M. J. H. Liversidge

In nineteenth century Britain, ownership of works of art showing views of Rome or imaginary classical scenes signalled membership of an educated cultural elite. Such art would probably be a “souvenir” from an upper class gentleman’s “Grand Tour”, which had usually been considered as the culmination of his education since the eighteenth century, as study of Latin was a major part of a gentleman’s education, and one aspect of marking his status. My education, which included five years of elementary Latin and no Ancient Greek, validated this tradition and when at university I took holidays in Italy and Greece to sightsee the antiquities, although bringing back only guidebooks, photos and postcards. I therefore still form part of this cultural inheritance, albeit in impoverished fashion.
This collection of essays and illustrations (colour and black & white) accompanied a 1996 exhibition at Bristol Museum and Art Gallery which examined this tradition, which developed from contemporary views of Rome in the early nineteenth century to recreations of ancient Roman scenes based upon accurate archaeological details in the latter half of the period.
Catharine Edwards excellent opening essay considers the ambivalent British response to Rome, with the perceived moral Republic being superseded by the decadent Empire, and the site of early Christian martyrdom being overlaid by non-Protestant buildings of Roman Catholics. She also highlights the changing response as upper class gentlemen are diluted by affluent middle class men and women.
The British response to Rome also changed from the picturesque present with ruins to recreation of an imagined historical representation of Ancient Rome, as suggested by novels such as Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii (1834).
Timothy Webb’s essay on English Romantic travellers in Rome, notes that although Romanticism is usually a response to nature, Shelley and Byron provided an early nineteenth century romantic literary response to Rome and goes on to explore this in greater detail. He notes however that this response is contradictory, trying to hold both the historic classical weight of Rome’s history with its impoverished early nineteenth century squalor. There is a section of Chris Woodward’s In Ruins (2001) about the changes to Rome and its ruins over the nineteenth century as they are “preserved”, but made less romantic, that complements this essay about the early nineteenth century response.
Michael Liversidge’s essay quotes from Archibald Alison’s 1790 essay “Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste”:
And what is it that conflitutes that emotion of fublime delight, which every man of common fenfibility feels upon the firft profpect of ROME? It is not the fcene of deftruction which is before him. It is not the Tyber diminithed in his imagination to a paultry ftream, flowing amid the ruins of that magnificence which it once adorned. It is not the triumph of fuperftition over the wreck of human greatnefs, and its monuments erected upon the very spot where the
firft honours of humanity have been gained. It is ancient Rome which fills his imagination. It is the country of Caesar, and Cicero, and Virgil, which is before him. It is the miftrefs of the world which he fees, and who feems to him to rife again from her tomh, to give laws to the universe. All that the labours of his youth, or the fudies of his maturer age have acquired with regard to the hiftory of this great people, open at once before his imagination, and prefent him with a field of high and folemn imagery which can never be exhaufted.
Take from him thefe affociations, conceal from him that it is Rome that he fees, and how different would be his emotion!
The book then looks at how the romantic response in the first half of the nineteenth century, was superseded by a more imaginative recreation in the second half.
The very interesting essay by Elizabeth Prettejohn describes the move from heroic public history paintings (exemplum virtutis ) in the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century to more domestic, genre paintings of Roman history, illustrating scenes from contemporary historical novels such as The Last Days of Pompeii (1834), archaeological discoveries and Christian martyrdom. This essay is skilfully argued with well referenced illustrations of the paintings showing this change.
Finally there is a catalogue of some of the paintings that have been discussed in the preceding essays, split into two sections, Representing Rome (details and description of each painting provided by Michael Liversidge) and Recreating Rome (by Elizabeth Prettejohn).
Some of these catalogue entries are really enlightening, such as Faithful Unto Death (1865 https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/faithful-unto-death-edward-john-poynter/... by Edward Poynter. This painting is described as “one of the most famous images in Victorian painting, familiar to schoolchildren well into the twentieth century through reproduction in textbooks”. Without context the painting is now difficult to interpret, although the soldier is in Roman uniform and there is flaming volcanic debris and fleeing people through the archway, so this would at least suggest a scene of Pompeii. However we are told that in 1865, the artist referenced the recent discovery of the remains of a Roman soldier in the ruins of Pompeii as the archaeological basis for this painting, with contemporary critics emphasising the soldier’s stoicism and archaeological authenticity, but Bulwer-Lytton’s The Last Days of Pompeii includes a similar scene, where the author depicts the sentry’s determination to stay at his post as deplorable submission to an autocratic regime. The painting has subsequently been used to illustrate British imperialism and as an antithesis to the “free” British soldier. I find this explanation of the multiplicity of interpretations fascinating.… (más)