File:Pompeii, its history, buildings, and antiquities - an account of the destruction of the city with a full description of the remains, and of the recent excavations, and also an itinerary for visitors (14758762196).jpg

Identifier: pompeibuildings00dyer (find matches)
Title: Pompeii, its history, buildings, and antiquities : an account of the destruction of the city with a full description of the remains, and of the recent excavations, and also an itinerary for visitors
Year: 1867 (1860s)
Authors: Dyer, Thomas Henry, 1804-1888
Subjects:
Publisher: London : Bell & Daldy
Contributing Library: Getty Research Institute
Digitizing Sponsor: Sloan Foundation

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ch gave its name to the house, and the discoveryof which excited an unusual sensation at Naples—a fountainof much more magnitude and attempt at decoration than anyother which had been discovered. Not that it possesses anygreat beauty, as will be seen by the annexed view, in whichit forms the principal feature. It was novel, however, andat that time indeed almost unique, the only thing resemblingit being in the adjoining house ; and in addition to this thematerials are curious, the whole being incrusted with a sortof mosaic, consisting of vitrified tesserae of different colours,in which blue predominates. The grand divisions of thepatterns and the borders are formed by real shells, whichremain perfect and unchanged. Almost all the ornamentsbear some reference to water, consisting principally ofaquatic plants and birds. On each side of the alcove is amarble mask, hollowed out, and intended, it is conjectured,to receive lights, which at night would have a whimsical and 2 c 386 POMPEII.
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HOUSE OF THE GREAT FOUNTAIN. 387 rather ghastly effect. The water trickled down a little flightof steps into a sort of raised piscina, in the front of which isa round column, pierced for a pipe, and prohably intendedfor a jet deau. It is a remarkable instance of the generalnegligence of arrangement, that in this house, which wasevidently one of considerable pretensions, nothing is sym-metrical. The pillars of the peristyle are not equidistantfrom their ante, and the fountain is opposite neither to anintercolumniation, nor to the centre of the opening of thetablinum. The high wall behind the alcove has lost the paintingsobservable in the plate on p. 386, which is copied from thesecond series of Pompeiana. The plaster fell soon afterSir W. Gell had taken his view. They presented another spe-cimen of the opus topiarium. In the panels are birds killingreptiles, &c, executed with considerable spirit, and belowthem is painted a variety of garden railings. An upperline of pictures, one o

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