In this luxuriantly produced volume, Mantha Zarmakoupi seeks to re-orient current scholarly discourses regarding ‘landscape’ as an expansive yet distinct analytical category for Roman art and architecture. While the nature imagery of Roman wall painting in particular has received a great deal of attention, scholars have tended to ‘deny the existence of the concept of landscape in this period due to the potency of the genre of historical landscape in art historical discourses’ (9). Z. proposes the application of contemporary ecocritical approaches and focuses on ‘artialisation’ as the process by which the natural world is transformed into landscape.
The concept of artialisation has been expounded mostly fully by French philosopher Alain Roger, who views ‘landscape’ as a fundamentally human construction, with land becoming landscape, becoming art, through human initiative and selection. Z.’s study is concerned primarily with villa architecture and its decoration, and artialisation proves a compelling model for approaching this material. Luxury villas, according to Z., offered an ideal medium for working out conceptions of land and landscape, since their design was freed from the physical constraints of urban building and from the monetary constraints of less affluent commissioners. Z. examines the self-reflective dimensions of villa architecture from various perspectives over the book’s six chapters. After introducing her methodological approach and the cultural context in chs 1 and 2, ch. 3 homes in on how the architectural layouts of villas responded to their natural surroundings: ‘the objective was to have as much contact with the landscape as possible, both to take advantage of the views and to enable light and air to circulate throughout the structure’ (53). Z. sees the porticus and cryptoporticus as particularly significant in creating a porous link between interior and exterior, both practically as a means of shielding rooms from heat exposure and symbolically as liminal spaces ‘signifying the cultural dynamic between humans and their environment’ (64). This, like the importation of foreign plants as ‘captives’ of war (36–7), was also a means for elites to assert power over the natural world.
The remaining chapters focus primarily on wall painting, especially pinakes (ch. 4), garden simulacra (ch. 5) and the ways in which painted landscapes interact with the actual natural environment of the villa (ch. 6). Ch. 6 is one of the book’s most exciting, and offers, among other things, an experiential analysis of how ancient viewers might have moved through these spaces. Z. revisits pinakes as representative of a broader shift in the way that landscape imagery was emphasised within the villa during the first century c.e. Though miniature in size, pinakes tend to constitute the sole decoration of otherwise monochrome walls — an arrangement that draws the eye towards them and signals their importance. Within the space of the villa, such images would have stood in dialogue with windows, doors and other architectural openings that offered views onto the actual landscape outside. A complex dialogue between ‘real’ and painted nature is thus engendered — presumably deliberately — within these carefully organised spaces. As Z. notes, this process of view framing is precisely the artialisation by which land becomes landscape.
In the book’s final pages, Z. turns to the role of slave labour in landscape production. Villa landscapes were, of course, largely created, cultivated and maintained by the enslaved, who are conspicuously absent from texts and images of villa life. This would have created a curious juxtaposition in which viewers would see the enslaved at work in the physical landscape through the villa’s framed architectural views, whereas the painted landscape scenes around that same viewer omitted such persons entirely.
A strength of this book is Z.’s holistic approach to art, architecture and landscape as connected components of the same story. Analyses of Roman architecture and wall painting often privilege aesthetic questions at the expense of structural or environmental surroundings, and Z.’s book vividly demonstrates the importance of approaching these elements together. She explicitly de-emphasises the traditional divide between architecture and nature in villas and places their interaction at the forefront of her analysis. Z. is particularly strong when she interrogates the interface between painted and built landscapes, for instance her discussion of harbour images in wall painting in relation to actual harbours that might have been visible from the villa (83–99). The book moves at a lively clip, and one might wish for lengthier analysis of stimulating points like this one. Questions of intentionality might also be fruitfully explored in more detail. Z. convincingly shows why villas were uniquely appealing as a medium for working out conceptions of landscape, but one would like to know more about how she envisions this process as actually functioning — for instance, the interplay between artist and patron. Who, in other words, is driving this process, and how much of the shift in attitudes to landscape is informed by cultural norms as opposed to actively shaping those norms? As these questions suggest, Z.’s book will doubtless prove invigorating to further study of Roman landscapes both ‘real’ and painted. Her emphasis on artialisation and her expansive conceptualisation of landscape offer vital frameworks for approaching this material, and Z. is virtuosic in converting her subject’s tangled complexity from barrier to boon. The topic of landscape has a special resonance today, and Z.’s book, among its other contributions, offers a compelling point of contact between ancient and contemporary concerns.
