Gilbert  Picard’s  ‘absurd’  proposition

Roman Painting by Gilbert Picard contains one of the most astonishing observations concerning the significance of domestically located Roman wall-painting. In three paragraphs containing less than six hundred words he challenges and overturns much of the arid literature that has divested the wall-paintings of their symbolic meaning and left them like empty vessels devoid of content. He began by concluding that W. G. Beyen’s hitherto dominant theory linking Roman wall-painting to ancient theatre backdrops was untenable and that a completely new approach was required. His and other criticisms on this theme are examined in greater detail in The House as Theatre.

His new approach began by examining the recurring door motif, which he considered to be the first image to dissolve the physical wall by replacing it with its metaphysical counterpart (fig.1). “The door is found in all the ancient arts, with the exception of that of classical Greece, for more than a thousand years, and it always has the same meaning. It is the entrance into the underworld or what amounts to the same thing, the entrance to the tomb. How could it have had another meaning in Romano-Campanian painting?” (Picard 1970: 97) (fig.2). Although he does not go on to substantiate his observation, it nevertheless has enormous ramifications. If the door is an indexical image, then we need to rethink the entire conceptual framework in which ancient Roman wall-painting existed within the house.

Picard’s direct link between wall-painting and in-house religio-commemorative practices, is far less fanciful when placed in the context of the complex relationship between the living and the dead that has existed in Italy from very ancient times. For example, we know that some three hundred years earlier Tarentine vase-painters catered for the eschatological needs of wealthy Aupulian families. Therefore, it is perfectly legitimate to ask who was providing a similar service to the wealthy Pompeians in the first century BC and what form did it take? Was one of those forms domestically located wall-painting? In pursuit of the answer one might also legitimately ask, when is a painting of a door not simply a door, to which Picard’s response was. “To stave off such temptation let us closely examine the frieze which surmounts the door (junua) at Boscoreale: there we see the hunt for the Calydonian boar, a funerary motif if there ever was one, as the Etruscan Urns and Roman sarcophagi amply attest.” (Picard 1970: 97) In this passage Picard reminds us of the Janus entrance-exit symbolism associated with door imagery and, in this instance, eschatological associations in the form of the frieze located above the door (fig.3&4).