Specimens of Ancient Decorations from Pompeii

Originally published in 1825, this work contains a series of decorative designs discovered during the excavation of the lost ancient city of Pompeii. The following extract is from its introduction. THE following Designs from Pompeii (or, as it is called by the Italians, Pompeja) were made with a view to assist the Artist in the interior decoration of houses, as well in what regards figure as colour. It was formerly a general notion, that the same species of Architecture which was used on the out- side of houses was as applicable to the inside of them, and hence the same heavy forms, the massy column, and cumbrous architrave and pediment, &c. were adopted in rooms as in porticos, though the same reasons for their use did not exist, and the difference of distances and lights under which these things were seen, rendered what was becoming in the one case, ridiculous in the other. The discovery of an ancient town, however, as Walpole justly remarks, shows that the Ancients had not committed the blunder which we thought we were imitating, and opened to us the view of a more festive and imaginative species of decoration.