A "New" Graffiti Drawing of Mercury from Pompeii and the Popular Reception of Images of Deities (20 min)

Presenters

Margaret L. Laird, University of Delaware

Abstract

The field notebooks of Pompeiian archaeologist Matteo Della Corte (Vander Poel Campanian Collection, Getty Research Institute) contain valuable evidence for ancient textual and figural graffiti, as recently demonstrated by DiBiasie-Sammons (AJA 2022: 385–410). Della Corte’s sketches of ancient drawings are especially important, as they reveal the appearance and original contexts of now-lost vernacular images that were not reproduced in official excavation notebooks or in subsequent publications. This paper presents one of these drawings—a large bust of Mercury made on an exterior wall at V.1.12—and situates it within the popular reception of this god and practices of drawing deities at Pompeii. Despite the fact that images of gods were ubiquitous in the town, remarkably few can be recognized in graffiti drawings. Martin Langner (Antike Graffitizeichnungen 2001) catalogues only 17 (out of 2500 drawings from Pompeii) and identifies only two as Mercury. I argue that several other drawings also should be identified as the god of commerce and analyze this expanded corpus. In most cases, full-figure gods are drawn to the side of doorways, emulating the practice of commissioning professionally painted images of Mercury at these thresholds. The drawers, however, alter the iconography of the fresco paintings, making the god ithyphallic and giving the images apotropaic power. This makes the figure of Mercury at V.1.12 all the more unique. Della Corte’s sketch reveals that it is the largest drawing of any deity, it is the only instance where Mercury is shown as a bust, and it follows standard iconographies. The person who drew the figure appears to have been inspired by a different visual tradition in which large busts of gods were painted in frames positioned above doors. The drawings provide insight into the ways in which ordinary people understood the efficacy of images and participated in Pompeii’s visual culture.