rror-like glaze over the surfaceinvolved not only polishing with marble dust, but also going over the surface with smallerrollers. The whole process, it is clear, was so elaborate and expensive that it was ofnecessity confined to the paintings in the best rooms of the house, the others being muchmore simply decorated. ( Kraus 156) The First Style (or incrustation). It has also been called the masonry style becausethe decorator tried to imitate, using stucco relief, the appearance of expensive and costlymarble panels. It appeared about 200 B.C., when it became fashionable to paint the innerwalls of private houses as well as public and religious buildings. This decorative modewas of Greek derivation, directly inspired by the isodomic masonry technique, and usedpolychrome stucco to reproduce the projecting elements such as the dado, the middlezone in large panels, the upper zone in smaller panels, the cornices, and sometimes thepilasters which articulate the walls vertically. The lively color contrast are no more than atranslation into the pictorial idiom of the Hellenistic innovation of employing various typesand colors of marble, in the realization of the single elements. ( Giuntoli 6). They give anillusion of actual marble panels. Roman paintings were true frescoes, the colors wereapplied while the plaster was still damp, but the brilliance of the surfaces was achieved bypainstaking preparation of the wall. The plaster was combined with marble dust if thepatron could afford it. Obviously incrustation was a process of decoration often beyondthe reach of any but the most powerful and wealthiest.A good example of the First Style is The North wall of the tablinum, House of Sallust.(pic. 1). , of unknown artist, this painted wall in Pompeii is about 12 x 8. Despite somelater alterations and additions, the nucleus of this house, the rooms around the atrium(Thecourt of a roman house that is near the entrance and open to the sky), stayed as it...
