. Pompeii : its life and art . abandoned. The Incrustation Style, as exemplified at Pompeii, is in asecondary stage ; it must have been worked out originally ingenuine materials, at a time when walls were actually veneered,to a certain height, with slabs of various kinds of marble, cutand arranged to represent ashlar work; above the cornicemarking the upper edge of the veneering, the surface was leftin the white. The use of different varieties of marble points WALL DECORATION 451 to an active commercial intercourse between the countries about;the Mediterranean Sea, such as first became possibl
. Pompeii : its life and art . abandoned. The Incrustation Style, as exemplified at Pompeii, is in asecondary stage ; it must have been worked out originally ingenuine materials, at a time when walls were actually veneered,to a certain height, with slabs of various kinds of marble, cutand arranged to represent ashlar work; above the cornicemarking the upper edge of the veneering, the surface was leftin the white. The use of different varieties of marble points WALL DECORATION 451 to an active commercial intercourse between the countries about;the Mediterranean Sea, such as first became possible after the. conquests of Alexander. So characteristic a style, requiringj the use of costly materials, could only have been developed in an important centre of wealth and culture. In view of all the circumstances, we are probably safe inI concluding that the Incrustation Style originated in Alexandria,! in the third century From Alexandria it spread to otherj cities of the East and West, stucco being used in imitation of. Fig. 251.— Distribution of colors in the section of wall represented in Fig. 250. marble, where marble could not be procured; scanty remainssimilar to those at Pompeii, and of approximately the sameperiod — the second century — have been found at Per-gamon, on the island of Delos, and lately in Priene. This stylerepresents for us the wall decoration of the Hellenistic age. Itis characterized by the same poverty of form and obvious striv-ing after simplicity which we have noticed in the architecture ofthe Tufa Period. The projecting cornice above the body of thewall is always of the same type; yet the second century a rich heritage of architectural forms, and lack oJ vari-ety in this and other details of ornamentation was due, not todearth of materials, but to the prevailing taste. 452 POMPEII The earliest known example of the decoration of the secondor Architectural Style, is on the walls of the Small Theatre,which was built soon a
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