Wall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase

Wall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This panel depicts a slender candelabrum, decorated with winged sirens, and is typical of the so-called Third Pompeian style of Roman wall painting. It comes from one of four bedrooms excavated near the modern town of Boscotrecase between 1903 and 1905 at the site of a luxury villa overlooking the Bay of Naples. The villa was probably built by Marcus Agrippa, close friend and son-in-law of the emperor Augustus, but the frescoes date to the period immediately after Agrippa's death in 12 B.C. when the villa was extensively and lavishly refurbished. The frescoes have been preserved because the villa was buried by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in A.D. 79.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Wall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at BoscotrecaseWall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at BoscotrecaseWall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at BoscotrecaseWall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at BoscotrecaseWall painting on red ground: candelabrum, from the imperial villa at Boscotrecase

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.