The pigments of Pompeii
A complete reference to every pigment identified in the wall paintings of Pompeii and the wider Bay of Naples, drawn from technical analysis of frescoes spanning the four Pompeian Styles.
Roman Italy · 2nd century BC through 79 AD · Fresco secco and true fresco
No ancient culture left behind a more completely preserved record of domestic wall painting than Pompeii. The eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD sealed an entire city's pigments under ash, and two and a half centuries of excavation and, more recently, modern spectroscopic analysis have produced an extraordinarily detailed picture of the Roman painter's palette. The pigments range from cheap, locally sourced earths to the most expensive materials in the ancient world: genuine cinnabar, Egyptian blue and on rare occasions Tyrian purple extracted from thousands of murex snails. The same room could combine all of these in a single scheme.
Each pigment below is given with its ancient name as recorded by Pliny the Elder and Vitruvius, both of whom wrote directly about the painter's materials available in their own lifetimes.
Blues and greens
Ancient name: caeruleum
Calcium copper silicate. The dominant blue throughout Pompeian painting. Vitruvius records its manufacture at Pozzuoli, near Naples, making it a genuinely local Campanian industry by the first century AD. Used in skies, water, garden scenes, and the famous deep blue grounds of the Third and Fourth Styles. Researchers estimate the pigment used in a single lavish blue room could have cost more than half a Roman soldier's annual salary.
Ancient name: chrysocolla
Basic copper carbonate. Used as a green pigment in garden scenes, foliage, and landscape passages. Pliny uses the term chrysocolla somewhat loosely for several green copper minerals, and modern analysis distinguishes the specific malachite component within Pompeian green passages from chrysocolla proper.
Ancient name: appianum
Copper silicate. A distinct blue-green mineral pigment from malachite, though the ancient terminology overlapped considerably. Pliny describes a specially refined grade as appianum, prepared by grinding chrysocolla with urine and an additional pounding process; this elaborate preparation is recorded for the highest grade of the pigment used in fine painting.
Ancient name: aerugo
Basic copper acetate. A manufactured green produced by exposing copper to vinegar fumes, well documented by Pliny as an artificial pigment distinct from the mined copper minerals. Used in foliage and decorative garland passages where a more saturated, glaze like green was wanted.
Ancient name: creta viridis
Complex iron-magnesium silicate (celadonite). A cheap, stable earth green used extensively as an underlayer and in less prominent passages. Listed in the source material as having different mineralogical sources of celadonite identified across different excavated sites.
Found in: some blue passages alongside Egyptian Blue
Basic copper carbonate. Present in some Pompeian blue passages, though Egyptian Blue's stability and consistency made it the overwhelmingly preferred blue across the city's surviving paintings.
Woad / Indigo (vitrum / indicum)
Ancient name: vitrum (woad) · indicum (indigo)
Organic blue dyes. Pliny records both vitrum (likely woad, Isatis tinctoria) and indicum (indigo, imported from India) as blue colorants available to Roman painters, used as glazes and in mixed pigments rather than as primary wall colors. Their organic instability made them far less common in surviving murals than the mineral and synthetic blues.
Reds and oranges
Ancient name: minium
Mercury sulfide. The most expensive red available to Roman painters, mined principally at Sisapo in Spain under strict imperial control according to Pliny. Used for the most prestigious red grounds and figural passages, including some of the famous deep red backgrounds of the Third and Fourth Styles. Vitruvius describes specific protective varnishing techniques to prevent its darkening on exposure to light, confirming Roman awareness of the pigment's chemical instability.
Indian red ochre (rubrica rubra)
Ancient name: rubrica rubra
Iron oxide earth. The deepest and most saturated of the three grades of red ochre Pompeian painters distinguished by intensity and source. Pompeians sourced their red and yellow ochres largely through local volcanic rock, a point confirmed by mineralogical analysis matching pigment samples to the volcanic geology of the region around Vesuvius.
Venetian red ochre (rubrica intermedia)
Ancient name: rubrica intermedia
Iron oxide earth. The intermediate grade of red ochre between the deeper Indian red and the paler Ercolano grade, sourced like the others from local volcanic rock in the region around Vesuvius.
Ercolano red ochre (rubrica minus rubens)
Ancient name: rubrica minus rubens, "less red ochre"
Iron oxide earth. The palest of the three red ochre grades distinguished by Pompeian painters, named for Herculaneum (Ercolano), the neighboring city also buried by Vesuvius in 79 AD.
Ancient name: ochrae
Iron oxide earth. Used for warm orange-red passages, particularly in architectural framing elements and decorative borders across all four styles.
Ancient name: sinopis
Iron oxide earth named for Sinope on the Black Sea, its primary ancient source according to Pliny, though local Campanian deposits were also used at Pompeii. A warm reddish-brown used in architectural and figural underpainting.
Ancient name: sandaraca
Arsenic tetrasulfide. A bright orange-red used for accents and highlights where the duller earth reds would not produce sufficient brilliance. Pliny notes its toxicity and its association with the related pigment orpiment, the two arsenic sulfides occurring together geologically just as they do in other ancient painting traditions.
Ancient name: cerussa usta
Lead tetroxide, literally "burnt white lead," produced by heating white lead until it converted to the red oxide. A manufactured red distinct from the mined cinnabar and ochres, used where an opaque, intensely orange-red was required and genuine cinnabar was either too costly or unavailable.
Ancient name: rubia
Organic red lake from the madder plant (Rubia tinctorum). Used as a transparent glaze over opaque underpainting to deepen and enrich red passages, in the same layering tradition later seen in Renaissance practice. Its organic nature makes it considerably rarer in surviving murals than the mineral reds, since it is more vulnerable to fading and chemical breakdown over two thousand years.
Purpurissum
Ancient name: purpurissum
A manufactured lake pigment described by Pliny as produced by treating chalk or another white base with the dye extracted in the manufacture of Tyrian purple. The resulting pigment was considerably cheaper than the pure dye itself, while still carrying prestige through its connection to murex purple production.
Tyrian purple (purpura)
Ancient name: purpura
Organic dye extracted from the hypobranchial gland of Murex sea snails, requiring thousands of snails to produce small quantities of dye. The most expensive colorant in the ancient Mediterranean world, restricted by sumptuary law to imperial and high status use in textiles, and only very rarely employed directly in wall painting given its extraordinary cost.
Yellows
Ancient name: ochrae
Iron oxide hydroxide. The standard Pompeian yellow, sourced locally from volcanic rock in the region, the same source identified for the local red ochres. Used extensively across all four styles for backgrounds, architectural framing, and figural skin tones.
Ancient name: ochrae
Hydrated iron oxide. A related yellow earth to goethite, both grouped under the general ancient term ochrae, distinguished by modern mineralogical analysis but likely treated as interchangeable by Roman painters depending on local supply.
Ancient name: auripigmentum, literally "gold paint"
Arsenic trisulfide. Named by the Romans for its brilliant golden yellow, where duller yellow ochres would not produce sufficient brightness, particularly for depicting actual gold objects, jewelry, and metalwork within painted scenes.
Litharge (spuma argenti)
Ancient name: spuma argenti, "foam of silver"
Lead monoxide, a byproduct of silver refining from lead ore, hence its Latin name. Used as a yellow-orange pigment and likely also valued as a drying agent in oil based preparations, a property recognized across multiple ancient painting traditions.
Whites and extenders
Ancient name: cerussa
Basic lead carbonate. The primary opaque white across all four Pompeian styles, used for highlights, flesh passages, and as the base into which other pigments were mixed to lighten them. The same material, when deliberately heated and oxidized, produced cerussa usta, or red lead.
Calcite / chalk, two grades (creta calcarea)
Ancient name: creta calcarea
Calcium carbonate. Used both as a white pigment and as the extender and filler mixed into the lime plaster itself. The source material distinguishes calcite proper from "chalk marine," likely reflecting whether the calcium carbonate was sourced from inland limestone deposits or from marine shell and coral material, the latter offering a particularly pure form of the mineral.
Gypsum (creta)
Ancient name: creta
Hydrated calcium sulfate. Used as a white extender and ground material, distinct from but related to the calcium carbonate whites.
Ancient name: creta
Calcium magnesium carbonate. A related white mineral filler, grouped under the same broad ancient terminology as gypsum and chalk, distinguished today through mineralogical analysis but likely interchangeable in Roman practice depending on what was locally available.
Barite (barytes)
Ancient name: barytes
Barium sulfate. A dense white mineral filler identified in some Pompeian plaster and pigment samples, used for its bulking and extending properties.
Ancient name: creta silicea
Hydrated aluminium silicate clay. A fine white clay used both as a pigment extender and as a base material in some painted preparations.
Diatomaceous earth (creta argentaria)
Ancient name: creta argentaria
Fossilized diatom silica. A lightweight white extender identified in some samples, distinguished from the calciumb ased whites by its silica composition and microscopic fossil structure.
Volcanic ash (creta anularia)
Ancient name: creta anularia
Pozzolanic volcanic material, abundant throughout the Campanian region surrounding Vesuvius. Used as a filler and structural additive in plaster preparations as much as a pigment in its own right, taking advantage of the same volcanic geology that made the region famous for its hydraulic cement.
Blacks
Wood charcoal black (atramentum)
Ancient name: atramentum
Carbon based black from charred wood. One of two distinct sources grouped under the general Roman term atramentum, used for outlines, deep shadow, and the famous monochrome black grounds of the Third and Fourth Styles.
Ancient name: atramentum
Carbon-based black from lamp soot. The finer of the two carbon blacks recognized under the term atramentum. Pliny describes manufacturing methods including the deliberate burning of resin and pitch to collect fine soot for the highest quality writing and painting black.
Ancient name: elephantinum, "ivory black"
Charred bone or ivory. A distinct black pigment from carbon soot, produced by charring animal bone or ivory rather than wood. The ancient name suggests the finest grade may have been made specifically from ivory, with the bone-based version a more accessible substitute.
Black copper / tenorite (chalcanthon)
Ancient name: chalcanthon
Copper oxide mineral, black in its tenorite form. A mineral black distinct from the carbon based blacks, used in some Pompeian passages where a particular density or undertone was wanted that carbon black could not provide.
The four styles of Roman wall painting
Art historians and archaeologists describe the development of Roman painting in four successive styles, spanning roughly two and a half centuries from the late Republic through the destruction of Pompeii in 79 AD. Each style represents a distinct relationship between painted illusion, architectural ornament, and figural narrative.
Roman Italy · ca. 200 BC through 79 AD
First Style
ca. 200-60 BC · Simulated masonry
The First Style was largely an exploration of simulating marble of various colors and types on painted plaster. Artists of the late Republican period drew upon early Hellenistic painting and architecture to simulate masonry. Typically, the wall was divided into three horizontal painted zones crowned with a stucco cornice of dentils based on the Doric architectural order. The decline of the First Style coincided with the Roman colonization of Pompeii in 80 BC, which transformed what had been an Italic town with Greek influences into a Roman city. Going beyond the simple representation of costlier building materials, artists began to borrow from the figural repertoire of Hellenistic wall painting, depicting gods, mortals, and heroes in various contexts.
Second Style
ca. 80-20 BC · Architectural illusion
The Second Style emerged in the early first century BC. Fresco artists imitated architectural forms purely by pictorial means. In place of stucco architectural details, they used flat plaster on which projection and recession were suggested entirely by shading and perspective; as the style progressed, forms grew more complex. The Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale is an exceptional example of the fully mature Second Style. Throughout the villa there are visual ambiguities to tease the eye: painted masonry, pillars, and columns that cast shadows into the viewer's space, and more conventional trompe l'oeil devices. Objects of daily life are depicted to seem real, with metal and glass vases on shelves and tables appearing to project out from the wall.
Second Style architectural illusion, Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale, ca. 50-40 BC. Painted columns and masonry cast convincing shadows into the viewer's space.
Villa of the Mysteries, Room 5, true fresco of the Second Style, dated ca. 70-60 BC. This panel depicts the reading of the rituals of the bridal mysteries, most commonly interpreted as a woman's initiation into the Dionysian Mysteries in preparation for marriage.
Villa of the Mysteries triclinium, third fresco, interpreted to represent the stages of initiation into the cult.
Villa of the Mysteries, Sala di Grande Dipinto, Scene VI. Maenads, the female followers of Bacchus, dance with swirling drapery, a motif drawn from painted Greek pottery traditions reaching back to the sixth century BC.
Third Style
ca. 20 BC-20 AD · Surface ornamentation
Under Emperor Augustus, in the second half of the first century BC, there was a new impulse to innovate rather than re-create in architecture, sculpture, and painting. The Third Style, which coincided with Augustus's reign, rejected illusion in favor of surface ornamentation. Wall paintings from this period typically comprise a single monochrome background, such as red, black, or white, with elaborate architectural and vegetal details. Small figural and landscape scenes appear in the center of the wall as part of, not the dominant element in, the overall decorative scheme. The finest known achievements of the early Third Style are the frescoes from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase, where attenuated candelabra and columns support exquisitely rendered vignettes.
Wall painting on black ground: aedicula with small landscape, imperial villa at Boscotrecase, late first century BC.
Detail of the Third Style ornamental scheme at Boscotrecase, showing the attenuated candelabra characteristic of the early style.
Wall painting: Polyphemus and Galatea in a landscape, imperial villa at Boscotrecase. A small mythological vignette set within the larger ornamental Third Style scheme.
Perseus and Andromeda, Boscotrecase. Perseus is about to rescue Andromeda from the ketos, a snaky sea monster painted in a brilliant blue-green palette built from Egyptian Blue and malachite.
Detail of the same fresco. Andromeda stands with outstretched arms, one hand chained to the crag.
Perseus flies in from the left with his lyre in one hand, winged shoes on his feet, and a windblown cloak over his shoulder.
In the upper right, Perseus is greeted by Andromeda's grateful father, alluding to the myth's happy ending: the marriage of hero and princess.
The Blue Room. Researchers estimate the Egyptian Blue pigment used in this single lavish scheme could have cost more than half the annual salary of a Roman foot soldier, before accounting for the labor of grinding and applying it.
Fourth Style
ca. 20-79 AD · Baroque revival
Characterized as a baroque reaction to the Third Style's mannerism, the Fourth Style is generally less disciplined than its predecessor. It revives large-scale narrative painting and panoramic vistas while retaining the architectural details of the Third Style. In the Julio-Claudian phase, a textile-like quality dominates and tendrils seem to connect all the elements on the wall. The colors warm up once again, used to advantage in the depiction of scenes drawn from mythology. The Fourth Style was the dominant mode at the moment Vesuvius erupted in 79 AD, and the great majority of surviving Pompeian mythological paintings, including those in the House of the Vettii, belong to this final period.
Houses and villas of Pompeii
A tour through the painted houses and villas of Pompeii and the surrounding Bay of Naples, the surviving domestic settings that show the pigments and styles.
Roman Italy · Pompeii, Herculaneum, and the Bay of Naples
Villa of P. Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale
ca. 50-40 BC · Second Style
Boscoreale, about a mile north of Pompeii, was known in antiquity for its numerous aristocratic country villas, a tradition reflected even in the Bourbon-era name of the region, the "Royal Forest," implying a hunting preserve. The villa, buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD, takes its name from P. Fannius Synistor, one of its owners during the first half of the first century AD. Excavated in the early 1900s, its frescoes are among the most important to survive anywhere in the Roman world.
Room M functioned as a bedroom. Its rear wall shows rocky terrain with balustrades and an arbor above, a small cave or grotto sheltering a fountain, and a small figure of Hekate below. In the center, between two columns, a parapet embellished with a yellow monochrome landscape supports a glass bowl filled with fruit.
A celebrated fresco from the villa depicts a kithara player as a young woman clothed in a purple chiton and white himation, adorned with a bracelet, earrings, and a headband with a central medallion, all gold. A small figure of Atlas supports the arm of her elaborately carved chair, originally lacquered a deep lustrous red. The instrument she plays is a gilded kithara, a large concert instrument played by Apollo and professional musicians. Behind her stands a small girl in a sleeveless purple chiton, similarly adorned with a gold headband, bracelet, and loop earrings. Like portrait figures, both gaze directly at the spectator. Most recently it has been suggested the pair may represent a Macedonian queen or princess and her daughter or younger sister.
Imperial villa, Boscotrecase
late 1st century BC · Third Style
Numerous Roman villas dotted the coast along the Bay of Naples in antiquity, and one of the most sumptuous was at Boscotrecase, built by Agrippa, friend of Emperor Augustus and husband of his daughter Julia. In 11 BC, the year after Agrippa's death, the villa passed to his posthumously born infant son, Agrippa Postumus, and Julia would have overseen its completion. The frescoes are among the finest existing examples of Roman wall painting and, on the basis of their remarkable similarity to paintings in the Villa Farnesina in Rome, were most likely executed by artists from the capital.
Villa of the Mysteries
ca. 70-60 BC · Second Style
The villa is named for the paintings in Room 5, true frescoes of the Second Style. Although the subject is debated, the most common interpretation is that they depict a woman's initiation into matrimony in accordance with the Dionysian Mysteries, a cult devoted to the god known to the Romans as Bacchus. A key feature identifying these scenes as Bacchic is the depiction of maenads, the deity's female followers, often shown dancing with swirling drapery on painted Greek pottery from the sixth century BC onward. A common theory holds that the frescoes depict a bride initiating into the Bacchic Mysteries in preparation for marriage, with the elaborate costume worn by the main figure believed to be wedding apparel.
Frigidarium of the Sarno Baths
Bathing complex
The frigidarium, the cold-water room of the Sarno Baths bathing complex, preserves a painted scheme that has been the subject of dedicated technical analysis identifying the pigments, stratigraphy, and weathering patterns of the surviving paint layers.
House of the Citharist
15-5 BC or 50 AD · Third Style
Five mythological panels were found in rooms 19 (triclinium), 20 (cubiculum), and 21 (exedra), all now housed in the Naples Archaeological Museum. Room 19 was dominated by black walls and contained a single painting depicting Antiope on the south wall; it is likely two additional panels on the north and east walls are now lost. Room 20 contained three mythological panels: Mars and Venus, possibly Aeneas and Dido (north wall), Laomedon (east wall), and Leda and the swan (south wall), set against a red and yellow backdrop with Third Style architectural framing. Room 21 had a single panel depicting the Judgement of Paris set against black walls with yellow and red accents.
House of Venus in the Shell
Mars, the Roman god of war, is painted standing on a plinth in a fresco from this house. In a typical pose, he holds a spear, shield, and crested helmet.
House of Julia Felix
A fresco fragment depicting Urania, the Muse of Astronomy, comes from this house, dated 62-79 AD and now in the Louvre.
House of the Black Wall
15 BC-50 AD
The "Black Room," with walls adorned by frescoes inspired by the Trojan War, was uncovered during recent excavations at the Archaeological Park of Pompeii. One fresco depicts Helen of Troy and Paris.
House of the Dioscuri
Fourth Style
A Fourth Style fresco depicts Perseus freeing Andromeda from her chains on the rock. Andromeda, chained helplessly, is meant as prey to pacify a sea monster sent by Poseidon to punish Cassiopeia, her mother, who had boasted of her daughter's beauty. Perseus comes face to face with Andromeda, immediately falls in love, and rushes off to kill the sea monster.
House of Venus and Mars
The owners of this house are unknown, but it seems quite wealthy, with a wide variety of rooms and frescoes. One fresco depicts Venus laying back into Mars's arms, with two cupids playing with Mars's armour beside them. The use of mainly warm tones is unsurprising, as Pompeians probably sourced their red and yellow ochres locally through volcanic rock. The cooler tones would have been more difficult to source, and like other depictions of Venus, may have signaled wealth. Venus is painted in her typical pale skin, contrasting against Mars's deep tanned skin, characteristic of Roman men who worked outdoors versus wealthy women who could stay indoors.
House of Marcus Lucretius
1st century AD
A fresco depicting Hercules and Omphale, found in the triclinium, shows the central nude figure of Hercules wearing an ivy-leaf crown and holding a spear, his wine cup fallen to the ground, supported by an elderly bearded man. A partially nude woman wearing a lion-skin headdress leans against the man's club. Several standing figures look on, and three small erotes play at the scene, one blowing pipes, one peeping from beneath the elderly man's robes, and a third attempting to right the fallen wine cup.
The house's tablinum also features landscape and architectural wall painting, including a centre panel on the north wall depicting the wedding of Mars and Venus.
House of the Tragic Poet
A panel depicts the gods Hypnos, Hera, and Zeus on Mt. Ida. Hypnos presents Hera to Zeus, who sits on the right; Zeus holds Hera by the wrist while she looks at the viewer reluctantly with her veil removed. Three young figures at the bottom right are possibly dactyli, and a pillar with three lions perched on it appears in the background.
A dramatic scene depicts Achilles releasing Briseis to the Greek king Agamemnon. Patroclus leads Briseis by the wrist on the right, while Achilles, seated, angrily directs them toward Agamemnon's messenger.
The semi-outdoor peristyle featured an imaginary garden scene in the trompe l'oeil style, intended to blend with the actual garden growing within the unroofed portion. To its left was a fresco known as the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, in which a nude Iphigenia is taken by Ulysses and Achilles to be sacrificed just before Artemis delivers a deer to be sacrificed in her place. Calchas the seer holds his hand to his mouth indicating divine revelation, while Agamemnon sits facing away with his face veiled.
House of the Vettii
Fourth Style
Located on the east wall of the north triclinium next to the large peristyle, a scene depicts the punishment of Ixion, the Lapith King who betrayed Zeus. After being welcomed into Olympus, Ixion lusted after Hera; Zeus created the cloud goddess Nephele in Hera's image, and Ixion's union with her produced the centaurs. As punishment, Hermes ties Ixion to a winged fiery wheel. Hephaestus stands behind the wheel setting it in motion, while Hermes also rests a hand on it, looking to Hera, enthroned to the right with a golden scepter and crown.
On the north wall of the same triclinium, Daedalus presents King Minos's wife Pasiphae with a wooden cow, which Pasiphae ordered constructed so she could mate with a bull, a punishment from Poseidon after Minos refused to sacrifice the bull to him. Daedalus stands centrally with his back turned, gesturing to explain the cow; a young boy, either an apprentice or Icarus, sits nearby with hammer and chisel.
The final mythological scene in the north triclinium, on the south wall, depicts Dionysus discovering Ariadne, a popular theme in Greek vase painting, capturing the moment Dionysus finds her sleeping on Naxos after her abandonment by Theseus.
In the southern triclinium, on the east wall, the Death of Pentheus depicts the legendary King of Thebes being killed by the female followers of Dionysus after he refused to believe in the god's divinity and imprisoned him. Disguised as a maenad, Pentheus observed the women's cult celebration; his mother Agave and her sisters mistook him for a lion and tore him to pieces.
On the south wall of the same triclinium, the Punishment of Dirce depicts Dirce, wife of Lykos, being punished by Amphion and Zethus after she had cruelly treated their mother Antiope, niece of Lykos, on his orders.
A Fourth Style painting from the triclinium depicts a scene of sacrifice in honor of the goddess Diana, shown accompanied by a deer.
House of the Prince of Naples
ca. 55 BC addition · Fourth Style
The summer triclinium, added around 55 BC, was decorated in the Fourth Style.
House of the Centenary
A wall painting in this house features the earliest known representation of Vesuvius, found in the household lararium, the shrine to the Lares. It depicts the mountain with a single vineyard-covered peak rather than today's double-peak profile, though some scholars reject this single-peak interpretation as a reliable historical record.
A secluded room decorated with explicit scenes of female-male intercourse has been suggested as a private "sex club," though other scholars categorize it simply as a bedroom that often featured erotic imagery. Some mythological paintings, including one of Medea, are thought to represent theatrical scenes; a painting of Hercules may depict the Hercules Furens of Seneca or Euripides, and a scene from Iphigenia in Tauris shows Pylades, Orestes, and Iphigenia.
House of Lucius Ceius Secundus
2nd century BC, late Samnite period
The walls are adorned with scenes of animals locked in battle, from a big cat on the verge of taking down a pair of rams to a deer looking back in terror as a wild boar gives chase. Nearby, African hunters stand in the shadow of Egyptian-style buildings, preparing to hunt hippopotamuses and crocodiles on the banks of the Nile. More than two thousand years after their creation, these frescoes were recently restored using laser cleaning before careful retouching of faded details, one of the few surviving Pompeian dwellings dated to the late Samnite period.
House of Menander
The estate takes its name from a well-preserved fresco of the ancient Greek dramatist Menander in a small room off the peristyle, though some speculate the painting depicts the house's owner or another reader of Menander's works rather than the playwright himself. The house also included a fresco depicting the death of Laocoön.
A lararium in the peristylium preserves additional painted decoration.
House of the Orchard
Also known as the Casa dei Cubicoli Floreali, Casa del Frutteto, or House of the Garden, this residence on the south side of Via dell'Abbondanza is notable for rich decorative features, including the floral motifs in its rooms that give the house its various names.
House of the Priest Amandus
A well-preserved example of a mid-sized Roman aristocratic residence, located on the south side of Via dell'Abbondanza. The house belonged to the influential Trebii family, prominent in Pompeii both before the Roman conquest and in the decades leading up to the eruption. Its name derives from an electoral inscription reading "Amandus Sakerdos" painted on the exterior wall.
House of Punished Love
A fresco represents the punishment of Eros by Aphrodite, dated to 25 BC. The fresco of Mars and Venus is on the south wall, and a fresco of Venus and the personification of Persuasion is on the north wall; the colours, facial structures, and background trees suggest both were painted by the same artist. Venus's appearance is consistent across both, in her pale skin, jewelry, and modest dress, though her hairstyle and color differ between the two scenes, oddly, if painted by the same hand. In the Mars and Venus fresco, a confusing power dynamic plays out: Venus is seated in a throne suggesting power, while Mars rests a hand on her chest, suggesting authority or ownership, with no signs of the shame or embarrassment found in the myth's original telling in Homer's Odyssey.
Temple of Isis
A fresco shows a priest wearing a mask of Anubis. The cult of Isis spread widely in the Hellenistic period through the religious links the Greeks maintained with Egypt, and was particularly popular in Pompeii due to the city's strong commercial ties with that region. A further fresco depicts Isis receiving Io at her sanctuary in Canopus, on the south wall of the Ekklesiasterion.
House of Actius Anicetus
Fourth Style
A Fourth Style fresco depicts a riot that broke out in Pompeii in 59 AD during games held in the arena involving Pompeians and inhabitants of Nuceria. On the orders of Nero, the event led to the closure of the amphitheatre for ten years.
House of Gaius Rufus
A surviving fresco depicts a beauty contest between Venus and Hesperus, judged by Apollo. The ancient Greeks called the morning star Phosphorus in its personified form and the evening star Hesperus, later understanding both to be the same planet and renaming it Aphrodite, a name the Romans adopted as Venus. Apollo sits enthroned with an aureole above his head; Hesperus stands on the stairs showcasing his beauty and holding a sword; Venus waits on the sidelines, lacking an aureole herself. The most vibrant colours in the fresco are the bright red and deep black used on Venus and Apollo. This is the first surviving fresco of Venus without cherubs nearby, and she is not the centre of attention, divided instead between the deities, with Hesperus as the main focal point.
House of Octavius Quartio
Two original structures combining to form this palatial residence were built during the Samnite period around the third century BC. The domus covered an entire insula before the earthquake of 62 AD and had two atriums and two entrances; after the earthquake, part of the house was sold to another owner and made independent. The arcaded terrace and large garden are thought to have been completed at this time, extending the area to about 1,800 square meters, possibly for commercial use.
House of the Greek Epigrams
A fresco from peristyle "i" depicts a satyr ravishing a maenad, and another fresco shows a heron attacking a cobra.
Further Pompeian frescoes
A fresco depicts two Lares, protective deities and sons of the god Mercury, pouring wine from a drinking horn into a bucket, standing on either side of a sacrifice scene in which the head of the family makes offerings while a musician plays and smaller figures bring items for sacrifice, including a pig. Beneath, a pair of serpents, bringers of good fortune and abundance, stand on either side of the altar.
A fresco showing a woman holding writing implements, a wax tablet and stylus, is commonly called Sappho, though it actually portrays a high-society Pompeian woman, richly dressed with gold-threaded hair and large gold earrings, dated to around 50 AD.
The so-called "Sale of Bread" fresco from the House of the Baker, dated around 79 AD, is misleadingly titled, as it actually depicts the distribution of bread by a political candidate rather than a sale by a baker or vendor.
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https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/banquet-hall-roman-frescoes-unearthed-in-pompeii/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/the-brilliant-blue-paint-covering-this-lavish-room-in-ancient-pompeii-may-have-cost-more-than-half-the-annual-salary-of-a-roman-foot-soldier-180988374/
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