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eacon • The Oplontis Project • Craxton in Greece
A
Cover
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Arne Psille
CONTENTS
FEBRUARY 2014 VOLUME CLXXIX NO. 617
13
Editor's Letter
Popular gestures
16
Agenda
What's on around the world
in February
18
Forum
Have traditional museum and exhibition
catalogues had their day?
21
Diary
Diana Campbell Betancourt
Features
23
Private Passions
Apollo talks to the Middle Eastern
patron and collector Ramin Salsali
28
Idol Pursuits
Susan Moore talks to Michael
Steinhardt about his outstanding
collection of antiquities
36
Touching the Void
Zoe Pilger meets Richard Deacon
ahead of his retrospective at Tate Britain
42
A Time of Gods
Artemis Cooper examines John
Craxton's cover designs for the books of
his lifelong friend, Patrick Leigh Fermor
48
A Virtual Villa
John R. Clarke reports on the Oplontis
Project and the digital technology that is
unearthing a Pompeii villa
54
A Sense of Wonder
Katy Barrett appraises the history of
the Wunderkammer and its resurgent
popularity and relevance today
Richard Deacon: pp. 36-40
FEBRUARY 2014 APOLLO 9
APOLLO
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News
60
Art Market
Susan Moore on this month's saleroom
highlights and January's auction results
66
Collectors' Focus
Editor
Thomas Marks
Associate Editor
Susan Moore
Editorial Assistant
Imelda Barnard
Senior Designer
Will Martin
Web Editor
Maggie Gray
Special Projects
Lucy Rogers-Coltman
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Editorial Advisory Panel
Sir John Boardman, Barbara Dawson, David Ekserdjian,
Philippa Glanville, Ian Gow, Michael Hall, Paul Moorhouse,
Tessa Murdoch, Joachim Pissarro, Dame Jessica Rawson
CBE, Charles Saumarez Smith CBE, Diana Scarisbrick, Robin
Simon, Kathleen Soriano
Emma Crichton-Miller on the market
for Etruscan art
70
Chairman
Andrew Neil
Architecture
The members of the advisory panel are available to advise the editor,
but are not responsible for the content of the magazine.
Gavin Stamp reappraises the legacy of
sculptor and architect Ivan Mestrovic
72
Around the Galleries
By Imelda Barnard
•f
Exhibitions
77
Kenwood House by Giles Waterfield
80
Musee Fin-de-Siecle Museum
Art Market: pp. 60-64
by Sheila McTighe
86
I.A. Sterligova, Byzantine Antiquities:
Works of Art from the Fourth to
by Antony Eastmond
Rachel Cohen, Bernard Berenson:
A Life in the Picture Trade, by Charles
Saumarez Smith
Bernard Berenson: pp. 88-89
Donal Cooper and Janet Robson, The
Making ofAssisi: The Pope, the
Franciscans and the Painting of the
Basilica & Joanna Cannon, Religious
Poverty, Visual Riches: Art in the
Dominican Churches of Central Italy in
the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries,
by Gervase Rosser
92
Robert Hales, Islamic and Oriental
Arms and Armour: A Lifetime's Passion,
by Lucien de Guise
98
From the Archives
Robert O'Byrne on Victorian architecture
10 APOLLO FEBRUARY 2014
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FEATURE
THE OPLONTIS PROJECT
A
Virtual
Villa
Twentieth-century excavations of a large Roman villa at Oplontis,
near Pompeii, led to incomplete reconstruction of parts of the building.
Since 2006, however, the researchers of the Oplontis Project
have harnessed a broad range of digital technologies
to deepen our understanding of the site
WRITER JOHN R. CLARKE
I
f Poppaea, the purported owner of the
grand Roman villa that has come to light
near Pompeii, were to walk into her slaves'
quarters today, she would think the gods
had enchanted it. What are these banks of
red flashing lights? Who are these strangely
dressed men and women manipulating
words and pictures on magical tablets?
The Oplontis Project team has been
working to reanimate Poppaea's Villa since
2006. Italian excavations between 1964
and 1984 uncovered 99 of its spaces buried
under nine metres of hardened volcanic ash,
including over 40 exquisitely decorated
rooms, four large gardens, and a 61-metre
swimming pool. After a hiatus of more than
20 years, and on the invitation of the Italian
Ministry of Culture, I assembled a team of
experts to excavate, study and publish
48 APOLLO FEBRUARY
2014
Poppaea's Villa (officially known as Villa A at
Oplontis, Torre Annunziata, Italy), a UNESCO
World Heritage site. The high-speed internet
and multiple computers that would astonish
Poppaea are only a small part of the arsenal
of digital technologies that are bringing her
villa to life.
Italian excavations halted in 1984, after
the discovery of the statuary-lined swimming
pool on the east of the site. Two modern streets
and a military complex hemmed in the site to
the north and west; the Sarno canal, built by
Domenico Fontana, had cut off the south face
of the villa in the late 16th century (Fig. 3).
Three hundred metres beyond the swimming
pool, workmen accidentally discovered a
second complex in 1973 (called Villa B, also
under study by the Oplontis Project) designed
for commerce - and also hemmed in by the
Sarno canal and dense modern construction.
It was there that excavators found 54 skeletons,
suffocated by volcanic gases in the room
where they sought refuge from the eruption
of Vesuvius in AD 79 - still clutching their
gold and jewellery. How to preserve and
make sense of these two precious but littleunderstood sites?
One way is to re-erect the columns and
rebuild the walls to support modern reinforced
concrete beams and roofs (Fig. 2). The Fund for
the Development of the South (the Cassa per
il Mezzogiorno) funded the original excavation
and reconstruction efforts, with the aim of
making a 'complete' villa to attract tourists
to the impoverished town. Although the
construction company managed to make
Villa A into a reasonable facsimile of Poppaea's
entertainment palace, they had to insert
FEATURE
FEATURE
THE OPLONTIS PROJECT
modern materials - the most destructive being
reinforced concrete - into ancient ones, making
the building susceptible to the collapses that
have also plagued Pompeii and Herculaneum.
Since there were few standing walls, they
used the ingenious technique of like-with-like
replacement (risardtura), often incorporating
ancient and new materials into walls - so that
it is quite difficult to distinguish the antique
from the modern. Fragments of precious frescos
and stucco moldings, large and small, lay in
huge heaps when funds ran out - orphans that
never found a place in the reconstructed rooms.
Given the many unanswered questions
about what had been excavated, the Oplontis
Project team chose not to attempt to bring to
light the estimated 40 rooms that still remain
under the military complex, but rather to study
fully what was there. This meant conducting
the first excavations beneath the AD 79 level
to learn about earlier phases of the villa, and
carrying out geological surveys to understand
its relation to the surrounding land- and seascape. It also meant dealing with thousands
of orphaned fragments, combing archives to
track the procedures used to recreate the villa,
and analysing the chemistry of everything
from ancient carbonised wood to the pigments
used in the frescos and the marble used
throughout the villa.
To address these challenges in the most
efficient way, the team adopted three digital
strategies: the born-digital ebook for publication; a flexible database to collect and share
resources; and a navigable 3D model to record
the actual and reconstructed states of the
villa. In light of the less-than-ideal results
obtained by print publication - including
limitations on the number of illustrations,
especially colour plates; the difficulties of
navigation; and above all the astronomical
cost of such large-scale books - we approached
proached
3
the most successful scholarly ebook publisher,
mblisher,
the American Council of Learned Societies
Humanities E-book series. Their ambitious
Jitious
ebooks typically have excellent search
tools
'h tools
and hyperlinks to a myriad of electronic
media, including archive repositories,S, datadatabases and films.
50 APOLLO FEBRUARY 2014
THE OPLONTIS PROJECT
1
Orphaned fresco fragments from fhe
west wall of oecus 15 at Villa A at
Oplontis, Torre Annunziata, Italy,
digitally reconstructed to show
their mirroring of the extant
east wall decoration
The Oplontis Project
2
View of the north garden fagade at
Villa A, showing re-erected columns
supporting reconstructed roofs
Photo: Paul Bardagjy
The Oplontis Project
-t**f4l
-
4_^
I
"'
rnlit
:
\,
s^—L_;—
Floor plan of Villa A,
projected onto a
satellite view of
present-day Torre
Annunziata. The black
outline shows the
extent of 20th-century
excavations
Timothy Liddell/
The Oplontis Project
4
Actual-state
photograph of the
east wall of the atrium
Photo: Paul
Bardagjy, 2009
The Oplontis Project
5
The east wall of the
atrium around the time
of the initial
excavation, c. 1968
The Wilhelmina
Jashemski Archive
Courtesy the Oplontis
Project
6
As its excavation
began in 1966, the east
wall of the atrium still
stood to the level of
the architrave
Photo: courtesy the
Soprintendenza
Archeologica di
Pompei
The Oplontis Project database developed
in parallel to the ACLS ebook; indeed some of
the contributors to the latter began work on
their chapters by building their part of the
database. For this reason it includes all of
the categories of research being carried out,
including the decoration of all surfaces, the
architecture, excavations, archival materials,
and photographs. On a page from the category
'Wall and Ceiling Decorations', for instance,
one sees the east wall of the atrium, the top
part of the catalogue description, written by
Regina Gee, and a thumbnail image of the
wall. This description forms the basis of the
descriptive catalogue of wall painting in the
second volume of the ebook. Clicking on
'hi-res' beneath the thumbnail opens a screen
showing the actual-state photograph taken by
project photographer Paul Bardagjy in 2009
(Fig. 4). From here we can link to scores of
archival photographs of this wall, including
details from when it was in better shape.
One of the archival photos linked to
this wall recently came into our hands from
a private collector in the town of Torre
Annunziata. It shows what the atrium looked
like when Princess Margaret visited the villa in
1973, years before it was open to the public.
The Princess is shooting photos; leftover
fragments lie on the floor. A still earlier
photograph, from the Wilhelmina Jashemski
Archive, shows what the wall looked like
at the time of excavation, around 1968: it
was in a state of collapse (Fig. 5). The wall
paintings a tourist sees today were literally
salvaged from the debris, consolidated with
reinforced concrete backings, and rehung
on a wall made from modern materials.
Another historical photo shows that when
excavations began on the west wall of the
atrium in 1966, it was miraculously standing
to the level of the architrave (Fig. 6). After
reconstruction, it was clear that the top part
of this wall had succumbed to the blast of the
pyroclastic flow in AD 79, displacing fragments
of its upper zone. When we located the fragments piled on the floors of several storage
areas (today transformed into laboratories),
we had the basis for reconstructing an Ionic
FEBRUARY 2014 APOLLO 51
FEATURE
FEATURE
THE OPLONTIS PROJECT
THE OPLONTIS PROJECT
second storey. As one sees it today, the modern
roof is some three metres too low. The 3D
model allows us to reconstruct the interior
of this and all the other spaces of the villa,
finding homes for the many fragments of
painted and stucco decoration (more than
3,000 in all) that were left over when funds
ran out (Fig. 7).
Another rescue of orphaned fragments
occurred quite recently, when in May 2013
I happened upon a large group of SecondStyle fragments in the last corner of the final
storeroom to be cleaned up. We identified
them as belonging to oecus 15 (a reception
room), but to the west wall - never excavated
because it lies beneath a modern street. The
fragments, as we have been able to reconstruct
them digitally, show the standing east wall
decoration in mirror reversal (Fig. 1). They
will make an important addition to the model,
and to our understanding of the decorative
system of the room.
Not only have fresco fragments been put
into their original context via digital means,
but whole rooms have also been reconstructed.
A case in point is the transformation of a seemingly featureless space into the most lavishly
decorated reception room in the villa (Figs. 8 &
9). The process of reconstructing room 78
52 APOLLO FEBRUARY
2014
began with my discovery of a cryptic note in
the excavation daybooks for 1974, mentioning
that excavators had found a series of impressions of wood panels in the hardened volcanic
ash. This is a kind of wall revetment never
before attested in antiquity. What of the floors
and wainscoting, stripped of their marble in
antiquity? Simon Barker studied tiny fragments
of marble residue closely, identifying the
range of expensive marbles used in that one
space and reconstructing the patterns on the
floor and walls. Architect Timothy Liddell put
this data into a 3D environment to provide a
stunning - and unprecedented -visualisation
of this opulent room, a unique testimony to the
tastes of super-wealthy patrons like Poppaea.
All of these room reconstructions are in the
The digital reconstruction of the atrium
east wall in situ in the
3D model of the villa
Reconstruction by
Martin Blazeby, King's
Visualisation Lab,
King's College, London
The Oplontis Project
The actual state of
room 78, as shown
in the 3D model
King's Visualisation
Lab, King's College,
London
The Oplontis Project
9
Room 78, digitally
restored in the 3D
model to show the
Roman decorative
scheme including
wood panelling
King's Visualisation
Lab, King's College,
London
The Oplontis Project
10 The villa's sculptures
set out for the Italian
press in 1978
Photo: Stanley
Jashemski
The Wilhelmina
Jashemski Archive
Courtesy The Oplontis
Project
from other similar archaeological initiatives.
Since it is based on a first-person shooter
gaming engine called Unity, the user can
navigate every space at will - unlike the
determined paths of most models. The user
can also toggle between actual and restored
states, change the lighting systems, and meet
other avatars. Most important for its use as a
scholarly resource is the fact that by pressing
the 'Query1 button, a researcher can directly
access the database for the feature on the
screen - whether a wall painting, or the
finds in one of 20 trenches, or the results of
isotopic analysis of the marble of one of the
19 sculptures found in the gardens.
The original excavations of Villa A at Torre
Annunziata aimed to make it into a living
museum that the public could visit. This meant
creating a new building that looked ancient.
Walls had to be rebuilt and colonnades had to
be reconstructed to support modern concrete
beams, new tile roofs, and reconsolidated fresco
fragments. In the process of building this living
museum, the pieces of the puzzle that didn't
fit were simply ignored. Today, via digital
process of being integrated into the 3D model with hardened volcanic ash. Using groundmeans, the Oplontis Project has put many of
penetrating
radar
(GPR),
we
found
anomalies
as it nears completion.
those puzzle pieces back into the villa.
on the south of the Sarno Canal, suggesting
In its current beta version, the 3D model
Linked to the database, the 3D model
that the tunnel ended in a stairway leading
gives users unlimited virtual access to the
will allow us, and future generations, to find
down some nine metres. But it was not until
entire 100 x 200 metre site, the same access
material easily by clicking on find-spots;
Superintendency geologist Giovanni Di Maio
physically available to the Oplontis Project
scholars will be able to share this work and
sunk
a
series
of
cores
between
15
and
30
metres
team under the terms of its collaboration
even add information to the database. The
below the modern surface that we knew that
with the Archaeological Superintendency of
model complements the ebook, and because
the villa stood perched on a 14-metre cliff
Pompeii. To complete the model, we plan to
the ACLS has graciously offered to make the
undertake the following digital reconstructions: above its own private harbour. The volcanic
Oplontis Project publications open access,
material to the north of the villa, beneath
elaborate the contours of the garden, as
scholars and the general public worldwide can
the
modern
town,
also
accumulated
over
the
pioneering garden archaeologist Wilhelmina
benefit
from the work of our 42 contributors,
parts
pushed
over
the
cliff
by
the
force
of
the
Jashemski found them in the 1970s; insert the
pyroclastic flows. Di Maio's wider explorations coming from a wide range of scientific and
plant materials; and put sculptures back in
humanistic disciplines. @
have allowed for the reconstruction of a
place according to their find-spots. Orphaned
substantial tract of the ancient coastline,
like the painting fragments, these sculptures
John R. Clarke is Regents Professor in Fine
from Torre Annunziata to the mouth of
have languished in storage for decades since
Arts at the University of Texas at Austin and
ancient
Sarno,
Pompeii's
river
port.
The
Wilhelmina's husband, Stanley Jashemski shot
co-director of the Oplontis Project. His many
this photograph, when the sculptures were set remains of other Roman villas that Di Maio
books include Looking at Laughter: Humor,
has documented are a reminder of the Greek
up for a day for the Italian press (Fig. 10).
Power, and Transgression in Roman Visual
geographer Strabo's description of the villas
Finally, exciting new geological research
Culture, 100B.C.-A.D. 250 (2007).
and cultivated estates that stretched along
has revealed the ancient setting of the villa.
the
entire
rim
of
the
Bay
of
Naples
like
one
There was one clue, partially explored in
For more information on the Oplontis
continuous city (Geography 5.4.8).
our first excavation: a stairway descending
Several features distinguish our 3D model Project, go to oplontisproject.org.
from the slaves' quarters to a tunnel, filled
FEBRUARY 2014 APOLLO 53