From Paris to Pompeii: French Romanticism and the Cultural Politics of Archaeology

Chapter One: Neoclassical Pompeii

one Neoclassical Pompeii Our modern conception of archaeology as a science that unearths even the humblest vestiges of the human past with extreme care and sophistication emerged only gradually over the last two centuries. Archaeology itself, it is true, is as old as history, and evidence pushes the human preoccupation with its own monuments far back into the remote past. The Renaissance is clearly a cultural ‘‘rebirth’’ that is fueled by the archaeological rediscovery of antiquity . Nonetheless, the meaning of the term ‘‘archaeology’’ will here be restricted to a radically new type of relation to the past and to its remnants which emerged roughly at the turn of the eighteenth century, during the shift from neoclassicism to Romanticism. Interest in the fragmentary remains of past cultures underwent a major transformation at that point which completely redefined and reconfigured the archaeological object—from its status and meaning to the way culture related to it. Overall, this shift in perception can be characterized as the transition from a purely aesthetic gaze to a historicizing gaze: the excavated fragment—be it a ruin, a statue, an inscription, a coin, or a vase—was formerly viewed chiefly as an art object, to be appreciated for its aesthetic merit, and either to be held up as a model of beauty or to be found shortcoming with respect to the ideal. In the nineteenth century, the fragment began to be viewed increasingly as a monument, document, or clue, in short, as a memorial device which furnished historical evidence about the past. Dating the vestige became of paramount importance, and the fragment was now endowed with a new type of value, no longer just aesthetic but primarily historical and hermeneutic: insofar as the unearthed object was the witness and survivor of a vanished past, it enabled the viewer to recon- 10 chapter 1 struct and reimagine the world to which it had belonged. From possessing an intrinsic value (beauty), it receded into a network of associations, became absorbed in a historical context, spoke not of itself but of the world in which it was embedded. It is this major shift in attitudes to historical objects that I call the ‘‘birth of archaeology,’’ which I investigate in this part. The Past as Buried Treasure The rediscovery of Pompeii and Herculaneum offers an exemplary illustration of the birth of a modern archaeological gaze. Buried during the August 24, 79 c.e., eruption of Vesuvius witnessed by Pliny the Younger,1 and only truly unearthed in the mid-eighteenth century (Herculaneum in 1738, Pompeii in 1748), the two Campanian cities stand out as the most spectacular archaeological find of the Enlightenment. Two and a half centuries later, the sites have not yet been fully exhumed, and about a third of Pompeii’s surface remains unexcavated. No other modern discovery has had an equal impact on the popular romance of archaeology or on the decorative arts. An instant sensation, the cities attracted travelers on the Grand Tour, influenced neoclassical painting, and set off a long-term trend in decoration, inspiring, for example, the Pompeian ornamental scheme of Napoleon’s castle at Malmaison and the pottery of Josiah Wedgwood.2 In the nineteenth century, this ornamental inspiration gave way to the intense romantic drama of the doomed cities, reproduced endlessly in poetry, painting, and theater, most famously in Bulwer-Lytton’s historical disaster novel, The Last Days of Pompeii (1834). The twentieth century kept this mythical event alive by transferring it to film, and directors of toga movies from Luigi Maggi (1908–9) to Sergio Leone (1959) kept turning to Bulwer’s classic melodramatic script. The extraordinary fame and mythical fascination of the buried cities make them an ideal seismograph to test changes in the popular perception of archaeology and its cultural role. The major shift I want to map here is the one from an image of Pompeii as a curious site of artistic treasures, prevalent in the eighteenth century, to the romantic myth of the city as a lost world magically restored by the powers of archaeology. Between 1750 and 1830, Pompeii is transformed from a grave to be robbed into the image of a lost civilization; in the process, a sweeping change has occurred—in the nature of the object exhumed, in the value attached to the artifacts, and in the gaze of the beholder . Neoclassical Pompeii 11 The first contact with Herculaneum...