Villa Boscoreale - Art

Art

The Villa is most notable for its now auction-scattered artistic works, notably its highly skilled buon fresco paintings. Villa Boscoreale was uncovered in 1900, revealing upon excavation many delineating nuances of luxurious Roman life. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, together with King’s College, London, is building a virtual model of the Villa, linking these scattered works, based on a plan drawn at the time of excavation by archaeologist Felice Barnabei (1902)—who also made extensive notes—photographs taken of the excavation, the research of Phyllis W. Lehmann (1953), and axonometric drawings of the plan, locating the images on the walls, by Maxwell Anderson (1987). The construction consisted of a rustic villa of three stories, complete with baths, an underground passage to a stable and agricultural buildings, the latter not excavated. On the Barnabei plan, the central ground floor of the living quarters—the only remains partially intact—consisted of over thirty rooms or enclosures, surrounding, by a peristyle walk, a colonnaded courtyard. The building featured an impressive main entrance approached by five broad steps leading to a colonnaded forecourt.

Most of the representational work has characteristics of Greek, Hellenism or Classicism. For instance, those found in the living room appear to be depictions of either philosophers, such as Epicurus, Zeno or Menedemus, or possibly old kings, like King Kinyras of Cyprus. Similarly, the bedrooms described in Second Style also evoke Hellenistic qualities, such as are seen at the Tomb of Lyson or at Kallikles. At a time when the Roman Republic was ending and classicism somewhat fading, this is considered as an interesting comment on style and taste. Seemingly, Greek representations in the home were considered acceptable, even admired and sophisticated. The images survived the quick succession of Vesuvian cataclysms because of the skill of the fresco work and the absence of organic materials such as indigo, murex purple, red madder among its pigments. The reddening of some of its yellow ochre shows temperatures to have exceeded 300°C."