Art and archaeology

Abstract

The most significant book of this review is Richard Beacham and Hugh Denard's Living Theatre in the Ancient Roman House, a volume in which the authors’ previous accomplishments, expertise in theatre and leading roles at Kings Visualisation Laboratory (which is reflected in the use of digital visualizations throughout the volume, both to recreate architectural spaces and to test the viability of painted architecture), is brought to bear on domestic space. The subject, epic length, and format of the book immediately evoke the memory of Cambridge University Press's last major publication on wall painting, Eleanor Leach's 2004 The Social Life of Painting in Ancient Rome and on the Bay of Naples and the comparison shows up very sharply the development of attitudes towards both wall painting and its theatrical referents in the last twenty years. In Leach's book, much was made of the theatrical influence on Pompeian interiors, particularly in the architectural Second Style and the Fourth Style. Leach relied on the theatre in order to search for signs of actual theatrical influence on frescoes painted in these styles, for example discussing whether their scenographic ‘sets’ were based on permanent or temporary theatres, and then to tie the way the two styles presented theatrical performance to the political circumstances of the times in which they flourished. Leach saw Second Style as a reflection of the active competition of elites during the late republic whilst Fourth Style was symptomatic of the tyranny of the Neronian age, in which these same elites were now largely reduced to passive spectators of the emperor's performance.