Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/356

Painting of darkening rooms in the day-time ; the lower portions of the walls are always painted in the strongest colours, and the upper in white or very faint tints, thus affording a sense of repose to the eye which can be better felt than described. Attempts have lately been made to carry out this principle in the wall-papers of modern residences. The paintings discovered in the Baths of Titus are, how- ever, considered to surpass even those of Pompeii; they represent scenes from the life of Adonis, and are character- ised by severe simplicity and grandeur of composition. These Baths also contain the arabesques from which Raphael took many of his ideas for the decoration of the Vatican; they are remarkable for imagination, variety and harmony of colouring. Roman painting, properly so-called, was chiefly por- traiture, in which considerable excellence appears to have been obtained. Marcus Ludius was a celebrated portrait and landscape painter and decorator in the time of Augustus, and appears to have combined beauty of com- position with truth of character ; but Roman artists never got beyond the simplest effects of light and shade, or the most rudimentary knowledge of perspective. (b) Roman Mosaics. Very numerous specimens of Roman mosaic work have come down to us. Almost every house in Pompeii or Herculaneum contains mosaic pavements or wall-linings. Of these the mosaic of the so-called "Casa del Fauno" (House of the Faun), found in J 831, and supposed to repre- sent one of Alexander's battles (Fig. 120), and the circular mosaic of the Lion crowned ivith Garlands by young Cupids, found in 1828-29, in the " house of the Dioscuri,"