This publication was issued on the occasion of the exhibition Buried by Vesuvius: Treasures from the Villa dei Papiri, on view at the J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa, Malibu, from June 26 to October 18, 2019. The exhibition was organized by Getty curator of antiquities Kenneth Lapatin. Lenders to the exhibition include the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano, and the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli “Vittorio Emanuele III.” As explained by Lapatin in his introduction to Buried by Vesuvius, the exhibition brought together in “holistic and up-to-date vision” the history of excavation (1750–present) and actual finds from the original villa at Herculaneum, as well as evidence of the history of its interpretation over the same period of time—all set in the magnificent reconstruction created by Getty. Although the exhibition comprised only 51 items, its unique venue, the quality and historic significance of the exhibits, and the essays and catalog descriptions by a cast of leading experts distributed across an unprecedented variety of fields make the exhibition and its catalog essential viewing and reading. As Francesco Sirano, Director of the Parco Archeologico di Ercolano and contributor to the volume writes: “Recontextualizing means reassembling, in a single unifying interpretation … all the evidence recovered over centuries of excavation projects and study, bringing together veins of specialized research that otherwise rarely intersect” (135).

Ars longa, vita brevis. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that every generation of humanists since the 15th c. has lived in hope of witnessing the resurrection of venerable antiquity through the recreation of its history and the discovery of its masterpieces of literature and art. Since the 18th c. these hopes have been spurred on by the discovery of ancient cities beneath the surge levels and lava fields of Mount Vesuvius on the Bay of Naples. When some 1,800 carbonized papyrus rolls – the contents of an ancient library such as those attested in classical literature – emerged from the ruins of a “Roman palace” in Herculaneum, hopes for finding the missing decades of Livy and lost treasures of Greek literature were rekindled. Such hopes have not entirely ceased, and the so-called “villa of the papyri” has often been a locus for them. In 1969 Professor Marcello Gigante of the University of Naples founded the Centro internazionale per lo studio dei papiri ercolanesi (CISPE, to which his name has now been appended) and the review Cronache ercolanesi in 1971. Between 1992 and 1998 Gigante's prestige as a scholar played no small part in opening new excavations of the villa site, with the avowed motive of finding more of the original library. Unfortunately, Gigante passed away in 2001, depriving the excavation of one of its most ardent supporters.

Another person whose life intersected with that of the villa was Jean Paul Getty himself, whose great wealth enabled him to envision a past, a present, and a future for the villa. Modeling his effort on the wonderful excavation plan (the first item in this exhibition) drawn by the Swiss military architect Karl Weber in the early 1750s, Getty commissioned a full-scale replica for his estate in Malibu. Though it was originally intended to house his entire art collection, it quickly became apparent that another building would be required for that purpose. The Malibu villa was to be dedicated solely to his collection of Greek and Roman antiquities. (It is now a footnote to history that Getty had also intended to fund an open-air excavation of the original.) After a prolonged period of conflict with the Italian government, the Getty Villa Malibu has become a showplace for international cooperation, as evidenced by the exhibition Buried by Vesuvius. Getty's obsession with the villa and its contents has thus survived his death (in 1976) to become a part of the villa's history. Sadly, he was never able to visit his villa, and his plan for an excavation of the original was not to be carried out.

The premise of Buried by Vesuvius is that the villa, its contents, and the history of its interpretation is at once an artefact of: the Late Republic and Early Empire; the destruction level of Vesuvius in 79 CE; the rediscovery of Herculaneum in the 18th c.; and contemporary efforts on the part of scholars representing public and private institutions to continue the process of discovery. Buried by Vesuvius has brought together these diverse phases (or identities), incorporating them in the structure of the exhibition and the organization of the catalog in an effort to recontextualize the villa and its contents over the broadest possible spectrum of history and scholarship.

The catalog of exhibits is preceded by 16 short essays, each of which is concise and well written, providing needed context within current scholarship on the villa. Several relate to the villa in antiquity, viz.: ownership (J. Fish), virtual reconstruction (M. Zarmakoupi), mosaic and opus sectile floors (V. Papaccio), wall paintings (D. Esposito), sculpture (C. H. Hallett), and the ancient texts on papyrus (D. Sider). There is an obligatory essay explaining the uniqueness of the site as the result of the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE (A. Cinque and G. Irollo). Four essays examine the first excavations of the villa and the provenance of its contents (now held mostly by public institutions in Naples): the Bourbon-era excavations of the villa (C. Parslow), the restoration of the finds (C. C. Mattusch and L. Melillo), early attempts to open and read the papyri (S. Maresca), and Bourbon-era publications and cultural politics (P. Vázquez-Gestal). Finally, what might be called a resurgence of interest in the villa, begun in the 1980s, has brought about new excavations, esp. 1992–98 (D. Camardo), new finds, such as the ivory tripods (M. P. Guidobaldi), and the use of new technology to achieve non-destructive readings of the surviving papyri (W. B. Seales, C. Chapman, V. Mocella). A discussion of the future of the villa site by the Herculaneum director (F. Sirano) concludes the preliminary essays. In this reviewer's opinion, additional essays on the nationalization of antiquities under the Italian Risorgimento (1860) and the international efforts to patronize the Herculaneum excavations that began around 1900 and culminated with Jean Paul Getty and the institutions founded by him would have served to bridge the gap between the 18th c. and the present.

The selection of works that constitute the exhibition itself is remarkably illustrative of Francesco Sirano's observation (quoted above) insofar as it “recontextualizes” the villa and its history despite being halfway around the globe. The Malibu exhibition presents a critical selection of the evidence in the form of a logical itinerary that begins with Weber's masterful ground plan and the supposed portrait of the villa's creator, L. Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus Pontifex (48 BCE–32 CE), and goes straight to its main claim to fame, viz., its library. The original findspot of the exhibits – and works that remained behind in Naples – is aided by means of a large gate-fold plan of the villa illustrated with 86 photographic images, each matched to its museum inventory number.

The exhibition begins, appropriately, with the original of Karl Weber's Excavation Plan of the Villa dei Papiri, 1754–58 (Cat. 1), on loan from the Naples Archaeological Museum. Weber's annotated plan has been shown by recent excavations to be extraordinarily accurate – miraculous, given the conditions under which it was made. If the excavator had not doggedly made and annotated this plan, the unity of the villa would not have been recognized by his contemporaries and J. Paul Getty would never have built his museum. Strangely enough, though the Accademia degli Ercolanesi came into possession of the plan following Weber's death in 1764, it was lost during the “Age of Lead,” as the later years of the Bourbon regime were called, and only came to light during the Risorgimento, when there was a renewed interest in Italy's antiquities and their documentation. In 1883 Giulio de Petra (with Domenico Comparetti) used Weber's plan, together with journals of the excavations, to “recontextualize” the bronze and marble sculptures then in the collection of the Archaeological Museum. Subsequent studies of the villa and its sculptural decoration – see especially Carol C. Mattusch, who contributed to this volume – have used de Petra's work as a benchmark. Readers of Buried by Vesuvius will still have to consult Comparetti and de Petra (Reference Comparetti and de Petra1883) for a complete transcription of Weber's annotations, and Mattusch (Reference Mattusch2005) for an accurate English translation (worth the effort).Footnote ¹

The identification of a poorly documented bronze head in the Naples Museum (inv. 5601) as Piso Pontifex (Cat. 3: Portrait of Lucius Calpurnius Piso Caesoninus Pontifex) by Sir Ronald Syme in his 1986 book The Augustan Aristocracy has gained broad acceptance, reflected here by its prominence in the exhibition (504 and frontispiece [cover in paperback edition]).Footnote ² It had previously been introduced to a Getty audience (as well as in Florence and Washington, DC) in Jens M. Daehner and Kenneth Lapatin's Power and Pathos exhibition in 2015.

Getting to the heart of the original villa (if not Getty's simulacrum), the exhibition continues with three items (Cat. 4–6) that bespeak the villa's identity as a kind of Epicurean institute, viz., three carbonized scrolls, a papyrus unrolling machine, and the transcription of text by the Epicurean philosopher Philodemus of Gadara, whose works seem to dominate the library. The scrolls were among those found in the vicinity of the “tablinum,” or principal hall of the villa's library. The machine and the transcriptions constitute the work of the Officina dei Papiri, now part of the Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli.

The “tablinum” was decorated with a 2-m statue of Athena Promachos in Pentelic marble. This statue, highly praised by Winckelmann, may offer a direct connection with the Acropolis of Athens, where a dedication by Piso Pontifex stood. Four small (i.e. half-scale) bronze busts representing philosophers probably served as table-top ornaments for the library (Cat. 8–11). (Epicurus is represented in two of the busts [one inscribed] on exhibit.) From the same complex of rooms came the superb bronze bust (Cat. 36) identified as Priapus, one of the finest pieces from the villa. Its presence in the library is not explained by the authors, though it would not be out of place as tutelary divinity of the “garden” which emblematized Epicurus and his school. Other works of sculpture in this exhibition no doubt were intended to convey an Epicurean message of simple, natural pleasure: the leaping piglet in bronze (Cat. 12), the portable sundial in the shape of a delectable ham (Cat. 13), and the infamous Pan and the She-Goat (Cat. 37).

More would be known of the intellectual content of the villa if definite identities could be attached to the numerous heads and busts of philosophers that lined both peristyles. A marble herm-bust (Cat. 40) previously known as “Zeno,” “Carneades,” or simply “Unknown Philosopher,” appears here identified as “Panyassis of Halikarnasssos,” author of an epic poem recounting the deeds of Herakles. The suggestion is that of Italo Sgobbo, who deciphered the painted inscription visible in certain light in earlier photographs of the work. According to Sgobbo, the inscription reads: “Panyassis the Poet, he was the most wretched (lypērotatos).”Footnote ³ Lapatin suggests the possibility of a pun on “Pan” for the association of this bust with the group (Cat. 37) found nearby. Other reasons for the work's presence in the villa might be the poet's connection with Herakles, founder of Herculaneum, or simply as an illustration – negative in the extreme – of political victimhood: a chord struck in advocacy of ataraxia or withdrawal from political affairs advocated by Epicureans. (Panyassis was executed by the Samian tyrant Lygdamos for plotting against him.) It is easy to see how this Epicurean value would have resonated among Romans living on the Bay of Naples in the Late Republic or Early Empire.

Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum – the exhibition and its catalog – well deserves to become part of the illustrious context, classical and post-classical, that has come to embrace the villa. One hopes that it will point the way to future “recontextualizations,” perhaps some that may include literary gems still to emerge from the known carbonized rolls and some that may still be found in further excavations of the site.