House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto
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The House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto (Italian: Casa di Marco Lucrezio Frontone[1], V.4.a) is a Roman house in Pompeii with well-preserved wall paintings in both the late Third Style as well as the Fourth Style.
Late Third Style paintings
Several rooms are decorated in the late Third Style including the atrium, tablinum and bedroom 5.[2] Roger Ling considers these to be the locus classicus of the late Third Style.[3]
The atrium is the simplest with black fields divided by golden yellow bands. Each field has a small figural detail in the centre, including a bird, a dog chasing a deer and a dog catching a hare. The upper zone of the wall has insubstantial architectural elements typical of Third Style.
The tablinum's two main walls have very elaborate decoration including perspectival architecture in the upper zone, perspectival gardens in the dado, and aediculae with figural paintings at their centre in the main zone.
Bedroom 5 has perspectival architecture with a fairly complicated arrangement of background fields in red, black, and yellow, featuring small ornamental figures such as caryatids and griffins.
Fourth Style paintings
Bedroom 6 is painted in the Fourth Style[4] with a bright golden yellow background. It contains two central figural panels. The first shows Narcissus gazing into his reflection. The second shows Xanthippe breastfeeding her father Mykon. On either side of the entrance are two tondos, one depicting Hermes.
The house is attached to a garden, which contains a portico with large-scale paintings of lions catching other animals including a bear.
References
- ^ "Official website".
- ^ Ling, Roger (1991). Roman Painting. London: Cambridge University Press. pp. 60–61. ISBN 0521306140.
- ^ Ling, Roger (1991). Roman Painting. London: Cambridge University Press. p. 60. ISBN 0521306140.
- ^ Scaife, Ross. "Information concerning the rooms in Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto". Pompeian Households: An On-line Companion. The Stoa: A Consortium for Electronic Publication in the Humanities. Retrieved 15 June 2024.
General References
- R. Ling, Roman Painting, Cambridge, 1991
- W. J. Peters (ed.), La Casa di Marcus Lucretius Fronto e le sue pitture, Assen, 1993
- S. L. Wynia, “The excavations in and around the House of Marcus Lucretius Fronto,” in La regione sotterrata dal Vesuvio, Naples, 1982
External Links
- Plan and photographic guide to the house
- Archaeological guide to the house, part of Pompeian Households: An On-line Companion.
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