File:Herculanum et Pompéi, recueil général des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques, etc., découverts jusqu'à ce jour, et reproduits d'apreès Le antichita di Ercolano, Il Museo borbonico, et tous les ouvrages (14780875314).jpg

English: Full translated plate description:The art of preparing woolen fabrics was one of the most important industries among the ancients, given the great use they made of this kind of fabric. Indeed, the Romans almost never used linen fabrics; and among them raw silk was exchanged for gold at equal weight. Aurélien forbade his wife to wear silk clothes: this luxury seemed to him excessive, even for an empress. Hence developed that astonishing perfection acquired by the art of working wool, and of making of it those light, flexible, and almost fluid tissues which give so much charm to the draperies imitated by the painters and sculptors of old. The fullers, who exercised an essential part of this art, had necessarily brought it to the same point of perfection to which all the others had arrived. Then, the improvement of the arts did not consist, as among the moderns, in the invention of new mechanical processes of manufacture, but only in the improvement of the products: hammer mills did not exist; and all the operations of carding, degreasing, laundering, treading, and dressing the fabric sheets were done with the arms of men, with the arms of slaves. It was from the individual efforts of the fuller workers that this exquisite whiteness that the Romans demanded, was achieved on the banks of the Galese, where they covered the lambs with a kind of garment sewn over their fleece, so that it arrived spotless on the spindles of the spinners.

The fullers' workshops were therefore important and very extensive establishments in Italy; and the city of Pompeii possessed one, placed in the two buildings called the Houses of the Fountains, between the Via di Mercurio and that of the Triumphal Arch. According to the custom which we have already pointed out, these workshops were decorated with paintings representing the various operations of the art which were exercised there, paintings which were, in certain cases, to be an excellent means of instruction. The two frescoes whose designs we provide here were painted between the pilasters of the peristyle, where the fountain was located. They provide an idea of the different operations of the fullonic art (fullonica) of the ancients: more complete information, but less striking for the mind, is found in Pliny, in Varro, and in the law that Caius Flaminius and Lucius Aemilius were not afraid to devote to the regulation of this industry. Space does not allow us to quote here either of these interesting passages, or the curious inscription which has been preserved by Fabretti, which mentions the disputes raised between the fountain-makers and the fullers on the purity of the water.

We notice, in the upper section, a workman busy carding a white fabric edged with a red band which winds around the edges: this detail proves to us that they were carding not only the new cloth, but even the togas, every time they were washed. Another workman brings back the wicker mannequin on which clothes were stretched out to be exposed to sulfur vapor. This workman is crowned with an olive branch, and on the utensil he carries is perched the bird of Minerva, tutelary deity of all those who worked fabrics. The necklace, the gold fishnet and the bracelets adorned with emerald of this woman who receives the work of a young laborer, indicate she is the director of the workshop, and perhaps the mistress of the whole factory. Women therefore did not always play, among the ancients, the idle and passive role which has been too generally assigned to them.

In the lower part of the plate, we see workmen who, placed in a kind of niche similar to those which exist in a room of the building, and sunk up to their knees in vats full of water, tread fabrics with their feet. The one in the middle especially, which is higher than the others, recalls the picturesque comparison made by Seneca (I) between the movements of the fullers and the dance of the Salii [armed priests of Mars] with the sacred shields. - Louis Barré, 1870.

Identifier: herculanumetpomp18703barr (find matches)
Title: Herculanum et Pompéi, recueil général des peintures, bronzes, mosaïques, etc., découverts jusqu'à ce jour, et reproduits d'apreès Le antichita di Ercolano, Il Museo borbonico, et tous les ouvrages analogues
Year: 1870 (1870s)
Authors: Barré, Louis, 1799-1857 Roux, H. (Henri), Sr Bouchet, Adolphe
Subjects: Art, Greco-Roman
Publisher: Paris, Firmin Didot frères, fils et cie
Contributing Library: Harold B. Lee Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Brigham Young University

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Text Appearing Before Image:
quelle a déjàperdu une partie de son contenu. Cette petite scène in-dustrielle , instructive peut-être pour nos pays vignoblesoù lon manque très-souvent de futailles, est rendueavec assez dadresse et de vérité. Le second sujet est une réunion de buveurs. Deuxdes quatre convives sont revêtus dun costume étrange,que lon ne sattendait certes pas à retrouver dans lan-tiquité , mais qui a été fort longtemps à la mode dansle moyen âge, et qui est encore porté par les matelotset les pêcheurs de quelques côtes de lItalie : cest uneespèce de manteau ou de surtout à capuchon. La symé-trie avec laquelle ces deux figures sont placées relati-vement aux autres peut porter à croire que ce sontdeux femmes. Lun des convives, qui a la tête décou-verte, fait un geste de commandement : cest sansdoute le roi du festin ou de la réunion. Les troisautres se servent, pour boire, de cornes ou de coupestrès-allongées, comme nous en avons déjà vu quel- PEINTURES. a™ Série. 12 7
Text Appearing After Image:
M0 B° V 4 V 49. ^1¥ ,îê)W 5F@W^®5 DEUXIÈME SÉRIE. 67 ques-unes. Un petit pocillateur vient renouveler la pro-vision de liquide placée sur la table à trois pieds. Lelong de la muraille on voit, accrochés à une espèce deporte-manteau, des objets qui paraissent être différentscomestibles ; et, comme il arrive ordinairement dans lescabarets, on aperçoit des caractères et des chiffres tracéssur le mur. Le style et lexécution de ce tableau, lesmœurs quil représente, ne donnent pas une haute idéedes habitués de la maison qui en était décorée : ce nepouvait être quune pauvre taverne, où se réunissaientdes personnes de la plus basse condition. PLANCHE 127. Lart dapprêter les tissus de laine était une des in-dustries les plus importantes chez les anciens, vu legrand usage quils faisaient de ce genre détoffe. Eneffet, les Romains ne se servaient presque jamais detissus de lin; et chez eux la soie brute séchangeaitcontre lor à poids égal. Aurélien défendit à s

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