A Cornice from Pompeii

There are many things to talk about the excavations at the House of the Black Room in Pompeii, from the awesome Parthian Perseus to the poor bakery workers who may have been locked in their quarters to die when the volcano erupted. Onetime Bookandswordblog commentator Sophie Hay gets to work there! One thing which I like is this piece of terracotta architectural decoration with painting which is colourful but not fussily precise.

The world used to be full of painting by ordinary people in a hurry and on a budget who never expected their work to be looked at too closely. Today we see this kind of painting on pre-painted miniatures for wargames, or holiday decorations at Canadian Tire, but not long ago it was not uncommon to have whole rooms with painted walls or roofs. Most of these were painted quickly by artists who made something good enough and moved on rather than trying to correct every misplaced brush-stroke. I don’t believe that anyone before the eruption cared that the green leaves are not all the same shape or some are a bit higher or lower than others. But in the age of machine production and reproduction, these details stand out to us, even if we could not paint something more precise.

Further Reading

https://livyarrow.org/2024/04/12/new-pompeii-images/
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-68777741

(scheduled 10 May 2024)