A quarter of a century from the last attempt, Francesca Bologna returns to the issue of identifying the hands of the craftsmen who painted panels in the Pompeian walls. Updating the Morellian method to the demands of recent scholarship (Chapter 1), she aims at identifying painters or ‘groups of attributions’ (p. 30) who worked in at least two buildings at Pompeii. As panels occur only in Third and Fourth Style wall paintings, her evidence is restricted to the first century AD and her corpus is made up of 138 panels attributed to seven Third Style painters and 240 panels attributed to 15 Fourth Style ‘groups of attributions’ (Chapter 2).

But these attributions are not the final scope of the research; rather, such identifications provide the foundation for a further aim of the book, devoted to assessing the living and social conditions of the painters working in Pompeii from the mid-first century AD to the final eruption of AD 79. Chapter 3 is devoted to the attempt of quantifying the costs of producing Roman wall paintings. Lacking contemporary evidence, the author follows the work of Janet DeLaine (1997) in using quantities derived from nineteenth and twentieth century building manuals, applying results from experimental archaeology (Barbet and Coutelas 2002). She reaches an estimate of two people painting 0.21 m² per hour (p. 70).

The cluster of identified painters (p. 28–29, Figure 2.12) is based on just the coordinates of the houses. So, rather than pointing to the ‘existence of loosely defined working areas associated with specific painters’ (see also p. 53), it suggests that there was a tendency for people of the same rank to live in the same areas of the city and to decorate their houses in a comparable way, thereby hiring the same group of painters or painters of the same level. The author acknowledges this when she asks if this neighborhood link ‘happen simply because the two houses [dei Vettii and dei Dioscuri] are in the same Regio VI or was it somewhat motivated by a connection between the owners of the two building?’ (p. 54, italics mine).

As it is well to be expected, considering the renovation work after the earthquake in AD 62/63 was interrupted in AD 79, room 12 in the Casa dei Pittori al lavoro, IX 10, is an important case in point (Varone 1995; Varone and Béarat 1997). Adding together the time and materials needed to paint the whole room (walls and ceiling), the author calculates a sum of 1,000 sesterces. She thereby provides a rough estimate (p. 80–81) of what it might have meant to decorate a Fourth Style room, rich in color and ornaments, like room 12.

Based on these figures, the author moves to estimate living standards of her 15 Fourth Style painters/groups. Applying necessary corrections to these numbers (p. 81–83), she calculates the total surface painted between AD 62/63 and 79, giving an estimate of the time needed in order to obtain the days each group/painter might have worked per year. Using the only available evidence for wages for a pictor parietarius and a pictor imaginarius from Diocletian’s Edictum de pretiis, she estimates each painter’s yearly income. Next, the author moves to estimate painters’ living standards on two parameters set by Robert Allen (2009), the ‘living basket’ and the ‘respectability basket’, in order to calculate how many months the artisans could live off their wages. As the painters she chooses form the basis for her results, it is worthwhile to dwell more on this issue. The groups of attributed Fourth Style paintings the author identifies are not entirely convincing. Exploiting the high quality of the illustrations and their useful layout within the text, I can highlight Figures 2.31 and 2.33, attributed to the same ‘Iphigenia Painter’ (p. 41–42), Figures 2.35 and 2.36, attributed to the same ‘Trojan Painter’ (p. 42–43), Figures 2.63 and 2.65 (p. 61), or to the amorini in Figures 2.64 and 2.68 (p. 61–63). Accepting — or, for that matter, rejecting — the author’s attributions is not an easy task, as it should rely on the same methods; I’m not keen on proposing alternative attributions using the same methods as the author, especially considering we are dealing with artistic craftsmanship in which traditions, repertoires and stereotypes played a significant role. Keeping in mind different methods could achieve interesting results only within a well laid Fragestellung, one might wonder if using image analysis software could offer more reliable insights.

Although the author states that she will consider painters whose handicraft can be found in at least two houses, we find two instances of a painter working in just one house, the Impluvio (p. 20) and the Dioscuri painter (p. 36–37). Therefore, it is not easy to understand why she does not analyse well-preserved IV style houses, one looks in vain, for instance, for the Casa dell’Ara Massima (Lorenz 2021).

As the research focuses on panel and figure paintings, only mythological panels, medallions and flying figures are analysed (p. 82, note 65). But given the focus on attributions, considering issues raised by Moormann (1995) on garden paintings (only quoted on p. 5, note 36), wouldn’t have been out of place. Not to mention another well represented genre of paintings in Pompeii: landscapes and villa landscapes. More than once, the author refers to the insufficient demand for experienced painters in Pompeii, leading to the necessity for them to resort to ‘a series of alternative part-time activities to make a living in the city’ (p. 85): it is not easy to understand why so well attested genres of paintings like the one referred to above shouldn’t find mention here, as in other parts of the book.

Again, engaging in the question of how (or if) painters were organized — the ‘workshops problem’ — the author states that she found no cases of painters working together more than once (p. 29). This is the case, however, (p. 33–34) of Infant Hercules P. and Flying Couples P. (and, possibly, Zephyr P.), working together in the Casa dei Dioscuri and Casa dei Vettii (p. 33–39, Figure 2.53). Two corrections might also be proposed as regarding chronology: the panel of Aeneas is not Third Style, as proposed by the author (p. 17–20, Figure 2.3) but Fourth Style (Hodske 2007: 248–249).¹

The same applies to the panel with Thetis in Hephaestus’s workshop, which is also Fourth Style (Hodske 2007, Kat. 633, Taf. 116.4) and not Third (p. 41, Figure 2.34, note 68). These are minor corrections, but I want to stress them due to the fact that following the chronology of the author, we would have here the rare instance of painters whose careers would have spanned the gap between Third and Fourth Styles, as the author also highlights. But, this is not the case, and we find once again confirmation of the gap between the Third and Fourth Style, a sharp and quite sudden divide that we clearly perceive in wall painting in the central years of the first century AD, as regards style, iconography, subjects and ornaments (ultimately, the basis on which Mau 1882 built his still-reliable typology). This is an issue that certainly needs to be the subject of further research; one could only speculate about the difference in styles being due to reasons stemming from the situation after the AD 62/63 earthquake (see p. 66, with reference to the ‘intensified painting activity … after the earthquake’, offering ‘a fertile ground for the experimentation and the creation of a new decorative language … promoting the development of new models and trends’).

Even allowing that the author’s attributions form an uncertain basis for her conclusions, and stressing — as she highlights more than once — that they are only tentative for laying a foundation for further research, her work here is welcome. Moreover, the percentage of speculations involved in such attempts is so high (see also Bologna 2023, p. 345) as to render it difficult to even evaluate such attempts, which could at the end be not so far from ancient reality — or close to what other methods might yield. And indeed, her conclusions (such as, that the demand for figure painters in Pompeii did not allow them ‘to be consistently at work for seven months per year for seventeen years’, p. 85), appear remarkably consistent with what has been proposed — albeit on the basis of completely different methods. Miko Flohr (2019), for example, estimates that two panel painters would have been enough to meet yearly demand in Pompeii, even under post-earthquake conditions.

After reading this book I maintain the opinion that — in the case of Roman wall painting — attribution is a rather confusing issue. However, researchers interested in the living conditions of craftsmen during the Roman Empire will certainly be interested in reading this book, as well as scholars of ancient wall painting. The latter will also find flesh for discussion in the author’s view of the organization of painters’ work in Pompeii, as the author is against the commonly held view of just a few big enterprises or ‘workshops’ in charge of decorating a large part of Pompeii (see e.g Esposito 2009), the author rather suggests individual painters working as independent artisans (p. 53, 66, 85, 103–104).

It is perhaps worrying finding out that two studies based on the same methods of attribution and on complementary evidence (ornaments in Esposito 2009: 24–25, panels in Painting Pompeii) should reach such diverging results. But it is worth mentioning here that when treating artisans’ mobility, conclusions from the book under review should be considered and discussed. In order to advance future research asking new questions and focusing on different issues, one might also wonder if other important evidence outside Italy should be considered. For their keen focus on city blocks and their history across time, I can mention the results of the work on the terrace houses (Hanghäuser) at Ephesos by the Austrian Archaeological Institute, well summarized in Zimmermann and Ladstätter (2011).

Irene Bragantini

Independent Researcher

irene.bragantini@gmail.com

Notes

1. See also the 1957 photo by Stanley A. Jashemski, available at: https://pompeiiinpictures.com/pompeiiinpictures/R7/7%2001%2047%20p4.htm (Last accessed: 2 July 2025). [^{^}]

References