue capitals. The white cornice has two friezes in relief, with decorations in blue and red. The lower parts of the walls facing the peristyle are also adorned with a wide frieze of geometric figures in the same shades of blue and ivory. 181

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The peristyle opens out onto a balustraded terrace overlooking the park which leads, on one of its sides, to a shallow rectangular fountain, evoking the characteristic impluvium of Roman houses (Figure 10.3). The various rooms in the house, especially those used to hold social events, also vividly evoke Pompeian ornamentation, as well as bearing traces of Renaissance grotesque, which in turn echoes the ornamentation of first-century-bc patrician residences. The walls are painted in Pompeian red, blue or ivory, while the ceiling is divided into geometrical sections, most of which are decorated with floral elements, cupids and scenes depicting mythological figures, interspersed with paintings of sculptures and ornamental elements to create the illusion of real statues. The floor is almost entirely wooden, but the hallway leading to the terrace is tiled with reddish-coloured diamond mosaics.

Figure 10.3 Terrace of the Pompeian house of Viña Santa Rita, currently the Hotel Casa Real, Buin, Chile. © María Gabriela Huidobro (author). 182

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Renner designed a garden that harmonized with the house. Although to some extent evidencing an English influence (Trebbi 1997: 20), the decorative elements in the park – amphorae, fountains and classical-style sculptures – also reflect an Italian and GraecoRoman aesthetic. In particular, close to the main house but surrounded by gardens is an additional space that echoes the style of the house and is called the Pompeian baths or Roman pool. This structure is enclosed by brick walls which were once plastered with lime and painted in the same Pompeian red. This space also houses a swimming pool and changing rooms (Figure 10.4). This part of the garden is entered through a two-pillared, two-columned portico followed by a door crowned by a semi-circular arch. At the far end of the pool, which is divided into a rectangular and an oval section of different sizes, stand the remains of a

Figure 10.4 Fountain with sculpture of Spring, before the entrance to the Roman baths at the Pompeian house of Viña Santa Rita, currently the Hotel Casa Real, Buin Chile. © María Gabriela Huidobro (author). 183

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white sculpture of a female figure, which despite its missing limbs and head is still recognizably classical in style. Close to the Pompeian baths is another fountain adorned with a classicist sculpture of a woman personifying spring, reinforcing the Graeco-Roman air of this feature. Lastly, adjoining the house, there is a chapel with luxurious interior decor. Since this transformation of the house and gardens at the end of the nineteenth century, the Fernández Concha property – the house, park and chapel – has served as a meeting place for the capital’s elite and most particularly, as a place of retreat for Christian priests and believers. Nevertheless, throughout the twentieth century, the Santa Rita vineyard faced various economic and production crises linked to domestic and international affairs. Furthermore, the house was also substantially damaged by several earthquakes, especially by the one that struck in 1985. However, the property was acquired in the early 1990s by Ricardo Claro, who not only improved vineyard production, but also fostered a revival of colonial architectural and economic heritage by restoring the Pompeian house. Consequently, the house and the park are now in excellent condition and serve as the premises of the Casa Real Hotel. Thanks to this restoration work, it is still possible to admire the vestiges of a time when families belonging to Chilean high society aspired to reproduce the culture they so deeply admired. By adopting iconic aesthetic styles such as that of Pompeii still evident in the Santa Rita house, members of the Chilean elite forged an identity that transcended the local limits of the country in the nineteenth century.

Conclusions The houses and parks built in a classicist style with Pompeian influence comprise a small proportion of the large number of residences and mansions erected in the last decades of the nineteenth century in Chile’s Central Valley. Nonetheless, the context surrounding their construction, the history of this process and the profile of the families who commissioned these buildings all richly illustrate social, cultural, political and artistic trends among the Chilean elite in that period. These Pompeian houses and gardens represent the systematic expression of the predilections and aspirations of leading Chilean families, raised in a Europeanized culture and heirs to a process of political and cultural independence that was by then firmly consolidated. In a context of forging a national and local identity, this elite embraced and identified with global trends rather than with Chilean characteristics or history. Fashion, art, education and various social events of the time clearly indicate a genuine desire to emulate French trends, the classicist style and the English avant-garde, albeit another, equally important influence was the liberal republican spirit then pervading the country. The last decades of the nineteenth century in Chile were also a period of economic boom and growth – a belle époque for the country – which had one of its clearest expressions in architecture and urban planning, and not only in the cities. In the rural 184

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areas of the Central Valley, some of the leading families owned estates and extensive lands, and consequently it was here that the Chilean tradition derived from the colonial period was most deeply rooted. In the countryside, agricultural activities centred around small villages, each made up of the workers’ and tenants’ houses together with the estate owner’s large house. Historically, these dwellings were built in a simple, functional style that in the Chilean imagination evoked the country’s colonial past. However, the cultural and aesthetic trends sweeping the main cities spread out not only to peripheral urban areas but also to the rural world. There, the leading families expressed their ideals and aspirations by building palatial residences heavily influenced by European styles. In this context, the choice of the Pompeian style for Arrieta Park, Maximiano Errázuriz’s house and Domingo Fernández Concha’s house was consistent with the trends of the time and the sociocultural context of late nineteenth-century Chile. The design of parks and residences reminiscent of the luxurious houses of Pompeii and their art and horti, enabled their owners, designers and architects to create an idyllic atmosphere while at the same time representing the ascendancy and splendour of the families living in them, in keeping with the cultural models that the Chilean elite so enormously admired. The limitations of Chile’s situation aside, the Pompeian houses thus formed a spatial and historical link between the elite cultural community and the most classical European tradition.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. The urban elite’s enthusiasm for the neoclassical style is discussed in greater detail in the chapter by Carolina Valenzuela included in this volume. 3. As can be seen in other chapters in this volume (such as those by Aurelia Vargas and Elvia Carreño, Federica Pezzoli or Renata Senna Garraffoni), this was a widespread trend in most Latin American countries. 4. Even in the twentieth century, it was still fashionable to adorn gardens with reproductions of sculptures, as can be seen in the chapters by Mirella Romero Recio (in relation to Vicente Blasco Ibáñez’s house in Valencia) and Ana Valtierra (on Joaquín Sorolla’s house in Madrid).

References Almeyda, A. (1948), Cartas de don Mariano Egaña a su padre: 1824–1829, Santiago de Chile: Sociedad de Bibliófilos Chilenos. Benavides, J. (1981), Conjuntos arquitectónicos rurales. Casas patronales, Santiago de Chile: Universidad de Chile. Bergot, S. (2009), ‘Unidad y distinción. El eclecticismo en Santiago en la segunda mitad del siglo XIX’, Revista 180, 23: 32–5.

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts Bergot, S. (2013), Entre ‘pouvoir’ et ‘devoir’. Dynamiques internes et construction sociale d’une famille de l’élite chilienne: le cas de Errázuriz Urmeneta, 1856–1930, Santiago de Chile: Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile – Université Paris 1. Bergot, S. (2019), ‘Conformación y devenir de la colección de arte de Maximiano Errázuriz Valdivieso (1870–1941). Un capital familiar entre lo económico y lo socio-cultural’, IntusLegere, 13 (2): 75–103. Child, T. (1891), Spanish-American Republics, New York: Harper & Brothers. De Ramón, R. (1969), ‘Arquitectura tradicional del “Chile Viejo” ’, Aisthesis, 4: 53–76. Del Pozo, J. (2004), ‘Los empresarios del vino en chile y su aporte a la transformación de la agricultura, de 1870 a 1930’, Universum, 19 (2): 12–27. Errázuriz, A. (1925), Cuadernos de familia, Santiago de Chile, (inédito). Guarda, G. (1969), Arquitectura rural en el Valle Central de Chile, Santiago de Chile: Universidad Católica. Guzmán, F. and Yáñez, E. (2013), ‘La recepción de los clásicos en las concepciones de Juan Egaña acerca del arte (1768–1836)’, Alpha, 37: 135–48. Imas, F., Rojas, M. and Velasco, E. (2015), La ruta de los palacios y las grandes casas de Santiago, Santiago de Chile: Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes. Imas, F. and Rojas, M. (2011), ‘El parque Arrieta de Peñalolén’, Brügmann, n°8, http:// brugmannrestauradores.blogspot.com/2011/08/el-olvidado-parque-arrieta.html [accessed 4 November 2022]. Leach, A. (2010), What is Architectural History?, Cambridge: Polity Press. Mangone, Fabio and Russo, Raffaella (2019), ‘El mito de la casa pompeyana entre los siglos XIX y XX’, La casa. Espacios domésticos, modos de habitar, Madrid: Abada: 1478–92. Medina, J. (1964), Los Errázuriz. Notas biográficas y documentos para la historia de esta familia en Chile, Santiago de Chile: Universitaria. Merino, R. (1997), Santiago de Memoria, Santiago de Chile: Planeta. Moreno, B. (2020), El patio como solución a la domus pompeyana, Trabajo de Fin de Grado, Madrid: Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. https://oa.upm.es/63483/1/TFG_Jun20_ Moreno_Tomas_Beatriz.pdf [accessed 10 September 2021]. Peliowski, A. (2018a), ‘Arquitectura, civilización y barbarie: Brunet Debaines como comentador social a mediados del siglo XIX en Chile’, Revista 180, 42: 76–87. Peliowski, A. (2018b), ‘Lo bello o lo útil. Ideologías en disputa en torno a la creación del primer curso universitario de arquitectura en Chile, 1848–1853’, Historia, 55 (2): 485–515. Pereira, E. (1956), ‘La arquitectura chilena en el siglo XIX’, Anales de la Universidad de Chile, 102: 7–40. Peña, M. (2008), Chile. Memorial de tierra larga, Santiago de Chile: Ril. Riquelme, F. (1996), ‘Neoclasicismos e historicismos en la arquitectura de Santiago’, in H. Eliash, De Toesca a la arquitectura moderna 1780–1950, Santiago: Universidad de Chile: 31–42. Rodríguez, H. (2015), Santa Rita. Un monumento histórico en el Valle del Maipo, Santiago: Fundación Claro Vial. Secchi, E. (1952), ‘La casa chilena hasta el siglo XIX’, Cuadernos del Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, Santiago de Chile: Consejo de Monumentos Nacionales, n° 3. Trebbi, R. (1997), Parques y jardines de Chile, Santiago de Chile: World Colors. Waisberg, M. (1978), ‘Persistencia de la vivienda colonial en Chile’, En torno a la historia de la arquitectura chilena, Valparaíso: Universidad de Chile.

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CHAPTER 11 THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII : FROM LITERATURE TO COMICS IN LATIN AMERICA 1 Laura Buitrago

In the second half of the twentieth century, Latin American publishers rediscovered Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s famous but controversial novel originally published in 1834. Comic books, illustrated literary adaptations and the complete novel itself were published and distributed in several countries on the continent. The rise of literary adaptations, which became a popular format in America and Europe alike, was a response to what parents, teachers and politicians perceived as the alarming popularity of superhero comics, which had captivated young audiences. Lytton’s novel was ‘decisive in shaping the image of the buried city in all spheres of life’ (Romero Recio 2012: 62) and it helped forge a collective image of Pompeii as the epitome of ‘decadent, exotic and sensual style’ (López 2019: 153). This in turn served to popularize the novel in illustrated format, prompting the need for several reprints from the mid-twentieth century onwards. Here, I shall describe the mechanisms through which illustrated literary adaptations of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel arrived in Latin America and the book’s reception by its adapters and illustrators, viewing ‘comics based on literary texts as emulations of their sources rather than cheap illustrations’ (Pointner and Boschenhoff 2010: 89). In doing so, I also hope to persuade scholars interested in the classical world to consider mass-produced works such as comics as sources, because as Marshall and Kovacs (2016: xxix) have argued, it is possible to study classical reception through such media.

Comics, illustrations and literature In the 1950s, comic books achieved unprecedented popularity in the Western world. In 1952, around one billion comic books, covering a variety of topics and aimed at multiple audiences, were in circulation in the United States alone (Gabilliet 2010: 29–30). Despite its obvious commercial success, this popular format was soon the target of criticism. Politicians of all persuasions, intellectuals and parents saw the avid interest of an entire generation of young people in an apparently empty cultural product as a serious threat. In response to the anxiety aroused in Cold War American society by the international disrepute that a culturally illiterate generation gripped by comic book fever would provoke, policy initiatives revolved around programmes aimed at encouraging young people to read ‘good books’, in the belief that the democratic values of free societies could 187

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only be instilled through instructive reading, and that such readers would make good citizens (Matthews 2019: 321–2). With this in mind, in 1941 Albert Kanter launched Classic Comics, a publication that combined the most popular printed format of the time (the comic book) and literary works considered essential reading (the classics). The aim was not so much to replace the original books with adaptations, but rather to captivate the comic-loving public with canonical Western literature presented in a condensed version using simple vocabulary and striking illustrations. The 48-page issues, slightly longer than the conventional 36-page comics, were published monthly and used colour or black and white comic strips to tell the story. They also featured publisher’s advertising on the back cover, and in the late 1950s, under the editorial direction of Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht, included author biographies and supplementary educational material in the final pages (Jones 2011:138). The sales success of the first issue in 1941 – The Three Musketeers – encouraged Kanter to continue adapting literary classics. Books were selected for adaptation by an editorial committee headed by Kanter and influenced by figures such as the former accountant and literary expert Meyer A. Kaplan, the future editor-in-chief of Gilberton, the publishing house that would later issue illustrated novels. Several factors were considered when deciding whether to publish a literary work, including popularity, adaptability, public perception and whether or not it was in the public domain, as Kanter was neither willing nor able to pay royalties. In addition, the reading lists used by state schools were expediently taken into account (Sawyer 1987: 7). One hundred and sixty-nine titles that met the above criteria were adapted, of which only the most popular were reprinted several times, rendering some issues a collector’s item and the entire series highly collectable. Although the initiative proved an effective tool for capturing readership, for example being widely accepted by US Army personnel, who had received fourteen million copies of Comics Illustrated through the Army mail and Red Cross stations since 1943 (Matthews 2019: 323), the format was viewed negatively. After the Second World War, comic books were seen as detrimental to democracy because their characters and stories encouraged violence, criminality and immorality. These were not the only threats in the post-war world. The anxieties of the time were mirrored in the cinema of the 1950s, reflecting the dread afflicting a society that feared nuclear destruction, having seen what such weapons could do in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the Gilberton titles contained narratives that differed radically from those of traditional comics in that they were adaptations of literary works of adventure, with moralizing overtones and educational aims. In an effort to avoid the negative connotations that the word comic implied for the series, in February 1947 the publisher announced a change of name in issue 33 (The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes) and a new logo in issue 34 (Mysterious Island) that subsequently adorned the cover of the new, revamped issue 35. The change was accompanied by a prolonged publicity campaign in the print media, whereby for one year (February 1947–March 1948), a comic book supplement called Classics Illustrated was included in The New York Times. The campaign was subsequently extended to eight other newspapers, and at least fourteen adaptations were published 188

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which subsequently became titles in the collection (Jones 2011: 90–2). Classics Illustrated was launched with publication of a title closely related to classical antiquity: The Last Days of Pompeii. This adaptation of Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel, published in March, was written by I. Thomas and illustrated by Henri Carl Kiefer, who had also designed the adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar (Jones 2011: 66–8).2 The full-colour cover featured the word ‘Pompeii’ in white lettering, against a background showing Vesuvius erupting and a thick cloud of purple smoke filling the sky above the city. The Colosseum was shown in flames, and several people were trapped on a nearby balcony while others were throwing themselves into the void. Near the Colosseum was a column – crowned by what might be a winged Victory or a Greek Nike – and the Arch of Constantine, in front of which were chariots and horses ridden by men, civilians with whips, soldiers, and other men milling about carrying baskets and herding donkeys and oxen with sticks. Women were drawn in the crowd hugging children, holding their head in their hands and carrying vessels, while in the lower left-hand corner was a bare-chested man wearing an Egyptianstyle headdress. The 10-cent, 56-page edition followed the narrative thread of the original novel regarding the good Christians–sinful pagans dichotomy, but was only printed once, being withdrawn in 1949 because of a ‘controversy over its explicitly religious content’ (Jones 2011: 310). In 1961, a ‘more successful “secularized” adaptation’ was republished under the editorship of the prolific writer and journalist Roberta Strauss Feuerlicht (Jones 2011: 310). Written by Alfred Sundel, this version focused on the love story between the two main characters. The interior illustrations were produced by Jack Kirby,3 the creator of various Marvel superheroes, with Dick Ayers as colourist, while Gerald McCann produced a new cover design that retained some similarities with the previous one. As with Kiefer, McCann depicted an erupting Vesuvius in the background, but added rivers of lava flowing down towards the city, while the sky was filled with clouds of black smoke and plumes of lava. The middle ground showed several people running, including a soldier, while in the foreground McCann drew a man in a white and crimson tunic with a band tied around his head, running away from the eruption he was watching out of the corner of his eye. The 48-page edition cost 15 cents and included a text comparing the destruction caused by the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 with that of the eruption of Vesuvius (Jones 2011: 139). The dramatic scenes of the eruption echoed the narrative portrayed by nineteenth-century artists such as the Madrid-born Ulpiano Checa and the Russian Karl Bryullov, who had based their work on Bulwer-Lytton’s account, since it was his novel, together with the accounts of travellers who had visited the sites, which had constructed the archetype of the brief but deadly Pompeian disaster, even though we know from Pliny the Younger that it lasted for several days. As for Kirby, it is worth noting that his later works were closely related to classical antiquity. In 1965, he and Stan Lee created the character of Hercules – inspired by the Roman deity of Greek origin, Heracles – for Marvel Comics, who duly appeared in the first issue of the Journey into Mystery Annual #1. In his debut, he has an unexpected encounter with Thor, who had been battling giants in the company of his brother Loki 189

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when he accidentally fell through a portal that transported him to Olympus. When the two meet, Hercules’ arrogance sparks an argument with Thor that leads to a battle which neither seems capable of winning because of their evenly-matched strength. Zeus ends the battle by declaring that both are worthy fighters and should therefore become friends and allies. Zeus returns Thor to Jotunheim, the place from whence he had come through the portal. The cover of the issue features the two characters fighting, each slamming their fists into their opponent’s torso. Hercules is depicted in the centre of the image, wearing what appear to be calcei patricii, the closed shoes worn by patricians that rise up the calf and are knotted at the knee, a green sash that crosses over his bare, musclebound chest and attaches to a belt which has the letter H in the middle, depicted as a symbol inside a white circle, and from which falls a green skirt-like garment covering his upper thighs. A kind of brown band encircles his head and covers his ears, similar to the ear and head protectors used in some contact sports. A blue vignette announces ‘the Clash of Titans’, highlighting the divine nature of both characters. Subsequently, Hercules appeared repeatedly as Thor’s opponent in the various multiverses, underlining their similarity and emphasizing his quality as a good hero while correcting the plot thread of his very first appearance in 1964 (Avengers #10), when he supported the villain Immortus by claiming that this character was actually being impersonated by an alien which had assumed his form (Koning 2020: 205). It is worth noting that in the 2010 reprint entitled Thor versus Hercules, which reprises the epic battle, the cover features Hercules attacking Thor amidst the kind of ruined scenery so frequently associated with antiquity, such as a broken Doric column. Several women are watching them in horror, one of whom is being protected by what might be a soldier, as he is sporting the characteristic galea-type helmet that Roman soldiers used to wear. By the mid-1950s, the publishing house consolidated its expansion through Gilberton World-Wide Publications. Although the initiative had begun around 1940 with a series published in Canada, several issues were soon published in Australia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and Greece, where mythological titles were also added (Jones 2011: 274–9). Other countries quickly followed, including Brazil (1948), Mexico (1951) and Spain, and it was through these countries that Latin America opened its doors to Classics Illustrated.

The Classics in Latin America and Spain Ediçao Maravilhosa was the title under which Classics Illustrated became known in Brazil. The collection, distributed by Editora Brasil América Ltda. (EBAL) since 1948, was printed with colour covers and black and white comic strips of a smaller size than those in the American edition, although these would later be enlarged, becoming known as the comic book or American format (Silva-Reis, Lucatelli 2016: 252–3). From 1950 onwards, the collection of adaptations4 included Brazilian literary works from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries such as A Muralha by Dinah Silveira de Queiroz, Sinhá Moça by Maria Dezonne Pacheco, A Escrava Isaura by Jorge Amado and Senhora 190

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by José de Alencar. To be considered for adaptation, books had to meet four criteria: popularity, literary value, an action plot and morality, this latter aspect being defined as the absence of any negative references to the Catholic Church or to any kind of eroticism, to avoid censorship of the publication (Silva-Reis, Lucatelli 2016: 254). Success was not long in coming, and with it, criticism. The Catholic Church singled out these publications as promoting ‘crime, robbery and disturbed fantasy’,5 while intellectuals highlighted the dubious quality of the literary adaptations, which led in 1954 to the establishment of editorial standards for literary adaptations whereby it became obligatory to specify the intended audience and to include an invitation to read the original work (Silva-Reis, Lucatelli 2016: 253). In November 1949, the first edition of Os últimos dias de Pompéia [The Last Days of Pompeii] was published (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1949). It was number 17 of the collection and cost 3 cruzeiros. Both the cover and the black and white strips were translated reprints of the issue illustrated by Kiefer in 1947, with slight modifications (title at the bottom of the page, man hanging from a balcony and predominance of primary colours), and the specified target audience was given as the over-twelves, even though the regulations stipulating this were not yet in force. The publication included a biography of the author at the beginning, while the final pages contained advertisements for the other collections and comic strips ‘for children aged 10 . . . to 100 years old’. A second edition was published in 1959 (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1959a). The price for this was raised to 15 cruzeiros and the age of the intended audience was also raised, specifying that the title was for adults. In addition, the cover design was radically different, the scene of chaotic flight from the burning city being replaced by one showing the main characters, Ione and Glaucus, holding hands, with Ione in the foreground dressed in a yellow and white chiton-style tunic, with her mouth half-open. She is drawn smaller than Glaucus, one of whose arms is placed around Ione’s back while he gazes impassively at the sky. In the background, falling white columns and destroyed buildings can be seen together with the erupting volcano and a cloud of smoke in the sky. Although the story told in the strips was the same as in the first edition, the cover hints at a change of perspective, probably spurred by criticism from the Catholic Church, whereby the love story now predominated over the religious conflict. A similar structure was employed by Editora de Periódicos S.C.L., the owner of the La Prensa newspaper, which by 1951 was publishing comic books in Mexico belonging to two collections bought from Gilberton and translated into Spanish as Clásicos Ilustrados and Clásicos Infantiles. Presumably successful due to the re-editions published in Mexico, editions of Clásicos Ilustrados crossed borders and became particularly popular in Central and South American countries such as Costa Rica, Colombia, Venezuela, Peru and Chile. The first edition of Los Últimos Días de Pompeya [The Last Days of Pompeii] was probably published around 1953. However, there is no doubt that the second edition was circulated in 1961 as number 14 (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1961), which reproduced the comic strips and colour cover of Kiefer’s edition. Priced at 1.50 Mexican pesos, the publication included a biography of the author and a short story on a range of themes in the final pages, as well as advertisements for other collections issued by the publishing house. In the 1970s, 191

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another edition was published that sought to imitate the design of the previous edition by including two elements that had been particularly striking on the original cover: the Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine. Despite the obvious absence of these elements in Pompeii, their inclusion in the two versions served to link this city to Rome and thus reaffirm the negative view of the Roman Empire as a period of tyranny and excess that was propagated by cinema and other cultural products from the USA (Unceta 2019: 25). From this perspective, the volcanic eruption that buried Pompeii was not viewed as a natural disaster but rather as a ripely deserved punishment for the greed, lust and social inequality rife in Pompeian (Seydl 2012: 21) and, by extension, Roman society. At the same time, in Barcelona, the Editorial Bruguera publishing house launched another kind of illustrated novel in 1955 that quickly became popular in Spain and Latin America. Seeking – as Kanter before them – to engage young readers, the writers and illustrators adapted various texts considered literary classics. However, the format they designed included both text and comic strips. In total, the editions consisted of 256 pages, of which sixty-four were black and white comic strips that were generally placed on the right-hand side of the publication and appeared every three pages (Guiral 2010: 75,105). The compilation was called Colección Historias and 204 books were published over eleven years. Adapted by José Antonio Vidal, a journalist and writer who adapted several of the texts published by the Editorial Bruguera, The Last Days of Pompeii (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1959b) was published as number 53 in 1959 (Guiral 2010: 65) and contained black and white illustrations by Luis Casamitjana. The full-colour cover, which was designed by Vicente Roso, advertised the 250 illustrations included in the issue and depicted a scene from the text: the encounter between a lion and the main character, a muscular Glaucus, whose appearance was possibly inspired by the character portrayed around the same time by Steve Reeves in the film of the same name directed by Mario Bonnard. He is shown holding a dagger in his hand, ready to attack a lion in the arena of what appears to be an amphitheatre. Although Glaucus is not attacked by a lion in the story, the scene suggests a fight between the two. This version was reprinted multiple times thanks to the general success of the adaptations (Guiral 2010: 75), but it is also possible that historical circumstances in Spain contributed to the adaptation’s longevity on the market. In 1952, under the Franco dictatorship, the Spanish Ministry of Information and Tourism created a Children’s Press Advisory Board to inspect publications aimed at children and adolescents. In the absence of a legal basis for these evaluations, on 24 June 1955 a decree was promulgated in the Official State Gazette (Boletín Oficial del Estado, BOE) establishing ‘the standards that children’s and young people’s publications must meet’, which in the first article stipulated that ‘the texts and illustrations must be adapted to the particular psychology of their readers, taking care to emphasize due respect for the religious, moral and political principles on which the Spanish State is based’. Given that the decree defined children’s publications as ‘a) publications by instalments and narrative pamphlets intended for children and adolescents, whatever their subject, whether or not they contain illustrations and whether or not they are periodical in their publication (. . .)’ 192

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and in view of the markedly religious and moralistic nature of the novel, it is no stretch of the imagination to speculate that the various reprints of this particular adaptation were in part due to its compliance and functionality within the political context. Article 4 of the abovementioned decree also laid down specific provisions according to the target audience of the publications, identifying three categories of publication: ‘a) Children’s magazines. Those aimed at boys and girls; b) Adolescent boys’ magazines. Those aimed at teenage boys; and c) Adolescent girls’ magazines. Those aimed at teenage girls.’ Within the framework of this legal provision, the Historias Selección collection was published in 1967 and included 173 new and reprinted titles spread across eight series, two of which were Clásicos Juveniles and Mujercitas. The adaptation of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel was published solely in the former – the series for boys – indicating that it was aimed at a male audience. This conclusion is further supported by the illustrations on the covers of the editions published in 1959 and 1973 (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1973). That of the 1959 edition includes elements specifically associated with traditional masculinity, such as aggressiveness, while that of the later edition contains all the classic elements of the Pompeian disaster (the erupting volcano, rivers of lava flowing towards the city, broken columns, half-destroyed buildings and women fleeing with children in their arms) as well as a central character in the shape of a soldier. Wide-eyed and obviously terrified, he is mounted on a chariot and is holding a whip in his hand, ready to strike the horse pulling it. This again highlights the male character’s aggressive nature, and also his domineering attitude, even towards animals. The scene evidences a similarity with that of a man on horseback in the painting by Ulpiano Checa entitled The Last Days of Pompeii, which may have served as the inspiration for the film version of the book directed by Bonnard in 1959 (Benito 2019: 291). Very different was the scene illustrated on the cover of the 1975 reissue of Joyas Literarias Juveniles (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1975), a collection produced by notable adapters such as Armonía Rodríguez, which again presents the scene of the eruption, the destroyed city and a woman with a child in her arms, but for the first time includes four men in different positions to those mentioned above. In the foreground is a wide-eyed, bejewelled man – the emperor – standing on a rock and gazing at the ground. To his right, a man is running, while to his left, another man in a white toga and a blue tunic over his shoulders is raising his arms. His mouth is wide open and his eyes are closed, perhaps portraying a scream, while another man behind him is fleeing. This particular case is striking because the comic introduces two new characters who are described as archaeologists and who stress the empirical nature of their profession as opposed to the subjective nature of literature: ‘we have limited ourselves to showing the whole world the vestiges of the world that was. In our footsteps will come the writers, who will forever trace a fascinating likeness of the era . . .’. The Bruguera publications were widely known in Latin America due to the company’s trade with the region, particularly in Argentina and Colombia, where it had established further publishing companies. However, Bruguera’s reach was not limited to these two areas; partner companies including bookshops, distributors and other publishers represented it in countries such as Costa Rica, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Mexico and the United States (Guiral 2010: 44), 193

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facilitating the arrival of texts such as Bulwer-Lytton’s novel and their distribution among a wider public. Despite the Catalan publishing house’s extensive commercial relations in the region, other publishing initiatives emerged that produced similar works in Spain and Latin America. On the Iberian Peninsula, Catalan publishers such as Ramón Sopena and Toray, and Basque publishers such as Vasco Americana, also published adaptations, as well as the complete novel by Bulwer-Lytton, employing the same iconographic themes of disaster, masculinity and femininity on the covers. The adapted version of the novel published by Toray in 1965 features a cover with the traditional background of the volcanic eruption, while in the foreground there is a soldier wearing a Roman helmet. His eyes are halfclosed and his mouth open, as if uttering a scream. The cover also displays the text ‘Graphic novel for adults’, indicating the target audience. Meanwhile, the Ramón Sopena publishing house issued three editions of the novel that suggest a change in the perception of Pompeii. The cover of the first edition, published in 1933, shows Ione, Glaucus and Arbaces together in a courtyard adorned with Doric columns, walls painted in Pompeian red and decorated with figures from the Antichità and a sculpture reminiscent of the Discobolus and the Apollo Belvedere. The 1959 cover depicts the traditional eruption and the boat in which the main characters flee, while the 1989 cover shows a soldier in the foreground who is armed with a spear and a shield and is watching the eruption from a rock. The cover produced by the Vasco Americana publishing house again emphasizes the violent eruption, but in a radical shift from the other illustrations, it shows a man in the foreground carrying a child, with a woman behind who is covering her face as she looks towards the eruption, and finally, a screaming soldier. The Catholic Church also played a definitive role in the distribution of the novel in Spain: in 1944, 1948 and 1962, the Catholic press, the Apostolado de la Prensa, issued three editions of The Last Days of Pompeii. The cover of the first features two women and a man watching the volcanic eruption from afar, while the second edition cover shows Glaucus entering the amphitheatre through Doric columns with his eyes closed while being threatened by a lion, in a scene that also includes several white buildings decorated with reliefs that resemble the Borghese dancers. The third depicts three women wrapped in a white blanket that resembles a nun’s habit, with the erupting volcano in the background. One of women in the foreground appears to be sitting on a rock, leaning on her hands with her head thrown back and her eyes closed. The others are running with their arms raised towards the volcano. The publishing house did not present itself as such but as ‘a Centre or Society for Catholic and social propaganda’ which aimed to ‘spread the word of truth and the glory of steadfast piety in various forms and methods’ (Catálogo 1914: 1). It had emerged around 1891 in Madrid, inspired by an association advocated by the Bishop of Barcelona, Pantaleón Monserrat, in 1871 in that city with the aim of organizing the Catholic press under a single umbrella. However, in response to the growing popularity of various periodicals towards the end of the nineteenth century, it had been reformulated as a ‘federation of centres for the dissemination of good reading and, above all, propaganda’ and produced literary works, press, broadsheets and pamphlets that were distributed in 194

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parishes throughout Spain (Hibbs-Lissorgues 1991: 109–11). A publishing initiative under the same name emerged in Chile around 1911, led by an Italian priest in the Salesian order, Bernardo Gentilini, whose goal was ‘to preserve and spread the faith by means of good reading matter’, including ‘good books, newspapers, periodicals and instructional materials, particularly aimed at people who are beyond the reach of priests’ (Loyola 2012: 169). Between 1911 and 1936, this press published 234 books of a social and religious nature, but I found no records referring to Bulwer-Lytton’s book. In Guayaquil, Ecuador, a businessman called Tomás Rivas Mariscal founded the publishing venture Publicaciones Educativas Ariel, which in the 1970s launched its own collection entitled Ariel Juvenil Ilustrada. As the name suggests, this was aimed at young people with the goal of encouraging reading among this segment of the population. It published illustrated text adaptations6 – mostly by Ana Bergholtz – of one hundred novels considered literary classics, including the Aeneid, the Odyssey, the Iliad, Ben-Hur and Quo Vadis, which were among the best-selling titles in the first edition. In an interview with Xavier Tayupanta, manager of the publishing firm Radmandí,7 I learnt that Rivas had bought the rights to a Spanish collection. A historical review of the company carried out by Antonio Guiral in 2010 suggests that the publisher in question was Bruguera, as it is probable that the request was lodged with Creaciones Editoriales, a company associated with the Catalan publisher that was responsible for producing and selling comics for various publishers (Guiral 2010:47), and we know that both the scriptwriter and the illustrator of the Ecuadorian adaptation of Bulwer-Lytton were recognized for their work with this publisher (Guiral 2010: 140, 126). Ariel was the first Ecuadorian publishing house to print and distribute literary classics nationwide at a lower price than the complete works sold in other editions – which were apparently imported and probably more expensive – outsourcing the printing process to the Editorial Andes press located in Bogotá, where this company printed educational texts.8 The titles published weekly by Ariel Juvenil were selected by an ad honorem editorial committee made up of Rivas and a group of renowned individuals in the social, political and cultural spheres in Ecuador, including Benjamín Carrión, Alfredo Parejo Diezcanseco, Rafael Díaz Ycaza and Hernán Rodríguez Castelo. The titles were advertised in the press and subsequently reviewed in newspapers such as El Universo, where Díaz Ycaza was a columnist. The collection’s success spurred the company to publish several others, including Ariel Universal, which issued one hundred titles of various kinds such as Plato’s Banquet and the plays by Aeschylus. The collection of Ecuadorian authors, known as Ariel Clásicos Ecuatorianos, prioritized national historical and literary themes, and included works such as Juan León Mera’s Novelitas Ecuatorianas and Federico González Suárez’s Historia General de la República de Ecuador I. Its edition of The Last Days of Pompeii (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1973–5) was published between 1973 and 1975 as number 37 of the children’s collection and cost 12 sucres, as did the other titles (Tayupanta 2018). Xavier Tayupanta has indicated that the texts were and remain very popular in Ecuador and were well received in Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Peru and – to a lesser extent – Chile. However, purchase intention has changed from generation to generation in Ecuador: the 195

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1990s generation bought adaptations when they did not want or could not access the original works, whereas for previous generations, these were the only affordable option. Nowadays, the adaptations are bought and highly regarded because of the brand’s reputation as an educational publishing house, to the extent that according to Xavier Tayupanta, the firm continually receives emails from people in various other Latin American countries requesting issues of the first editions, explaining that they had acquired titles in their youth and wished to complete their collection or simply buy them again. The adaptations are also marketed in supermarket chains and through Amazon, where their best-selling title is Don Quixote, particularly in the Spanish market. The adaptation and interior illustrations of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel were the work of Flores Lázaro and Jesús Durán. Meanwhile, the colour cover was drawn by Nelson Jácome, and reprises the archetypal image of the Pompeian disaster previously produced by

Figure 11.1 Cover of The Last Days of Pompeii, first edition produced between 1973 and 1975 by Publicaciones Educativas Ariel. © Radmandí Proyectos Editoriales. 196

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Bruguera, including the violent lava eruption, a darkened sky and inhabitants – particularly women – fleeing and screaming, as well as ruined buildings, broken columns and a muscular, protective man accompanying one of the women in the illustration. The adaptation includes a short biography of the author written by Rafael Díaz Ycaza, which mentions Bulwer-Lytton’s trip to Pompeii, stating ‘(. . .) He also thought, as we did: “perhaps the Christian revolutionaries were flogged in these places” and “there it must have been love here” ’. (Bulwer-Lytton [1834] 1973–5: 5). The reissue launched in 2019 by Radmandí also includes questions aimed at assessing the reading comprehension of the intended audience, probably children and adolescents since the Ariel Juvenil Ilustrada collection forms part of the Plan Lector collection, intended for sale to schools as textbooks.

Some final thoughts The various editions of Bulwer-Lytton’s novel and other titles published in Latin America demonstrate significant reception of classical antiquity through literature. His novel, which became popular among a wider public through comic books, illustrated adaptations and inexpensive reprints from the mid-twentieth century onwards, perpetuates the idea of a decadent Roman Empire punished for its excesses by a massive natural catastrophe, the eruption of Vesuvius. This event has formed the basis for the construction of an entire archetype of disaster which, despite being historically known, continues to feed on the literary meta-narratives of the past – such as Bulwer-Lytton’s novel – but also on the political events of the present, insofar as with each reception, new interpretations of the event are construed according to the historical context. Examples of this include the muscle-bound characterisation of Glaucus in the films and on the covers discussed, as well as the depiction of white classical architecture despite the polychromy evident in Pompeii from the earliest excavations, phenomena that also evidence the correlation and transmediality that exist in mass-produced formats. The striking preference of Latin American publishers for a more devotional adaptation of the novel may indicate the deep-rooted Christian nature of these regions, where the Catholic Church exerts a strong influence within socio-cultural contexts that enable it to act as a moral judge, as was the case in Brazil. In Spain, it is clear that the novel and its adaptations served not only the educational and moral purposes of the Franco dictatorship, but also the economic purposes of publishers, who realized that the title could remain on the market precisely because of these characteristics and therefore reissued it several times. However, it should also be noted that titles related to classical antiquity enjoyed great popularity around the 1950s, probably due to the rise of the sword-and-sandal genre of film, which may also have contributed to this publishing success. It is also worth mentioning that an analysis of the covers is particularly important because in addition to highlighting the existence of other sources for studying the reception of antiquity – in this case, Roman – it enables the application of a gender perspective that evidences the use and abuse of a historical narrative to dictate supposedly 197

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gendered behaviours. Thus, the characterization of male and female figures reveals how serialized products can serve to perpetuate stereotypical gender roles. The passive, reticent attitude of the female characters reinforces the idea of women’s vulnerability and selflessness, even in a crisis, and their repeated association with children – specifically, carrying them – may suggest that this is their only duty because in most cases, it is men who are expected to show impassivity, leadership and protection. This perspective also sheds light on the case of Bruguera’s Colección Juvenil adaptation of Bulwer-Lytton’s text, which specifically targeted boys, most probably with the intention of instilling forms of behaviour considered proper to their sex through the characterization of Glaucus as a brave, conquering and merciful lover who has converted to Christianity despite being tempted by the Roman seductress, Julia. It is also important to note gender inequality as regards female scriptwriters in the comic book industry. The multiple works produced by Ana Bergholtz and Armonía Rodríguez for Ariel and Bruguera alike oblige a reevaluation of the idea that women in the 1950s played a passive role restricted to the domestic sphere, yielding a more complex vision of their historical participation, since these women adapted classic texts targeting a male audience and wrote the scripts for comic books aimed at a female readership. In addition, it is worth mentioning the supposedly inoffensive nature of texts considered educational, because as Zenaida Osorio has noted, stripping such texts of their role as products and marketing them instead as educational resources obscures the fact that they reiterate and standardize discourses that can be sexist, classist, Eurocentric and ahistorical, besides establishing selected views as valid and depriving children and young people of the slightest hint of a critical approach (Osorio 2001: 14), requiring only that they learn lessons by rote. Newspapers also act as vehicles for the reproduction of information, either through advertising or opinion columns, as the veracity attributed to them renders it more difficult to detect any underlying intentions. At the same time, the timelessness of the classics is striking. Whether as comic books, novels or adaptations, they remain sources considered indispensable for acquiring civic and ethical values and for rejecting perversions of these; thus, they remain sources to either imitate or reject, as well as products in high commercial demand. In conclusion, I believe it is necessary to advocate the use of non-traditional sources in the study of antiquity in Latin America. Although numerous authors have contended that sources such as cinema, television, comics and other artistic expressions constitute rich seams of information, no field of study has yet been developed that would enable us to elucidate the dynamics of our own context; nevertheless, it is necessary to identify these in order to understand the classics in all their complexity.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación).

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The Last Days of Pompeii 2. No. 68, February 1950. According to Sawyer, New York University was involved in the adaptation of this title, for which it received $11,000 (Sawyer 1987: 7). 3. According to Jones, Kirby sought to conclude the project early due to the ‘numerous redesigns’ that the editor demanded of him (Jones 2011: 228). Strauss Feuerlicht was renowned for insisting on precision and continuity in illustrations and scripts (Jones 2011: 198). 4. According to Silva-Reis and Lucatelli, 251 issues had been published by 1961, of which fifty-four were Brazilian literary works. 5. ‘fomentavam o crime, o roubo e perturbavam a fantasía’ (Silva-Reis, Lucatelli 2016: 253). 6. A list provided by Xavier Tayupanta shows that the vast majority were produced by the Uruguayan Ana Bergholtz (thirty-four titles). Other adapters included Flores Lázaro (twenty-five titles) Rafael Díaz Ycaza (twenty titles), Armonía Rodríguez (eight titles), Marcos Soligó (four titles), Gustavo Dávila (three titles), Luis Olmedo Lainez (three titles), Aldo Rodríguez de Flores (three titles), Sergio Lázaro de los Ríos (two titles) and Juan Llarch (two titles). There remain ten titles that it has not been possible to identify from the information provided. I am grateful to Xavier Tayupanta for his timely and helpful assistance during my research. 7. An Ecuadorian publishing house that acquired the rights to Ariel and currently distributes this publisher’s titles through Amazon and various Ecuadorian supermarket chains. 8. Some of the titles published by this press were Documentos sobre la campaña Libertadora de 1819 (1970) by Horacio Rodríguez Plata and Temas de antropología e indigenismo (1954) by Gabriel Giraldo Jaramillo.

References Benito García, Á. (2019), El pintor Ulpiano Checa (1860–1816), Madrid: Ayuntamiento de Colmenar de Oreja. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1949), Os últimos días de Pompéia. Ediçao Maravilhosa N.17, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Brasil-America Limitada. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1959a), Os últimos días de Pompéia. Ediçao Maravilhosa N.17, 2da ediçao Rio de Janeiro: Editora Brasil-America Limitada. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1959b), Los últimos días de Pompeya, Colección Historias N. 83, Barcelona: Editora Bruguera. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1961), Clásicos Ilustrados. Los últimos días de Pompeya N.14, Editora de Periódicos La Prensa. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1973), Los últimos días de Pompeya, Colección Historias Color N. 23, Barcelona: Editorial Bruguera. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1973–5), Los últimos días de Pompeya, Ariel Juvenil Ilustrada, Guayaquil: Publicaciones Educativas Ariel. Bulwer-Lytton, E. ([1834] 1975), Los últimos días de Pompeya, Joyas Juveniles Ilustradas, Barcelona: Editorial Bruguera. Catálogo de las publicaciones del Apostolado de la Prensa (1914), Madrid: Administración del Apostolado de la Prensa. Gabilliet, J-P. (2010), Of Comics and Men: A Cultural History of American Comic Books, translated by Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen, University Press of Mississippi. Guiral, A. (2010), 100 años de Bruguera: de El Gato Negro a Ediciones B, Barcelona: Ediciones B. Hibbs-Lissorgues, S. (1991), ‘La prensa católica catalana de 1868 a 1900 (I)’, Anales de Literatura Española, N. 7 (1991): 99–119.

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Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts Koning, H. (2020), ‘The Incredible Hercules: Prince of Power’, in J. L. Blanshard A. and Stafford, E. (eds), The Modern Hercules: Images of the Hero from the Nineteenth to the Early TwentyFirst Century. Leiden: Brill. Jones, W. B. (2011), Classics Illustrated: A cultural history 2nd edn, McFarland & Company. López Gregoris, R. (2019), ‘Plauto, personaje de novela histórica’, in L. Unceta Gómez and C. Sánchez Pérez (eds), En los márgenes de Roma: la antigüedad romana en la cultura de masas contemporánea, Madrid: Catarata. Loyola Tapia, M. (2012), ‘El Apostolado de la Prensa. La actuación del salesiano Bernardo Gentilini’, Diálogos Revista Electrónica de Historia, Vol. 13 (2), September 2012–February 2013: 160–98. Available at: https://repositoriosiidca.csuca.org/Record/RepoKERWA19167/ Details [accessed 21 September 2021]. Marshall, C. W. and Kovacs, G. (2016) ‘Introduction’ in Kovacs, G. and Marshall, C.W. (eds), Son of classics and comics, New York: Oxford University Press. Matthews, K. L. (2019), ‘Making Reading Popular: Cold War Literacy and Classics Illustrated’, Book History 22: 320–41. Available at: https://muse.jhu.edu/article/736558 [accessed 21 September 2021]. Osorio Porras, Z. (2001), Personas ilustradas: la imagen de las personas en la iconografía escolar colombiana, Bogotá: Colciencias. Pointner, F. E. and Boschenhoff, S. E. (2010) ‘Classics Emulated: Comic Adaptations of Literary Texts’, CEA Critic, 72(3): 86–106. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/44378426 [accessed 21 September 2021]. Romero Recio, M. (2012), Viajeros españoles en Pompeya (1748–1936): ecos de un descubrimiento, Madrid: Ediciones Polifemo. Sawyer, M. (1987), ‘Albert Lewis Kanter and the Classics: The Man Behind the Gilberton Company’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 20: 1–18. Available at: https://www.proquest.com/ docview/1297348945?pq-origsite=gscholar&fromopenview=true&imgSeq=1 [accessed 21 September 2021]. Seydl, J. L. (2012), ‘Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection’, in Gardner Coates, V., Lapatin, K.D.S. and Seydl, J. L., The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse ,Resurrection, Los Angeles: Getty Publications. Silva-Reis, D. and Lucatelli, B. G. (2016), ‘Dos Classics Illustrated à Edição Maravilhosa: Victor Hugo entre textos e paratextos (1949–1959)’, TradTerm, São Paulo, v. 27, September 2016: 247–77. Available at: http://www.revistas.usp.br/tradterm/index [accessed 21 September 2021]. Tayupanta, J. (2018), ‘El mayor esfuerzo editorial ecuatoriano del siglo XX’, Nuestra historia, Radmandí Proyectos Editoriales. Available online: http://www.radmandi.com/nuestra-historia/ [accessed 25 July 2021]. Unceta, L. (2019), ‘El epítome como representación del original. Algunos ejemplos del diálogo posmoderno con la Antigua Roma’, in L. Unceta Gómez and C. Sánchez Pérez (eds), En los márgenes de Roma: la antigüedad romana en la cultura de masas contemporánea, Madrid: Catarata.

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CHAPTER 12 THE LATIN AMERICAN POMPEIIS: FROM A LANDSCAPE IN RUINS TO THE IMAGE OF TRAGEDY 1 Ricardo Del Molino García

In 2013, the exhibition entitled, ‘La Pompeya Colombiana’ by the photographer François Dolmetsch, at the MÜ gallery in Bogota, displayed a series of artistic photographs depicting the landscape that was once Armero, the town that disappeared in 1985 under the mud flow (lahar) of a melting glacier, triggered by the eruption of Nevado del Ruiz in Colombia. The epithet of ‘Pompeii’ used in the title of the exhibition was nothing new in the Latin American collective imaginary, but just another one of the monikers employed to describe natural disasters on the continent. Accordingly, the aim of this chapter is to approach the origins of the image of Pompeii as a synonym, metaphor or simile of the landscapes left in the wake of Latin American and Caribbean tragedies.2 It is a journey through some of those landscapes classified as ‘Pompeian’ in the Latin American cultural imaginary from the end of the eighteenth century down to the present day, whose aim is to enquire into how this came about. Likewise, the representations of those places labelled as such are systemized, while the sobriquet’s evolution, from its use as a comparative reference for pre-Hispanic and colonial ruins to its identification with devastation, is also analysed. All with the intention of highlighting the image of Pompeii as a Latin American cultural benchmark. The corpus of Latin American Pompeiis presented in this chapter is by no means an exhaustive and closed list of the use of this sobriquet. The ones described below are some of the examples that allow for confirming the continued validity of the ancient Campanian city in the socio-cultural construction of the landscape and in Latin American public imagination, paraphrasing Hales and Paul (2011), since the end of the eighteenth century.

Pompeii as a comparative reference for pre-Hispanic and colonial ruins Pompeii has dwelt in the Latin American cultural imaginary since the second half of the eighteenth century (De Pedro 2009: 46; Guzmán 2019: 7; Pillsbury and Trever 2019: 73). However, despite the fact that some authors currently identify the sites of Chan Chan in Peru and Palenque in Mexico as the Pompeiis of the American Enlightenment (Almagro and Maier 2012: 413; Maier 2015; Pillsbury and Trever 2019: 51), it is impossible to claim that those pre-Hispanic ruins were referred to as Pompeiis in the eighteenth century. It was not until the 1830s and 1840s that the first accounts with comparative references and 201

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comparisons between those ruins and Pompeii appeared. A news item about Friedrich von Waldeck’s visit to Uxmal in Yucatan (Mexico), published in London in 1831, claimed that, if they had been more accessible, the Mayan ruins would have rivalled those of Pompeii and Herculaneum (Reed 1966: 285). Some years later, in 1843, in his book entitled, Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, John L. Stephens drew a parallel between the Pompeian ruins and Uxmal when expressing his opposition to the fact that, if this Mexican site had been located in the Unites States, it might have been regarded as a quarry, while contending that it had the same tourism potential as the ancient Roman city (Stephens 1843: 233). This identification appeared in subsequent texts, such as the Apéndice al Diccionario Universal de Historia y de Geografía, published in Mexico, in which the entry for the word ‘(ruins) of Uxmal’ reproduces Stephens’ text (Orozco 1856: 720). Meanwhile, the image of Pompeii was artistically consolidated in Europe thanks to the paintings of John Martin (1822) and Karl Briullov (1833), plus the popular novel by Edward Bulwer-Lytton (1834). Perhaps it would not be too risky to assume that Domingo Faustino Sarmiento was familiar with some of these works when, in his book Facundo o civilización y barbarie en las pampas argentinas (1845), he identified the landscape of the Argentine city of Cordoba with a ‘Pompeii of the Spanish Middle Ages’ (Sarmiento 1845: 128). With this characterization, the author evoked the image of a fossilized and petrified landscape frozen in time in the minds of his readership. Together with Uxmal and Cordoba, the second half of the nineteenth century – perhaps as a consequence of the Spanish translation of Bulwer-Lytton’s book by Isaac Núnez de Arenas in 1848 – witnessed the appearance of new epithets conjuring up the image of the ancient Roman city in the Latin American cultural imaginary. A good example of this was the designation of the Mexican site of San Juan Ixtayopan as ‘the Mexican Pompeii’ in 1868 (Villada 1870: 181). In the 1870s, Niceto de Zamacois’ La destrucción de Pompeya (1871) and Manuel Larrainzar’s Estudios sobre la historia de América, sus ruinas y antigüedades (1875) were published in Mexico. The latter establishes the discoveries of Palenque and Pompeii at the same time during the reign of Charles III (Larrainzar 1875: 32–3), while referring to the tragedy caused by Mount Vesuvius to speculate about the mysterious end of Palenque (Larrainzar 1875: 35). The following year (i.e. 1876) saw the publication of Aristides Rojas’ Un libro en prosa, in which, as well as recounting his visit to Pompeii (Rojas 1876: 387–8, 393), he employed the Roman city to characterize the pagan, licentious and sinful nature of the indigenous population of the Nagarandos of Nicaragua, whose capital, called the ‘American Pompeii’, disappeared after an earthquake as a sort of divine punishment (Rojas 1876: 443). This was one of the first testimonies of the presence of Pompeii as a moral landscape in the nineteenth-century Latin American cultural imaginary. At the end of the 1870s, the epithet of ‘the American Pompeii’ which F. L. Oswald (1880) gave Uxmal was reproduced in different publications (‘The American Pompeii’ 1880; Blacket 1883: 4, 75; Association for the Advancement of Women 1892: 86). In the 1880s, also in Mexico, Tula became another Latin American Pompeii. On 13 August 1880, the Mexican newspaper Le Trait d’Union published a letter written by 202

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Désiré Charnay, dated two days before the announcement of the discovery of Tula, in which she confirmed its similarity to Pompeii (Díaz y de Ovando 1990: 15–6; Rutsch 2007: 62). Charnay called Tula the ‘Indian Pompeii’, while asserting that it was not a mere metaphor. This discovery caught the attention of the intellectuals of the period and, in 1880, a variety of articles were published in both Mexico and abroad, which referred to the identification of this archaeological landscape with that of Pompeii. Similarly, in 1880 La Voz de México published a historical study in which the sobriquet of ‘the Indian Pompeii’ given to Tula was mentioned (Díaz y de Ovando 1990: 17). In the United Kingdom, in The Architect Tula was described as the ‘Indian and Mexican Pompeii’ owing to the fact that its culture was assimilated to that of the ancient Roman city (‘Notes and Comments’ 1880: 274), while in the United States several similar references were published in The Sanitarian (‘Literature’ 1880: 571–2) and The Kansas City Review of Science and Industry (‘Exploration’ 1880: 496), describing Charney’s discovery of Tula, its similarity to Pompeii and the use of the epithet of ‘the Indian or Mexican Pompeii’ so as to place the accent on a landscape replete with palaces, dwellings, streets and so forth. Consequently, the image of Tula contained fossilized pre-Hispanic time and the wealth of an American civilization prior to the arrival of the Europeans. Teotihuacan was identified as another Mexican Pompeii at the end of the nineteenth century when its ruins were relocated. Described as the ‘Mexican Pompeii’ in Fanny Chambers Gooch’s Face to face with the Mexicans, published in 1887 (1887: 23, 442), the accent was also placed on the similarity between the pre-Hispanic archaeological landscape and that of Pompeii, owing to the fact that the former also contained ‘cement floors and walls painted with [coloured] frescos’ (Gooch 1887: 442). A few years later, in 1892, the Mexican newspaper El Monitor republicano mentioned Pompeii as a civilizing and comparative reference for assessing Teotihuacan (Ramírez 2008: 161). Besides these Latin American and Anglo-Saxon publications, in 1884 Palenque was given the sobriquet of ‘the Pompeii of the New World’ in Charles Vogel’s Le monde terrestre au point actuel de la Civilisation (1884: 342). In this work, Palenque was identified with the ancient Roman city because of its rich historical heritage, comprising palaces, temples and sculptures. In 1890, the popular science magazine Scientific American published ‘Palenque, the American Pompeii’ (1890: 11890), in which it was claimed that the ruins of this pre-Hispanic city were the most interesting in America. Together with the Mexican sites of Uxmal, Tula, Teotihuacan and Palenque, at the end of the nineteenth century the Guatemalan city of Antigua was identified with the ancient Roman city in the Spanish newspaper La Unión Republicana, describing it as the ‘American Pompeii’ so as to emphasize the rich cultural heritage discovered there (‘Sección varia’ 1896: 3). Returning to Domingo Sarmiento, after having visited the archaeological site, he recovered the epithet of ‘the Argentine Pompeii’ to describe Cordoba in 1881, with the aim of presenting yet again the city as a tourism destination that might arouse the interest of the European public, before referring to it in the same fashion in the newspaper El Nacional in 1883 (Cicerchia 1998: 69). Finally, in 1888, the year in which Sarmiento died, the text entitled, ‘Sesenta años después. La Pompeya Americana’, describing the 203

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Argentine city of Cordoba as ‘the Pompeii of the Spanish Middle Ages’, was published yet again in Volume XLVIII of his collected works. From this brief summary of the Latin American Pompeiis of the nineteenth century it is possible to infer (except in the case of Cordoba) that the ancient Campanian city was a constant comparative reference for descriptions of pre-Hispanic sites of the period and that its image did not evoke tragedy. Moreover, Pompeii was only referred to as a devastated landscape in Aristides Rojas’ book, when describing the ancient capital of the Nicaraguan natives.

Pompeii as an image of tragedy in the twentieth-century Latin American cultural landscape From St Pierre to San Parangaricutiro The image of Pompeii as a landscape of tragedy began to take shape in Latin America and the Caribbean at the beginning of May 1902, when the city of St Pierre, on the French island of Martinique, was devastated by the eruption of Mount Pelée. Such was the scale of the destruction that the main media outlets in Europe and the United States compared it to the devastation caused by Mount Vesuvius in the first century so as to give their readers an idea of its magnitude. On 10 May 1902, for instance, The Indianapolis News resorted to Pompeii to describe what had happened on Martinique a few days before, while also recounting how a US Republican senator had employed the comparison to refer to the disaster (Hornaday 1902: 1). Two days later, the same newspaper published a message of condolence that Kaiser Wilhelm II had sent to the president of France, in which the former expressed how moved he was by a tragedy that had ‘cost the lives of nearly as many persons as perished at Pompeii’ (‘Wilhelm’s message to President Loubet’ 1902: 2). The similarity between Pompeii and St Pierre was also echoed in the Latin American press. To offer just one example, the article ‘El cataclismo de las Antillas’, published in the Buenos Aires magazine Caras y Caretas in June 1902, declared that there had not occurred a disaster similar to that of Martinique since the destruction of Pompeii (‘El cataclismo de las Antillas’ 1902: 52). In 1902, the Spanish magazine Blanco y Negro included two photographs, previously published in the US magazine Collier’s Weekly, illustrating the desolate landscape of St Pierre. Especially striking is the image of a charred human body, described as the ‘remains of the corpse of a black woman under the volcanic lava’, which recalled the plaster cast moulds of the Pompeian victims. Furthermore, the text accompanying the photos placed the accent on the similarity between the image and what had occurred in Pompeii (‘Actualidades’, 1902: 11). There were also references to Pompeii in different monographs addressing the disaster of St Pierre. An image of Martinique, which could easily have been the Gulf of Naples, was reproduced on the front cover of William A. Garesché’s Complete story of the Martinique and St. Vincent Horrors (1902), while on the page opposite the portrait of his wife Mary the following can be read: ‘Comprising also Graphic Accounts of the World’s 204

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Great Disasters, from the destruction of Pompeii to the present time, including explanations from leading scientists as to the cause of these eruptions, their extent and final outcome’. St Pierre and Pompeii were thus linked in historical diachrony and their landscapes seemed to merge into the same description. Indeed, the book’s first chapter begins with the claim that ‘St. Pierre is as dead as Pompeii’ (Garesché 1902: 29). Despite the frequent allusions to the work of William A. Garesché (1902: 139, 235, 275–93, 458–9), highlighting the identification between St Pierre and Pompeii in the testimony of one of the survivors of the disaster (Garesché 1902: 210), the devastation of Martinique was considered to be greater than that of Pompeii in the first century (Garesché 1902: 38, 45, 235). More interestingly, in terms of how the image of the catastrophe linked to the ancient Roman city was shaped in Latin America, Garesché explicitly cited the work of Bulwer-Lytton, while declaring that the calamity of Martinique had led to renewed interest in the ancient disaster: ‘The Martinique catastrophe recalls Bulwer-Lytton’s description of the destruction of Pompeii in his “Last Days of Pompeii” to which is given renewed interest by the recent disaster of St. Pierre’ (Garesché 1902: 52). The question arises as to whether or not this is a reciprocal or inverse mediation (Unceta 2019: 25–6), as well as being mediated by Bulwer-Lytton’s book, in which the tragedy of St Pierre helped, in turn, to gauge the scale of the Pompeian catastrophe, particularly from a human perspective. There is another work whose front cover features an illustration of the bay of St Pierre with a Vesuvius-type volcano, at the precise moment of its eruption, which recalls the coast of Naples. The book in question is Martinique Flood of Fire and Burning Rain: The Greatest Horror of Modern Times by Samuel A. McAlister and Louis A. Ayme (1902). As before, the book’s subtitle and the initial list of major historical disasters diachronically link both catastrophes. In point of fact, McAlister and Ayme’s work is a journey through the history of the devastation caused by earthquakes and volcanos, as indicated in the preface, in which St Pierre is described as ‘the Pompeii of modern times’ (McAlister and Ayme 1902: 3). And as with Garesché, McAlister and Ayme drew parallels between the desolate landscape of Martinique and Bulwer-Lytton’s work, which also begs the question of whether this is a mediated or reciprocal reception. In the words of McAlister and Ayme, It is no work of the imagination of man that we present, no wild flight of fancy into the realms of the terrible and the appalling, but sober fact and actual history; but yet more thrilling in its details than anything that fiction could well invent. BulwerLytton, in his ‘Last Days of Pompeii’ surrounds the fall of the Roman city with all the glamour of a story of the imagination, but for the record of the ‘Last Days of St. Pierre’ sober truth will suffice; fiction could add no new interest to its dread details. McAlister and Ayme 1902: 5 As chapters 2 and 3 of McAlister and Ayme’s book contain illustrations and photographs of the disaster of St Pierre, together with those of Pompeii, the image of the two tragedies is unquestionably linked, while the similarities between both are repeated on different occasions (McAlister and Ayme 1902: 200, 295). 205

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Figure 12.1 ‘Great disasters of history by earthquake and volcano’ in McAlister, Samuel A. and Louis A. Ayme. Martinique Flood of Fire and Burning Rain: The Greatest Horror of Modern Times. Philadelphia: P.W. Ziegler, 1902. © Harvard University, digitalized by Google (public domain).

Also in 1902, a link between the two tragedies appeared in James Martin Miller and John Stevens Durham’s The Martinique Horror and St. Vincent Calamity, in which St Pierre is touted as a ‘new world Pompeii’ (Miller and Durham 1902: 525), in the compilation of photographs entitled, Martinique: The Second Pompeii (Pen & Picture 1902), in which the same image of the charred corpse published in the aforementioned Spanish magazine appears, and in John Randolph Whitney’s monograph, published in 1902, with its constant references to Pompeii to describe the tragedy of St Pierre. The connection in this last work is expressed in its long title: True Story of the Martinique and St. Vincent Calamities: Being a Vivid and Authentic Account of the Most Appalling Disaster of Modern Times, Including An Account of Pompeii and Herculaneum and Accounts of All the Most Noted Volcanic Eruptions. Whitney (1902: 20) explicitly employed the epithet of ‘the modern Pompeii’ to refer to St Pierre, diachronically linked the two tragedies (23), included a drawing of charred bodies similar to the Pompeian plaster cast moulds (97) and an illustration of St Pierre bearing a striking resemblance to the Bay of Naples (98), while comparing the first-century cataclysm to the eruption of 1902, even projecting it into the future (188). Whitney also resorted to Bulwer-Lytton’s book to offer an idea of the magnitude of the destruction on Martinique: ‘The destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, as described by Sir 206

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Figure 12.2 Everett, Marshall. The complete story of the Martinique Horror and other great disasters. Chicago, 1902. © The Library of Congress. www.loc.gov/item/02023424/ (public domain).

Edward Bulwer-Lytton in “The Last Days of Pompeii” is given renewed interest by the disaster at St. Pierre, to which it bears many points of similarity’ (Whitney 1902: 198). The author also wondered how, despite the greater scale of the disaster of St Pierre, the image of Pompeii still prevailed in the Western imagination (Whitney 1902: 278). To these should be added other explicit comparisons between both tragedies (Whitney 1902: 302, 363, 524–5, 551–2, 560), even including images of St Pierre and Pompeii side by side, as if the author wanted to establish visually the similarity between them (Whitney 1902: 288). The image of Pompeii was also used to reflect the disaster of Martinique in other nonAnglo-Saxon works published in 1902. In France, in Jean Hess’ La Catastrophe de la Martinique parallels are drawn between the ancient Roman city and St Pierre (Hess 1902: 241–2, 256), in Puerto Rico Joaquín Pujals called St Pierre ‘the Herculaneum and Pompeii of the Modern Age’, in addition to describing it as ‘a picture impossible to paint’ (Pujals 1902: 14), and in Uruguay Luis Alberto Herrera declared that ‘St Pierre, buried alive in boiling lava, has given America a broader, more funereal and more moving Pompeii than the Pompeii of classical times’ (Herrera 1903: 69). The tragedy of St Pierre continued to attract the interest of international scientists and public opinion in the following years, as evidenced by the three books written by Angelo Heilprin entitled, Mont Pelée and the Tragedy of Martinique (1903), The Tower of 207

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Pelée (1904) and The Eruption of Pelée (1908), the latter being noteworthy since it contains a relevant repertoire of photographs of the disaster. Another testimony of the dissemination of Latin American culture relating to the landscape of the tragedy of St Pierre, constructed on the basis of references to Pompeii, is Joaquín Díaz Gárcez’s literary composition ‘Una ciudad muerta’ (1906: 59–61). The most illustrative aspect of this work is when the author asserts, ‘Pompeii has subsided again. The city of St Pierre in Martinique has just perished, buried under the ash and lava of a volcano’ (Díaz 1906: 60). Following this, Díaz Gárcez offers an image of the catastrophe with a landscape in which, in his own words, the women will no longer go to pick flowers and only tourists will arrive to collect ash and rocks (Díaz 1906: 61). In relation to all these works, Renée-Clémentine Lucien and David Marcilhacy (2019) contend that a religious interpretation can be made of the eruption of Mount Pelée. Without rejecting this possible approach, the interesting point from the perspective of this chapter, is that it is the first ‘Latin American Pompeii’ whose image does not evoke a fossilized colonial age (like Cordoba and Antigua) or the testimony of an ancient preHispanic civilization (as Uxmal, Tula, Teotihuacan and Palenque do), but a current calamity. Consequently, it is St Pierre that unveils the image of Pompeii as a landscape of disaster in the Latin American present. In light of this, and as already observed, this poses the question of whether the tragedy of St Pierre had a reciprocal impact on the image of ancient Pompeii, at least in the more human dimension. Perhaps the catastrophe of Martinique might have even influenced the cinematographic image of the ancient Roman city. In some posters of the film adaptations of Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii, by Luigi Maggi and Arturo Ambrosio in 1908 and Mario Caserini and Eleuterio Rodolfi in 1913, it is possible to observe certain similarities between the images of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in some monographs (Kobel 2007: 150). The identification of the disaster of St Pierre with the image of Pompeii did not prevent the latter from being used as a comparative reference for past civilizations on American soil. As a matter of fact, the nineteenth-century Mexican Pompeiis, whose landscapes evoked the cultural development of pre-Hispanic civilizations, endured. Accordingly, Teotihuacan, which for the Duke of Loubat was ‘an authentic Mexican Pompeii’, was still referred to with that sobriquet in the international press at the beginning of the twentieth century, occasionally stressing its value as a tourist destination (‘A Mexican Pompeii’ 1905: 36). At the same time, Teotihuacan’s national character was reinforced, as Antonio García Cubas stated in Mexico in 1906, when he employed the possessive case in ‘our Pompeii’ (García 1906: 265). In 1912, some Spanish newspapers, including El Tiempo (‘Una Pompeya americana’ 1912a: 3) and Nuestro Tiempo (‘Una Pompeya americana’ 1912b: 254), echoed William Niven’s discovery of a rich Mexican site, in an undetermined place, under volcanic soil, which included houses, ovens, tombs and, in particular, the charred body of a purported silversmith, whose home was sumptuously decorated with frescoes, identified as an ‘American Pompeii’ (‘Una Pompeya americana’ 1912b: 255). 208

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Notwithstanding the fact that, in 1915, Carlos Prince declared that the ‘Pompeii of America’ was still waiting to be discovered under the layers of lava of some of the Central American volcanos (Prince 1915: 259–60), in 1921 the identification of Teotihuacan as ‘the American Pompeii’ was recovered (‘Uncover Ruins of American Pompeii in Mexican Hills’ 1921: 13), while a new Pompeii would appear when Cuicuilco was located. The discovery of Cuicuilco was widely covered in the Mexican and US press in 1922, above all as of the incorporation of the North American archaeologist Byron Cummings (Bostwick 2006: 112). This new site swelled the ranks of the Mexican Pompeiis, as evidenced by the fact that the international press would call it ‘the Mexican Pompeii’ (‘A Mexican Pompeii’ 1922: 26), ‘the second Pompeii’ (Jopp 1922: 114) or ‘the Pompeii of the Western World’ (‘Resolutions in Memory of John M. Stillman’ 1924: 417; ‘Teachers will hear lure of exploration’ 1924: 8). Christian Duverger claims that, if the archaeological excavations had been as successful as expected, Cuicuilco might have become the Pompeii of the New World. However, Cummings concluded his archaeological work in 1925, which ultimately signified that Cuicuilco lost its status of a new Pompeii (Duverger 2007: 328). Nevertheless, the sources continued to refer to Cuicuilco as an American Pompeii in the following years. In the 1920s, Antigua in Guatemala was yet again given the sobriquet of ‘Pompeii’ (Fernández 1925: 7), while in Panama the site of Coclé was identified as ‘the Pompeii of America’ by its discoverer A. Hyatt Verrill (1927: 279). Despite the previous testimonies of diverse Pompeiis, in 1936 E. John Long asserted, in The National Geographic Magazine, that the Guatemalan city of Antigua was possibly the most popular of all the Pompeiis (Long 1936: 429). In fact, however anecdotal it may seem, the widespread use of the epithet of ‘Pompeii’ to refer to Antigua is borne out by a trivia game published in the Californian newspaper Santa Ana Journal. Readers were asked the following question: ‘What city is often called “the Pompeii of America?” ’ The correct answer was Antigua in Guatemala (‘College Questions’ 1938: 2). But the popularity of the Guatemalan city did not prevent the epithet from being used in other countries. In 1941, for instance, Machu Pichu was referred to as ‘the American Pompeii’ in Lawrence Griswold’s The Other America (1941: 106). From San Parangaricutiro to Yungay In February 1943, forty years after the tragedy of St Pierre, the volcano Paricutin surged suddenly from a cornfield in the Mexican state of Michoacan. During the first few months of its prolonged activity, it buried the villages of El Paricutin and San Juan Parangaricutiro, giving rise to a desolate landscape that soon became the subject of photographs, illustrations and paintings. Diego Rivera and Gerardo Murillo (Dr Atl), among others, depicted the landscape of the disaster in their paintings. Initially, no express parallel was drawn with Pompeii. In the following decades, however, the media would identify the landscape of San Juan Parangaricutiro with the image of the ancient Roman city. Meanwhile, in Latin America during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s the Guatemalan city of Antigua largely prevailed as the American Pompeii, at the expense of other sites like 209

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Chan Chan (Peru), Copan (Honduras), Coclé (Panama) and even the city of Santafe (Argentina), which earned itself the designation of ‘the Argentine Pompeii’ (Zapata 1954: 68). The peculiarity of Antigua was that the fossilized time of the colonial ruins converged with the evocation of the disaster in its landscape. In point of fact, it warrants noting that in 1948 the association ‘Friends of Antigua’, whose aim was to promote the city, launched a competition to choose the image of the posters for promoting the city as a tourist destination. This identification gained popularity, with the epithet of ‘the Pompeii of America’ continuing to appear in press articles, including ‘The Architecture of Colonial Antigua, Guatemala, 1543–1773’, by Sidney David Markman (1951: 204), ‘Pompeya americana’, published in the Venezuelan daily El Nacional in 1956 (Picón-Salas 1991: 163) and Jorge del Valle Matheu’s ‘Pompeya del Nuevo Mundo’, published in the Guía sociogeográfica de Guatemala in 1956. In this last article, it possible to find an explanation for the sobriquet given to Antigua owing to ‘its colossal ruins, stone streets, squares, churches and palaces which have continued to defy time since 1773, the year in which an earthquake’ destroyed the city (Del Valle 1956: 21). In subsequent years, the identification of Antigua with Pompeii would be disseminated in different media, as shown by the epithets of ‘the Pompeii of the New World’ (Verges 1959: 134) and ‘the Pompeii of America’ (Luján 1966: 55; Woodman 1966: 44). Additionally, this sobriquet was also popularized in some tourist guidebooks (Sapia 1959). From Yungay to Armero On 31 May 1970, Peru was struck by a new natural disaster, after which recourse was had yet again to the epithet of ‘Pompeii’ as the image of disaster in order to offer an idea of its magnitude. This was the landslide on the snow-covered Mount Huascaran, triggered by an earthquake, which buried the town of Yungay. It is worth observing that the first accounts evoked the Pompeian landscape to describe the scope of the destruction, regardless of the fact that they were two different natural catastrophes. The epithets of ‘the modern Pompeii’, appearing in Time (‘World: Infernal Thunder Over Peru’ 1970), and ‘the Pompeii of the twentieth century’, in Soviet Life (Bychkov 1971: 60), both bear witness to this. It should be borne in mind that the characterization of Yungay as Pompeii was a new development, insofar as the Peruvian disaster was not caused by a volcanic eruption. The similarities were to be found in the destruction and the alleged immediacy of both, which was not the case with Pompeii. This aspect, which had been gradually fleshed out since the Roman Age, was consolidated by Bulwer-Lytton’s flights of fancy (Romero Recio 2015: 122). In parallel with Yungay, the Pompeian landscapes in Latin America continued to proliferate. Indeed, the following year in Peru Leon Viejo, a city abandoned in the sixteenth century and rediscovered in 1967, was mentioned as ‘the authentic American Pompeii’ in the Revista conservadora del pensamiento centroamericano (La Orden 1971: 3). In 1972, a new Pompeii appeared in Venezuela, as indicated by Rafael Pineda in his book San Felipe El Fuerte: la Pompeya de Venezuela (1972). In the 1970s there was a revival of the memory of St Pierre as ‘the Pompeii of the New World’ in several accounts appearing in popular 210

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publications (‘Martinica y Guadalupe. Antillas francesas’ 1974: 102). By the same token, at the end of that decade Machu Pichu and Joya de Ceren both laid claim to the sobriquet. As to the Inca site, in an interview that he gave in 1977, the president of Peru, Fernando Belaúnde Terry, drew a parallel between Machu Pichu and Pompeii, comparing both sites (Belaúnde and Dorn 1977). With respect to the Mayan site of Joya de Ceren, discovered in 1978 buried under the volcanic ash of Mount Loma Caldera at the end of the sixth century (Sheets 2013: 13), Payson D. Sheets, one of its discoverers, first identified El Salvador as a whole with a ‘Central American Pompeii’ in his book Excavating in a Central American Pompeii (1979), before restricting this analogy to Joya de Ceren (Sheets 1983). Armero As had occurred with St Pierre and Yungay, the tragedy unfolding in the Colombian city of Armero in 1985 breathed new life into comparisons and parallels with ancient Pompeii. One of the first appeared in Germán Colmenares’ article ‘Esta rosa fue testigo’, published in the newspaper El Tiempo in 1987 (Santamaría 1987: 13). It recounts the experience of the journalist Germán Santamaría in Armero, described as a ‘Colombian Pompeii’ (Santamaría 1987: 13–4), and, in particular, his conversation with Omayra (Santamaría 1987: 13–4), the girl trapped in the mud who died, after 50 hours of agonizing resistance, and whose death was broadcast on television in different countries and captured by the photographer Frank Fournier, who subsequently won the World Press Photo Award in 1985. It is precisely this particular episode that led Colmenares to link Armero to the image of Pompeii. In addition to uniting twenty centuries and to reflecting on the individual human tragedies that were played out in the two catastrophes, Colmenares humanized and updated Pompeii by transferring it to Colombia, while at the same time immortalizing Armero and converting it into the new Pompeii. In the words of Colmenares, If in Pompeii, which one night was buried under the lava of Mount Vesuvius, there had been a dialogue like that between Omayra and the journalist, nowadays, twenty centuries later, we would remember it with tears in our eyes. A present, only when a destruction encompassing vast regions and multitudes is concentrated in a human drop is it possible to get to the root of the tragedy. Santamaría, 1987: 14 Since then, Armero has often been referred to with the epithet of ‘the Colombian Pompeii’, including François Dolmetsch’s photographic exhibition in 2013, which has served as a departure point for this chapter. The recollection of the catastrophe has even constructed a memory, wavering between reality and fiction, in which there is room for the ancient Campanian city, as Francisco González notes: Several people from Armero declare that, on 13 November 1985, The Last Days of Pompeii was being shown, a film that would be premonitory. After watching it, 211

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Charcas, a resident of Armero, arrived flustered at the cafe Ancla and said, ‘What happened in Pompeii could happen to us here.’ This anecdote is perhaps apocryphal. Either way, truth is always stranger than fiction. González 2015: 25 The truth is that the popularization of the image of Armero as the Colombian Pompeii is evident. This can be observed, for example, in a documentary about the children who disappeared in the wake of the catastrophe, broadcast on Red Más Noticias in 2019, which begins with a voice in off saying, ‘Armero came into being with the bad luck of Pompeii’, and ends with ‘in Armero, the Colombian Pompeii, miracles still occur’.3 Neither was Armero the only Latin American Pompeii, nor did it gain the upper hand over the other pre-existing ones, but coexisted with them. Moreover, in the 1990s Joya de Ceren reasserted itself as ‘the Pompeii of El Salvador’, after being declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1993. It is important to recall that the Salvadoran site combines both the tradition of the pre-Hispanic ruins and that of a landscape of disaster, for it was abandoned after the volcanic eruption (Laporte and Escobedo 1993: 455). In addition, the image of Joya de Ceren as Pompeii has been promoted by the Salvadoran tourism authorities, like, for example, in the symposium held in the Nicaraguan city of Chichicastenango in 1993, on the occasion of the starting up of the activities of the Mundo Maya project, where the Salvadoran representative María Isaura Araúz defended the identification of Joya de Ceren with Pompeii (‘Turismo’ 1994: 101). In the following years, the identification of Joya de Ceren with the ancient Roman city was reinforced when it was called ‘the Mesoamerican Pompeii’ (Miller 1994: 223) and ‘the New World Pompeii’ (Roach 1997). It is telling that, in view of this identification, Payson Sheets, the discoverer of Joya de Ceren, who had initially associated the image of the site with Pompeii, would then, in the 1990s, express his discomfort with the comparison appearing in the press. Sheets drew several obvious comparisons, but no longer accepted the epithet due to the different state of conservation of the two sites (Roach 1997). Nevertheless, in 2013, he yet again recognized Joya de Ceren as ‘a unique site in the world, only comparable to Pompeii’ (Sheets 2013: 13). Together with Joya de Ceren, in the 1990s the epithet was still being applied to other Latin American sites on account of their landscapes frozen in time. For instance, the Nicaraguan city of Leon Viejo was called ‘the Pompeii of America’ (Arellano 1993), St Pierre received the epithet of ‘a modern version of Pompeii on Martinique’ (Maclean 1998: 82) and San Felipe el Fuerte was referred to as ‘the Venezuelan Pompeii’ (Musset 2009: 39). The new candidates included Zaña, the Peruvian colonial city that was destroyed when the river going by the same name broke its banks in 1720 (Hampe 2002: 76), which Teodoro Hampe compared to the ancient Roman city, even going so far as to talk about a ‘Pompeii on the north coast of Peru’ (Hampe 2002: 78). To these Latin American Pompeiis should be added others in different parts of the world, with the epithet being awarded to New Orleans, after the catastrophic flood in 2009, thus contributing yet again to the popularization of comparisons to antiquity (Lowe and Shahabudin 2009: 93–4). 212

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Lastly, over the past two decades the image of Pompeii has endured as an iconic place of reference in the Latin American cultural imaginary, either for classifying pre-Hispanic or colonial ruins or as a metaphor for tragedy.

Conclusion In this brief historical journey that we have made through the Latin American Pompeiis from the eighteenth century down to the present day, we have been able to observe how the image of the ancient Roman city has evolved in Latin America, from those Pompeiis synonymous with landscapes of ruins, with frozen or fossilized time in colonial or preHispanic sites, in the imaginary of nineteenth-century intellectuality, to the Pompeiis conjuring up images of desolation, tragedy and devastation in the twentieth century. We have shown that before the image of Pompeii was associated with a landscape of disaster, it was tantamount to a landscape in ruins that contained a frozen time and which was based on a valuable pre-Hispanic or colonial cultural heritage, on par with its European counterpart, and which gave America an identity and history. Thus, the Latin American Pompeiis demonstrated that there was an equally ancient time and a similarly rich heritage in Latin America as in Europe. It was perhaps for this reason that the epithets employed were accompanied by a national, regional or cultural gentilic, thus converting the ancient Roman city into a Mayan, Mexican, Andean, Caribbean, Colombian or Argentine site. It should be recalled that when countries claim their own Pompeii, they are also vindicating their identity, history and cultural heritage. Furthermore, it should not be forgotten that the comparison of the Latin American disasters to Pompeii has reinforced and enriched its image in Western cultural history. To the Latin American Pompeiis should be added a long list of epithets such as ‘the Pompeii of the East’ for Tambora in Indonesia, ‘the Polish Pompeii’ for Biskupin in Poland and ‘the Pompeii of Iceland’ for Thorjsardalur in Iceland (Holmberg 2013: 201), among others. With respect to the image of tragedy, it can be seen that Pompeii continues to dwell in the Latin American cultural imaginary as the main landscape of reference for representing and describing the scope of natural disasters. It is worth stressing that, just as Pompeii has been used as a comparative reference and qualifier for the magnitude of catastrophes in Latin American and the Caribbean, so too have the Latin American calamities (above all those of St Pierre and Armero) served to describe the scale of the destruction occurring at the foot of Mount Vesuvius in the first century from a human perspective. Therefore, it is a reciprocal or inverse reception that, in the words of Unceta (2019: 25–6), ought to be taken into account. In conclusion, Pompeii was not always a desolate and devastated landscape in the Latin American imaginary. Its image evolved from ruins to destruction as a result of the need to describe and gauge the natural disasters occurring in Latin America and the Caribbean. And, at the same time, Latin America promoted and reinforced the image of Pompeii as that of tragedy par excellence in the imagination of Westerners. Even when the devastation 213

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of Pompeii was surmounted by some of the twentieth-century Latin American catastrophes, the ancient Roman city continued to be the indisputable benchmark, for it was never converted into the St Pierre, Yungay or Armero of antiquity.

Notes 1. This paper is the result of the Research Project ‘Reception and Influence of Pompeii and Herculaneum in Spain and Ibero-America’ (PGC2018-093509-B-I00, FEDER/Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación-Agencia Estatal de Investigación). 2. In the chapter by Renata Senna Garraffoni in this book, the authoress observes that, with the account of the eruption, the Brazilian press placed readers in an international context, creating perceptions of cosmopolitanism and lifestyles in modernity inspired by antiquity. 3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=loXHK7aYgzQ&ab_channel=REDM%C3%81SNoticias [accessed 21 November 2021].

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EPILOGUE Shelley Hales

In the spring and summer of 2017, visitors to Pompeii would find the Theatre and Antiquarium haunted by the memory of a tourist who had been on site one hundred years previously. The exhibition, Picasso and Naples. Parade, staged in conjunction with the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, was designed to celebrate the centenary of Pablo Picasso’s visit to Naples and Pompeii and featured the costumes he designed for the performances of Parade, danced by the Ballets Russes in Naples that year (Picasso e Napoli. Parade 2017). The ballet was the reason Picasso was in town and offered the opportunity to tour Pompeii with Léonide Massine, its choreographer. The exhibition, mentioned in María Martín de Vidales García’s Chapter 6, is particularly significant to this volume because, for the first time in years, it acknowledged on site an interdependent cultural relationship between Spain and the Bay of Naples. The visit of probably the most iconic artist of the twentieth century brought kudos to the area whilst the exhibitors took the opportunity to demonstrate the region’s influences on Picasso’s work from ancient Pompeian theatre masks (displayed alongside African masks in a rare display of cultural comparison) and Neapolitan theatre tradition (such as the punchinello). The occlusion of Spain from popular imaginations of Pompeii is so remarkable given the way that the Iberian Peninsula shaped the contexts in which Pompeii was first received. Most obviously this was by its very discovery by the Bourbons but also by the enormous impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake that shaped a European generation’s response to natural disaster precisely at the same moment. Nevertheless, this ‘forgetting’ was perhaps inevitable given the political events and cultural drifts of the ensuing century. As Jesús Salas Álvarez notes in Chapter 7, the Unification of Italy led to Pompeii becoming a key symbol of a specifically Italian national heritage (a closely-guarded identification sharply exposed by the controversy over the 2021 appointment of the German Gabriel Zuchtriegel as director of the Superintendency). The achievements and lionization of Giuseppe Fiorelli, one-time Bourbon political prisoner, as the ‘father’ of excavation at Pompeii almost inevitably encouraged the increasing polarization of appraisals of pre- and post-Unification archaeology, necessitating a backlash against the Bourbon excavators whose work is only now slowly being reassessed. At the same time, the dominance of what might be termed a northern European ‘tourist gaze’ (Urry 2011) from the beginning shaped Pompeii as a product of the ‘other’ Catholic south to be consumed by visitors from the north who considered themselves the worthy inheritors of the classical legacy (Sweet 2012: 164–98). Another impact of this gaze has played out in the traditional focus of Pompeian reception studies on precisely those north-western

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countries (increasingly joined by the USA), further pushing out serious study of Spanish receptions of Pompeii. As a corrective, this book offers a fascinating set of chapters refocusing our attention not only on Spain but also on her and Portugal’s erstwhile overseas territories in the Americas. They uncover not only the extent to which both peninsular and Creole artists, architects and patrons adopted and experimented with Pompeian subjects and styles but plot the way the Bourbons (as both colonial rulers and, in the case of Teresa Cristina, as royal wife) first sent these overseas, only in many cases for the populations of those overseas territories to use the style precisely to assert independence. Pompeii’s excavations were almost perfectly timed to coincide with this pivotal moment in many of those countries, such as Mexico, Chile and Peru, which found themselves developing their identity as nation states alongside the accelerating emergence of the site and its growing cultural influence. As a way of concluding this volume, I would like to pick out some of the recurrent themes that particularly resonated with my own experience of working with receptions of Pompeii predominantly in Britain and France, and seem to prompt further discussion. These are eclecticism; the role of advances in technology and communication; the ‘gendering’ of Pompeii. I do not do so in order to constrain the case studies presented here in a Eurocentric, established narrative of Pompeian reception. Rather, I hope that this approach points up the twofold importance of the expansion of regional studies of Pompeian influence to new territories. Firstly, adding new instances of these themes to our repertoire adds depth and nuance to our understanding of the nature of the appeal of Pompeii. Secondly, it encourages us to explore how those themes were adapted in particular contexts, showing the local resonances that determined the nature of their reception in each place. In adopting the language of globalization, we might understand individual case studies to be ‘glocal’ examples of a phenomenon (Pompeian fashion) that was becoming increasingly globalized during the nineteenth century (Featherstone 1995). I will close by looking at how, as the sum of its parts, this volume documents the tenacity with which Pompeian reference suffused Central and South America.

Eclecticism One of the most immediate issues that strikes any conversation of Pompeian style is what exactly is it? In some cases, the question is easily answered. Precise references to Pompeii are made through the reproduction of specific images, easily recognizable from the ruins on the site. At this end of the spectrum, we have the painted dancing bacchants made so famous by their presence in the Antichità (recurrently occurring through the chapters), sculptural forms such as the dancing Faun from the House of the Faun (see the garden of Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida’s house discussed by Ana Valtierra in Chapter 5), mosaics such as the Cave Canem mosaic from the House of the Tragic Poet (as laid in Chapultepec Castle in Mexico and discussed in Chapter 2) or even entire houses such as the House of the Vettii chosen by González del Castillo as a model for homes in the Ciudad Lineal in Madrid (Chapter 1). 220

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Elsewhere, however, recognitions of Pompeii are much more intuitive, relying on architectural features such as columned porticoes or façades, courtyards that might evoke atria or peristyles or decorative features such as the deep red which has become irrevocably aligned with the Vesuvian cities. In many of the examples cited here, the Pompeian decoration is not really Pompeian at all in terms of being lifted from the excavated sites, rather the arabesques on the pillar behind the main group in Eduardo Rosales Gallinas’s Stigmatization of St Catherine of Siena (1862) or on the ceilings of Domingo del Monte Aponte’s house in Havana are more reminiscent of Raphael’s Vatican loggia than the Vesuvian cities. That is not to diminish them as manifestations of Pompeian style, rather it helps us to acknowledge the wide number of influences that were swept up in the ‘Pompeian’ (Hleunig Heilmann 2016) and its sometimes somewhat loose relation to ‘actual’ Pompeii in the service of contemporary taste and expectation. Another complication comes from the fact that this Pompeian style rarely appears in isolation from other historical references. Pompeian is just one of many interior choices available to the homeowners across the volume but the variety is most articulated in Chapter 4 by Carolina Valenzuela Matus as she charts the many period environments encased within individual homes of Santiago. That eclecticism is also stressed between houses as the suburbs filled with homes referencing different styles, with Tudor and Turkish homes neighbours to each other. The American journalist Theodore Child’s response, as reproduced in Chapter 10 by María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar, rather archly suggested that this eclectic Chilean fashion was a kind of poor imitation of Europe but he should not be taken at face value. His snobbish critique echoes the sorts of things that British visitors said of North American homes. In both cases, the sneering masks a lack of understanding of the value and type of messages local communities were making through their historical choices (Nichols 2017). The greatest sign that this is likely the case is that Pompeian style was wrapped in the same eclecticism in Europe and the United States. Even the most apparently ‘pure’ of Pompeian interiors, Prince Jérôme Napoléon’s Maison Pompéienne in Paris, included a domed Turkish bath house and it shared the Avenue Montaigne with a house based on the Erechtheum, a Gothic pile and a Moorish pavilion (Hales 2016). The creator of the Pompeia at Saratoga Springs too had created a Moorish house before embarking on his Pompeian project (von Stackelberg 2017: 247). In this sense, the way we think about Pompeian interiors probably has to expand to think more broadly in terms of the historical sets of which they were a part. As Pompeian reception studies develop, working with specialists in reception of other historical periods could be a fruitful way of helping to articulate what Pompeii, in particular, brought to these sets and to understand the implications of which styles were included or excluded in any one context. The same eclecticism is also shown in the subjects chosen by the painters of Pompeian scenes surveyed in this volume. None of them are exclusively Pompeian and their scenes are interchangeable with their other subjects, which range from the contemporary costumbrist to the oriental to the medieval. In this respect, they are entirely in sync with the artists of northern Europe such as Lawrence Alma-Tadema (Querci, De Caro 2008; Prettejohn, Trippi 2016), Jean-Léon Gérôme and Théodore Chassériau who were equally 221

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at home painting the harem and Turkish baths as Pompeian interiors (Sciama, ViguierDutheil 2014). The artists in María Martín de Vidales García’s chapter demonstrate a similar geographical and chronological range. As a few examples, Juan Jiménez Martín’s In the Harem (n.d.); Juan Luna y Novicio, Death of Cleopatra (1881), José Moreno Carbonero’s Roger de Flor’s Entry into Constantinople (1888) show that they and their audiences had an appetite for variety. Architectural and painted interiors are brought together with the homes of artists in which their own eclectic interiors became the subject of their paintings. In Chapter 5, Ana Valtierra shows how Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida’s house in Madrid offered both inspiration and a subject for his paintings. Its sculptures not only include the sort of Hellenistic copies that imitate the taste of the Pompeian homeowner, such as the Dancing Faun, but also – and intriguingly – a Pompeian homeowner himself in the guise of the bronze portrait of Caecilius Jucundus. In his painting, Garden of the Sorolla House (1919), in which the dancing Faun is viewed from behind looking into the garden area, it becomes hard to tell whether this is present or past. Sorolla’s home evokes the studio homes of other artists across Europe, most famously Alma-Tadema’s London houses which likewise presented a series of historical references within their interiors, many of which appeared transported into the past in his canvases (Prettejohn, Trippi 2016). Dried rose petals in the little atrium of Alma-Tadema’s home at Grove End Road captured in a watercolour by Nicolaas van der Waay were both a trace of the making of his painting The Roses of Heliogabalus (1888) in this very house, but also seemed to imply that the decadent banquet depicted in it had only just happened the day before. To recognize that these houses are ancient houses constructed in their makers’ own image is not to state a banal inevitability; rather they seem to have provided a venue in which conscious repeated self-citation allowed artists to perform themselves into their own canvases, their own antique pasts. Whilst artists’ houses might be considered special cases, nevertheless they prompt us to consider the experience of inhabiting historically indeterminate spaces. Time is suspended and slips in all sorts of directions in this atmosphere and, of all historical styles, the Pompeian was perhaps most adept at playing this game because of Pompeii’s own complex relationship with time and apparent conquest of the inevitability of death and disappearance. The photograph of the octagonal Pompeian courtyard in the Arrieta house on the outskirts of Santiago (Figure 10.1) is particularly striking in this respect. The viewer has to cope with the obvious dissonance between the ancient walls and the boy’s tailored suit. Is he lost in the past or has Pompeii been projected into the present? Or is another scenario being played out here, of the discovery of a preserved ruin? The dried leaves blowing across the floor add to an air of neglect and reclamation by nature and the archway by which the boy has entered looks strikingly like a Bourbon excavation tunnel. Existing both in antiquity as living town and in the present as a remarkable ruin gave Pompeii an extra advantage over other antiquities in these kinds of temporal games. Pompeii also may have been a particularly good model for these consumerist fantasies precisely because of its own interiors’ eclecticisms and short cuts. Both Carolina

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Valenzuela Matus and Federica Pezzoli draw attention to the achievability of the Pompeian style, the former noting how commentators exposed the decorative facades of the Santiago suburbs as achieved through plaster moulding rather than masonry and the latter how the houses of Trinidad, Cuba used murals as a simple way of concealing cheap building materials. Such strategies are clearly shared by ancient Pompeii where painting allowed a series of fantasies to be played out in fresco that a homeowner simply had no option of realizing in reality. Pompeian wall-painting offered a fantastic melange of subjects, themes and moods – fantasy worlds of Egypt sat alongside the Greek; the elegant and learned coupled with the erotic and the comedic. Flora and fauna from different seasons and parts of the empire share indeterminate landscapes, a fantasy made possible in both painting but also in the arena by the buying power of empire. Whilst the nature of Pompeian eclecticism was very different than that made possible by trade and commerce in the nineteenth century, it served as a precedent for justifying a modern aesthetic that happily juxtaposed Roman, Greek and Oriental. Pompeian culture was understood to be similarly eclectic, drawing on Roman, Greek and Egyptian influences. For example, the Persian rugs and Turkish Baths in the Maison Pompéienne that were explained away as reflections of Romans’ own Orientalist tastes (Baudez 2014; Hales 2016). At the same time, Pompeii could stand in for all those places. In Laura Buitrago’s chapter it is striking how the covers of several Last Days of Pompeii comic editions found no shame in having Pompeians escaping the eruption rather circuitously via the Colosseum and Arch of Constantine in Rome as Pompeii’s destruction was made to bear the moral weight of the eventual fall of the western Empire. The link between the century’s eclectic taste and bourgeois capitalism of the nineteenth century has been well-established (von Stackelberg & Macaulay-Lewis 2017, 17–19). As Renata Senna Garraffoni notes in connection with the affluent homes of Rio de Janeiro, here too these tastes reflected the deployment of knowledge and wealth. In the suburbs of Santiago de Chile and Madrid alike, the money invested in these properties bought variety and an expression of individualism but also paid into a collectively agreed and sanctioned collection of historical periods and exotic references. By the time many of the examples explored in this volume were built it is true that, back in Europe, some critics had begun to decry the lack of direction in contemporary architecture and were starting to dismiss the reliance on style of the past as historical pastiche, which they dismissed as bourgeois (Maleuvre 1999, 115–87). However, the stakes in the new states of Central and South America were high. In these contexts, the eclectic style are shown here to have been an indication of an enriched middle class that could compete with their European peers and of a thorough immersion and inclusion in the history valued and recognized by those peers. Caroline van Eck and Miguel John Versluys (2017, 90) have understood the successive historical styles arranged in French nineteenth-century interiors to be manifestations of cultural memory. How much more crucial would evidence of that memory be in new states eager to assert themselves in a then still Eurocentric world.

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Modernity and technology Pompeii was also refreshingly modern and novel, constantly presenting fresh examples for emulation. Looking back to the beginning of this section, we mentioned the dancing bacchants already well-known at the very beginning of the century, the Cave Canem mosaic unearthed in 1824 and the House of Vettii in the 1890s. Today, we find it hard to imagine Pompeii as new, though press releases of the excavations in Regio V have allowed us to relive some of that excitement at fresh discoveries. But, during the nineteenth century Pompeii was utterly modern, excavated by means of latest technologies and providing an inquisitive audience with an endless sequence of novel finds, its territory expanding and developing through excavation and reconstruction in step with the embellishment of the urban centres discussed in this volume. The very modernity of this new antiquity was perhaps one of the reasons it was felt to be so adaptable to modern amenities. In Chapter 1, Mirella Romero Recio notes that the homes of Ciudad Lineal balanced their boasting of historicist detail with the latest conveniences such as electricity, heating and telephones. Back in Paris, at the Maison Pompéienne, gas lamps, electric cables and acoustic pipes and clocks were all justified as innovations that Romans would have embraced had they ever witnessed them. Pompeii and the new states of South America shared the advantages of coming into being at the beginning of a century in which technological advances would link the world in astonishing and previously unimaginable ways. Jesús Salas Álvarez, Chapter 7, in particular concentrates on the role of technology but the themes run across the volume, appearing, again, for example in Chapter 9. The telegraph (Standage 1998) and photograph enabled the rapid dissemination of information, shrinking the world virtually. The cumbersome transport of casts from Europe to the arts academies could be replaced by photographs which swiftly transmitted intimate views of excavations and brought them into the remit not only of students and professionals but to citizens in their own living rooms whilst increased opportunity for mobility allowed those citizens from the Americas to view Pompeii for themselves (provoking the need for tourist guides as in Chapter 2) and bring back the souvenirs to cement the social advantages of having done so (see, for example, Chapter 4). Likewise, artists, architects and entertainers might have truly global careers, further binding experiences in Europe and other continents. As just one example, Antonio Poletti, the magician mentioned by Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez in Chapter 2 as performing in Mexico City in the 1880s had been a regular in London venues in the late 1850s, holding a Christmas residency at the Crystal Palace in 1860 (The Athenaeum 22 Dec. 1860: 849). The combination of these technologies not only fuelled the material for historicist fashions by disseminating information quickly but, more importantly, have been consistently deeply implicated in the reorientation of expectations of the world that led to the kind of acquisitive eclecticism into which Pompeian life fitted. Photographs and souvenirs brought the world into drawing-rooms, intensely personal and private, encouraging a middle-class consumption of its findings. They also conditioned the ways in which those viewers looked and consumed information. Photographic technologies, 224

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and the visual techniques developed alongside them, like the diorama, such as the Cosmorama in Rio de Janeiro (see Chapter 9), allowed viewers to see in a new, immersive way across space and time. Technologies like the camera and the microscope met a thirst to make the unseen seeable and the unfamiliar familiar for the first time (Flint 2000, 1–39). Technology expanded the view of the consumer – to see more and from all angles. New modes of mobility have also been understood as providing new viewing opportunities, the train speeding up vision to juxtapose different landscapes and the hot air balloon providing the birth of aerial photography. In Jesús Salas Álvarez’s Chapter 7, the mystery accrued to Alfred Guesdon’s 1848 aerial view of Pompeii, demonstrates precisely that appeal (Paul 2019). In short, as Jonathan Crary puts it, spectacle becomes a crucial condition of capitalist modernity (Crary 1991: 16–17). Eclectic interiors themselves can be understood as a product of this spectacle, presenting a series of immersive tableaux (van Eck, Versluys 2017: 78–9). As one of those new sciences, Archaeology brought the past into view and Pompeii was its test bed. Fiorelli was the master of technology both in perfecting new techniques, such as body casting, and in taking advantage of photography to advertise the findings and attract publicity and visitors (Dwyer 2010). Both cast and photograph are products of their time, both able to make manifest something which has become unseeable either because of a distance of space or time. This inquisitive demand for the past to be conjurable can also be glimpsed in small ways here by other arts and entertainment. Magic and materializing spiritualism were also a way of making that happen (Flint 2000: 258–84) – the advertisements in the Mexican press for conjuring tricks including the emergence of a woman from a pile of ash or of a Pompeian column are perfect examples (Chapter 2). These conditions of nineteenth-century modernity not only lay the past open to scrutiny but also open different appropriations of those past to scrutiny and comparison. We have seen it already in British critics assessing North American interiors and Theodore Child’s reporting on the houses of Santiago. But it is clear that the different countries covered in this volume were observing each other too. For example, Federica Pezzoli’s Chapter 8 opens with an extract from a Mexican journalist observing the Pompeian houses of the Cerro suburb of Havana. The inevitable awareness of this scrutiny makes the choices of patrons even more important. All of these threads come together in the International Exhibitions which became key fora for the dissemination of cultural knowledge, taste and industrial and commercial progress. No surprise that it is precisely at successive Exhibitions that Mirella Romero Recio finds González del Castillo promoting Arturo Soria’s vision of the Ciudad Lineal in Chapter 1. They are the greatest public manifestations of the spectacle and encyclopedic turns of the century (Nichols 2015: 1–34). Objects and products from all corners of the world were brought together, exhibited side by side in the safe confines of the Exposition parks, commodified and tamed (Walsh 1992: 103; Shields 2003: 4–13). The exhibitions reflected and promoted the kind of eclectic spectacle visible in the streets and interiors of Santiago and other cities discussed in this volume. The Fine Arts Courts of the 1854 Sydenham Crystal Palace (Nichols 2015; Hales 2006) and Charles 225

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Garnier’s History of Human Habitation exhibit at the foot of the Eiffel Tower at the 1889 Exposition Internationale in Paris (Hales 2017) both recreate the aesthetic of a succession of different cultures and civilizations seen in jumbled sequence, always potentially in the same frame as their neighbours. In fact, the exhibitions themselves could be understood as a kind of communal, bourgeois interior. Didier Maleuvre’s (1999, 133–5) discussion of miniaturization as a strategy of such interiors is particularly reminiscent of the model worlds of the International Exhibitions. The exhibitions also show some of the challenges faced by the countries of South America in fitting into this vision of modernity. In 1854, one of the several Routledge Guides to the Sydenham Crystal Palace bemoaned the Eurocentric focus of the courts and listed Mexico alongside China and Japan as countries that should have been included. In fact, Central and South America were included in the Palace but not as examples of progress and modernity. Instead, they appeared in the Natural History court, in an exhibition which led visitors through a tour of the continents (notably excluding Europe) in order to showcase the flora, fauna and peoples of other(ed) peoples. They were represented by casts of members of various indigenous peoples, such as the Kranak, posed alongside cacti, jaguars and tapir (Qureshi 2011: 194–209). In later exhibitions, Central and South America did get architectural representation. The 1867 Paris Exposition included a replica of the Temple of the Feathered Serpent of Xochicalco (Kaufman 2004: 274) and Garnier’s 1889 Habitations exhibit included Aztec and Inca houses alongside the Pompeian (Bouvier 2005: 46). But, as with the ethnographical exhibit at Sydenham, these houses appeared as examples of the homes of peoples of the so-called Isolated Civilizations, civilizations that were static in terms of development, both without and outside history, and physically and conceptually peripheral, making no contribution to global (i.e. Eurocentric) progress. Whilst the excavation and reconstruction of key sites like Xochicalco imitated the scientific prowess of the Pompeian excavations, they also confirmed the difference of the landscapes of the Americas. In this situation it becomes even clearer why the countries under discussion in this volume were eager exhibitors of their contemporary cultural and industrial products. Notably, of the pavilions they occupied at the Paris Expositions, only the 1889 Mexican pavilion, which took an Aztec form (Beale 1890, 122), departed from a French idiom. The photographs of other Latin American pavilions show they were decidedly French in design (and so competitively so that the Argentina pavilion was a prize-winner, whereupon it was relocated to Buenos Aires). Manifestation of a shared aesthetic and cultural memory with Europe, demonstrated both at the exhibitions and back home appear to have been key to being admitted to the group of countries associated with progress. Ironically, appreciation and emulation of the past was key to demonstrating modernity.

Gender The collective endeavours of technology and progress in which Pompeii was caught were of the masculine, social sphere. The proposed roles for Pompeian style in helping to 226

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promote urban cohesion and civic identity likewise put Pompeii to an implicitly masculine end. However, elsewhere in this volume, the gendering of Pompeii becomes explicit in both familiar and unfamiliar ways that deserve further investigation. It has become almost commonplace to point out the extent to which Pompeii is forever female. Partly this was because she is of the mysterious South, the tempting other, from the seductive beauty of the contemporary Bay of Naples (its hills described by Théophile Gautier as undulating like a women’s hips) to the striptease of archaeological discovery (Wallace 2004: 79–100). The voyeuristic gaze of the archaeologist and tourist penetrating the hidden world of a lost and alien past is an endlessly repeated trope of the nineteenth century, from paintings such as Théodore Chassériau’s Tepidarium (1853) (Betzer 2010) to the narratives of novellas such as Gautier’s Arria Marcella (1852) or Wilhelm Jensen’s Gradiva (1902) in which male desire regenerates the ghosts of femmes fatales, which stalk the site as examples of the fantisized victims of the eruptions and as erotic embodiments of the lost city itself. As Luciana Jacobelli (2008, 63) has it ‘Arria e Pompei sembrano fondersi’. In Chapter 2, Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez document the ‘Biógrafo Lumier’ company’s trick of conjuring a Pompeian woman from a pile of ashes, a feat that brought these fantasies to the Mexican stage. Notably, the woman is named Lais after one of the Hellenistic world’s most famous hetairai, a name also attributed to none other than Emma Hamilton in a famous cartoon by the British caricaturist James Gillray (Jenkins, Sloan 1996: 301). Emma herself, of course, was another woman who conjured the dead past via her famous ‘attitudes’. The effect of the femininizing fantasy of Pompeii was the repeated views of women in their secret interiors; their homes and bathhouses, perfectly encapsulated by Juan Jiménez A Roman Lady at Her Dressing Table (1895). Pompeii’s homes were repeatedly characterized as feminine interiors in a decidedly nineteenth-century conception of domesticity, that overlooked the fact that Pompeian atrium houses were male-dominated social spaces rather than domestic retreats. In Chapter 6, María Martín de Vidales García produces many examples of coy, lounging Pompeian woman in order to demonstrate the heavy emphasis on the female to an extent more marked than, say, in the works of AlmaTadema, where older men also inhabit the houses, often in the guise of art-appreciating elders. The discrepancy alerts us to the scope for recognizing shifting expectations of gender and sexuality and their associations with Pompeii in different places and times. In Alejo Vera y Estaca’s, A Jeweller’s Shop in Pompeii (1871), Pompeian women are both the buyers of commodities and the commodified, the receipt of a consumer gaze and a reflection of the modern consumer. In Chapter 2, Aurelia Vargas Valencia and Elvia Carreño Velázquez remind us of the link between the women in such paintings and those of nineteenth-century high society as they discuss the Pompeian dress fashions adopted by women in Mexico. In my own research, I have found similar links between gender and consumerism. Whereas Garnier’s model houses at the 1889 Exposition placed emphasis on the houses’ exterior as masculine, in that they were intellectual products and reflections of society and culture, it is very striking that companies such as Biscuits Pernot, eager to sell their products to middle-class visitors to the Exposition, focused their advertising on the imagined female occupants inside the houses, identifying 227

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these interiors with luxury and indulgence (Hales 2017). Whilst these kinds of identifications were used in rather banal ways for the purposes of consumerism, the knock-on effects for considerations of Pompeian style could be considerable. Marden Nichols (2017, 133–5) proposes, for example, that one of the reasons for the criticism of Constantino Brumidi’s paintings for the US Capitol, as explored here by Daniel Expósito in Chapter 3, was that the Pompeian style was seen to be too feminine for the chambers of power. The voyeuristic male gaze was also drawn to the inspection of woman as prone victim, a manifestation of the otherwise unknowable nature of death (Guthke 1999, 186–28). Female victims might evoke more empathy, their gender adding to the idea of helplessness and suffering of the victims but their exposure also satisfying the frisson gained from gazing on them unimpeded. From the outset, casts of female victims on site received the most attention, were admired as art and pored over by male critics. The exposure of female victims lives in the example cited by Ricardo Del Molino García in Chapter 12 of the publication in the American and Spanish press of those ‘remains of the corpse of a black woman under the volcanic lava’ of the 1902 eruption of St Pelée on Martinique, the voyeurism further justified by the otherness of her blackness. It carries on into the 1980s with cameras following the terrible death of Omayra Sánchez, a young victim of the mudslides that swallowed Armero in 1985. Back in the world of nineteenth-century paintings, of all the images presented by María Martín de Vidales García in Chapter 6, the only one which seems to suggest criticism of the morality of Pompeian lifestyles is the one in which dead male bodies are the spectacle. The dragging of prone gladiator corpses from the field of play in the Philippines-born Juan Luna y Novicio’s Spolarium (1884) suggests an interest in the plight of the exploited under-classes more typical of Neapolitan artists such as Francesco Netti, Domenico Morelli or Camillo Miola (Figurelli 2011). These artists likewise subverted the usual gender expectations on Pompeian painting to show the human cost of Pompeian luxury. In Netti’s Gladiatorial Fight during a Dinner Party at Pompeii (1880) another faceless male corpse is dragged from a domestic arena, his life lost for the entertainment of a largely un-seeing clientele whilst the usual rules of eroticism are overturned by women taking the initiative to crowd and admire the passive winning gladiator, individuality as lost under his helmet as that of his deceased rival. Morelli’s After the Orgy (1861–63) or Miola’s The Symposium (n.d.) saw Pompeian domestic life through the vantage point of slaves, deliberately portrayed as young men in plain tunics rather than the beautiful young women pampering their mistress in Jiménez Martín’s painting. More usually, the role of the male in a hyper-feminized Pompeii was to jump into action in the rescuing of all those languid women, whose incessant apathy was obviously not going to be enough to help them save themselves. Ulpiano Checa’s painting The Last Days of Pompeii (1890) offers a stark contrast to the indolence on display in his Ancient Flirting (1893). In visualizing the escape from Vesuvius, Checa returned to one of his favourite tropes of men on galloping horses. In the spirit of the eclecticism, it was a scene he had imagined many times in different variations and circumstances, from barbarian hordes invading Rome to Arabs in the desert. 228

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The polarization of gender roles in the Last Days of Pompeii scenario hardened into the twentieth century as the cinematic versions of Last Days of Pompeii films squared the focus onto increasingly hyper-masculinized protagonists from Preston Foster to Steve Reeves, whose strength would offer some agency in the face of threats from either volcanic debris or Roman oppression. It is perhaps not surprising that it is this image that turns up on the covers of the comic book variants of The Last Days of Pompeii in Laura Buitrago’s chapter, which feature young, dazed women and burly, proactive young men. No surprise either perhaps that in Franco’s Spain The Last Days of Pompeii was categorized as a suitable novel for young men, placing the emphasis on courage and action. This last example is so instructive because its polarization of gender roles is so easily detectable and relatable to autocratic rule. Nevertheless, it acts as a useful reminder that the gendering of Pompeii is never fixed. Rather, it evolves to meet the demands of different audiences and contexts. As a result, the nature of gender representations in these chapters invite further reflection on debates about and norms of gender roles in each context and the bearings these had on imaginations of Pompeii. An obvious next step for Pompeian reception studies more generally would be to consider a wider spectrum of sexualities and identifications that are only just coming to surface somewhat belatedly in this area (Syme 2004; Coates, Lapatin, Seydl 2012: 21–3, 109–22).

Transforming a Continent Undoubtedly the most striking theme running through all the chapters of this book is the extent to which evocations of Pompeii aided in the transformation of a continent into a recognizable, modern European territory, to the extent that Mexico herself could be represented in allegory as a dancing bacchant (Chapter 2). Pompeii is mapped onto the past, present and future of these territories, changing the built and natural environment, urban and rural. It is, of course, an irony, that the motivation for many of these transformations was a dislocation from colonial Spanish styes that spoke of a colonized past even as, as this volume shows, Spanish architects and artists were pursuing very similar tactics back on the peninsula. Urban homes bought Pompeian architectural façades to the growing suburbs of leading cities like Santiago. The civic realm was equally transformed by public buildings such as the Iturbide Theatre and the Pane Baths in Mexico City (Chapter 2), which not only operated in Pompeian style but offered Pompeian entertainment (a crucial insight, which we are so often missing, into links between the style of any building and its use or impact on visitors). More remarkable perhaps are the advances into the countryside explored in María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar’s Chapter 10 with the transformation of the ranch estates of Chile into Pompeian villas. As a productive, domestic and increasingly social centre, the casa patronal easily leant itself to the model of the ancient villa, thereby dragging the rural workforce into the orbit of classical antiquity. The consequence was not just the visual transformation of the built environment but its wrapping in European cultural memory, with its eclectic styles from different times 229

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and spaces. It is a great irony of course that even as this taste appeared to parade ethnic difference and distinct temporal traditions it threatened to annihilate such differences as they were crushed by an increasingly globalized middle-class, urban taste. The Belgian architect Frantz Jourdain’s account of the History of Human Habitations exhibition at the 1889 Paris Exposition specifically deplored uniformization. He used Japan as an example, warning that its entire indigenous architectural tradition was about to collapse under the influence of Western culture (Jourdain 1889: 17–19). He exhorted his readers to shake off the hypnotic effect of the ruins of Greece and Italy in favour of embracing contemporary diversity rather than past paradigms. Here again, we might detect the privilege of the northern European who, as a citizen of the continent that has generated this urban taste, has the confidence to voice dissent from it. The Pompeian homes of Central and South America, on the other hand, brought Pompeii but more importantly the territories themselves into a living modernity recognizable to external scrutiny. Plans to use Pompeii as an archetype for ideal living, which surface in several chapters of the volume (starting with a proposal to improve living standards in Buenos Aires in Mirella Romero Recio’s Introduction), also projected the Pompeian into an idealized future. In Spain, González del Castillo’s Ciudad Lineal leant on Pompeii to create an ideal city quarter in Madrid (Chapter 1) and the overhaul of Santa Lucia Hill in Santiago (Chapter 4) offered another, if smaller, example of attempts to use the ancient in order to pursue civic and social experiments. On a domestic level, the ideal of the courtyard house had long been considered by architects in northern Europe but the climate manifestly went against it (Amaury-Duval 1819–21; Bouvier 2005: 43). In southern Europe and in the New World, including large parts of Central and South America, courtyards and patios were already key features of regional architectural types (such as the Chilean casa patronal), rendering them perfectly adaptable to atrium and peristyle. In this sense, the New World could triumph where northern Europe had failed. As Daniel Expósito puts it in Chapter 3, in adopting these historicizing styles, the New World may not just have been imitating Europe out of deference but with a view to surpassing it, taking from the Old World what that world had once taken from antiquity. The natural landscape in which these buildings sat could, too, be reimagined as the Bay of Naples. In the first instance, this was made possible by the active volcanoes and tendency to seismic activity that rendered the landscape as unpredictable as the Bay. The first comparisons appear to have been made by European onlookers making sense of an alien landscape by the adoption of a familiar reference though, in Chapter 2, a Mexican journalist uses the same trope to make sense of an 1880 eruption in his own country. In Chapter 12, Ricardo Del Molino García charts the tendency to denote natural disasters and their sites of destruction as Vesuvius and Pompeii from the devastation of St Pierre by the eruption of Mt Pelée on Martinique in 1902 to the burial of Armero in Columbia under mudslides caused by the eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano in 1985, a terrible disaster that was still being compared to Pompeii in 2013. We might also add the recent eruption of the La Soufrière volcano in St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 2021 (Black Star News 23 April 2021 [blackstarnews.com]). The ongoing trend testifies to the 230

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extent to which each subsequent disaster reaffirms the legacy of Vesuvius but also the dominance of the European tradition, which fetishizes and remembers the devastation of 79 ce above subsequent disasters around the world (Paul 2009). Many of the buildings explored in this volume have ended up validating their own ‘Pompeian’ nature by being destroyed or existing as ruins. In María Gabriela Huidobro Salazar’s Chapter 10, Maximiano Errázuriz’s Pompeian house is a good example of a home that now only exists in the photographic archive, having been destroyed by earthquake in 1906. In other examples in the same chapter, the passing of time, neglect or changing taste have also taken their toll, reducing once-pristine Pompeian environments to a state of faded glory, such as the once-stuccoed walls of the Roman baths of the house of Viña Santa Rita now stripped to bare brick. This raises an important point; the Pompeian nature of any building, painting or text may not best be assessed at its conception but by considering its longer-term trajectory, its different owners and consumers, the changing physical, social and cultural environment to which it is subject and its own battle with decomposition. The natural landscape is further transformed by the excavation and identification of what we might think of as ‘real’ ruins, the sites of the ancient cultures of Central and South America, again the focus of Ricardo Del Molino García’s Chapter 12, though also in Chapter 4, where Carolina Valenzuela Matus talks of the Pompeian excavations prompting interest in Incan culture in Peru. The exposure and advertisement of abandoned and destroyed cities gives historical depth and identity to a continent that as we have seen was once viewed from the outside as static and timeless. Again, insistence on seeing these sites as Pompeii may occlude their identity and reinforce a European gaze but with the pay-off of offering a historical landscape with the prestige of exceptionally well-preserved sites and tourist opportunities. It is in this guise that Mexico’s decision to stand out from European norms by adopting Aztec architecture at the Paris Expositions makes sense. The restoration of the Pyramid of the Sun at Teotihuacan as part of activities commemorating the first centenary of Mexico’s independence in 1910 (see Chapter 2) and Antonio García Cubas’s reference to the site as ‘our Pompeii’ reveals the depth of ownership, identity and competition. They showed a Bourbon heritage of exploiting the antiquity of territory to promote a new state’s link to its territory and mastery of it. The complications of connecting past ruins to present identities and future aspirations in Central and South America is, of course, a reflection of the area’s complex histories and numerous populations. Most of the chapters here reflect middle-class Creoles’ use of Pompeian styles to determine their own social and political agendas though other groups were also inevitably viewers and users. Carolina Valenzuela Matus considers the effects on such groups when she talks about the working classes of Santiago being reduced to bystanders of the performance of an apparently democratic antiquity played out in front of them in the grounds of Santa Lucia Hill. One wonders too about indigenous populations. As much as Pompeian style created an identity for those elites who had the most to gain from independence and modernity, it also alienated other groups from their own environments (present and past). The dislocational aspects of what might be termed 231

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‘Pompeianification’ is an obvious place for further contemplation. In Chapter 8, Federica Pezzoli articulates very clearly the uncomfortable truth that the adoption of neoclassical styles and academic training in Havana was explicitly spoken about in terms of wresting artistic production from free black artists, who would be excluded from the academy, and setting it into a white European tradition (Neill 2012) and we should remember that that European tradition had only one role for the black man or woman in Pompeian genre scenes – as a slave.

Conclusion The chapters in this collection show emphatically the influence of Pompeii on the Hispanophone world. They chart that influence from the initial dissemination of casts and information from the first Bourbon excavations of the eighteenth century, through the long nineteenth century, to the films and publications of the twentieth and the disasters of the twenty-first. This very persistency and reach reinforce the importance of exploring the evocations and implications of Pompeian style everywhere it manifests. This volume contains many possibilities for further exploration and future collaborations that can only enrich our understanding of the appeal of Pompeii. They should also remind us that the ascendancy of Pompeii is not inevitable or guaranteed and that, one day, Pompeii may not be the dominant archetype but the ruin that needs to be made familiar by comparison to a new archetype.

References Amaury-Duval, E. E. (1819–21), ‘Notes sur Herculanum et Pompéi’, Mémoires historiques, politiques et litteraires sur le Royaume de Naples, 5. Paris: G. Orloff: 396–437. Baudez, B. (2014), ‘L’Architecture néo-grecque au milieu du XIXe siècle: l’exemple de la Maison Pompéienne du Prince Napoléon’, in Sciama and Viguier-Dutheil 2014: 127–39. Beale, S. (1890), ‘A Last Look at the Paris Exhibition’, Universal Review, 6.21 January: 113–34. Betzer, S. (2010), ‘Afterimage of the Eruption: An Archaeology of Chassériau’s Tepidarium (1853)’, Art History, 33 (3): 466–89. Blix, G. (2009), From Paris to Pompeii: French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Bouvier, B. (2005), ‘Charles Garnier (1825–1898) architecte historien de l’Habitation humaine’, Livraisons d’histoire de l’architecture, 9: 43–51. Coates, V. G., Lapatin, K. and Seydl, J. (2012), The Last Days of Pompeii: Decadence, Apocalypse, Resurrection, Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum. Crary, J. (1991), Techniques of the Observer, Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press. Dwyer, E. (2010), Pompeii’s Living Statues: Ancient Roman Lives Stolen from Death, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Featherstone, M. (1995), Undoing Culture: Globalization, Postmodernism and Identity, London: Sage Publications. Figurelli, L. (2011), ‘Italian Classical-Revival Painters and the “Southern Question” ’, in Hales, Paul 2011: 137–52.

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Epilogue Flint, K. (2000), The Victorians and the Visual Imagination, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Guthke, K. S. (1999), The Gender of Death: a Cultural History in Art and Literature, Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press. Hales, S. (2006), ‘Re-casting Antiquity: Pompeii and the Crystal Palace’, Arion, 14 (1): 99–133. Hales, S. and Paul, J. (eds) (2011), Pompeii in the Modern Imagination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hales, S. and Leander Touati, A. M. (eds) (2016), Returns to Pompeii. Interior Space and Decoration Documented and Revived. 18th–21st Century, Stockholm: Acta Instituti Romani Regni Sueciae. Hales, S. (2016), ‘Living with Arria Marcella. Novel Interiors in the Maison Pompéienne’, in Hales, Leander Touati 2016: 217–44. Hales, S. (2017), ‘The History of Human Habitation: ancient domestic architecture in nineteenthcentury Europe’, in von Stackelberg, Macaulay-Lewis 2017: 92–125. Hleunig Heilmann, M. (2016), ‘Pompeian revival in the decorative arts: Arabesque, grotesque, Herculanean, Pompeian or neo-Pompeian? Terminological clarifications’, in Hales, Leander Touati 2016: 273–4 Jacobelli, L. (2008), ‘Arria Marcella e il Gothic Nove pompeiano’, in R. Cremante et al. (eds) I misteri di Pompei. Antichità pompeiane nell’immaginario della modernità, Pompei: Flavius: 53–66. Jenkins, I., Sloan, K. (1996), Vases and Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and His Collection, London: British Museum Press. Jourdain, F. (1889), Constructions elevées au Champ de Mars par M. Charles Garnier pour servir à l’histoire de l’habitation humaine, Paris: Librarie centrale des beaux-arts. Kaufman, E. N. (2004), ‘The architectural museum from World’s Fair to restoration village’, in B. M. Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies: An Anthology of Contexts, Oxford: Blackwell: 273–89. Maleuvre, D. (1999), Museum Memories: History, Technology, Art, Stanford, Ca.: Stanford University Press. Michaux, E. (2005), ‘Panoramas and Dioramas’, in B. de Andia (ed.), Les Expositions Universelles à Paris de 1855 à 1937, Paris: Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris: 126–30. Neill, P. (2012), ‘Founding the Academy of San Alejandro and the Politics of Taste in Late Colonial Havana, Cuba’, Colonial Latin American Review, 21 (2): 293–318. Nichols, K. (2015), Greece and Rome at the Crystal Palace: Classical Sculpture and Modern Britain, 1854–1936. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Nichols, M. F. (2017), ‘Domestic Interiors, National Concerns: the Pompeian style in the United States’, in von Stackelberg and Macaulay-Lewis 2017: 126–52. Picasso e Napoli. Parade (1917), Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of Capodimonte-Antiquarium (Pompeii) from 11 April to 10 July 2017, Milano: Electa. Querci, E. and De Caro, S. (eds) (2008), Alma-Tadema e la nostalgia dell’antico. Napoli, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 19 October 2007–31 March 2008, Naples: Electa Napoli. Qureshi, S. (2011), Peoples on Parade: Exhibitions, Empire and Anthropology in NineteenthCentury Britain, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Romero Recio, M. (2016), ‘Pompeii in Spanish Interior Decoration’, in Hales, Leander 2016: 55–74. Sciama, C. and Viguier-Dutheil, F. (eds) (2014), La lyre d’ivoire. Henri-Pierre Picou et les NéoGrecs, Paris: Le Passage. Shields, R. (2003), The Virtual, London; New York: Routledge. Paul, J. (2009), ‘ “I fear it’s potentially like Pompeii:” Disaster, Mass Media and the Ancient City’, in D. Lowe and K. Shahabudin (eds), Classics For All: Reworking Antiquity in Mass Culture, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars: 91–108. Paul, J. (2019), ‘Drones Over Pompeii: Cinematic Perspectives on Antiquity in the Digital Era’, Classical Receptions Journal, 11 (3): 274–95. 233

Pompeii in the Visual and Performing Arts Prettejohn, E. and Trippi, P. (eds) (2016), Lawrence Alma-Tadema: At Home in Antiquity. Prestel: Munich. Standage, T. (1998), The Victorian Internet. New York: Walker and Co. Sweet, R. (2012), Cities and the Grand Tour: The British in Italy, c. 1690–1820, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Syme, A. M. (2004), ‘Love among the ruins: David Cannon Dashiell’s “Queer Mysteries” ’, Art Journal, 63.4: 80–95. Urry, J. and Larsen, J. (2011), The Tourist Gaze 3.0. London, Los Angeles: SAGE. van Eck, C. and Versluys, M. J. (2017), ‘The Hôtel de Beauharnais in Paris: Egypt, Greece, Rome and the Dynamics of Stylistic Transformation’, in von Stackelberg and Macaulay-Lewis 2017: 54–91. von Stackelberg, K. (2017), ‘Reconsidering hyperreality: Roman houses and their gardens’, in von Stackelberg and Macaulay-Lewis 2017: 232–68. von Stackelberg, K. and Macaulay-Lewis, E. (eds) (2017), Housing the New Romans, New York: Oxford University Press. Wallace, J. (2004), Digging the Dirt: the Archaeological Imagination, London: Duckworth. Walsh, K. (1992), The Representation of the Past: Museums and Heritage in the Post-Modern World, London: Routledge.

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INDEX

Academy of Fine Arts of Seville 125 Accademia Ercolanese 3 Albé, Gioacchino 139–41, 143–5 Alcubierre, Roque Joaquín de 3, 123, 129 Aldama Aréchaga, Domingo 142–3, 145, 151 n.12 Aldama, Miguel 140, 142, 144 Aldunate, Manuel 78–9 Alfonso Soler, José Eugenio 140 Alma Tadema, (Sir) Laurence 20, 98–100, 112, 115, 117, 221–2, 227 A Favourite Custom (painting) 112 Pompeian Scene or The Siesta (painting) 115 The Sculpture Gallery (painting) 20 Alphonse, Bernoud 129 Alvarez Dumont, Eugenio 89, 107 Telephus Suckled by a Deer 107 Amador de los Ríos, José 18 Ambroise Henault, Lucien 78 American Pompeii 202–3, 208–10 Amodio, Michele 129, 158 Andreaux, Jules 129 Ansart, Ernest 78 Antichità di Ercolano Esposte, Le 3, 4, 5, 37, 75, 106–8, 111–12, 116, 118 nn.4,5, 122, 124, 147, 148, 194, 220 Argentina 6, 8, 12 n.7, 74, 193, 210, 226 Cordoba 202–4, 208 Santafe 210 Arias Centurión, Manuel José 126 Ariel Publicaciones Educativas 195, 197–8, 199 n.7 Arrieta Pereira, José 174–6 Ayers, Dick 189 Barcelona 7, 8, 10, 30, 108, 192, 194 Palace of Pedralbes 108 Villa Andrea 30 Belmás, Mariano 22 Benalcanfur, V. de 161–3 Benoît-Lévy, Georges 23 Bergholtz, Ana 195, 198, 199 n.6 Blasco Ibáñez, Vicente 6, 19, 30 n.4, 31 n.8, 185 n.4 Pompeian terrace or gallery in Malvarrosa (house) 19, 100 n.2 Blasco-Ibañez Blasco, Libertad 19, 20 Borrell y Lemus, José Mariano 146–7, 151 n.14 Borrell y Padrón, José Mariano 145–6 Bragaldi, Mario 140, 143

Brazil 6–8, 10, 12 nn.7,10, 84 n.2, 153–4, 156–60, 163–4, 166, 167 n.3, 190, 197 Brogi, Giacomo 129 Brown, Ricardo 78 Bruguera Editorial 8, 192–3, 195, 197–8 Brumidi, Constantino 62–4, 66, 68, 69 nn.8,10, 228 Brunet des Baines, Claude François 78–9, 171 Bryullov, Karl 8, 189 Bulwer-Lytton, Edward 7–8, 12 n.13, 19, 49, 111, 117, 187, 189, 191–8, 202, 205–8, 210 Los últimos días de Pompeya (Illustrated novel, 1953) 191 Os ultimo dias de Pompéia (Illustrated novel, 1949) 191 The Last Days of Pompeii (Illustrated novel, 1959) 192 The Last Days of Pompeii (Illustrated novel, 1973–75) 195 The Last Days of Pompeii (Ilustrated novel, 1947) 189 The Last Days of Pompeii (novel, 1834) 7, 19, 49, 111, 207 Burchard, Johan Theodor 171, 181 Cabello y Aso, Luis 18 Canina, Luigi 17 Canova, Antonio 20, 127 Cantero, Justo Germán 145–6 Carrasco, Jesús 22 Casamitjana, Luis 192 Cerdán, Pedro 21–2 Charles III of Spain (Charles VII of Naples) 2, 3, 4, 35, 105–6, 122–6, 132 n.6, 202 Charles IV of Spain 4, 50, 108, 131, 156 Checa, Ulpiano 5, 8, 115, 189, 193, 228 Ancient Flirting (painting) 115, 228 The Last Days of Pompeii (painting) 8, 115, 193, 228 Two Lovers of Pompeii (painting) 115 Chelli, Eusebio 6, 79, 171, 178 Child, Theodore 78, 172, 221, 225 Chile 6–8, 73–5, 77–8, 83, 84 n.2, 171–8, 180, 184–5, 191, 195, 220, 223, 229 Claro, Ricardo 184 Classics Illustrated 188–90 Clemente Pinto, Antonio (Baron of New Friburg) 164

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Index Colombia 6, 8–9, 191, 193, 195, 201, 211 Armero 201, 210–14, 228, 230 Concha, Fernández 181, 184 Correia da Lima, José 159 Cortijo, (Lieutenant Colonel) Santiago 57–8, 61 Count of Mirasol (Rafael de Arístegui y VélezLadrón de Guevara) 55, 57–8, 61 Covarsí, Adelardo 26 Crystal Palace 20, 224–6 Cuba 5, 6, 55, 60, 108, 137–9, 141–3, 145, 148–9, 150 n.10, 167 n.11, 193, 223 Dall’Aglio, Daniel 139–43, 146, 148–9, 151 n.15 De Cubas, Francisco 18 De Gálvez y Gallardo, Matías 126 De la Cruz y Bahamonde, Nicolás 75 De la Gándara, Jerónimo 17 De Lara, María Monserrate 145 De las Casas, Manuel 30 De Madrazo, José 109 Allegories of Midday, Afternoon, Winter and Spring (painting) 109 De Villanueva, Juan 108 De Zabaleta, Antonio 18 Del Castillo, José 107, 118 n.4 Adorno pompeyano: el Invierno (Pompeian Adornment: Winter) (painting) 107 Allegories of Painting, Architecture, Fame, Music, Astronomy and Arithmetic (cartoons) 107 Del Monte Aponte, Domingo 143–5, 221 Del Rio Zañartu, Pedro 7, 75, 77 Diaz de Espada y Landa, Juan José 139 Díaz Ycaza, Rafael 195 Durán, Jesús 196 Echaurren Valero, Víctor 76–7 Egaña Riesco, Juan 174 Egaña, Mariano 74 El Salvador Joya de Ceren 211–12 Loma Caldera mount 211 Ellis, Alexander John 128, 132 n.14 Ercolanese Museum 3, 122–3 Errázuriz, Amelia 178 Errázuriz Valdivieso, Maximiano 12 n.5, 76, 79, 177–8, 180–1 Fleming Tolson, Roger 6, 171, 178 Fratelli Allinari, the 129 Gandarillas, Francisco 82 Gangolf Kaiser, Carl 36, 37 García Mercadal, Fernando 18 Gigante, Giacinto 129 Gil y Manguino, Jerónimo Antonio 126

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Gilberton (publishing house) 188, 190–1 González del Castillo, Hilarión 23–30, 31 n.14, 220, 225, 230 Guatemala 9, 193, 195, 209–10 Antigua 203, 208–10 Guesdon, Alfred 129 L’Italie a vol d’oiseau (A Bird’s Eye View of Italy) (album of forty-five plates) 129 Havana 10, 55, 137–43, 146, 148–9, 221, 225, 232 Aldama Palace 140–2, 145, 149 Principal Theatre 140–1 Seminario de San Carlos y San Ambrosio 139 Tacón Theatre 140–2 Villa of the Count of Santovenia 137 Herculaneum 1–4, 9, 12 n.6, 17–18, 35–9, 44, 49–50, 56, 59, 61, 67, 73, 75, 77, 83, 87–9, 92–4, 100, 105–6, 108–9, 121–7, 130–2, 137, 149, 158, 161–2, 202, 206–7 Herculaneum and Pompeii of modern age, the 207 Hernández Amores, Germán 113–14, 117 Esclava de Guerra (A Slave of War) (painting) 114 Pompeyana después del baño (A Pompeian Woman after Bathing) (painting) 113 Herrero y Herreros, Alejandro 18 Herreros, Mercedes 76 Hofmann, Julius 36 Honduras 210 Copan 210 Hualpén 7, 75, 77 Indian Pompeii 203 Inza, Domingo 18 Jácome, Nelson 196 Jareño, Francisco 17–18, 21 Jeuffrain, Paul 129 Jiménez Martín, Juan 8, 111, 222, 227–8 A Roman Lady at Her Dressing Table (Tocador de una dama romana) (painting) 8, 111, 227 In the Harem (painting) 222 Kanter, Albert 188, 192 Kiefer, Henri Carl 189 Kirby, Jack 189, 199 n.3 Knechtel, Wilhelm 36–7 Lais or the female phoenix (Lais o la mujer fénix) (magic show) 43–4, 227 Lathoud, Paul 78–9, 171, 176 Lázaro, Flores 196 Lequesne, Eugène Louis 82 Lombardo, Simonet 107 Bacchus and Ariadne (fresco) 107 López, Pascual 23–5, 27, 30

Index Luna y Novicio, Juan 8, 114–15, 117, 222, 228 Death of Cleopatra (painting) 222 Figura femenina (A Female Figure) (painting) 115 La canción de Tesalia (The Song of Thessaly) (painting) 8 Spolarium (painting) 117, 228 The Roman Ladies (painting) 115 Madrid 4–8, 10, 12 n.4, 18, 20, 22, 24–5, 27, 29–30, 35, 87, 88–9, 92, 95–6, 101 nn.7,9, 106–8, 125, 127, 131, 139, 143, 150 n.3, 185 n.4, 194, 220, 222–3, 230 Capricho de la Alameda de Osuna Palace 5 Casa de las Alhajas 108 Casa Edeline 30 Ciudad Lineal [Linear City] 6, 22–30, 31 n.10, 150 n.3, 220, 224–5, 230 House of the Labrador, Palace of Aranjuez 108 La Tierruca 25, 28 Linares Palace 5, 108 National Archaeological Museum 18 National Library 18 National Museum of Artistic Reproductions 127 Naval Museum 108 Navy Headquarters 108 Palace of Buenavista 108 Palace of Marquis of Portugalete 5 Palace of Santoña 108–9 Prince House, El Escorial 4, 108 Royal Academy of Jurisprudence and Legislation of Spain 108 Royal Palace of El Pardo 4, 107 Sorolla Museum 87, 89, 96, 101 n.12 State Secretaries Palace 108 Martínez de Campos, Manuel Eusebio 137 Martínez Hernández, Anastasio 22 Martinique 9, 204–8, 212, 228 St Pierre 9, 204–14, 230 Mount Pelée 9, 204, 208, 228, 230 Mas Fondevila, Arcadio 115 Painting of a Pompeian Child (painting) 115 Masriera y Manovens, Francisco 114 Escena clásica (A Classical Scene) (painting) 114 Matanzas 137, 139, 141–3, 148–9, 150 n.5 Esteban Theatre (Sauto Theatre) 141, 148 St Peter the Apostle, church 141, 149 Mauri, Achille 129 Maximilian of Habsburg 5, 36–7, 49 McCann, Gerald 189 Meigs, Montgomery (Capitan) Cunningham 55, 62–4, 66, 68 Menchaca Lira, Manuel 76 Mengs, Raphael Anton 124–5 Merenciano, Francisco 20 Meucci, Antonio 6, 139–43, 145, 149

Mexican Pompeii 49, 50, 202–3, 208–9 Mexico 2–3, 5–8, 10, 35–9, 42–3, 45–6, 49–50, 63, 84 nn.2,3, 123, 125–7, 131, 140–1, 167 n.11, 190–1, 193, 201–3, 208, 220, 226–7, 229, 231 Archbishop’s Palace 38 Chapultepec Castle 5, 36, 45–6, 220 Cuernavaca 37 Cuicuilco 209 Iturbide Theatre 6, 38, 141, 229 Mexico City 3, 7, 10, 43, 45, 50, 83, 131, 224, 229 Michoacan 39, 209 Palenque 10, 201–3, 208 Paricutin volcano 50, 209 San Juan Ixtayopan 202 San Juan Parangaricutiro 204, 209 San Luis Potosí 38 Tacana volcano 39 Teotihuacan 10, 49, 203, 208–9, 231 Tlanepantla 45 Tula 10, 202–3, 208 Uxmal 10, 202–3 Monroy, Petronilo 36–7, 45–6, 49 Allegory of the Constitution of 1857 (painting) 45–6 The Bacchante of Tirso (Bacchante with Thyrsus) (fresco) 37, 46 Montañés, Bernardino 108 Montes de Oca y Obregón, (Bishop) Ignacio 38 Morelli, Domenico 112, 117, 228 Moreno Carbonero, José 117, 222 Gladiators After Combat (painting) 117 Roger de Flor’s Entry into Constantinople (painting) 222 Murcia 21, 22, 108 Carreño family house 22 Royal Casino of Murcia 21, 108 Queen’s Casino 109 Naples 3, 4, 7, 9, 17–18, 25, 31 n.14, 42, 75, 87, 88–9, 90–2, 95, 97, 99, 105–6, 115–16, 122, 125, 128, 155–8, 160–1, 164, 204–6, 219, 227, 230 National Academy of Fine Arts of San Alejandro 139–40, 150 n.8 National Museum of Naples [Royal Bourbon Museum of Naples] 36, 66, 87, 89–90, 93–4, 97–9, 130–1, 156, 162, 163 New World Pompeii 206, 212 Nicaragua 202 Leon Viejo 212 Nagarandos 202 Normand, Alfred-Nicholas 129 Núñez de Arenas, Isaac 202 Obregón, José María 36 Ossa, Francisco Ignacio 79

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Index Paestum 93 Panama 9, 193, 195, 209–10 Coclé 209–10 Panquehue 79, 177–8, 180–1 Pedro del Rio Zañartu Park-Museum 7, 75 Pedro II, (Dom) Emperor of Brazil 153, 156–7, 159–60, 168 n.14 Peña Muñoz, Maximino 109 Vestal romana cuidando el fuego sagrado (A Roman Vestal Attending to the Sacred Fire) (painting) 109 Peru 3, 8, 74–5, 191, 193, 195, 201, 210–12, 220, 231 Chan Chan 201, 210 Machu Pichu 209, 211 Mount Huascaran 210 Yungay 209, 210–11, 214 Zaña 212 Picasso, Pablo 115–16, 118, 219 Piqué, Francisco 149 Planes Peñalver, José 21 Plasencia y Maestro, Casto 113, 117 Motivo decorativo: Ninfa de las mariposas o escena pompeyana (Decorative Motif: Nymph of the Butterflies or a Pompeian Scene) (painting) 113, 117 Pompeian style 4, 5, 10, 12 n.5, 19, 26, 28, 30, 31 n.15, 36, 38, 40, 42, 45–6, 49, 50, 55–6, 59, 61, 64, 66, 76, 78–9, 83–4, 99, 107–13, 115, 117, 123, 139–40, 148, 173, 175, 177, 179, 185, 220–1, 223, 226, 228–9, 231–2 arched door 92 Atrium 20–2, 26, 28, 31 n.15, 38, 73, 76, 79, 83, 222, 227, 230 Bacchante 5, 37, 46, 87, 98–9, 108, 111, 116 brazier 99, 114 Compluvium 21 Corinthian capitals 90, 176 Corinthian columns 26, 111 Cupid 81, 111, 113, 144, 145, 146, 147–8, 182 Domus 26, 95, 99, 109, 130, 137 Doric columns 79, 137, 142, 190, 194 Doric entablature 146 Doric portico 30 frescoes 2, 20, 25, 26, 31 n.9, 37, 40, 44, 46, 62–3, 66, 68, 77, 89–90, 94, 100 n.2, 106, 107, 109, 111–12, 115–16, 118, 161, 164, 175–7, 203, 208, 223 gardens 2, 6, 20, 25, 27–9, 37–8, 45, 49, 50, 74, 87, 92, 95–7, 101–7, 173–6, 179, 183, 184, 185 Impluvium 20–1, 30, 95, 182 Ionic columns 79 maenads 99, 108, 111, 112 mosaics 25–6, 38, 40, 45, 75–6, 131, 179, 182, 220 Muse 20, 111 peristyle 21, 26–8, 96, 123, 175, 179, 181–2, 221, 230

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Putti 64–7 Triclinium 26 Pompeianism 107 Pompeii 1–11, 12 nn.6,14, 17–21, 23–30, 31 n.17, 35–40, 42–5, 49–50, 56, 59, 61, 66–7, 73–9, 81–3, 84 n.2, 87–9, 919, 100 nn.2,5, 101 n.10, 105–17, 118 n.7, 121–2, 124, 128–31, 132 nn.14,15, 137, 149, 150 nn.2,4,5, 153–8, 160–1, 163–4, 166, 167 nn.3,9, 172–3, 175, 177–8, 184–5, 187, 189, 191–5, 197, 201–14, 219–32. amphitheatre 8, 27, 43, 75 Complesso di Giulia Felice 99 House of the Black Wall 17 House of Castor and Pollux 17 House of Cornelius Rufus 20, 131, 137 House of Holconius Rufus 131 House of Marcus Lucretius 27, 116 House of Naviglio 66, 106 House of Pansa 18, 25, 27–8, 137 House of Sallust 18, 129 House of the Centenary 96 House of the Citharist 27 House of the Coloured Capitals 116 House of the Faun 18, 27, 36, 38, 95, 133 n.18, 220 House of the Tragic Poet 20, 25, 27, 38, 76, 220 House of the Vettii 20–1, 24–7, 31 n.14, 220, 224 House of the Wedding of Hercules (House of Mars and Venus) 112 Large Palaestra 129 Lupanar 131 Odeon 27, 129 Street of Tombs 128–9, 132 n.14 Temple of Apollo 26 Temple of Isis 129, 155, 164 Temple of Jupiter 18 Villa of Cicero 37, 106–8, 111–12, 116, 118 n.5 Villa of Diomedes 25, 27, 36, 155 Villa of the Mysteries 116 Pompeii of America 209–12 Pompeii of modern times 205 Pompeii of the New World 203, 209–10, 212 Pompeii of the Spanish Middle Ages 202, 204 Pompeiis of the American Enlightenment 201 Portici, Palace of 3, 122, 124 Pradilla Ortíz, Francisco 115 A Boy Playing the Flute (painting) 115 Puerto Rico 5, 6, 55–6, 58–60, 207 Santa Catalina Fortress 6, 55–7, 61 Ramírez Ibáñez, Manuel 112 Baño pompeyano (Pompeian Bath) (painting) 112 Rebull, Santiago 5, 36, 37, 46

Index La Bacante de la Copa (Bacchante with glass) (fresco) 37 La Bacante del León (Bacchante with lion) (fresco) 37 La Bacante del Lirio (Bacchante with lily) (fresco) 37 La Bacante del Pandero (Bacchante with tambourine) (fresco) 37 Renner, Guillaume 181, 183 Ribera y Fernández, Juan Antonio 109 Allegories of Dawn, Night, Autumn and Summer (painting) 109 Rio de Janeiro 7, 10, 12 n.7, 153–4, 156–8, 160–6, 167 n.10, 223, 225 Catete Palace 12 n.7, 164–6, 168 n.18 Cosmorama 157, 225 National Museum of Fine Arts 160 National Museum of Rio de Janeiro 156, 160, 162–3 Rivas Mariscal, Tomás 195 Rive, Robert 129 Rodríguez Arangoiti, Ramón 35–7, 49 Rodríguez, Armonía 193, 198, 199 n.6 Rome 1, 2, 5, 10, 17–18, 26, 35, 50, 62, 63–4, 66–7, 76, 82, 87–9, 98–9, 105, 107, 112–13, 115, 118 n.3, 124, 127, 132 n.6, 149, 155, 164–5, 192, 223, 228 Domus Aurea 2, 66, 69 n.10 Rosales Gallinas, Eduardo 109, 221 Stigmatization of St Catherine of Siena (painting) 221 Roso, Vicente 192 Rubio Rosell, Rafael 20

Cousiño Palace 79 Echaurren Palace 79 Edwards Palace 79 Errázuriz Urmeneta Palace 178 Municipal Theatre 78 National Congress 78 Quinta de las Delicias [Mansion of Delights] 175, 176 Quinta Normal 78 Santa Lucia Hill 6, 73, 78, 81–3, 230, 231 University of Chile 78 Saragossa Theatre 108 Sarmiento, Domingo Faustino 74, 202, 203 Segovia 108 Royal Water Closet 108 Sierra, Justo 49 Silva Jardim, Antônio 154, 157, 167 n.12 Sommer, Giorgio 129–31, 132 n.13, 133 n.18 Soria, Arturo 6, 22–4, 26, 31 n.10, 150 n.3, 225 Sorolla, Joaquín 4, 5, 6, 19–20, 87, 100, 185 n.4, 220, 222 Bacchic dance (painting) 87, 99 Faun (sculpture) 95–7, 220, 222 L. Caecilius Iucundus (bust) 94 Resting Bacchante (painting) 87, 98, 99 Satyr with Wineskin (sculpture) 96 Spain 1–3, 5–6, 8–11, 17, 23–4, 26–8, 38, 55, 59, 60, 88, 105, 107, 108, 111, 123–7, 131–2, 142, 190, 192, 194–5, 197, 219, 229–30 Steegers, Vitrubio 145 Strauss Feuerlicht, Roberta 188–9, 199 n.3 Sundel, Alfred 189 Suñol y Pujol, Jerónimo 20

Saavedra, Ángel de, Duke of Rivas 17 Sagebien, Jules 6, 143, 144, 149 Salinas Teruel, Agustín 8, 112 Ofrenda a los lares (An Offering to the Lares) (painting) 112 San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Mexico) 2, 5, 35–6, 45, 49, 51 n.2, 125–7, 131, 132 n.11 San Carlos Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Valencia) 5, 87, 125 San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts (Madrid) 4, 5, 30 n.3, 105, 124–5, 127, 131, 132 n.9, 139 Sánchez-Medina House 30 Stabiae 3, 9, 12 n.6, 35, 44, 49, 50, 122 Santa Rita Vineyard 180–4, 231 Santaolaria, Vicente 20 Santiago de Chile 6, 7, 23, 73, 77–81, 83, 171, 174–6, 178, 180–1, 221–3, 225, 229–31 Alhambra Palace 79 Arrieta House and Park 174, 222 Central Market 78 Central Post Office 78 Concha Cazzote Palace 79

Tartarini, Luigi 140, 143 Teresa Cristina, Empress of Brazil 6, 154–64, 166, 167 n.4, 168 n.13, 220 Thomas, I. 189 Tolsá, Manuel 5, 50, 126 Trinidad 141, 145–8, 223 Borrell Palace 141, 147, 148 Cantero Palace 141, 145–9 Guáimaro sugar mill 141, 145–8 Philharmonic Society of St Cecilia 141 Tubino, Francisco María 18 Tusquets, Óscar 30 Ustick Walter, Thomas 61 United States 5, 9, 50, 55, 63–4, 68–9 n.8, 100, 139, 142, 145, 171, 187, 193, 203, 204, 221 Capitol 5, 6, 55, 61–3, 66, 228 The Pompeia at Saratoga Springs 28, 221 Venezuela 8, 60, 191, 195, 210 San Felipe el Fuerte 212 Vera y Estaca, Alejo 109–12, 118 n.7, 227

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Index A Pompeian Lady in Her Boudoir (engraving) 111 St Cecilia and St Valerian (painting) 109 Una tienda de joyas en Pompeya (A Jeweller’s Shop in Pompeii) (painting) 109, 227 Una Vestal (A Vestal) (painting) 109 Verdugo, Manuel 26 Vesuvius 9, 27, 30, 37, 40, 42–3, 49, 59, 75, 94, 105, 137, 153–5, 157–9, 161, 166, 168 n.12, 174, 189, 197, 202, 204–6, 208, 211, 213, 228, 230–1

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Vicuña Mackenna, Benjamín 75, 80–2 Vidal, José Antonio 192 Villa Errázuriz 178–80 Villeneuve, Víctor 82 Vivaceta, Fermín 78 Waehneldt, Gustav 12 n.7, 164 Wyatt, Digby 20 Zamacois, Niceto de 43, 49–50, 202

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