Pompeii Frescoes: The Sacred Paintings Preserved by Fire
On the morning of August 24, 79 CE, Mount Vesuvius began its catastrophic eruption. By the following day, the Roman city of Pompeii — prosperous, sophisticated, populated by approximately 11,000 people — was buried under 4 to 6 meters of volcanic ash and pumice. The disaster was complete and instantaneous. And because of it, the paintings on the walls of Pompeii's houses, temples, and villas were preserved with a fidelity impossible in any other ancient context: the colors still vivid after 1,900 years, the plaster still smooth, the subjects — mythological scenes, still lifes, portraits, sacred ceremonies — still legible. The frescoes of Pompeii are the primary source of knowledge about Roman domestic painting, a tradition almost entirely lost elsewhere. Among them, the cycle of frescoes in the Villa of the Mysteries — 29 life-size figures moving through a continuous Dionysiac ritual narrative on the walls of a single room — constitutes the most complete surviving depiction of an a...