Pompeii No.6: Painting the Ionic Capitals

Historic Ornament: A Pictorial Archive   |   C. B. Griesbach   |   Dover

In last week's posting, I painted columns (pilasters, actually) in the Pompeii Room, and now it's time to crown them with capitals.

One of my great pleasures in the process of painting this room is in looking through many art reference books and choosing the elements for the room as though I were actually building a house. And how delightful to know that whatever I do end up choosing will be in stock, as long as I can paint it!

I chose the Ionic capital (above) for an interesting reason. My first choice would have been a Corinthian capital, like the one below:

Historic Ornament: A Pictorial Archive   |   C. B. Griesbach   |   Dover

You can see, however, that the classic Corinthian capital is twice as deep as the Ionic one. As I did my visual calculations, I quickly realized that because the columns don't go all the way to the floor, and are in fact short, the preferred capital would make them appear downright squat. And that would never do!

There are six capitals to be painted, and several shades of auburn and mauve to be mixed, so my approach is to paint all six capitals simultaneously. As I paint one element of a capital, say that highlighted line that goes through the middle, I paint the same highlight on all of them.

That way, all six capitals look like this, with very little variation.

click to enlarge

Here's the Pompeii Room as it appears today.

On the left you can see a block of yellow, which was the original color of the room. In my next posting, we'll turn that into masonry, working our way around the hallway door.
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Pompeii No.5: Painting the Columns

This week I'm painting the columns of the Pompeii Room. My versions are squared and would have four or maybe three sides in reality, so they would more properly be called pilasters.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, Spring 2010   |   www.findamuralist.com

The Pompeians often decorated with an unusual form of column that had, for lack of a better way to describe them, square plugs. I've been looking for the origin and meaning of such columns, and have yet to discover any information that would help to illuminate. Perhaps one of my clever readers can fill in the blanks. At any rate, I've looked at this element and decided that adding it to my own room would lend a distinctly Pompeian air.

On the left is a fragment from the villa of Publius Fannius Synistor (it can be viewed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art), and on the right is a fragment of the South Porch of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles. It's the work of the brilliant muralist, Garth Benton.

Some of the folks who have seen the room at this early stage are interpreting the auburn color as a brown, but it is in fact a deep purple. The shadows that are falling from the "plugs" — just as they do in Mr. Synistor's house — are that very same auburn with white paint added. They become a lovely mauve.

My choice is to not show the sides of the pilasters, and all the extra plug shapes, because so much more is going to happen within those auburn panels. (Sometimes in art the suggestion of something is sufficient, and besides, I can take a little artistic license here.)

I have, however, added dimension to the frieze. It would look strangely flat without that lip, and who knows, I might want to hang some Pompeian goodies from it a little later.

Since my last posting, I've installed track lighting on the ceiling. The lights are not necessarily a final solution, but for the time being they'll help me focus wherever I'm painting at the moment.

click to enlarge

Here's the Pompeii Room as it looks today. In my next posting, I'll add capitals to the columns, a look that would make P. Fannius Synistor feel right at home.
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