The House of the Vettii

One from the subconscious --

Painted in 1957, seven years after I'd first seen Pompeii, the oil on panel (16"x20") did not start out with Pompeii or any place, any thing in mind. It began as an abstraction, merely shapes, which as I worked took on figurative and architectural elements. By the time it was completed, I knew that somehow the association with the city below Vesuvius was valid, that perhaps it was what I felt when roaming the rooms of that restored brothel.

Though tourists today are titillated mostly by a few erotic frescoes found within the house, as well as by leering guides playing to mass appeal, the House of the Vettii merits sustained study as an architectural marvel. It once belonged to two wealthy Romans, Aulus Vettius Restitutus and Aulus Vettius Conviva, whom we may assume were responsible for the handsome rooms and beautiful paintings which adorn them. The Peristyle is particularly enchanting, surrounded by columns, the walls decorated with graceful frescoes, a garden at its center. Off the Peristyle, room after room featured dazzling paintings, some still in place but others now housed in the National Museum at Naples for better conservation.

I've returned to the House of the Vettii many times since first taken there in 1950 by a distant cousin, Francesco Mastellone, whom I'd found living in Meta di Sorrento. On each visit, I'm less conscious of the house as a ruin, more aware of what it must have been -- its beauty! -- before the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 A.D. I think that is what I painted: the Vettii, brothel or no, when it and the Pompeiians who strolled through it were elegant, if pagan, representatives of the renowned Roman colony by the sea.

The painting is in a private collection in Denver. Years after its purchase, I was pleased to hear from its owner that critic Arnold Toynbee, visiting her home, had commented "I like it very, very much." Like applause to an actor!

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