ROMAN ANTIQUITIES at the Metropolitan Museum

Speranza

The Metropolitan Museum of New York is fortunate to have a series of wall paintings from two Roman villas near POMPEI.

One is a VILLA at BOSCO REALE.

The other is a villa at BOSCO TRE CASE.

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The villa at BOSCO REALE was constructed about 50-40 BC, during a period when ROMAN aristocrats were building lavish retreats around the Bay of NAPOLI, the ancient equivalent of the COSTA AZURRA or Palm Springs.

In their public life in the city of ROMA, senators sought to maintain the asture old REPUBLICAN traditions, but in their COUNTRY VILLAS, they assumed a lifestyle that emulated the luxurious leisure and cultural amenities of the Hellenistic royal courts that had recently fallen under Roman control.

THE BOSCO REALE villa painting includes THREE panels from the main reception hall of the villa that are decorated with large-scale figures.

They are generally agreed to be COPIES or versions from a cycle of royal paintings created for one of the Macedonian courts of the early Hellenistic period.

ALSO FROM BOSCO REALE villa are the frescoes from the celebrated bedroom or cubiculum, which are among the most complete and impressive to have survived from antiquity.

The back and side walls are decorated with cenes that create a fuller illusion of spatial depth than any other known wall paintings of the period.

They combine elements that evoke royal precincts or sanctuaries, stage-sets, and bucolic landscapes -- three aspects of the Hellenistic world that fascinated cultivated Romans and found expresion in their literature as well as their art.