Architectures et espace fictifs dans l’Antiquité : textes – images

This book is composed of three parts. The first part is devoted to painted architectural representations (painted vases from southern Italy, decorated murals in Pompeii). The authors underline the meaningfulness and the complexity if the trompe-l’oeil effects attempted by painters. Indeed, artists multiply optical illusions not only when they paint actual architectural monuments, but also on architectural structures where painted and especially stucco-covered decors are inserted. The second part focuses on literary descriptions (ekphrasis). When poets describe architectures, which are more or less inspired by existing monuments or by fictional ones derived from literary works, they project on these buildings-in-discourse a reading grid which reflects the views of their contemporaries on their architectural environment. The third and final part investigates the feedback effect of fiction on reality. In existing gardens and sanctuaries, real space is revisited by architectural fiction; ephemeral buildings or Pompeian graffiti themselves show the pervasive impact of architectural imagination on the way real space may be perceived.